INCOMING: Kafe Sobaka

Pomegranate Restaurant opening spinoff in Golden Hill. Just don't ask them about it.

by Nate Martins and Troy Johnson

Posted Monday, January 7, 2013, 10:28AM

Congratulations, Golden Hill. We believe you're getting some amazing peasant food.

THE NAME in Russian-Georgian grub in San Diego is Pomegranate Restaurant. All signs are pointing to a second location in Golden Hill (2469 Broadway) called Kafe Sobaka, Restoran Pomegranate. Their website describes the spot as: “A ménage a trois of Georgian, Russian and California Cuisine.”

So we called Pomegranate. A man dismissed us forthrightly, saying this is not their place. So we stopped by at dinner time to try and talk to the owner, Dmitri. "This must be something completely different. It's not us," he said. Dimitri appeared a touch menacing, though lovably so. So we opted to shut up and depart with our organs intact.

Then we found the website for Kafe Sobaka. And lo and behold—the phone number is the nearly the exact same as Pomegranate's (one number off). So we're politely calling fignya on Mr. Dmitri. And, having eaten at Pomegranate in the past, we couldn't be happier that he or his family or his restaurant group is coming to the neighborhood that they currently deny coming to. Acting as if we just uncovered a Watergate-esque scandal through tough-nosed investigative work, we laughed at ourselves and remembered we write about restaurants.

(Note: Totally possible we still could be wrong. But we're betting people. Keep you posted...)

Regardless, Kafe Sobaka's menu will be extensive (and damn funny). There will be borscht. And then lovelies like zharenniyi yazyik, a Georgian dish of beef tongue wrapped in herbs and roasted in ghee, and the shashlik (available Thursday to Sunday) is “tantalizing meat fire roasted on long evil-looking daggers until it is as tender and juicy as the lips of your lover.” Yowza. Also expect kharcho (beef-and-rice soup), lobio (beans), ikra (eggplant salad), khachapuri (cheese pie), yaichnitsa (traditional peasant omelet), Palmeni Siberian meat dumplings, pirozhki (Russian savory pies), chanakhi (lamb stew), tabaka (fried Cornish game hen), satsivi (chicken w/ walnut sauce), and of course a rotating menu of cakes.

All items are offered in four sizes: Communist, Socialist, Imperialist and Anarchist—priced accordingly, with the tiny Communist clocking in at $2.87. Paying cash? Sweet. They’ll hook you up with a free cup of tea or a bone for your furry accomplice.

Kafe Sobaka will be pouring beers from Eastern Europe and California, with wines from Georgia, California and South America. There will also be many life forms of vodka, of course, tweaked with all sorts of herbs and spices.

No open date yet.