pinkberry at hard rock; hula's; eclipse

pinkberry opened its first location in san diego this week, in the hard rock hotel in the gaslamp. we stopped by saturday and it was quite busy, with lots of L.A.-type foot traffic sauntering through to the hotel, or in one cae, being pushed in a grocery cart shown here. the tart yogurt - plain and green tea, with the usual fruit toppings available - was quite good but didn't blow away the many that managed to precede it in san diego (yogurt world, yog-art, yogotango, red mango). give credit to the hard rock though, for really livening up what had been the figurative dead end of 5th ave, at least on this 4th of july weekend. as for pinkberry, we're still waiting on that hillcrest location, guys.

speaking of hillcrest, we walked by the new hula's bar on university, across from urban mo's. it was hard to ignore as we exited ortega's restaurant just down university and got a full frontal blast of bad dance music. i do like how open hula's is to the street, it makes this part of university vibrant considering that mo's was packing them in too. but it will be interesting to see how long the music stays at that volume once the noise complaints begin.



instead of heading into hula's for a cher blare we stopped by eclipse chocolat and grabbed three of those 36 cupcake flavors they're doing this weekend. the woman behind the counter was tired from a long day, but apparently they've been doing great business. she helped us pick out the peanut butter banana, salty s'mores and burnt caramel marshmallow cupcakes shown. considering their efforts and the contribution they're making to san diego with their unique cafe, that was good to hear.