Chef Claudette Zepeda has launched an online cooking club.

Want to learn how to make a new dish at home? Here are five cooking classes you can take online, all led by local chefs

Mexican Cuisine 101

Cook alongside a Top Chef alum while learning the art of Mexican cuisine. Claudette Zepeda launched a cooking club and has a lineup of classes on her website, where she’s teaching how to make everything from pan dulce (July 18) to carnitas estilo Michoacan (July 22) on Zoom in an approachable way. Two days before the class, you’ll receive a shopping list and a note of what equipment you’ll need. If you want to just have a glass of wine and watch, that’s fine too—classes are recorded, and you’ll be sent a link afterward. A portion of the $30 ticket price is donated to No Kid Hungry.

Cook as a Group

Jodi Abel is a self-taught chef, and for the past 12 years she has been teaching group cooking and team-building classes through her company LaJollaCooks4U. Her group classes are now virtual on Zoom: pick either a 60-minute or 90-minute session, and you’ll be given a selection of two or three dishes to make. Contact them for a quote.

Bring a Celebrity Chef Into Your Kitchen 

Brian Malarkey has been hosting virtual cooking classes focusing on dishes with Baja and Asian influences, and teaching how to grill meats. During a one-hour class, you learn how to make one entrée and one side dish along with general cooking tips. After you’ve plated your dish, you can show it to him for feedback. Classes are interactive, and you can ask questions through Zoom’s chat feature—he also shares behind-the-scenes info about what it’s like to be on Top Chef. Proceeds from the classes have been going to the PMC Relief Fund. His site has a library of short videos on basic cooking techniques, and he regularly invites guest chefs to cook (virtually) alongside him. On Monday, August 10, the special guest chef is Rocco DiSpirito, who will be showing how to make an authentic Milanese risotto.

Cross-Border Cooking

Chef Alma Fernanda is a San Diego local who has cooked in restaurants in LA, Mexico City, and Madrid, and she offers virtual cooking classes every Thursday evening that have become popular on both sides of the border. Classes cover a wide variety of cuisines, from traditional Mexican seafood to Mediterranean and Italian, or are focused on specific ingredients. She saves a recording of each class for five days after the live stream so attendees have time to look back for reference. Fernanda conducts her classes predominantly in Spanish. Classes are $25 US per session; email her at [email protected] or direct message her on Instagram to sign up.

A Taste of Tuscany

Chef Giacomo Lenzi moved to San Diego from his native Tuscany, Italy, and launched catering company A Casa Mia. Just before the pandemic he had secured a new event space, but shortly afterward he needed to come up with a new business plan. He launched a virtual cooking school that hosts a class every week, and the price of admission includes an ingredient kit that will be delivered to you the day before the online session. The next class, which covers how to make a pizza from scratch ($40), is on August 7.

The post 5 Online Cooking Classes in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

A woman emerges. She wears gloves and carries our pizza and a CSA box of veggies from local farmers. We are careful to give her six feet of space. Anyone working serving the public right now is at risk. She gives us two options. She will put our pizza on top of our hood, or in our trunk. She will not hand us the food, and we do not want the food handed to us. We opt for the trunk, though afterward I feel the hood would’ve been safer.

On the drive home, the car smells of hand sanitizer and pizza. Once home, I place everything outside of our front door. I remove all the food from the to-go bag. I won’t allow it in the house where my eight year old is. I take a tube of Clorox wipes, and wipe down all of the containers of food on our porch.

“Is this crazy?” I ask my wife.

Sanitizing the pizza boxes before bringing it into the house.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

Italy and Spain and China are on lockdown. California and New York are on lockdown. A third of the country is on lockdown. “Death toll” is a number well wake up to, hospitals are getting crushed with the flood of sick people, healthcare workers are working to the point of exhaustion while exposing themselves to coronavirus every minute of their lifesaving work. For the first time in my life I know what a ventilator is, how many are available in the U.S., and that it’s not enough.

It is definitely crazy. Everything is crazy. Nothing is normal.

Hand sanitizer at the to-go station inside Tribute Pizza.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

I carry the food containers into the house, making sure not to put them down on our kitchen counters. I sanitize one free hand, use that hand to grab a clean plate from the cupboard, and dump the contents of the meatballs onto the plate. I do the same with the pizza.

Once all the food is safely on clean plates, I discard the containers. I go to the sink and wash my hands thoroughly for two birthday songs. Finally, we sit down to eat. It is delicious. And yet I’m not totally comfortable doing this. Maybe there is no comfortable way to eat in the pandemic.

Let’s back up to how we got here.

It’s March 8th. I’m at a crowded Mexican restaurant in San Diego taking notes on ceviche. This is my job. I take it very seriously. I’m unaware how wildly luxurious it will be a week from now to think about ceviche. I’m unaware how wildly free it was to be in a crowded restaurant and not worry about endangering a healthcare worker or a grandparent or humanity. Beyond washing our hands every hour or so, life is relatively normal. There are many birthday parties happening around us.

It’s March 9th. In four days, I’m scheduled to fly to the Midwest to film a TV show about restaurants. But the country’s starting to quiver a little bit. My wife and I decide to keep our two-day trip to the mountains. It’s important. I’m going to be gone for weeks. I need her to remember who I am.

It’s March 10th. I wake up in Big Bear to a text from my co-host: “I’m a little nervous.” She’s not a nervous type. Five days earlier I had asked her if she was concerned and she said she would kick coronavirus’s ass. I believed her. We laughed it off, a tad uneasily.

I get on a call with our producers to gauge their concern. They just don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re not epidemiologists. Just average people binging on the news cycle, trying to not be on the wrong side of history. At that point it was still valid to ask, “Is it bad enough to cancel things and ruin people’s lives economically?” Our TV show helps restaurants by telling their stories. At this point they are struggling because the virus has reduced customers to a trickle, and their people—dishwashers, cooks, servers, bussers, bartenders, owners, suppliers—need help. Four hours after that call, the WHO declares coronavirus a pandemic. We cancel our flights, postpone the show. It feels terrible and right, but even then we’re not sure.

Construction cones denote where to park for curbside pickup.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

It’s March 11th. We are now sure. The NCAA basketball championships are canceled, along with the NBA, MLB, NHL, Broadway plays, St. Patrick’s Day parades, South by Southwest and Coachella. Elementary schools close, college campuses shutter. Then they turn off whole cities, entire countries. Tom Hanks contracts COVID-19, which feels like a personal attack on America. Then the guy from James Bond movies. An NBA player gets it. In a year that “cancel culture” became a national exercise, coronavirus cancels culture.

The media flashes images of people standing in long lines to buy guns. People joke that it’s not like we can shoot coronavirus. It isn’t a skeet flung into the air off the side of a cruise ship. But we all know the guns aren’t for the virus. Nothing forms lines at the gun shop quite like fear.

Overnight, two-thirds of my income is “postponed.” It’s harder to play with your eight year-old when you know existentially bad news that affects the both of you. You make her a fort with a little less gusto, no matter how hard you try to manufacture joy.

Workers inside Tribute monitor the customers arriving.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

Corona is a social virus. “Social distancing” becomes the global slogan, that awful refrain, as common in conversations as “um.” The tragic realization is that this means the people who create social spaces have to fall on the sword. Restaurants’ and bars’ entire purpose is to shrink the ever-increasing space between us. To bring people together, within feet or inches, very much on purpose. Recently, as tech has isolated a lot of us, that function seemed especially important and vital. And now, the thing that makes them vital and special is making them life-threatening.

