A palm tree strung with café lights leaned over our table, and beyond it, past a low glass windbreak, the sand ran straight to the water. This is the patio at World Famous, on the strand in Pacific Beach, in San Diego, and it was here that we spent a recent afternoon with old (we were new) friends, picnic tables and all.
The table filled up fast. Menus went down, then iced teas, a beer, a glass of white wine, water with lemon. Someone pointed toward the lifeguard tower painted in faded stripes across the walk. Conversation moved the way conversation does when nobody is watching the clock.
Then the food arrived, in waves of its own. A blackened salmon salad, the fish still crackling from the pan, laid over spinach and cherry tomatoes with a wedge of lemon standing at attention. A platter of bacon-wrapped shrimp, breaded and fried gold, set over slaw in a pool of sweet chili sauce. A cheeseburger stacked with bacon and a fried egg, its yolk sitting there fully intact, daring anyone to cut into it too fast. A trio of fish tacos, each dressed differently: pickled onion and cotija on one, pico de gallo and cheddar on another.
And then, the bisque.
It came in a wide white bowl, a thin ribbon of paprika drawn across the surface like a signature, with a torn piece of bread on the side for whatever the spoon left behind. We have eaten a good deal of lobster bisque over a good many years, in a good many places, and we can say without hedging that this was the best of them. Rich, but not heavy. Sweet, but only where sweetness belonged.
We finished it before anyone else at the table had finished talking.
At least one of our servers that afternoon, it turned out, was the daughter of Dieter May, who opened World Famous in Pacific Beach nearly twenty years ago after growing up making trips to San Diego as a kid from Austria. He runs the place with an eye toward the ocean, having spent much of his own life chasing waves around the world, and these days he does it with his three daughters alongside him. It showed. The service moved with the same unhurried confidence as the tide outside.
World Famous has been feeding this stretch of beach since 1970, and on an afternoon like this one, it earns its name.
More information is available at worldfamouspb.com.
