The post Vote Now for San Diego’s Best Restaurants 2024 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>With all restaurants do to nourish us, we invite you to give back to them by voting for your Reader’s Choice favorites in several categories.
Vote in as many categories as you like, but you can only cast one vote per category. If the altruistic love of your favorite spot isn’t enough, your vote will enter you to win a $200 gift card to the Catamaran Hotel Resort and Spa.
Winning restaurants earn bragging rights for the entire calendar year—and your continued love and support. So, go on. It’s up to you to decide on our city’s next culinary icon.
Voting has closed. View the Best Restaurants 2024 Winners here.
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]]>The post 2024 Best Restaurants Marketing Toolkit appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>Promoting & Voting Dates:
Voting: February 12 through February 18
Extended get-out-the-vote week: February 19 – February 23, 2024.
Awards and Bragging Rights:
Winning restaurants will be announced in the Best Restaurants issue of San Diego Magazine this May and will receive “2024 Winner” graphics to plaster anywhere that’s legal.
Winners will also be invited to participate at the Best of San Diego Party on August 2, 2023, where thousands of our readers await the chance to savor the culinary creations that earned you the top spot.
Let’s Get Started:
A series of “Vote for Us” graphics are below. All static marketing materials can be downloaded by clicking on the image. Follow the steps below:
Static “Vote for Us” Graphics:
• Click on the image you want to open Google Drive.
• Right-click or double-tap the image to open it larger.
• Choose download or click the down arrow on the right side of the opened image.
• Download your image.
Customizable “Vote for Us” Graphics:
• Click the graphic you want.
• Canva will open on your browser. If you don’t already have a Canva account, you will be asked to establish a FREE account.
• Once you log in, you can upload your photos, and add content to your graphics like the name of your restaurant and the category you aim to win.
Email Blasts:
Download an email blast graphic and send it through your email marketing platform! Don’t forget to link the email to the ballot page: www.sdmag.com/vote2024
Click the image above to download
Custom Email:
Click here to go to Canva and log in (it’s free to join). When you choose the graphic to edit, choose the prompt to “Duplicate” before you start. DO NOT CHOOSE EDIT. In your duplicated version, add your photos and text within the app. Download the type of file your email system requires. Don’t forget to link the email to the ballot page: www.sdmag.com/vote2024
Instagram In-Feed Post
Don’t forget to include a link to vote in your Instagram bio: www.sdmag.com/vote2024.
Click the image above to download.
Custom In-Feed Post
Click here to go to Canva and log in (it’s free to join). When you choose the graphic to edit, choose the prompt to “Duplicate” before you start. DO NOT CHOOSE EDIT. In your duplicated version, add your photos and text within the app. Download the type of file your email system requires. Don’t forget to link the email to the ballot page: www.sdmag.com/vote2024
Instagram GIFY
Official Best Restaurants voting stickers are available in Instagram stories. Search Best Restaurants and add a sticker GIFY to your content. Click on the graphic to go to download. Don’t forget to include a tap-to-vote link in your story: www.sdmag.com/vote2024.
Click the image above to download.
Custom Instagram Story
Click here to go to Canva and log in (it’s free to join). When you choose the graphic to edit, choose the prompt to “Duplicate” before you start. DO NOT CHOOSE EDIT. In your duplicated version, add your photos and text within the app. Download a .png or .jpeg. Don’t forget a tap-to-vote link in your story: www.sdmag.com/vote2024.
Click the image above to download.
To-Go Order QR Cards
Get out the vote by placing one of these cards in all your to-go orders. A convenient QR code that links to voting is on each card. The QR Code will take your customer directly to vote at www.SDMag.com/Vote2024
Click the image above to download.
Poster
Print and hang a poster in your restaurant! The QR Code will take your customer directly to vote at www.SDMag.com/Vote2024
Click the image above to download.
Logos and Icons
Add a logo or icon to your email or website. Don’t forget to include a link to vote: www.SDMag.com/vote2024
Click the image above to download.