It’s still March 11. A chart begins to circulate from online reservation platform, OpenTable. The numbers for the San Diego market for the beginning of the month are green, showing an increase in business. Then on March 8th the numbers began to sink: -7%. March 9th it was negative 13 percent. Then 31 percent. On March 11, there is a small uptick of three percent. People heard their cries of help, and they showed up to eat and drink and support the small business owners and their employees. And then, March 12th, hell breaks loose. Restaurant business nosedives, down 43%. For an industry that exists week-to-week on tiny profit margins (the industry standard is 3-5%), this is the point of no-return. It’s not just unsustainable, it’s fatal.

Tribute makes a real good pizza. Owner Matt Lyons got advice from pizza legend, Chris Bianco.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

The message from restaurants is that they are being extraordinarily safe. And it’s true, part of a restaurant’s daily task is preventing pathogens from getting their customers sick. For decades, they have been governed and inspected by health agencies. Sure, there are some that look like a dumpster fire, but most of the good ones are cleaner than your own.

Still, restaurants poise a problem—a crowd, touching common items (menus, condiments, tables, chairs, credit card machines, etc.). So they begin taking drastic measures, removing tables to make sure there is the recommended six-foot safety distance, removing condiments and menus, increasing the concentration in their sanitizing solvents, handing out hand sanitizer with orders. Desperate measures for desperate times.

I do hundreds of pages of research, speak with a friend who’s an epidemiologist. I try to determine whether professionals are saying it’s safe to dine out and help these people. Most of the experts say as long as you’re safe and not in the at-risk category, it is. The L.A. Times critic Peter Meehan writes a story that basically says it’s safe. The piece seems a tad cavalier, but not tone deaf. I try strike a middle ground, relaying experts who say it’s safe if you’re not in the at-risk category and take precautions.

Within 48 hours, that all changes. I have to adjust the story, relay the CDC’s recommendations that everyone avoid restaurants. (Meehan will do the same to his story). On my personal social media, I post a long admission that after all the research I believe restaurants need to shut down. I feel like I’ve betrayed the people in my industry. But the facts about coronavirus are too dire.

It’s March 15. Chef Brian Malarkey calls me to say he’s closing all of his restaurants, the first major closures in San Diego. He lets his staff shop in the walk-in refrigerator, taking home duck and lamb and eggs and cheese and produce. It’s a nice gesture no one wants. But Malarkey is confident every restaurant will be ordered closed soon. Calling it early gives his people a jump on the unemployment line, which will buckle under the strain in days to come.

The night before they close, customers enjoy one last meal, leaving generous tips to help the staff. One man tips $700. At Garden Kitchen in Rolando, a man walks in and buys a $750 gift certificate and says he’ll see them when this is over. At Little Lion, regular people who don’t appear to be wealthy (a description from the owner) are handing out $200 tips.

It’s March 16. The County of San Diego orders all bars closed, and closes all dine-in spaces at restaurants. They are now allowed to do only takeout and delivery. For many restaurants, this is their financial apocalypse. My email inbox is flooded with hundreds of messages from restaurant owners small and large, begging for help. I begin frantically posting their messages on social media. I post stories on San Diego Magazine’s website.

Nationwide rallying cries go out on social media, urging people to buy gift certificates from the restaurants, buy their merchandise, do anything they can to help them. The industry’s low-income employees flood the unemployment lines. GoFundMe pages are set up for them. Some restaurants dedicate a portion of sales to them. Some restaurant owners simply can’t. There’s a myth that every restaurant owner is wealthy, will just go home and lay by their pools until this subsides. But anyone who knows this industry knows that’s the cruelest lie, that most restaurant owners are small business owners who are only one bad month or two away from closing.

Every morning, I wake up to dozens of messages asking for help. There are just too many. The heartbreaking stories are just coming too fast. I feel a crushing guilt for not being able to help them all. At the same time, it feels insanely unfair for me to choose who to help. The process of interviewing them, writing a story, editing that story, fact checking, getting images, and posting that story is far too slow. My work rapidly morphs from longform story writing to informational triage. I’m just trying to relay SOS messages as quickly as possible.

In the middle of this, my eight year old daughter sits on the couch. With county schools canceled, she’s home all day with my wife and I. She needs love and attention and schooling and food. Normally my parents could help take care of her, but they are over age 70 and all have underlying medical conditions, so we can’t risk it. With most restaurants closed, my wife and I find ourselves continually loading up on groceries, cooking three meals a day, doing dishes, so many dishes, trying to work in the moments between.

Tribute offers CSA boxes now to get local food to its customers and help local farmers.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

So I take a few days to develop a new system. I start doing Instagram Live interviews with people in the food and drink community. The videos put a human face to the disaster. I’m able to use my social media channels to connect these people directly with my followers—a network of about 60,000 people. That’s not huge, but it helps. My followers can see into their kitchens, see what efforts these people are making to ensure their food setup is safe and responsible. They’re able to see these people’s eyes. The community responds to it.

In the beginning, to be fair, I refuse to choose who to help. I just let anyone into my Instagram videos to tell their story. My wife, who’s also in media, is nervous about this. She says it’s vaguely irresponsible. I push back at her. I tell her people need help, this is the fastest and most democratic process. We nearly argue.

“What if someone joins in and is naked?” she asks. “What if someone uses this platform to scam people?”

God, she’s right. Sad as it is, this is irresponsible. I have to verify these people. I have to choose who to help. It’s brutal.

So I start setting up scheduled times with various local food and drink people. I want to be inclusive—include people from every neighborhood, every nationality, mom and pops, people really in need. But even the big companies like Specialty Produce need help, because what they employ hundreds of people.

The live Instagram interviews are also a little too long. People have a lot to say, so much chaos to work through. I know as a journalist and writer and TV person that viewers don’t have the attention span for this. The videos need to be shorter. But any shorter, and they lose humanity.

At the same time, a large portion of the planet starts to quarantine, shelter in place. Everyone on the globe, it seems, begins to go live on Instagram. The channel becomes clogged with musicians, artists, employees, writers, journalists, TV people, everyone—isolated and trying to connect with an audience who can help. It’s like an open-source crisis hotline. In doing so, the app becomes its own pandemic. Jokes start circulating making fun of everyone doing Instagram Live.

And yet, still, we do. There are only so many ways to help, and this seems the fastest, the most immediate.

Restaurants and food people and their customers are doing amazing, hopeful things. Some of them are turning their restaurants into general stores or bodegas, selling essential goods to locals who can’t get to the grocery store, or get there and find the grocery store empty. Local company Skrewball Whiskey pledges up to $500,000 to U.S. bartenders out of work. Most restaurants that have stayed open for delivery and takeout are not making money. Sales do help keep the lights on, but most of them are doing it as a community service. There’s a reason governor Gavin Newsom included them as “essential businesses” that could stay open. Because adding food insecurity to a pandemic is never a good idea. Grocery stores can only do so much.

The toughest thing is that many restaurants only make money at the bar. Food is often a loss leader. And with no one ordering bottles of wine or sitting at their happy hour, restaurants can’t make that money. The ABC makes an emergency change to its laws, allowing any restaurant with a license to serve booze to-go as with food. Restaurants start selling Negronis out the front door. It helps a little.

