Upon arriving for our 7pm reservation my wife and I found the restaurant pleasantly buzzing with people. (Hint - we parked under Hotel Parisi and Fresh paid for it!) The hostess sat us right away and our server came within seconds to get us drinks. She was very nice, offering us suggestions from their wine list, which was very cleverly written to clearly describe the wines. We selected a classic, Opus One, which we had seen for double the price in our other favorite restaurants, but saw many affordable prices for all of our favorite vintages. My wife is a light eater so she decided on a salad and grilled mahi mahi. The portions were very nice, big enough to fill her up and small enough to not make her feel guilty for not finishing everything. Her salad really lived up to the restaurant's name being crispy and truly fresh. The fish was grilled perfectly and the accompanying vegetables were very flavorful and colorful. I ordered a duck confit to start, it had a fruity glaze, which I don't remember the name of and the meat was melting off of the bones. It was actually a big portion for an appetizer and I loved it. My main dish was the Steak Frites...even though I love fish I was really in the mood for a great piece of meat. It was perfectly grilled and the fries were done with truffles, which evoked a wonderful tingle in my mouth while eating. We decided for dessert to try their sampling plate which was perfect sizes of everything to clean the pallate and finish off sweet. One of my favorite aspects of the dinner was that we never once had to ask for more water, our wine glasses were always refilled without us noticing and once we placed our order the remainder of the evening was focused on a romantic conversation and marvelling over the flavor of our delicious meals. We live downtown, but love coming into La Jolla and we now have a favorite food spot. I highly recommend Fresh to all of our friends.
Pros: Food, service, ambience
Cons: not downtown
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