All Graphics
Click here to download our full suite of assets.
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]]>The post 20 of the Best New Restaurants in San Diego 2023 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>But financial analysts who are not sadistic would advise you to put your money into the stock market, into real estate, into off-brand Beanie Babies before putting it into the restaurant industry. That means all you’re left with are people who do it because they have to, or because the dream of creating a hospitable place that makes humans happy is just too compelling to ignore.
Here are the new arrivals that won me over in 2023 and became part of my own personal hit list of the best new restaurants in San Diego.
Kinme
Omakase-only sushi spots took over the whole dang scene (omakase means you eat what chef deigns their best and most creative stuff that day, with no menu to choose from). Azuki in Bankers Hill has long been one of the city’s favorite sushi spots. It was never hype-trained. It just quietly, consistently snuck up on us all, probably because of owner Shihomi Borillo and chef Nao Ichimura’s obsession with the good-food movement.
Kinme is their tiny (900 square feet), 10-seat, omakase-only concept a block up the hill. It’s a mix of Edomae-style sushi and kaiseke, a seasonal, multi-course Japanese meal. The menu changes all the time, but it has included things like grilled corn with koji miso and tomatillo salt, A5 wagyu in ginger shoyu, and chawanmushi, plus Japanese whiskys, rare sake, and top-notch tea to finish.
Fish Guts
A hell of a fish-taco-and-sammy shop. San Diego born and raised, Pablo Becker helped open some of the bigger Mexican restaurants in the country with his cousin, famed Mexican chef Richard Sandoval. He needed a break, so he moved to Chicago for five years and became a line cook. He was offered management roles, refused. Head down, cooking. Five years.
Fish Guts is his return home, a small-but-mighty corner spot in Barrio Logan. It serves sandwiches during the day, tacos at night, using almost all sustainable fish from local boats. Get the blackened whitefish with the jalapeño-cabbage slaw, the mushroom taco, or the fantastic Negra Modelo beer–battered lunch sammy with Mexican tartar sauce.
MAKE Projects
MAKE Projects is one of the city’s most inspiring food nonprofits, helping low-income refugees and immigrant women learn farming, cooking, and catering skills and earn a living as they acclimate to their new life in the US.
During the weekends, the women cook and sell specialties from their native countries—East African mandazi (they’re like beignets), halloumi with farm veggies, pancakes with Cambodian orange syrup, Afghan chicken tacos with Haitian pikliz—made with ingredients from their urban farm. Now they have a permanent home in North Park.
Lia’s Lumpia
I could hang on this back porch all day, joy-shoveling lumpia with a couple beers. Chef Spencer Hunter’s grandma owned one of the first Filipino restaurants in San Diego decades ago and was famed for her hand-rolled lumpia (being lazy, but real close to accurate, let’s call it the egg roll of the Philippines).
Spencer went to college for sustainable hospitality and cooked in huts in South America, then came home to work through some top-notch kitchens (Searsucker, Waters Fine Foods + Catering). He and his mom, Benelia Santos-Hunter, started doing lumpia pop-ups at festivals, including Coachella. They went on Great Food Truck Race, nearly and probably should’ve won (a contestable second place), and found a permanent spot in Barrio Logan in an old house filled with pop-culture and Filipino cultural knicknacks.
It’s a total work in progress, design-wise. This is two family members ad-hoc’ing a dream, and I like that. Spencer will do seasonal riffs (ramen lumpia, Thanksgiving lumpia), but get “Lola’s Lumpia,” stuffed with a mix of beef and pork marinated in oyster sauce and various things. And don’t miss their ube-coffee ice cream with white chocolate shavings.
El Sueño
Pietro Busalacchi is a damn likable hospitality guy—a real host—and he can make a hell of a cocktail. That alone set a good base, one that El Sueño delivers on. The Point Loma High grad (a cousin of iconic San Diego Italian food family the Busalacchis) worked at TomTom in LA before coming home to open two concepts in Old Town. El Sueño is a partnership with Gustavo Rios—a Mexican concept based on food from Baja, the Huasteca region in the Gulf (where Rios’ mother is from), and Busalacchi’s travels through Mexico. It’s designed like a sweeping jungle in a two-story, indoor-outdoor space. Sit at the edge of the bar overlooking the patio and order the enchiladas suizas and a Bad Bunny (jalapeño-infused arette blanco, Mandre espadin, and carrot juice).