Restaurants can now serve cocktails to go if you’re also ordering food.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

But it’s not enough. None of this will likely be enough. Some restaurants will be able to weather it. So, so many of them will not. Small business owners will be financially ruined without help. But help from where? The landlords? Can we expect them to take the financial burden? From banks? From the government? If we’re going to save these people, it’s going to have to be a combination of them all.

And so I sit here wiping a Tribute Pizza box with a hand sanitizer, as my phone explodes with messages from food and drink people, from my mom wondering if she’s allowed to have her housecleaner still come to her house (absolutely not, pay the cleaner to not come for a month), from friends checking in on me, from news alerts about COVID, from friends with explosive political opinions and memes to help distract us for a second.

When you arrive at Tribute, you call the restaurant and they’ll walk your food outside.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

I sit down on the couch, eyes puffy, exhausted. My daughter tries to keep quiet at the dining room table doing her homework. My wife takes a conference call in her office, trying to keep us financially afloat. I briefly think about the broccoli in the fridge that has to be cooked today before it goes bad, about my need to Google signs an eight year old is depressed, about how to keep your marriage solid during a quarantine.

I face the tripod with my phone loaded to Instagram. I push “Go Live.” I see another tired face on the other end of the video, a restaurateur or a small business owner. We say a tired hello and this goes on.

New signage in the window at Tribute explain pizza in a time of coronavirus.

Photo Credit: Claire Johnson

The good news is that people are rallying behind these small business owners and their employees. They’re buying gift certificates. They’re buying merch. Restaurants have never been about food. They’re about people. And now the people need to be about restaurants.

This virus will have a lasting, unimaginable effect on restaurant life and our culture long after the virus itself has gone dormant. I don’t really know what that will look like. No one does. In the meantime, I’ll continue telling the people’s stories here and on Instagram Live.

And as long as the CDC says it’s safe and the restaurants remain open for takeout and delivery, they will be part of how we all get through this.

Tribute Pizza, 3077 North Park Way. 

The post Ordering Pizza in a Pandemic appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Sure, there’s a 20-foot mural of a giant cartoon robot above the bar. He appears to be attempting flotation therapy, doing a lazy backstroke among naval ships and 400-foot koi fish. There are also a few colorful toys in a trophy case at the host’s station. But when you name your restaurant “Animae”—in honor of the wildly inventive and occasionally disturbing tradition of Japanese animation—I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that I be overstimulated, amused, and terrified. Instead, I just felt sexy.

Well, at least the pork tomahawk is terrifying and phenomenal.

Pork tomahawk (left); whole fried snapper (center); pork belly and calamari (bottom right)

Photo Credit: James Tran and Olivia Beall

Animae is the new $5.5 million project from Puffer Malarkey, the partnership of operations man and designer Chris Puffer and chef Brian Malarkey, the latter known nationally for his recurring role on Top Chef. After Malarkey’s breakthrough restaurant Searsucker was sold to Hakkasan, he and Puffer put everything they had into the massive Herb & Wood in Little Italy and, well, it jackpotted. It’s an excellent, grand thing, and continues to spit out coins for everyone involved. That spawned Farmer & the Seahorse, Herb & Sea, and now this.

Success draws talented people who also enjoy doing well in life. So longtime Cucina Urbana chef Joe Magnanelli defected to Animae, as did accomplished drinks man and GM Lucien Conner (formerly of Puesto). They’re partners, not just employees. Everyone has a stake in this game, is incentivized to excel. You can feel it.

Your search for reasonable parking will be mocked by this corner of Broadway and Pacific Highway. A night’s budget for dinner at Animae will not be small and will most likely include $12–$15 to the Ace Parking valet (before tip).

The restaurant is the ground-floor attraction of Pacific Gate by Bosa, the ultra-luxury condo development on the embarcadero. This part of downtown is where all the new pretty things are being built (including a $2 billion redevelopment of the waterfront), but much of it is still a ways off. Animae is an early adopter, with a well-known brand but little to no foot traffic. Judging by the jampacked Friday night crowd—all in advanced stages of wealth accumulation—Animae doesn’t need it.

Animae’s spin on a dirty martini

James Tran and Olivia Beall

Animae is fully self-aware, intentionally inauthentic Asian food. Before you think that’s a bad thing, let me suggest that authenticity is one of the food world’s dumber demands. The idea that two accomplished chefs named Joe and Brian shouldn’t cook tom yum mushrooms (the major flavors of the Thai soup—lemongrass, lime leaf, onion, and garlic—sautéed and deliciously absorbed into hoji, king, and maitake mushrooms) is about as low-rent and insulting as suggesting a great Thai chef should not cook cioppino. One of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever eaten was made by a Korean chef who’d never cooked a cheeseburger before.

So, at Animae you get creations like “butter dumplings,” traditional Asian soup dumplings (xiao long bao) filled with escargot and browned butter over a Wagyu carpaccio and a frico (cheese crisp). It’s French food in a Chinese handbag. Browned butter—cooked low and slow until the milk solids caramelize and develop an intoxicating nuttiness—would make mossy river rocks taste delicious. The dumpling is thicker and tougher than traditional bao (it eats like al dente pasta), and that’s probably not their ideal result. But the flavors, abnormal bedfellows though they may be, really sing. You get elotes (Mexican street corn) tossed with housemade kimchi that’s been pureed in aioli, using Japanese togarashi seasoning (chiles, orange peel, sesame seeds, ginger, seaweed) with pickled jicama and Cotija cheese. Be sure to mix it all up. We used to call this kind of thing “fusion,” but in today’s modern, globalized food culture we just call it food.

Xiao long bao filled with escargot and served atop Wagyu beef carpaccio

James Tran and Olivia Beall

Every detail in Animae seems obsessed over. Maybe it’s because the restaurant was delayed so long. (Getting a restaurant finished on time has become a cliché joke, and I’m not going to point fingers… but it’s the city’s fault.) The dirty martini, for instance: Instead of plain old olive juice, they start with dry vermouth and add koji (fermented rice), miso, furikake, dried mushrooms, black pepper, soy sauce, and a touch of Laphroaig scotch for smokiness. The result is a more interesting and delicious cocktail, even if it’s not a dirty martini.

The crab hand rolls are very good, tossed with Madras curry and Kewpie mayo (Japanese mayo, the chef’s mayo, amazing, partially because of MSG), topped with uni, shiso leaves, radish, and crunchy garlic. But it’s the chili garlic ponzu sauce that’s real wizardry. Pour it everywhere, drink it, write it poems. Then order the roasted duck bao buns. You know these by now. The Chinese figured out how to make bread clouds, because they’re Chinese and they’ve been baking bread longer than anyone. The buns are whiter than brand-new veneers. Eating them is a form of ASMR, and Animae makes theirs using duck fat, then adds maple-miso sauce, blue cheese, and persimmon.

Mushrooms cooked with the flavors of tom yum soup and topped with burrata

James Tran and Olivia Beall

The menu has high-end cuisine and dishes that taste like some of the best Asian takeout you’ve had. On the high end, the pork tomahawk is obscene. Juicy marinated pork cubes (loin and belly) are sliced, winding, serpentine, around the plate like some carnivorous hieroglyph. It’s marinated in koji (which gives proteins a sweet, funky umami), drizzled with Madras curry sauce, and sprinkled with fennel pollen. Do not order this massive plate for yourself, unless you are struggling emotionally and need to put those feelings somewhere, or are an offensive lineman. It’s a gaudy retort (really, enough meat for four people) to any plant-based resolutions you may have made in the new year. And it’s worth it.

