Credit Jim Sullivan Photography
San Diego?s famed Gaslamp Quarter is a bustling community filled with vibrant nightlife, which indubitably includes dining to die for. Amid the burgeoning downtown culinary scene is Monkey King, an elegant late-night Chinese cuisine eatery that swung into action in late 2017.
The current iteration of Monkey King is a reprisal of a restaurant by the same name, which actually claimed the same space in the late 1800s. At that time, one of the most influential men in San Diego’s Chinatown, Tom Ah Quin, ran Monkey King, which was reportedly an illegal lottery house where politicians and San Diego’s elite could go to dine, drink and gamble into the late hours of the night. Now commanding the same location where the original establishment once was, the reprised Monkey King restaurant pays homage to its storied history and Prohibition-era past in combination with decidedly modern-era elements. One apparent aspect carried over from days of yore is that Monkey King is one of the few late-night dining options in the Gaslamp. The dining menu is available until midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends. This bodes well for the throngs of nightclub and bar-goers (and staffers) and other night owls who seek quality eats well into the wee hours.
No matter your preferred time to dine, the restaurant?s Executive Chef Brendan Mica, who hails from New York City, where he most recently served as chef de cuisine at The Standard High Line in Manhatta...