Beach City Market at Horton Plaza in Downtown San Diego (Restaurant Review)

This lunch-to-go packaged salads, wraps, sushi, deli place on the street level at the 1st Street entrance to psychedelic Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego is rather far from the nearest beach (that would be Coronado Beach) and isn't quite a market (though it's just a long fly ball from Ralph's grocery store). Rather, it is something of a middle-upper class self-serve deli selling pre-packaged organic and too healthy to be tasty finger food with an ok deli and a juice bar.

Walking in and veering right you are faced with a salad bar area lined with prepackaged health food stuff like smoked salmon on steamed rice with teriyaki sauce (it sounds and looks better than it tastes), feta cheese, higher end pita breads, varieties of salads, and dry pastas. There is a sushi counter that make healthy sushi with brown rice (yucky... It looks nasty and tastes rough), and a deli counter that makes decent (though quite overpriced) sandwiches. Oddly enough, no fruit section and no pizza.

There are endless varieties of juices to choose from and a decent coffee/smoothie bar that makes drinks to order. Incidently, this is also the place where you pay for the food you picked up most of the time because that 'Cashier' counter on the right side of the entrance way is almost never in use. So, sometimes it takes a while waiting to pay for the food even when the line isn't all that long (the staff is serving double duty as cashier and coffee-maker). Otherwise the service is ok...friendly and laid back.

I'd say.... this is not one of the best food deals in town... Unless you are having a brown-rice and organic food only mania. They do have some good daily specials barbeque deals, but for the price you pay here (lunch going for $8 - $12), you're better off taking the elevator to the 4th floor food court for really tasty food for less. The facility is usually clean and the patio dining area is awesome, though this area is a favorite hang out of homeless folks (they don't actually come to the restaurant, but they ambush you on the sidewalk in front of it).

This is a part of Horton Plaza, of course, so if you park in the plaza's parking lot, bring your parking ticket in to be verified (free for 3 hrs).

Beach City Market: 3 Horton Plz (on 1st Avenue side), San Diego, CA 92101, Tel. (619) 232-2491 Website: www.beachcitymarket.com