La Jollita's Arroz Marinero has me plotting a kitchen comeback.

La Jollita sits on Prospect Street in La Jolla, and it does something a lot of restaurants don't: it makes a rice dish worth thinking about the next day.

The Arroz Marinero is the one to order. For the uninitiated: it's a Latin seafood rice — think paella's coastal cousin, rice cooked down with mixed seafood until everything tastes like everything else in the best possible way. Shrimp, calamari, peppers, scallions, all of it folded through seasoned rice that actually absorbed something.

Here's what makes it work. Most restaurant rice dishes are a delivery vehicle — the toppings carry the flavor and the rice is just there. This one's the opposite. The seafood and the rice actually talk to each other. Every bite tastes like the whole pan, not just the piece you speared.

Why this one sticks

Some dishes you eat and forget by the parking lot. And some dishes follow you home. This one followed me home.

I don't say this lightly — I cook a lot, and most restaurant rice doesn't make me want to reverse-engineer it. This one does. There's something about the way the flavors built on each other that I haven't stopped thinking about since October 8.

Second angle, same obsession. Shot at the table, October 8.

So now I have a project

I'm going to try to recreate it. The wins, the probably-several fails, the moment I figure out whatever they did with that rice — all of it documented. If it works, the recipe goes up. If it doesn't, the bloopers go up anyway.

La Jollita, Prospect Street, La Jolla. Go order the Arroz Marinero and tell me I'm wrong.