New Cafe: American Breakfast & Chinese Food in East Village, Downtown San Diego, California

Anyone dropping in at the southeast corner of E St at 9th Avenue in downtown San Diego looking for cheap sushi and Hawaiian dishes would now be greeted by the area's newest restaurant. The New Café is a mom and pop (and 3 sons) Chinese semi-fast-food joint that does American diner style breakfast and serves cheap burgers and sandwiches along with its Chinese dishes.

The place is quite small and there is only room for 5 small tables in the inside dining area (there is a small table set up out on the patio on 9th Avenue side, though), but it is very well kept - immaculately clean and beautifully decorated with strings of fake flowers cascading down over the counter from the ceiling. Each table is equipped with sugar, salt, pepper, and a bottle of soy sauce. It's really a Smorgish sort of place... Functional without being sterile. You walk in, try to sniff at the fake flowers (they can almost pass for real ones!), and immediately get the feeling that you won't get to leave until you've been very well fed indeed.

There is also a small but clean unisex restroom in the back for customers.

The menu is moderately large with all the common Chinese dishes ($5-6.50): fried rice, meat with broccoli or bell pepper or ginger, kung pao, foo yong egg by itself or with meat and/or vegetable, lo mein noodle, chop suey, teriyaki rice bowls. The taste is not spectacular (heavy on soy sauce for most of the dishes, especially the rice bowls). The American diner food includes diner-style breakfast with choices of eggs & meat with hash browns, toast, and coffee from $3-8, pancake and/or French toast from $2.95-4.75, meat loaf, pork chops, liver & onions, steak, hamburger, hot sandwiches, soups, and salads. The most expensive of the entrees is the $9.50 steak. You can really stuff yourself full of (not spectacularly good tasting) lunch here for less than $10.

Since my new place doesn't have wifi, I have to go to the Central Library in downtown to use the connection there quite often these days. Having a place to drop by to lunch and/or dinner that doesn't cost an arm and a leg is quite a blessing. Mom does give you your money's worth (actually I wonder if she isn't giving more. For the price, you get a lot of food) of carbohydrates and is always very friendly... and you can see that she goes as fast as she can even when the place is busy to get lunch to you before you faint from acute hypoglycemia. There really is no other place in town where you can have a burger and fries for $2.75! Not even at the fast food joints nearby.

New Café American Diner and Chinese Food is across 9th Avenue from the Central Post Office and Library in Downtown San Diego. It is a cash only establishment.

New Café: 901 E Street, San Diego, CA 92101. Tel. (619) 595-1785. Open daily from 10AM-10PM.
Cash only.