The 7 Best Places to Eat in Southeast San Diego

Three ceviches on one board, birria fries in the middle of the table and a box of leftovers for the ride home. That's a typical meal at Ferchaladas, a small, casual spot on Imperial Avenue in Grant Hill, and it's our pick for the best place to eat in Southeast San Diego. The ceviche board is the reason. Nothing else in these neighborhoods is attempting one like it.

There are three to know. Mango Wango comes out cold and sweet. Verde Sauce Shrimp does exactly what the name promises. El Prieto is the showpiece, served raw under a dark sauce, and it belongs at the top of your first order. All three come up by name, over and over, in reviews from this spring and summer.

The other half of the menu runs on birria. Birria fries are built for sharing, and birria tacos and birria ramen are there when one round of birria isn't enough. Shrimp tacos, octopus tacos and Cali tacos are the other regular orders. Portions are huge and leftovers are the norm, so order for the whole table and count on a to-go box.

A lot of the affection for Ferchaladas is about the people. Owner Fernando works the window and Sochi works the floor, and reviews from May through July mention both by name, describing the same attention going to every table. It's a women-owned and Latino-owned business, and it holds a 4.7 on both Google and Yelp, with hundreds of reviews on each. Put that together with a ceviche board nobody nearby can match, and you have the reason it edged out Bowlegged BBQ for number one.

Think lunch or an early dinner, since Ferchaladas can close as early as 5 PM midweek. Tables are first-come, first-served, in the small room or out on the sidewalk, and the line tends to move fast. Street parking on this stretch of Imperial takes a few extra minutes at midday, so build that into the plan.

If Ferchaladas is the ceviche table, Bowlegged BBQ is the backyard cookout. This family-owned barbecue spot on Market Street in Chollas View cooks East Texas-style barbecue from family recipes that, in the restaurant's own words, were "passed down through generations." It also has the biggest following of any place on this list, with a 4.6 across more than 1,200 Google reviews and a 4.5 across more than 1,000 on Yelp.

Recent reviews set the scene before they get to the food. People describe catching the smoke before they find the entrance, then walking in to music, walls devoted to Black history and the owners on site. The whole place has a family, backyard-cookout feel, and one reviewer summed up the room as "90s vibes."

Get the sampler plate. Brisket, baby back ribs and a hot link cover the meats people name again and again, and greens and cornbread are the sides to go with them. The brisket gets praised for being tender, and the baby backs share the spotlight. On the next visit, tri tip, rib tips, beef hot links and fried catfish all have their fans, and baked beans and mac and cheese are the other sides worth knowing. The sampler with two sides is $42.54. Eating solo? A quarter rack of ribs is $19.66.

Then there's the banana pudding. It gets called out again and again, usually with a tip that it sells out early in the day, so order it up front.

Bowlegged is closed Monday and Tuesday and closes at 7 PM the rest of the week, which makes lunch the easy window. While you're there, ask about the weekday lunch specials.

Stay on Market Street and the menu jumps from East Texas to Thailand and Laos. Kin Saep is a family-owned Thai and Lao kitchen in a low, unassuming strip storefront in Chollas View, and the family describes it as serving the Barrio Logan, Logan Heights and Chollas View area. The dining room is small. The menu goes a long way.

Build dinner around three dishes. Start with the crab fried rice, which recent reviews say doesn't skimp on the crab. Add the grilled pork neck, called tender and juicy in a June review. Then share a bowl of khao piek, a noodle soup praised for a great broth and noodles with a texture worth noticing.

One July table's order reads like a tour of the whole kitchen: pad see ew with crispy chicken, Lao-style papaya salad, pad kra pow with pork, pad thai with beef, cream cheese rangoons, mango sticky rice and fresh sugar cane juice. The kitchen points newcomers toward its staples, Pad Thai, Green Curry and Tom Yum Soup, and talks up fresh herbs, generous portions and aromatic curries. For a simple two-course plan, go savory to sweet with the Basil Fried Rice and then the Mango Sticky Rice.

Hospitality is part of the draw. A July review described the staff going out of their way for guests visiting from out of town. Kin Saep holds a 4.6 on Yelp, and it lands at number three for a menu this deep coming out of a room this small. Seating is limited and the kitchen closes at 7:30 PM every night, so aim for an early dinner. Bowlegged is on the same street, which makes brisket at lunch and crab fried rice at dinner a very good day.