For more Asian takeout vibes, try the pork belly and calamari. The belly is cured and slow roasted, the calamari is both sautéed clean and deep fried, and it’s rested on egg noodles with yuzu (Japanese citrus) in the dough. Or the fried rice, a Niigata meets Baton Rouge idea, loaded with ham hocks and mustard greens, the rice seasoned with tare (a thick Japanese sauce with miso, mirin, koji, ginger, soy), topped with a fried egg and crispy fried rice tossed with tender rice for texture.

Animae’s entrance on Pacific Highway

Photo Credit: James Tran and Olivia Beall

The only dish we don’t truly enjoy is the one that’s generated the most buzz: the brothless ramen. Chef Magnanelli spent the last decade helming a successful Italian restaurant and this is ramen as a spartan pasta dish. The broth is reduced until there’s nothing left, all the flavor absorbed into the noodles. The problem is the nori (seaweed). While jammed with umami, seaweed is, at the end of the day, ocean weed. If you truly love the taste of nori snacks (they sell them at Costco now, so many of us do), you may enjoy it. I personally love nori, but without a broth to spread its umami gospel (and tone it down), it bullies the other ingredients.

But honestly, that’s the only real miss of our 15 dishes over two nights. And even if you don’t enjoy eating it, anyone can be excited by the idea of a brothless ramen. And a major reason we dine at restaurants like Animae is to taste new ideas. We don’t pay $15 to a restaurant valet to have our expectations met. We pay it to develop new ones.

Malasadas, Portuguese donuts, are served with green curry ice cream.

Photo Credit: James Tran and Olivia Beall

Oh, and for dessert, order the malasadas, soft doughy donuts filled with coconut cream, tossed in a mixture of coffee grounds, sugar, and sea salt, and paired with green curry ice cream (yes, ice cream with lemongrass, lime leaf, galangal, and Thai chile—amazing).

I still want more neon and stunted adolescent weirdness in a restaurant named Animae, but it’s a hell of a restaurant.

The post Chefs Brian Malarkey and Joe Magnanelli Take Fusion to a New Level at Animae appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Herb & Wood could’ve been named We’re Back. 

When chef Brian Malarkey and partner Chris Puffer opened the massive Little Italy restaurant, their name had taken a bit of a hit. Malarkey had risen to prominence through Top Chef and the “fabric” restaurants, Searsucker and Herringbone. Then those were sold to Hakkasan, and the duo found themselves adrift. Herb & Wood was the first major project of their own (with plenty of investors), and Malarkey’s not shy about saying it was a redemption project.

“The fabric restaurants were good but not that good,” Malarkey says. “It took a bit for us to resolidify and attract talent after that.”

With chef Shane McIntyre (who recently left), cocktail man Willem Van Leuven and pastry chef Adrian Mendoza, Herb & Wood became one of those runaway successes restaurateurs dream about. A successful chef once told me, “There is no money in restaurants unless you do a simple concept and do 20 of them, or do a multimillion-dollar place like Malarkey.”

“I never thought I was the most talented chef in the kitchen,” says Malarkey. “The other day I looked around and it was like a chef university, a culinary think tank. We had Joe Magnanelli [formerly the longtime chef of Cucina Urbana], Carlos Anthony [Herb & Wood chef], Mike Ground [former exec chef at Patio Group], Sara [ex-Searsucker], Adrian Mendoza, and a couple guys Joe brought over from Nobu. We’re to look back on this as one of the greatest moments of our lives.”

That think tank has been brainstorming and tweaking the menu for Animae—a 9,300 square-foot, $5.5 million art deco-ish restaurant on the bottom floor of Pacific Gate by Bosa, an ultra-luxury condo development in the Embarcadero Marina. It opens Sept. 20, with Magnanelli at the reigns as exec chef and partner. Later this year, Harris will head up the next Puffer Malarkey concept, Herb & Sea in Encinitas.

Animae is a coal-fired pan-Asian concept, which may seem a stretch for Magnanelli, who for a decade was known for his Italian food at Urban Kitchen Group. But we no longer call it “fusion,” because everything has been fused. Chef pantries look like excessively stamped passports, with everything from thyme to za’atar to furikake. Even mom and pop shops are using fish sauce these days.

Plus, Malarkey says of Magninelli, “I could walk into any restaurant in Urban Kitchen Group, order one of his dishes, and it would taste exactly the same. He’s not just good, he’s consistently good. I wish I could walk into my own restaurants and say the same thing.”

Animae will fit between 170-190 people. Craft cocktails will be handled by Adam Ono (ex-Yeast of Eden, Bourbon & Branch). Like Herb & Wood, it will have an adjacent coffee shop with to-go food from the Animae kitchen. At night, they’ll transform the area into an event space. 

I asked Malarkey a few tough questions on the eve of his open: 

You’re running marathons. You look kind of ripped. Helping with the stress? 

Whenever I do a new opening, I get really intense and in shape. When you’re playing with a lot of money you gotta be real responsible and focused. To the investors, but also to your wife and kids. You’ve got to have clarity. Thank god for the Peloton and the healthy eating. I’ve been able to get on the line cooking with Joe and these guys. I’m like Rocky Balboa chasing the chicken. 

Embarcadero Marina is in flux. Huge projects in the work, but they’re still a ways off. It’s not a dining destination like Little Italy. Why there, why now? 

Really came around with meeting Nat Bosa. He doesn’t have restaurants in his other buildings. He’d eaten dinner at Herb & Wood, came in here casually and said, “I want a premium restaurant, and I don’t want to have problems with the group who runs it, so I’m going to make you a sweetheart deal.” He’s so straightforward and honest, so we felt we could be, too. He asked if Animae would do really well there. Puffer and I looked at each other and said, “We have no idea, Nat. We’re either going to kill it, or we’re going to close.”  

Plus, there’s no foot traffic in the area. Where’d you go to business school? Help me understand. 

Herb & Wood and Juniper & Ivy [Richard Blais’ restaurant next door] aren’t in the heart of Little Italy where people walk by and think “Oh, this place is cute.” I’d put the number of walk-ins at about 10 a night. The other 300 people are ride-sharing or valeting. Uber and Lyft have has changed our entire industry. Everyone just wants to go out and not worry about having to drive. You don’t need parking, and you can be off the beaten path. Look at Major Domo in L.A. Granted, that’s David Chang. But, still, it’s changed.

Animae is carpeted. Restaurant carpet is gross. Please explain yourself. 

It took Puffer a while to talk me into it. We’re getting old. Our hearing’s going. I want to be able to sit across from people and have a great conversation. Plus, it’s the funkiest carpet ever. The whole place is so soft and has giant curtains. We used to be the ones cleaning up warehouses and making super-loud restaurants. Now I think we’re at the forefront of restaurateurs getting back to places you can talk to people. 

Why has Herb & Wood done so damn well, and how will that translate to Animae?

Puffer and I were never allowed to have this much talent in the olden days. We no longer have people who tell us what our budgets are. Plus, all of our new GMs and chefs are our business partners. We gave them ownership stake. Ask any young chef or old chef what they want in life and they’re going to say, “I want my own restaurant.” Well, now you got it. We’d much rather make less money and sleep at night. That’s helping us get the best talent. We give them budgets that are reasonable, and beautiful venues to work with. If you build a fancy restaurant, and you don’t pay your people, you’re going to fail. 

