ld town is a touristy area of San Diego, and a State Historical Park.  The area is relatively small, squeezed into a large commercial and business district.  Old Town is what it sounds like; a historical site with buildings preserved (rebuilt) as they were one hundred or more years ago, when San Diego was a frontier town of the Old West.

One big restaurant there is in a large two-story hacienda style building that was the original Spanish officers' quarters, like 200 years ago, before California was a state.  The rest of the area has old Wells Fargo offices and corrals and such, restored to their 1800's look as well as lots of giant cactus and dirt walkways with hitching posts and old wagons and such. I find it quite ugly myself; it's mostly a way to make you glad you didn't live here a century ago. They had no blogs then, I've been told.

Anyway, the big restaurant in the officers' quarters there is famous and huge, but has very long lines.  We arrived there around 8pm on a Thursday night in early-October, which isn't exactly the heart of tourist season, and they told us there was a 45-60 minute wait.  So we tried another Mexican place a short walk away, and they had no wait at all. This was surprising, since they were woefully understaffed.  The patio dining had probably twenty-five tables, with an average of three people per table, and there were two waiters for the whole area.  That would be bad in most restaurants, and was even worse for a Mexican restaurant, where lots of people have appetizers, entrées, and lots of drinks.  So the waiters are forever running back and forth with new trays of giant margaritas, while trying to get food to each table, and take orders.

We had to wait five minutes to get menus, and then another fifteen before a waiter could show up to take our quickly-decided upon orders.  At least we weren't the only ones.

However once seated we noticed that there were very few waiters. Turned out they had two waiters for the whole patio, which probably had 25 tables, almost all of them busy. I'm sure the guys made a fortune in tips, but they were laboring.  And since we had to wait like 20 minutes to order and then saw the guy one other time all night, dad wasn't in the mood to be a big tipper.

I got Shrimp Florentine, which was odd.  It came with a long thin dish of jumbo shrimp with the tails on, peeled, in a sort of marinade of mushrooms and spinach.  That dish was on top of a larger plate that had white rice with some steamed carrot and squash strips.  It was okay, but a weird meal.  The mushroom portion was exquisite, and unbelievably-rich.  If you've ever had Beef Stroganoff, it was like that, but with shrimp.  Amazingly-potent taste, with olive oil and other spices.  Literally too strong to eat straight. I ate about 1/3 of it with alternating bites of rice and veggies, and once the neutrals were gone, I was done. I saved it in a doggy bag and figure it'll be good on top of egg noodles.

Dad got chicken fajitas, which they brought out in the traditional way, with the chicken and veggies on a sizzling black platter, and that on a wooden plank, since the platter was 400 degrees or so.  The tortillas in a little foil wrapper, and a plate of refried beans and Spanish rice.

All good, except for the guy sitting down his plate with the handle sticking off the side of the table a bit.  Dad automatically reaches to grab it and move it over and... spent the rest of the meal holding ice cubes on his fingers. He could hardly eat, it was hurting so much, and I looked at it back at his house later and there was just this puffy white streak about an inch across his thumb.  Horrible burn.

Generally restaurants wrap the handle in a dish towel or something like that, rather than leaving it protruding out from the plate at 400 degrees.  I'm sure that didn't help encourage him to tip big either.

Overall we weren't real satisfied with things.  The food was about a 6, good chips for appetizers, but neither entre was that good.  Dad's fajitas were nice, and the stuff on the sizzling platter was good, but the plate of rice and beans was crap.  Very weak rice, not even Spanish style, just sort of orange from chili powder, and the beans were lardy and unseasoned. The shrimp portion of mine was not very edible on its own, and what it was served with was skimpy and bland.

The service was awful; all from lack of staff rather than lack of effort, but either way, we were sitting and waiting for menus, waiting to order, waiting for water refills, and then waiting for the check. For the prices there ($15ish for entrees) I wouldn't go back, even if promised prompt service next time.

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