The Kitchen at MCASD
Considering how important it is for a museum to have good taste in art, art tasted terrible for decades. Restaurateur Tracy Borkum is fixing that. She got a degree in art history from UC Berkeley before she became one of San Diego’s top restaurateurs (starting with Cucina Urbana), so it makes sense that she’s becoming the city’s art-foodist. She and partner/chef Tim Kolanko are putting real-deal restaurants in culture temples. It’s a smart joining of forces, doubling the “attraction” of a cultural space and rehabbing the sector’s reputation for limp-sandwich cafés.
They opened Artifact at the Mingei Museum a couple years ago (Michelin gave it a Bib Gourmand nod), and this year they launched The Kitchen at MCASD as part of the La Jolla museum’s $100 million renovation, serving breakfast and lunch. Get the avocado bowl (with Aleppo pistachio dukkah, garlic creme fraîche, and carrot molasses) or the lamb burger with tzatziki and chili-mango chutney.
Hitokuchi
Chef John Hong first made his name by braving the nightclub-food scene at Bang Bang in downtown, a concept that dared to ask, “What if you could dance and drink and not have terrible food?” Then he became one of the first in San Diego to do omakase-only with Hidden Fish on Convoy. And now this, next door.
Hitokuchi returns Hong to his Japanese cooking roots. There’s a killer raw bar section (uni and caviar with soy-marinated salmon roe) and great toasts (toro tartare with wasabi crème fraîche) and entrées (creamy lobster basil, braised pork belly with mala sauce). It brought more national attention to the city when Esquire named it one of this year’s “Best New Restaurants in America.” Hong’s a talent.
Lilian’s Kitchen
The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe is one of the county’s classic resorts, tucked into those horsey, eucalyptus-shrouded backroads in North County. The whole property got new owners and a $50 million renovation recently, and Clique Hospitality (Lionfish, Serea) was tapped to do the restaurant (Lilian’s Kitchen) and bar (Bing’s).
Lilian’s is a stunner. Heavy woods and olive-green walls and hunter-green leather stools are patterned into a texturalist’s dream. In the kitchen is Moira Hill, a local talent who worked her way up through some of the county’s best (George’s, Juniper & Ivy, Trust, Campfire). The restaurant serves meals for all three rounds of the day, dinner being the main show: grilled octopus, peking duck tostadas, chimichurri lamb chops, oysters, grilled lobster frites in béarnaise, veal Milanese and ribeyes… you name it.
Sushi Gaga
Ayaka Ito has been one of the main creative forces behind East Village for a while now. Originally from Nagoya, Japan, she’s a certified sake master and her original concept, BeShock Ramen, is one of the more underrated noodle bars in the city. This year she opened three distinct new concepts nearby: Asa Bakery (coffee, tea, Japanese sandos), Bar Kamon (a speakeasy), and Sushi Gaga, a 10-seat, omakase-only sushi room with nigiri, apps, and noodles that rotate according to the chef’s whim (but sometimes include oyster and lobster confit and ramen with sea bream chashu).
Books & Records
Since Anderson Clark and Brian Douglass opened Common Stock in Hillcrest in 2018, they’ve become some of the city’s better operators. Common Stock is retro comfort (Peruvian rotisserie chicken, pimento grilled cheese with roasted tomato soup, steak frites). Books & Records is their new dinner-and-drinks-and-jazz-and-culture concept that’s breathing life into an iconic space, the former Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant (it was gutting when that closed during the pandemic).