Wrap up the food concept for me in a neat little bow.

Coal-fired, Asian inspired. We’re not doing authentic Asian. There are no rules. So much fun to break them together. Almost every single dish is a mashup of Asian and Mediterranean. It’s incredible steaks, seafood, Asian crudo. Joe has taken his pasta skills and he’s making brothless ramen noodles. Whole roasted duck. Udon lobster dish with shaved parmesan. Whole fried chicken. We’re making our own bao buns. 

What’s your contribution to Joe’s menu?

Joe got more into Chinese flavors that are rich and bold. All I wanted was Thai and Japanese, super light with acid and spice. So I’m the guy who runs around putting a bunch of herbs and salt on everything. 

Animae opens Sept. 20. 969 Pacific Hwy, Embarcadero Marina. 

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

First Look: Animae

The post First Look: Animae appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Addison

Addison at the Grand Del Mar will always be in play. Under the technical mastery of chef William Bradley, it’s simply one of the best restaurants on the planet, let alone San Diego. The fact that it’s not won a James Beard Award yet is a product of bias, not value. It’s a special occasion restaurant, for sure, based in the Fairmont Grand Del Mar resort. It’s not cheap. It’s very, very formal. And it’s pretty spell-binding.

5200 Grand Del Mar Way, Del Mar

Juniper & Ivy

Although the headlines have been taken by the Crack Shack, their casual fried chicken offshoot, Richard Blais’ marquee fine-dining warehouse has continued to exceed expectations since opening in 2014. Blais lives locally, takes a very active role for someone with a TV and book career, and his team is one of the best in town, especially Executive Chef Anthony Wells, who spent a year at Thomas Keller’s Per Se and was the opening-day butcher at Jonathan Benno’s Lincoln Ristorante.

2228 Kettner Blvd, Little Italy

Herb & Wood

First off, it’s the most beautiful restaurant in town. Chef Brian Malarkey and his partner/GM Chris Puffer captured some Victorian magic in the old Mixture art warehouse. Malarkey and chef de cuisine Shane McIntyre have never been short on talent. It’s always just been a question of, “How involved will Malarkey be?” When he left Searsucker, quality suffered. But H&W is his baby, and it’s arguably the best restaurant he’s ever done.

2210 Kettner Blvd., Little Italy

George’s California Modern

Chef Trey Foshee is one of the best in the country. To boot, he’s also one of the most sustainable, ethical chefs around, meaning that his kitchen cooks for the head and the mouth. Doesn’t hurt that he’s perched over La Jolla Cove. But what really pushed the George’s empire up in recent years is the bar program, which, under Stephen Kurpinsky, has finally reached the same level as the kitchen.

1250 Prospect St., La Jolla

Trust

Chef Brad Wise seemed to come out of nowhere. His tenure at JRDN in Pacific Beach wasn’t buzzed about. But when he partnered with GM Stephen Schwob (ex-Addison) to open this hip, minimalist restaurant in Hillcrest, they’ve both consistently blown minds of anyone I’ve sent there. That oxtail raviolini, the vinegar whipped-cream potatoes, the whole damn thing, is excellent.

3752 Park Blvd., Hillcrest

Market

Carl Schroeder seems to get overlooked, possibly because of Market’s quirky location between Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. It’s not a road traveled much unless you own a horse and an Aston Martin. But Schroeder’s a perfectionist and incredibly talented chef, and his staff totally buys in and knows the food and wine down to the smallest detail.

3702 Via de la Valle, Del Mar

Pick up San Diego Magazine‘s June issue later this month to see who wins.

San Diego’s Best Restaurant of 2018: The Finalists

Trust Restaurant in Hillcrest is one of the finalists for top restaurant of the year in San Diego. | Photo: Sam Wells

The post San Diego’s Best Restaurant of 2018: The Finalists appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

When this issue is released, my inbox starts to swell with people’s opinions on it. They range from “THANK YOU!” to “YOU’RE AN IDIOT!” to “AMAZING!” to “IT’S RIGGED!” to “YOU’RE AN IDIOT!”

So this year, I figured I would answer a few of the questions I usually get, to hopefully clarify things ahead of time.

Q: Do advertisers pay to win categories? Is it rigged?

A: No. Absolutely not. Nyet. The Best Restaurants list is divided into two sections: Readers’ Pick and Critic’s Pick. The readers make their votes, and those votes are tabulated using a non-subjective tool called math. We do not insert advertisers in there, or give them extra votes, or help them in any way. This list is as pure as we can make it. The only thing that could change the readers’ pick is bad math or if it looks like a restaurant stuffed the ballot box (see below).

The Critic’s Choice is simply me and the hamster in my brain. I keep a list throughout the year of the best things I’ve been lucky enough to put in my mouth. It’s my little black book of San Diego’s most amazing food. In seven years as San Diego Magazine’s food critic, I have never, ever been asked by someone from the magazine to include an advertiser. I just fill out my ballot like the readers, based on my personal experience. A few restaurants have, however, offered upwards of a couple thousand dollars to name them a winner. I declined, which may explain my current living situation.

Q: Are Readers’ Picks a popularity contest? Can’t restaurants stuff the ballot box?

A: They can, and they do. But we have ways of sniffing out shenanigans. One way is that we can look at IP addresses and see if one was used hundreds of times. We also notice when a voter names the same restaurant in every category, e.g. an Indian restaurant wins every field, including “Best Mexican” and “Best Restaurant That’s Anything But Indian.” We don’t allow spam, and we account for that, but restaurants are allowed to promote and campaign.

Q: How the hell did readers pick XX Restaurant as Best XX?

A: The readers like what they like. I learned a while ago that my aesthetic tastes are not universal. My palate was not dipped in the River Styx. And therefore I will not begrudge the readers their favorites. After all, I named William Bradley my favorite chef in town, but I’ve been known to crush a rotisserie chicken in my car on the way home from Sprouts. And Thomas Keller, a very fine world-famous French chef, famously purchased In N Out for a staff party.

Q: Why isn’t my restaurant included?

A: To be honest, I don’t like naming restaurants “best.” Restaurant culture isn’t a tennis match. And because, with any category, there are usually a handful of restaurants that could “win” a category for me. For instance, with “Best New Restaurant,” I was hemming and hawing between Trust in Hillcrest and Herb & Wood in Little Italy. The ultimate deciding factor for me was that the team at Trust didn’t have the “name” going into this project that chef Brian Malarkey does at Herb & Wood. Malarkey’s restaurant is excellent, and beautiful, and deserving. But he also had more resources and momentum. The fact that Trust pulled off what they did with fewer resources inspired me. They MacGyvered a really great restaurant.

Also, every year I forget restaurants, or fail to get restaurants into the list. Last year, I completely spaced on Kindred, winner of this year’s “Best Vegetarian/Vegan.” This year, I’m ticked off that Flying Pig (Oceanside and Vista) and Land & Water Co. (Carlsbad) aren’t included in my picks. Those are two of my favorite restaurants in town that somehow didn’t fit the puzzle. And that’s what a list like this is—a puzzle.

Q: How is Sushi Ota not your Best Sushi Restaurant? Is your mouth injured? Everyone knows Master Ota is untouchable!

