San Diego Convention Center Comic Con International Food Edition!

Hola Geekationers! Comic Con International is nearly upon us! Very shortly, hundreds of thousands of geeks will be converging on the San Diego Convention Center in search of all matters of nerdom. As always, there's a hitch - after spending $500 on a statue of Green Lantern, you may not want to plunk $20 down for a meal in the Gaslamp District. Paying $8 for a hot dog and a soda at the convention center's concession stands isn't really satisfying, either.

That's where Geekations comes in. We've mapped out some of the best sites for eating an entire meal for under $10 within walking distance of the convention center.


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Traditionally, the best place to eat has always been the Ralphs Supermarket at 101 G Street. You can get there from the convention center by walking up 1st Avenue. Ralphs is really what you make of it - in addition to being a fully-stocked supermarket, it has a large salad bar, as well as a cold and hot deli. You can definitely walk away with a decent meal for under $10, although if you're willing to scarf down a couple of sub-$1 corn dogs, it's the cheapest food in the area.


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Just north of Ralphs is Horton Plaza, a local mall. Which means mall court food. There's a pretty good variety of relatively inexpensive places to eat with an international flair, including Chinese, Indian and Mexican, as well as some burger and steak sandwich joints. It's a little overpriced for what it is, but still much, much cheaper than finding a restaurant in the Gaslamp.

OK, I have no exact map for this next place (or series of places), but the one thing you can generally find in the Gaslamp for relatively cheap is pizza. There are a number of pizza joints that sell slices. I haven't sampled them enough to give much of a recommendation, so you're on your own for this one.


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Next up - Subway, with their $5 footlong menu. The closest one is located at 611 K Street, right in the shadow of Petco Park, the baseball stadium. K Street intersects with the train stop right in front of the convention center, so it should be easy to find. It can get busy during lunch hours, so it can pay off to think in advance and pick up a sandwich earlier in the day. Most of them will keep for a couple hours fairly well.


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Oh thank heaven for 7-Eleven. If you need a cheap cup of coffee, or a corn dog at 3AM, this is the place to go. The food is total crap, but it's cheap total crap. The closest location is just on the other side of Petco Park at 417 9th Avenue. There's also a location just Northeast of Horton Plaza, but this one is the closest to the convention center by a couple of blocks. Remember, their free chili may be just this side of terrible, but you can use it to up the calorie count of their cheapest hot dogs in a pinch.


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Finally, with what may be the best food on this list, the Cine' Cafe' (although the door says Cine' Market). It's a nice little deli/bodega, where you can buy sandwiches or KY Jelly. For our purposes though, let's stick with the sandwiches. It's a little sketchy looking, but they make relatively inexpensive salads and sandwiches, ranging mostly between $5-10. It's a little pricier than Subway, but hey, at least it's not Subway, right?

That's it for now from Geekations. Enjoy the Con!


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