Tommy and Daneyel Walker opened The Mental Bar on Imperial Avenue in South Encanto for a reason they put plainly: "the neighborhoods that raised them never had the coffee spot they deserved." Tommy is a U.S. Navy veteran who grew up in Queens, and Daneyel is from Los Angeles. They picked a spot inside San Diego's federally designated Promise Zone on purpose, and the result is the coffee-and-breakfast pick on this list. It's veteran-owned, woman-owned and family-owned.

The coffee comes with a system. Roasts are grouped into four named collections, Music, Boss, Calm and Hood, so part of the fun is picking the one that matches your morning. There's also a Fair Trade single-origin lineup from Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Sumatra and Peru for anyone who likes to know where the beans came from.

Behind the coffee is a real breakfast menu. The Cali sandwich, the breakfast burrito, avocado toast, bagel sandwiches and the breakfast bagel are the dishes people order most, and a Chicken Avocado Sandwich joined the lineup recently. The classic pairing is an Americano and a Cheese Danish, taken out to the patio. It's dog-friendly, too. The ratings tell the rest of the story: The Mental Bar holds a 4.8 on Google and a 4.8 on Yelp, the highest marks of any stop on this list.

Plan it for the first half of the day, because the counter closes by mid-afternoon. The space also hosts private events and training programs, so check the current walk-in hours before you head over.

Poboy Shop is the Lincoln Park storefront of The Gumbo Pot, a Black-owned business with almost 30 years of catering behind it across San Diego, Riverside and Los Angeles counties. Street fairs, special events, corporate dining: The Gumbo Pot has catered all of them. On Euclid Avenue, that same Cajun and Creole cooking comes over a counter, under a big wall mural of New Orleans.

The po'boys follow a house build. Every one comes on a French roll with tomato and coleslaw, and the remoulade arrives on the side, so you sauce it the way you like. The Fried Shrimp Poboy is the one to get. A July review described it on a hefty French roll with three packets of hot sauce, next to a cup of gumbo "big enough to pass for a bowl." Get both, and you've got the order. For the next visit, the hot link po'boy has its own fans, and the fried catfish comes either as a plate or on a po'boy.

Service is a big part of the reputation. In one July review, the counter waved off payment for a soda during a short wait, then waved off the sandwich too. Put that kind of welcome together with nearly three decades of cooking and a gumbo cup that eats like a bowl, and you have the number five spot.

Plan around a short week. Poboy Shop is closed Sunday and Monday, and Saturday service doesn't start until 2 PM, so a weekday lunch is the easiest way in.

Sweet Spot Real Jamaican Restaurant, on Market Street in Grant Hill, is where to go when the craving is oxtail. The Oxtail and Beans is dry-rubbed in Jamaican seasoning, slow-cooked for hours and simmered with white beans, and a July review described meat that fell right off the bone.

The other half of the house specialty is jerk chicken, marinated and grilled, with the sauce optional. That same July review found "an authentic spicy burn" in it, and the counter names these two as its most popular dishes. So pick one, or bring a friend and split both. Past the big two, the menu covers Curried Goat, Curried Chicken, Brown Stewed Chicken and Jamaican Southern Fried Chicken, plus beef, chicken and vegetable patties. Grab a patty for the road either way.

Plates are filling, and a June review noted that the room works well for families with kids. Sweet Spot also cooks every day of the week, which makes it a reliable call on a Monday when some of its neighbors are closed. Sunday wraps up earlier, at 6 PM. The kitchen can run with a small crew, so give your order a little extra time when it's busy, and count on leaving full.

Every neighborhood needs its pizza place, and in South Bay Terraces it's Bambino's Pizzaria & Deli on Paradise Valley Road. This storefront goes by Bambino's Pizza & Deli #1, and there's a second Bambino's elsewhere in the area, so double-check which one you're ordering from.

The go-to pies are the BBQ Chicken Pizza and, when the table is hungry, the Meat Lover's, both $14.99. Feeding a group? A medium one-topping pizza with six boneless wings is $20.99. Then there's the shrimp pizza, which one May review called "the reason for coming back." The Veggie Combo covers the vegetarians, and the deli half of the name means subs and sandwiches too.

If the rest of these are the dish you drive across town for, Bambino's is pizza night close to home. It has a big local following, with 727 Yelp reviews averaging 4.4, and recent reviews describe pizza arriving fresh and hot and staff who don't rush a table. Sitting down to eat is a relaxed plan.

The parking lot is small, though, and one recent review recommends ordering online for pickup instead, which is an easy way to get dinner home while it's still hot.