A: For those of you who still don’t know about Master Ota, do yourself a favor and find his restaurant. It’s in Pacific Beach, next to a 7/11 and a freeway. Ota has, and will be during his time on earth, the apex of sushi in San Diego. Local fishermen literally make all other restaurants wait at the docks until Master Ota has had his pick of the day’s very best catch.

That said, our sushi scene has evolved, and there are very excellent sushi chefs who deserve a nod. For me as a critic, sustainability plays a huge part. Our oceans have been looted, and they’re in danger of collapsing. Sushi is a major contributor to that plundering. That’s why, last year, I gave the award to Land & Water Co.—whose chef-owner, Rob Ruiz, is now one of the country’s top sustainable seafood experts, and runs his restaurant as such.

And this year, I picked another sustainable sushi chef who’s got major chops: Davin Waite of Wrench & Rodent in Oceanside. First of all, Davin’s a punk and has built a little skate-zen place that’s fun to hang out in. Second, he’s a really good, respectful, obsessive sushi chef. Third, he’s as sustainable as it gets. Ota will always be the yoda of the scene, but younger jedis deserve credit for helping in saving the universe.

Q: Hey, Critic! You chose Kettner Exchange as “Best of the Best, Casual”? That’s a fancy restaurant whose chef has cooked at the James Beard House!

A: You’re right. That’s odd. And not quite right on my part. Here’s what happened. There was no ignoring George’s California Modern this year as “Best of the Best, Fancy.” Trey Foshee has been one of the country’s top chefs for decades. This year they underwent a massive renovation of their bar area, and bartender Stephen Kurpinsky has become a real inspiration and innovator for the city’s cocktail scene. It was the year to honor one of the country’s best restaurants.

I had actually considered Kettner Exchange for that award, since it’s a beautifully designed spot and Brian Redzikowski’s food absolutely blew me away over the last year. So, I reasoned—Kettner has two very active bars, which makes it a social scene as much as a dining one, and aren’t bar areas, even nicer ones like theirs, casual? It may be flawed reasoning, but it was mine. And I wanted to shine as much light on KEX and Redzikowski and bartender Steven Tuttle as possible.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I will answer as many as possible. Thanks, guys. Hope you enjoy the issue.

Behind the Best Restaurants Issue

Critic’s Pick for Best Caterer 2017: Miho. | Photo: Sam Wells

The post Behind the Best Restaurants Issue appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

The hottest thing in San Diego’s restaurant scene right now is fire. Braising and sous vide is out. Grilling and roasting are in. Gas stovetops are giving way to wood-burning ovens.

When Brian Malarkey opened Herb & Wood, he and chef de cuisine Shane McIntyre made wood-burning flame the focus. Same thing at Bottega Americano in East Village, Trust Restaurant in Hillcrest, the new Grill at the Lodge at Torrey Pines, and Campfire in Carlsbad.

After decades of advanced cooking techniques, our old Francophillic love of sauces, and our modern-day sous vide addiction, why go back to the flame? Latent caveman impulse? A cook’s version of texting an ex?

“I’m working to build layers of flavoring and getting that perfect caramelization on proteins, vegetables, breads and other ingredients,” says chef Brad Wise at Trust. “Cooking over wood fire allows you to achieve that.”

“I’m excited to once again be working with the wood fire,” says Andrew Bachellier at Campfire. “It’s a truly uncontrollable element that takes tremendous focus and technique, but when harnessed can yield unbelievable layers and complexity of flavor.”

As for the always quotable Malarkey, he explains: “Don’t fear the burn! Black is back! Caramelization is the secret sauce! It’s Francis Mallmann’s world … We’re just burning it up!”

The Mallmann in reference is an Argentinian chef, famous for applying Patagonian, open-fire barbecuing techniques to high-end food. In America, our renewed love for dry heat can be seen in Dallas chef Tim Byre’s 2013 book, Smoke: New Firewood Cooking, which was nominated for a James Beard Award.

Cooking over open flame is advantageous for three main reasons: caramelization, the Maillard reaction, and smoke. All three famously add thousands of flavor compounds to food. They are nature’s MSGs.

First, caramelization, which happens when high heat hits sugars. That’s what gives the crust on pizza or bread its phenomenal flavor. It’s what turns a sharp, raw onion into a sweet, flavorful, soft brown string of sweetness. That’s what makes Herb & Wood’s roasted carrots so tantalizing (see bottom of article for full description).

Second, the Maillard Reaction, named after its discoverer, French scientist Louis Camille Maillard. This is what makes bacon so incredibly good. When an amino acid (the building block of every protein) interacts with a sugar and heat, it creates another few thousand flavor molecules. America’s obsession with bacon is essentially a Maillard obsession, but Mallaird doesn’t translate into funny memes quite as well.

Third, smoke. Anyone who’s eaten a good piece of barbecue brisket (Smitty’s in Lockhart, Texas, remains my favorite) or dad’s charcoal-grilled kielbasa knows that smoke from burning wood (cedar, oak, white pine, applewood, whatever), when used correctly, imparts a rich, ancient flavor to food. Gas flames do not. Bacon is the ultimate proof of what a little smoke can do to the magical combo of protein, salt, fat and sugar.

Evaporation also helps. When you use dry heat to cook a piece of meat, you evaporate some moisture inside, which amplifies its flavor (same thing happens when you “reduce” a sauce). The concept also works with dry-aging—meat loses moisture over time, thus concentrating the flavor molecules (that’s not the whole magic show of dry-aging, which includes breakdown of muscle fibers, but it’s part of it).

Oh, and there’s time. That’s the thing about fire: it’s hot. So it takes much less time to caramelize and cook a protein near a flame than it would, say, if you put it in the sous vide machine at 167 degrees for 26 years. And on a busy Friday night in a restaurant kitchen? Chefs would shank someone for a couple extra minutes on the clock.

In his book Cooked, Michael Pollain suggests that we’re evolutionarily designed to crave foods roasted over fire. After all, fire is the only thing that made certain foods (raw meat, for one) edible for millions of years.

So why not cook everything over an open flame? Why doesn’t every restaurant set stuff on fire?

Because open-flame is a real pain. It’s wild and unpredictable, like presidential candidates.

“Cooking over wood requires a cook to actually cook, to control the heat source the distance of the item from the source for the desired effect,” says Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove and Galaxy Taco. “That’s one of the reasons I like it besides the obvious flavor advantages.”

Braising a meat in liquid, you can afford to take your eye off of it. Liquid isn’t going to burn. But ignore a dish in a wood-burning oven? It ends up looking like a stocking stuffer for the bad kid in the family. Food gets ruined. Cooks get fired. Owners raise the cost of booze to try and make up for the loss of inventory. Sober customers cry. The restaurant closes, in comes a 7/11 in its place. America becomes a territory of China.

No one wants that.

“It’s challenging to make sure you’re creating the correct burn pattern, or coal circulation,” explains Wise. “It’s especially challenging on a Friday night during service when there’s a full ticket rail and a full grill. You have to watch closely so you aren’t burning too hot or letting the fire die on you. There are also obstacles that mother nature throws your way when using wood for cooking. Each piece is different, each piece burns differently.”

Fire’s comeback, specifically in San Diego, might also be a Mexican thing. The influence of open-fire cooking from Baja has invaded menus across town in the last few years. You get the ash, the smoke, the primitive glee. It tastes like you’re on a nameless beach or ranch south of the border, with stars and the moon instead of push notifications.