The menu from culinary director Sam Deckman (son of Baja star Drew Deckman) is largely Baja-Asian: tuna crudo with kimchi-pineapple aioli and candied jalapeño; charred broccoli with labneh and yuzu ponzu; seabass al pastor; Coke-braised duck carnitas with shiso pancakes. Live jazz every Friday and Saturday night fills the city’s aching supper-club hole.
Smokehouse & Bar at the Historic Laundry
And now the greatest beach lawn smells like brisket. San Diego’s grand dame property is entering the final phase of its $550 million restoration and enhancement. It is exceedingly hard to mess with a classic. Pitchforks are at the ready. The gentry are emotionally vulnerable and allergic to change. One of the better things the Hotel Del did was retrofit the old laundry warehouse into a smokehouse with drop-dead gorgeous brick walls, ancient wooden beams, art and ironwork, and a bar with thirsty-sheriff vibes. Go in and get the smokehouse plate with options for brisket, pulled pork, ribs, jalapeño-cheddar sausage, smoked chicken leg, tater tots, the works. Load up a potato. Smoke the mac ‘n cheese. Go nuts.
Quixote
Personally, the only design that gets me emotional is minimalism or maximalism. Inbetweenism makes me think of taxes and the greatest failure, which is trying to mildly please everyone. You wind up standing in a yawn of a room, the building equivalent of dentist music and being dead inside. The Lafayette Hotel is a maximalist art project on a grand scale, a chaos zoo of patterns and textures and oddities. I love it as much as others will get vertigo from it.
The signature restaurant is Quixote, a pagan’s dining cathedral with gothic arches and stained glass and drippy light fixtures, lit for secrets. The chef is José Cepeda, a young talent originally from Puebla, Mexico, who did time at LA’s Mexican standout Mirame. Quixote’s menu is roughly based on his mother’s recipes from Oaxaca: guacamole with chicharrones and chapulines (marinated and seasoned grasshoppers); Oaxacan fondue with chorizo and truffle; memelitas (duck carnitas with cotija adobado and mole). One whole dining room looks like a prayer room or a tomb. No ambition was denied.
Pâtisserie Mélanie
This is a cute pink box of a French bakery and coffee house that adapts to a small-menu restaurant after dark. It’s the sort of neighborhood spot with espresso machines in the front and fermenting dough and cassoulets in the back. It’s the work of Melanie Dunn, a longtime English teacher at Crawford High who spent a few years studying dough art at Le Cordon Bleu. In the morning, it’s all espresso creations and viennoiseries (yeast-leavened treats like kouignettes, croissants, and chaussons), weekend desserts (bouchons, financiers, macarons, tartes), and brunch bites (croques and quiches). At night, it offers a very focused French dinner service (coq au vin, beef Bourguignon, cassoulet).
Ramen Nagi
San Diego’s weather screams smoothies, but climate won’t deny us our cravings. Fact is, nothing deep-tissue massages your bones like soup. And this year, the city was riddled with ramen shops and phở shops and birria-in-consomme shops. Soup everywhere. The biggest arrival was Nagi, started two decades ago in Tokyo by chef Satoshi Ikuta as a pop-up that turned into an international phenomenon with dozens of locations across Asia. Now their benevolent encroachment has begun stateside, and UTC landed just the fifth US location.
It’s Hakata-style ramen, a southern Japan specialty anchored by the almighty pork cloud of tonkotsu. The Original King is the tonkotsu, the Red King is miso-minced pork, the Black King has black garlic and squid ink, and the Green King is basil and parm and olive oil in tonkotsu. Customization is Nagi’s USP: noodle thickness and al dente-ness and strength of broth are all adjustable to your whim.
Ichifuji
With all due respect to hallowed Rose Donuts, Linda Vista was largely college food until the last couple of years. But in 2023, it got two great new Asian options: White Rice from Phil Esteban (SDM’s 2020 Chef of the Year) and Ichifuji. Ichifuji is the new project from Masato Fujita (who comes from two-Michelin-starred San Diego sushi restaurants Soichi and Tadokoro) and Hiroshi Ichikawa (Taka Sushi). The options are eight-course omakase or nigiri—both of which include sakizuke (seasonal apps), soups (like a dark red miso), three-day miso-marinated black cod, and dessert. San Diego’s sushi world is near the top in the US now, plain and simple.
