"No Shirt- No Shoes- No Problem"

Sounds very So- Cal- ish to me, yes?



Ahh, summer will be over soon. At this point I am still in San Diego, California, with every cell of my body persistently making its own case of telling me not to withdraw myself from the Sunshine State. These days I've pretty much been pampered by the friendly sun and the refreshing ocean breeze that almost emulate a rejuvenating sanctuary - I mean, it helps me clear my head and refrains myself from fulfilling my every-5 second urge to tweet from my Blackberry. But really, what's been doing wonders to me is the constant company of a great girlfriend. Yes, you know who you are E (*wink).



Today E took me to Ocean Beach to try out one of the most popular burger joint in town which boasts more than a thousand reviews on Yelp. We met up with another friend of ours on the spot, who previously warned us about how the waiting line could be quite intolerable. Turned out it wasn't that bad. We waited for 15-20 mins and got seated right away. As you can see, it's got a very laid back, surfer shack kind of ambiance with all the surfboards hanging from the ceilings and the license plate-covered walls.



"No Shirt- No Shoes- No Problem" is their motto.

This is Hodad's that first opened on the beach at the end of Santa Monica Avenue in the very laid back neighborhood of Ocean Beach (or as San Diegans call it, OB) in 1969. Rumor has it they serve the perfect American trifecta: burgers, fries, and shakes. A very generous portion of them. This place is definitely not for the faint-hearted, at least portion-wise. It even got the thumbs up from Guy Fieri on "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on Food Network, agreeing that their bacon cheeseburger is quite a show stopper.



A basket of huge and crunchy deep fried battered onion rings arrived first on our table. A bountiful of them. But really, how many pieces of onion rings can you actually eat? There were four of us but we ended up finishing only half of it. They're not bad, but they're not the best. Especially with the breading looks a little bit darker than it should be, then you know how many times they've reused the oil for frying.



I got the smallest option on the menu called mini cheeseburger, which in my honest opinion, was far from being minuscule. It's almost the same size of an In-n-Out burger, only slighttttly smaller and a lot messier. Perhaps the fact that it's not the biggest burger on the menu has something to do with my patty being just an ok patty. Not juicy enough, not rare enough, not thick enough for me. Things might've been different had I gotten a bigger one, I can't say for sure. But they give you a lot of pickles to go with the burger. I normally like to have everything on my burger and end up eating all of it. But I actually had to get rid of some of them because it was just a little too much. I'm pretty sure this doesn't apply to most of my guy friends.

I didn't get their shakes - I'm not a milkshake person in general. I heard people are raving about it, though. I also heard that they have a pretty good beer selection. I happened to find a recipe of their famous bacon cheeseburger here on the internet. I don't know how close it is to the real thing, since I haven't had the real thing anyways. I'd love to come back for it though. But whatever, the recipe makes me salivate already.

Special thanks to E and A for taking me to Hodad's!