Plus, it’s fire. Humans like playing with it. We like to stick our plastic army men in it to see what happens (also maybe an act specific to my neighborhood). Some scientists argue fire is what helped us leapfrog our monkey pals in the evolutionary conga line. People are transfixed by it. We sit around and watch it, despite its lack of Kardashians. There’s a simian excitement to it, a cowboyness.

If there’s one singular thing that chefs really love most in this life, it’s definitely fire and knives and booze. And math.

With all of this open flame in San Diego’s kitchens, you can expect some mistakes. Food will be burned. Food will be cooked on the outside, but slaughterhouse raw in the middle. Maybe poke a fork into it for inspection before you dive in.

But, used right, fire is a lightning fast route to well-tanned food loaded with flavor.

COME ON BABY BITE MY FIRE

Five open-flame dishes to try in San Diego.

Wood-Grilled Trout @ Galaxy Taco. Adobo rub, shishito-watercress salad, and hoja santa.

Fire-Grilled Fingerling Potatoes @ Trust. Served with vinegar whipped cream, butter, and chives.

Roasted Baby Carrots @ Herb & Wood. Tossed in a cashew-sesame dukkah, espellette yogurt, and carrot top pesto.

Monte Cristo @ The Grill at the Lodge at Torrey Pines. Wood-roasted turkey, Applewood ham, gouda on raisin brioche with a strawberry-green pepper jam.

Leeks @ Campfire. With fungi and creamy Tallegio.

Fired Up

The post Fired Up appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

After using Thomas Schoos for Searsucker and Herringbone, they went rogue for design this time. Puffer took lead. “We wanted to stay away from reclaimed wood, white marble, black steel, Edison light bulbs, and other materials that have been overused,” he says. “I didn’t want to over-design the hell out of it. Dining for me has always been an escape. In life there’s chaos. I feel like I’ve gotten away from the world. Get the hell away from the grind. It does have a little gay Paris meets NYC with Willy Wonka posh to it.”

The space is divided into four separate areas. First, a little lounge area that Puffer suggests looks a bit “like a chic loft space.” Second, what they’re referring to as the “lavender lounge,” with an indoor-outdoor porch feel. Third, the main dining room. Fourth, the patio with a double-sided fireplace.

All told, the space fits 230 diners. And it shares a wall with arguably the city’s hottest restaurant, Juniper & Ivy.

Yeah, so. Little Italy. That’s kind of a place to eat now.

For the menu, Malarkey and chef de cuisine Shane McIntyre (ex-Searsucker, Green Acre) are focusing on proteins and vegetables from their wood oven. So a heavily roasted menu. Like stuffed branzino with Meyer lemon, parsley, chives, and chervil, wrapped in prosciutto and roasted, and topped with a chili tapenade made with Castelvetrano olives, Calabrian chiles, garlic, and shallots.

Local tuna and uni crudo in cucumber citrus broth. Wood-fired king trumpet mushrooms with lemon verbena and house-churned butter. Pastas like triangoli with smoked rabbit sausage and burrata.

They’ll do their own dry-aged meat program. They’ll make their own pizza dough and baked goods on site each day, under the supervision of pastry chef Adrian Mendoza (Spago, Herringbone). Desserts will include a blueberry soufflé with whipped buttermilk and blueberry compote, a 24-hour crepe torte with berries, ricotta and honeyed pistachios, etc.

Bartender Willem Van Leuven (ex-Puesto, Prohibition) is well-versed in agave spirits, but his menu is mostly focused on fresh herbs. This vodka potion sounds interesting: “Grapes & Vodka” with muddled grapes, Green Mark vodka, peach liqueur, sugar, orange, and lemon.

You get the picture. Now take a look at the first known photos in the universe of Herb & Wood.

It’s slated to open this month.

2210 Kettner Blvd., San Diego, www.herbandwood.com

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood

The post FIRST LOOK: Herb & Wood appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

I’ve considered the fact that maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’ll go home and yell at some kid to get off my lawn. But, no, this is a real problem. The rest of the diners are all yell-talking.

“Welcome to Hip Bistro X, we have a wonderful table for you by the bar. Here are your menus and earplugs. Enjoy!”

Dinner has become a rock concert. And here’s why.

Restaurant design is hard. Literally. Owners are asking for the hip design materials of for this post-industrial moment—concrete, steel, reclaimed wood, glass, exposed air conditioned ducts that act like a shaky, hollow, homemade instrument for a moonshiner jug band. Soft materials are out. Carpet is what your parents’ steakhouse had. Not cool. Soft leather seats are in Denny’s, not this hip joint. And white tablecloths? You erudite prude.

What happens when you throw a loud noise at a hard surface? It bounces back even harder. It’s the Marshall stack of noise. It’s like when Jimi Hendrix put his guitar next to the amp and made all that crazy, loud music.

Windows are hard. High ceilings in a cavernous warehouse space with a roll-up garage door that lets the sonata of the street flood into the space? Congratulations, you just turned a restaurant into an echo chamber. You’ve got an open kitchen, too? There is nothing silent or zen about restaurant kitchens.

In ye olden days, the bar used to be separated or off in the back, away from the dining room. Now, “social dining” is the name of the game. The bar is the centerpiece of most restaurants. I don’t know much. But I do know that when you add alcohol to a human, the human gets louder. In our effort to make dining fun, we’ve also made it deafening.

For more insight, I called Matthew Ellis. Matt is the owner and designer behind Bluemotif Architecture, who’s designed some of the city’s top restaurants, including Cowboy Star, Juniper & Ivy and Kettner Exchange.

Why’s it so loud, man?

I don’t think enough designers are thinking about it during the design process. You work hard to get a place open and go, ‘Oh, shit. It’s really loud in here.’ So we have to work extra hard to offset the acoustics.

Pandora’s box?

With new sound systems you can put speakers everywhere. Some operators really want that vibe, crank it up and create a lounge scene. They want to break that barrier and threshold between restaurant and bar.

What about the trend of indoor-outdoor dining? Blowing out walls and making the restaurant part of the street?

San Diego is known for its friendly outdoor climate, but creating a comfortable outdoor dining environment can be tricky.  It’s a difficult balance, especially if you’re located near a major intersection. You’ve got the traffic, the brakes squeaking, street musicians competing for attention, planes flying overhead (in Little Italy), etc…. When you’re designing a place that demands intimacy but still provides interactivity w/ the urban environment, you’re trying to control that noise. It’s a delicate balance of designing an envelope to buffer and keep environmental noise out while also attempting to dampen “noise” from within while also maintaining enough background chatter that the environment doesn’t feel dead (nothing kills a vibe more than deathly library silence). To add a layer of complexity, sometimes, opening the envelope of the building (cracking open a door or window can help alleviate interior “noise”, but in an urban environment where residents live next to our local drinking habits, we also have to find strategies to minimize the negative impact the “noise” escaping from a restaurant has on it’s neighbors.

What about server stations—those seem like drum kits.

Yeah. You have to be mindful of where you place server stations.  No one likes to sit next to a bunch of clankety tin and glassware, but even that can be mitigated with the correct acoustic attenuation.

Talk to me.

