Glass Door
1835 Columbia St. (Little Italy)
619-564-3755
Prices: Starters, salads and burgers, $7 to $16; entrees, $16 to $30
By Frank Sabatini Jr. | Downtown News
Little Italy’s only “view restaurant” is back with a bang after closing temporarily for a remodel. Perched atop the fourth floor of the Porto Vista Hotel & Suites, the west-facing Glass Door reawakens with a less-fussy ambiance and new entrees that match root beer to ribeye and bleu cheese to mussels.
Gone are the white tablecloths and mustard-yellow walls. They’ve been replaced by large, metallic high-top tables and a muted-blue color scheme embracing flat-screen televisions. The design changes also extend to the elongated patio, which overhangs Columbia Street and looks out to San Diego’s skyline and harbor.
Purple, recessed lighting illuminates the space now, with seating that looks straight out to the precious view. The gorgeous Moroccan lights that contributed to Glass Door’s original highbrow chic have been kept, however, along with a couple of popular dishes from the previous menu.
Despite the restaurant’s casual re-branding, Chef Eric Smith has upped the ante with his menu by toying creatively with celebrated American-Euro recipes. From the “light fare” section, for instance, a heaping pound of Prince Edward Island mussels arrive in a pond of béchamel, bleu cheese and bacon. Miraculously, the petite bivalves retained their delicate, pristine flavor amid what seems like an aggressive assemblage of other ingredients.
The sustainable mussels show up twice more, as a welcome garnish to lobster risotto cakes with sherry reduction, and in cioppino blanco, a zippy seafood stew with San Francisco roots that Smith enhances with salmon and lobster tail. He keeps the recipe’s classic foundation of crabmeat, white wine and an openhanded measure of chili flakes.
From the salad offerings, my companion effused over a pretty composition of heirloom tomatoes, super-fresh strawberries, feta cheese and basil. My choice – oddly named “The Lock Smith” for reasons we couldn’t decipher – featured a piling of baby lettuces, heirlooms, bacon, garbanzo beans and smoky cheddar. Perhaps it was the tortilla wheel garnishing the salad that prompted the name, given that the organics flowed through it like a thick key entering a big round keyhole.
Smith melds together two American staples for creating a highly tasty entree named “root beer ribeye.” Indeed, the herbaceous flavor of root beer (contained here in compound butter) pairs brilliantly with the fatty notes and spicy rub of a good steak. This was a generous cut that demands a wolf’s appetite. The plate was rounded off with a Peruvian touch of purple potatoes.
Other beef choices land you squarely in the burger category, with “the notorious bib” encasing a whole egg. A slathering of bacon-beet aioli adds novelty and richness to the patty. All of the burgers sell for $14, although they’re 25 percent off during happy hour.
The lasagna cupcake is a carryover from the old menu, but worth trying. Smith uses sheet pasta to neatly wrap the spherical stacking of ricotta, mozzarella and truffled portabella mushrooms. My only complaint was that it could have used a little more marinara between the layers.
Longtime denizens will also be happy to see that Smith kept his famous duck confit fries on the menu. Consider it his gourmet take on carne asada fries, in which tender pulled duck meat replaces the beef on top and pure duck fat (a.k.a. liquid gold) replaces the vegetable oil used for frying.
Glass Door’s cocktail menu has also been revised by bar manager Dean Powers, who might fool you into thinking you’re drinking a Manhattan with his namesake Deano. The difference is that it’s far boozier and more complex due to a few permutations involving Makers Mark, ginger liqueur, blackberries and rosemary. Another drink, Bebida de los Muertos or “Drink of the Dead,” mimics an Old Fashion except that it’s made with tequila instead of whisky and uses agave instead of sugar. So what if view outside turns a little blurry.
For dessert we lucked out with homemade ice cream that Smith happened to be making when we ordered, a delectable blueberry-orange and plain coconut. Both were ultra-creamy and worthy of a big slice of three-layer chocolate cake, outsourced from Opera Patisserie.
For many, the makeover at Glass Door will feel more approachable with a wider range of food and cocktails and more communal seating. That million-dollar view, however, is an amenity we associate with a fine dining atmosphere.
