Week 148: BoujieMana

Week 148: October 26th-November 1st, 2025

In her retirement, my mom has found many hobbies and her time is spent traveling, creating art, and enjoying life. This past week, she came down to San Diego for a few days to see me and my sister and my brother-in-law. She treated us all to a nice dinner at a place I picked out called BoujieMana.

I'd been wanting to try BoujieMana for a while, but having a non-foodie boyfriend makes it hard to go out and enjoy nice restaurants, so I took the opportunity to try a new spot and enjoy time with my family.

The location of the restaurant is the one thing that really surprised me. It shares a parking lot with some office buildings and is right next to a charter high school called SET. In my opinion, it did not seem like a place for a nice restaurant, so I was a little confused.

The building itself was definitely a converted office building or industrial building because it felt very lobby-ish. They did a decent job with the interior design and elevating the space a bit, but it was pretty obvious that it was not originally built to be a restaurant.

The sign outside of BoujieMana

Thankfully we had a reservation, because it was surprisingly busy at BoujieMana for a Tuesday evening. Especially given the odd location, I did not expect most of the tables to be filled when we got there. I suspect most of the people were enjoying a happy hour after their workdays in the office buildings nearby. Most of them were wearing business casual clothes and seemed like coworkers with how they interacted and from what I overheard in passing conversation.

We were seated very quickly. Despite it being slightly loud due to the size of the room and the conversations around us, we enjoyed looking over the menu. I especially liked the special drink menu that had illustrations for each cocktail. I didn't order one, but having the image of the drink in front of me definitely was tempting.

We ordered family-style and shared the crispy chicken wings ($18, fine herbs, lemon, garlic, labneh ranch, chili) and the Lebanese homemade tabbouleh ($10, mint, parsley, shallots, bulgur wheat, tomatoes) as appetizers. Both were good, but I was surprised that the tabbouleh did not come with any pita or crackers to put it on. We all really loved the labneh ranch served with the crispy chicken wings.

The tabbouleh and the crispy chicken wings at BoujieMana

For entrees, we had the summer squash and sweet corn pizza ($22, zucchini, sun gold tomatoes, sweet yellow corn, basil, lemon, garlic chili oil), the grilled whole snapper ($42, marinated heirloom tomatoes, red onion, mint, dill, basil, lemon, chili, garlic aioli), the paccheri alla vodka diavolo ($33, pork, pomodoro, chili, basil, parmigiano), and the stuffed eggplant ($28, zucchini, spring onion, sweet peppers, garlic, basil, cumin, sun gold tomato).

The Summer Squash and Sweet Corn Pizza

The grilled whole snapper

The paccheri alla vodka diavolo pasta

The stuffed eggplant

Everything was very good, and I definitely want to return to try the dry aged duck (they were out when we went, and you also have to pre-order it). I will say eating family style on the little appetizer plates resulted in our table looking like a hot mess when our plates were cleared away at the end of our meal. I think having dishware that is too small (for the tabbouleh, especially) makes a meal messier cause the food just does not fit. If we hadn't eaten family-style, it probably would have been less messy, but then we wouldn't be able to try as many items as possible. I love going out to eat with my family because we love to share and try each other's dishes.

We didn't have room for dessert, but the dessert menu was cute so I took pics of it. I loved that they called it "distinguished tea service."

The last notable item from my visit to BoujieMana was that this was the first place I have been in San Diego that had bidets in every bathroom stall. There is something odd about the thought of a public bidet in America, which I know is a silly thing to say because they are very common in other countries, but I didn't use it... I was just pleasantly surprised to see a bidet out in the wild, as I am very pro-bidet.

A Bidet in the Wild at BoujieMana!

The BoujieMana Yelp Page is here if you'd like to check it out as well. I think the restaurant has deserved all the accolades it has received, I just wonder how many more they could have if they had picked a better location! Imagine how successful a place like that would be if it was in a more trafficked area.

See you next week.