Sprouts Aside, Cafe Is Typically Conventional

Commerce will feed the new San Diego Convention Center, but where will the expected swarms of conventioneers from Paducah, Poughkeepsie and Peoria find sustenance? And where, for that matter, will those of us invited to lunch or dine with these visitors find ourselves lifting knives and forks?

The answer to both questions is, fortunately, multiple-choice, because downtown offers plenty of options and more are on the way. But, just as many expected, the convention center quite suddenly has tilted downtown’s geography toward it, and some south-of-Market Street neighborhoods that formerly held no attraction for those without business in them now look to be in the thick of things.

Cafe 6th & K, in the heart of the produce district at the Ramada Hotel, is one of those places that any day now will buzz with the same mixture of regional accents that makes convention hotel dining rooms in Atlanta and Chicago sound like all-American Babels. As is the case with such rooms elsewhere, Cafe 6th & K may never catch on with locals, but it is interesting to see what will be presented to visitors as a typical taste of San Diego.

The menu is pretty much what might be found in a convention hotel anywhere, with the possible exception of the alfalfa sprouts that have been insinuated into some of the sandwiches. As its main attractions, it holds out prime rib, filet mignon with sauce bearnaise, fried chicken, several pastas and a hamburger named the America’s Cup, which, the menu notes rather endearingly, excludes kiwi from its garnish.

If the menu offers what the typical conventioneer might expect to find, the ground-floor room may certainly fulfill his or her expectations of what a San Diego hotel eatery should be like. Colored in the pinks and mauves that have come to be known as “California hotel classic,” Cafe 6th & K is built to handle a crowd, is staffed by servers who are glad to chat with out-of-towners during slack periods and offers from some tables a fine view of the convention center and the sail-shaped tenting on its roof, which at night looks somewhat like a tight formation of yachts. A menu liner treats visitors to snippets of San Diego history, including one that might make some locals weep: In 1867, Alonzo Horton bought 960 acres in what has become downtown for $265.

An English chef named David Tweedle supervises the kitchen, but the menu looks to have been written by somebody in the market research department. Among the starters are such amiably named offerings as the “Maui Wowie,” which baby shrimp “bask” on a bed of papaya and other fruits, and the “basta pasta,” a combination of angel hair, vegetables and “Alfredo sauce.” Everyone who knows cooking, presumably including chef Tweedle, knows there ain’t no such animal as an “Alfredo sauce,” but that point probably matters little in this context.

The menu reassuringly offers several soups daily, including an always-available scallop chowder, served in a hollowed-out round sourdough loaf, that comes off as a good variation on San Diego’s ever-popular clam chowder and is likable for its flavorful broth and chunks of smoked bacon. A seafood gumbo offered as a daily special showed the dangers of doing cookbook research; Tweedle evidently relied on one of the phony, pseudo-Cajun recipes that now plague us and concocted a thick, muddy soup that would have been fairly authentic except for the unholy dose of cayenne that made a guest choke on the very first sip.

Quite a bit of light fare is offered, including several salads--there is a Caesar, naturally; in this case fleshed out with strips of roasted chicken--some vaguely localized pastas (the pasta Del Mar combines shrimp and scallops with linguine and a lemon-garlic cream sauce, doubtless a variant of the “Alfredo sauce” employed elsewhere) and a quartet of sandwiches, including a nicely stacked club served on a toasted croissant. To toast a croissant at least shows imagination.

The entree list includes one definite local reference, the Stingaree Stir, a Chinese-style stir-fry of vegetables, cashews and a choice of chicken or pork that points to the early Chinese presence in what is now called the Gaslamp Quarter. The Sonoran Shrimp is, oddly enough, just about the only bow to nearby Mexico, but it is a cordial one. These large shrimp are thoroughly encased in strips of bacon and grilled to a nice finish, basted all the while with a smoky, Mexican-style barbecue sauce that cooks down to a nice glaze.

Because conventioneers will come from all 50 states, and prime rib remains the lingua franca of American cuisine, this dish takes first position on the entree list and is offered in two differently sized cuts: large and very large. The smaller of the two seemed more than generous, and, although the meat was reasonably well cooked, it was neither particularly tender nor very flavorful. The horseradish sauce--the creamed English version and very well done--served not so much as an accent but as a principal flavor. Both this and other entrees were garnished with an excellent selection of tender-crisp vegetables, one of the few items that may leave visitors with a true impression of California-style cooking.

* CAFE 6th & K

Ramada Hotel, 660 K St.

696-0234

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $20 to $60.