One of the things that’ll kill the acoustics in a space are big, plate-glass windows. They reflect sound, and they do so in a way that’s not consistent. Add to that hard floors, hard ceilings, and hard, vertical walls. We’ve found you can have big windows, but if you place them at a slight angle, it helps break up the sound. Sometimes opening windows to the outside environmental noise is better than keeping the windows closed to avoid a lot of sound reverberation.

Reclaimed wood is the current restaurant material Jesus. Is wood loud?

Wood is not a bad material for absorption. It attenuates better than drywall.  Soft woods and wood surfaces with heavier irregularity dampen sound better than hard woods with clean refined finishes.

What project of yours was a challenge, and how’d you handle it? 

Catania in La Jolla was a challenge to control interior sound. That little space was super challenging. Concrete floor, concrete ceiling and four walls of glass (which we wanted to take in that awesome view). The ceiling was very low and made of concrete. We wanted wood floors to soften the noise, but the client really wanted concrete for cost and maintenance reasons. So we put in acoustic attenuation on the ceilings. It does such a great job.  It’s dark and disappears from view and doesn’t create a distraction that pulls your eyes away from that amazing view.  We also used a cork paneling on the walls which complemented the olive wood veneers. Green Acre in La Jolla was a challenge to control the outdoor environmental sound. Every few minutes, jets from Miramar race by and shake the foundation of the building. That was a really big issue, especially since the entire concept was based on pulling the canyon into the space and connecting to the natural outdoor environment. We used a really dense material that looks like panels of Triscuit Crackers. It absorbs and dampens sound from the outside before it rattles the patrons eardrums – cool product.

Roll-up garage doors look cool. How are they for sound?

Horrible. Not only are they really thin and made up of a bunch of aluminum and glass panels, but they’re meant to move and fold. They have a lot of joints. They reflect a ton of noise and leak a lot of noise.

Would carpet help?

Carpet is GREAT for acoustics, but carpet is just nasty in restaurants. One great night of service = blood stains, beer spills, and food fights which leave their wear (stains and yeasty odors).  We have a project that we’re using a cork flooring. Cork is really great for sound but it looks like regular wood flooring.

What about people?

People are actually some of the best absorbers of sound … because we’re basically just big bags of water.

Open kitchens?

You have a couple choices. You can put glass up, but then it becomes a sound reflector. Or you can leave it open, and then risk the pots and pans and the sound of the whisks.

What’s the hardest external noise element?

Restaurants near hospitals. The ambulances come screaming by with sirens. You just can’t make that sexy.

Does shape of the room matter?

Shape and proportion matter.  Flat, orthogonal, perpendicular, regular surfaces are every acoustician’s enemy – It has to do with the wall height and width ratios. If you have a very square room or a cube, the sound can be horrible. But if you have more volume in that space, sometimes it’s not that bad because the sound can bounce around and deflect up high, above the zone where it can be detected.

What about brick?

Although brick is a relatively hard surface, a brick wall has a lot of irregularity which can help a great deal in sound attenuation.

So now you can see—the hard design elements en vogue and the big, open, square spaces are why your ears hurt. Restaurant noise is the new MSG, leaving diners wondering why their temples are throbbing.

Restaurant owners, I plead with you. Put some soft stuff in there. Angle a window. Use cork or brick or “attenuation material.” Having soft material in your new, hip restaurant does not mean you love Kenny G. You do not have to drive a LeBaron. It does not prevent you from attending Coachella.

Before you open your restaurant, invite tons of friends into your restaurant and get them drunk. The volume of drunk people goes to 11. Physically install panels while they’re in there.

Tinnitus should not be a dinner option.

The Noisy Restaurant Epidemic

The post The Noisy Restaurant Epidemic appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Stone Brewing just announced it’s signed a letter of intent for a new brewery in Richmond, Virginia. That’ll give them a much-needed distribution hub to rain Ruination down on the right coast. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe even gave a quote for the press release. That’s when you know you are not only making some bad-ass beer, but also doing so on a governor-cares economic scale.

***

Lucha Libre Taco Shop—the one at the bottom of the hill where Washington Street meets the 5 Freeway, with the line around the block, in the part of town that no one really knows what to call (it’s Middletown)—is doubling down in North Park. Took ‘em long enough. They’re taking over Marie’s Café spot at 3016 University Ave., hoping for a late March, early April grand opening.

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Email from a restaurant industry friend (names withheld to protect the accused): “Two big misconceptions I want to clear up: ‘The taco at ***** ***** *** * ***** is delicious.’ It’s not. It’s putrid. El Pueblo in National City is the best fish taco in San Diego—and it’s only 99 cents! Secondly, ‘The ****** ****” rocks!’ It doesn’t. It’s passable if there’s no line and someone’s volunteered to chauffeur me there. And all of the good restaurants that serve breakfast are closed. And there’s a toilet nearby in case one of the better restaurants magically opens and I want a do-over and need to make room.”

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Few years back, Obama passed a law requiring chain restaurants with over 20-plus locations to post the nutritional info of their menu items. Maybe that was shame enough—the restaurant equivalent of a scarlet letter. Or maybe drive-thru execs are tired of looking at the swollen, spud-like sight of us after eating their food. A new John Hopkins study found fast food chains are cutting about 60 calories from each new menu item.

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Sir chef Brian Malarkey, he of tender blue eyes and Searsucker/Herringbone repute, is competing on Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen. He’s hosting a viewing party at the newly renovated Searsucker Del Mar on Oct. 15 (8-10PM).

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I recently spent a couple weekends in Baja for our upcoming November cover story on the region’s food and wine scene. There are phenomenal Mexican chefs cooking world-class cuisine down there (seafood, smoke, chiles). There’s also a Michelin-starred gringo, Drew Deckman, who cooks under a few oak trees on one of the oldest wineries in Baja’s wine region, Valle de Guadalupe. His “restaurant” (Deckman’s en el Mogor) is literally tables scattered under trees; his kitchen is seven feet away, consisting of reclaimed materials MacGuyvered together (his huge cutting board is an old door from a science building at University of San Diego). He cooks entirely with firewood. Zero gas. And his food is absolutely phenomenal. Well, he’s just announced he’ll be in San Diego for one night on Oct. 16 to cook dinner at Común Kitchen in Downtown. You should go.

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Hamilton’s is pretty legendary in San Diego. There was a dark time that Heineken considered the most innovative beer-water in the realm. Hamilton’s was among the first to shed the craft beer light down upon The Bloated and The Unfulfilled (O’Brien’s was the city’s first craft beer bar). This Saturday, as part of their 8th Annual Celebration, they’ll do their Oktoberfest Pub Crawl from 1-4PM—shuttling drinkers to all three of their beer holes (Hami’s, Monkey Paw and Small Bar). All told, over 65 German and German-ic-ish beers. German food, too. Go sausage. Wear your lederhosen. Seriously. There’s a competition.

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Tommy Gomes, highly respected, highly salty fishmonger from Catalina Offshore Products, shares this thought on chefs and fish: “There is no such thing as cheap seafood. Remember why you became a chef? I’m sure it wasn’t to meet the 53-foot ****ing trailer truck of vacuum-packed processed food. Get in the game, support your local fishing fleet and the American fisherman.” You can see more of Tommy’s perspective on seafood here.

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Fleming’s just launched a late-night happy hour menu. Eight items, $9 each. Filet mignon flatbread (w/ Danish bleu and jack cheese). Short rib empanadas. North Atlantic lobster lettuce wraps.

THE DIGEST: Oct. 9, 2014

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