Tia Juana Tilly’s Moves North as Mission Valley Outpost Opens

By far the most interesting aspect of the late but not particularly lamented Lehr’s Greenhouse was its location smack in the middle of the jumble of flying ramps and overpasses that make up the interchange of Interstates 8 and 805.

The same could be said of Tia Juana Tilly’s, the new occupant of this immense and uniquely sited restaurant building in pastoral Mission Valley.

Tens of thousands of San Diegans should be familiar with Tia Juana Tilly’s, since the parent restaurant of the same name has stood for years at the corner of 7th and Revolucion in downtown Tijuana, next door to the jai alai fronton . (The Tilly’s restaurants are under the same ownership as the sports palace.)

Precedent exists for Tilly’s move north across the border. Some four years ago, Tijuana’s celebrated La Fonda Roberto’s, which specializes in regional cuisine from the interior of Mexico, opened a small but pleasant branch in Chula Vista. A serious restaurant, Roberto’s made the border crossing quite easily.

Tilly’s a Different Story

But Tilly’s, though a lively focal point for Americans visiting Tijuana (the younger ones, at any rate), brings little excitement with it to Mission Valley. The freeways that whiz past and above the place just don’t provide the same background for--or incentive to--unrestrained merrymaking as do the bright lights and street life of Tijuana’s main drag.

For better or worse, Lehr’s over-fertilized botanical look has been banished from the premises. The entryway bar, remodeled into a lounge-in-the-round, caters to after-hours office workers and singles, and the left-hand dining room has been repainted in flat colors and turned into The Jai Alai Room, the only area typically open for public dining. It is a comfortable enough room, if somewhat dark and brooding in its decor. (The other main dining space, now called Tilly’s Fifth Avenue, serves primarily as a banquet room.) The pounding disco music in the bar gives way to graceful Latin Big Band rhythms in the dining room, although the two sounds do tend to overlap at times. When they do, the result is far from restful.

At the Tijuana restaurant, the menu always has succeeded at least in part because it was kinda Mexican and kinda American, sufficiently exotic but also sufficiently familiar to make the young American crowd feel that they were in a foreign place, but not too foreign. The same sort of menu simply seems out of place in San Diego.

This split gastronomic personality results in a menu that on the appetizer page alone runs from the very Mexican oysters Marcella, baked under a covering of chorizo sausage, to the shamelessly American stuffed potato skins, prosaicly cornball right down to the side dish of “ranch” dressing. (It would take the tongue of an incensed Daniel Webster, at the very least, to adequately express the outrage upon modern American eating habits caused by the introduction of stuffed potato skins and other similarly garish dishes.)

Oysters and Chorizo Mix

The sordid spuds were bypassed, the oysters Marcella sampled--the idea of combining oysters and chorizo turned out to be a good one flavor-wise, but the sausage should have been precooked and drained, since the oysters arrived bathing in little puddles of orange grease. Oysters Cardenas and Madrazo, the first in spiced garlic butter, the second baked with chilies, sour cream and cheese, were much happier choices. A combination plate featuring two samples of each oyster preparation is available.

Another appetizer that showed some promise was the queso Arabe, a variation on the queso fundido theme in which mild melted cheese mantled a mixture of fresh watercress and chopped onion. The vegetables, especially the cress, gave the cheese quite a presence, sufficiently so that the dish could have done without the top layer of thin, under-flavored tomatillo sauce. This sauce, by the way, moistens several of the entrees, but it needs to have more bite if it is to do its job properly.

Entrees do not include the choice of soup or salad, although both are available a la carte. A salad was found to have been thrown together with as much of an eye to beauty, taste and variety as the freeways that surround the restaurant.

The menu does offer plenty of choice in main dish selections, ranging from omelets and sandwiches (the inevitable hamburger, a turkey club, and a crab-cream cheese triple-decker) to chicken and seafood salads, and finally to a formal entree list that runs the gamut from a taco tray for two to roast prime rib. A list like this always makes one question whether a kitchen that is a jack of several trades can be a master of any.

Tilly’s kitchen barbecues chicken and pork ribs; it mesquite-grills chicken breasts and orange roughy and spreads them with tomatillo sauce; it dunks fish filets and prawns in beer batter and deep fries them (the menu specifies Corona beer, evidently to catch the eye of the Yuppie set); it pounds filet mignon and spreads it with salsa and cheese, and it grills quail and swordfish and serves both without tomatillo sauce, which on the whole seems a good idea.

sh Fried Shrimp Done Well The fried shrimp actually were rather nice and on the whole seem a safe bet for this menu. Whether the flavor of Corona beer adds anything special to the preparation will have to be left to the judgment of someone who really knows his cervezas, but on the whole the shrimp were juicy and pleasing within their crisp batter coats.

A broiled snapper, dressed with a pat of herb butter but mainly flavored by mesquite, pleased the guest who ordered it. The mesquite flavor did seem overly insistent, though, perhaps because the fish had sat over it too long--it was a bit charred at the edges.

The most typically Mexican dish ordered, the carne asada, earned a mixed notice. The relatively thin steak was tender enough, although the underlying spiciness expected in this preparation was barely noticeable. Frijoles refritos registered as sub-standard; the spiced white rice did somewhat better, but the chili relleno was a forlorn object, innocent of any stuffing and quite exhausted beneath its greasy crust. It gave every evidence of having been cooked well in advance.

The both-sides-of-the-border theme continues right to the end, with flan in cajeta and ends with cheesecakes, macadamia fudge sundaes and mud pie. The flan is quite passable, and likeable for the cajeta (a suave sauce made of milk and caramelized sugar) topping, which rarely turns up on San Diego menus.

TIA JUANA TILLY’S

2828 Camino del Rio South, San Diego

299-2828

Lunch and dinner daily

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $20 to $45.