Elvira
Point Loma Heights’ Cesarina—which began a couple years ago as a farmers market booth run by a married couple of Italian expats—serves one of the best plates of pappardelle in San Diego. The pasta is handmade, all day long (got my vote this year for Best Pasta in the city), with the rest of the menu centered around chef Cesarina Mezzoni’s recipes. The demand far outstripped the size of their original restaurant, so now plans are afoot to sprinkle sister concepts across San Diego. Elvira is first, finally activating the iconic (and similarly petite) restaurant spot near Robb Field that was once home to Thee Bungalow and Bo-Beau. This is their ode to Roman street food: pizza, pasta, mains like cod and ground lamb cutlets.
Haidilao
Historians have often credited cooking as the beginning of civilization and culture, the idea being that ancient humans huddled around a fire cooking food, and, while we waited, we formed rituals and language and customs and secrets. Chinese hot pot is the closest restaurant experience to that old huddling.
This year, San Diego got a branch of Sichuan’s super mega international star, Hidalao (over 1,500 locations now worldwide), and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s massive (fits 300 people), and you choose your own adventure with noodles (vermicelli, fried tofu skin, udon, instant noodle, and so on), soup bases (tomato, Sichuan spicy hot, mushroom, pork tripe), and proteins that are both widely familiar (chicken, pork sausage, Spam) and not so much (beef heart, duck intestine). You’ll occasionally see workers decked in white hand-pulling noodles in the dining room, tableside, as if they’re effortlessly and magically manipulating the strands of time itself.
Red Chickz
The fried chicken sandwich wars are still lingering, but a few clear victors have been named, and LA’s Red Chikz is one of them. TikTok fueled its rise, but it’s delivered on social hype with one of the crispiest, moistest Nashville-style options on the market. The first San Diego location landed at the Shoppes at Carlsbad this year. Even never-chain people are won over. The chicken is breaded and made to order, and Red Chikz uses halal chicken in tenders and wings (in terms of quality, halal is near apex). Each sandwich comes in seven different levels of pain (from “country” to “glow” to “inferno”), and the wedge fries may be even better than the sandwich.
Rosemarie’s Burgers & Brews
Rosemarie’s had a real successful run as a trailer, slinging “sliders” (an understatement, since each slider is massively packed with food) to the crowd at Harlan Brewing in Bay Park. This year, they got a permanent location in Mission Beach, and it’s a hell of a hangout. Owner Nick Balsamo went alley-diving in OB to find funk for the décor, and it looks like some very cool grandmother’s living room. Fitting, since it’s named after his Sicilian grandma. The sliders are mostly Wagyu on brioche buns, with hot chicken options and fried Korean BBQ eggplant options. And they serve beer. You have a new office.
Amalfi Cucina Carmel Valley
The spread of Amalfi is a very good and expected thing for North County. Four Italian friends (a few who helped grow the Buona Forchetta empire) started their own concept at Lake San Marcos (a wild little world of human-made waterside life) and were so successful that they’re up to four locations in our oft-ignored northern burbs of San Diego. It’s all based on chef Marcello Avitabile’s Amalfi Coast–inspired cooking. He’s a six-time World Pizza Champion, so any pie coming out blistered from that oven is fantastic. But it’s the smaller gems, like his simple pan-fried Roman artichokes over arugula, that win over the day. The bar in Carmel Valley has amaros and negronis and old-fashioneds.
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]]>The post Callie’s General Manager Has the Mother of All Resumes appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>It’s not uncommon to hear restaurant managers refer to their staff this way, but, unlike most of them, Sim has a necklace that I noticed when we sat down: a thin chain with “Callie” written in gold, like some people wear with the names of their actual kids. You get the sense Sim really means it.
Sim is the general manager of Callie. She opened the East Village Mediterranean-style gem with chef Travis Swikard in the middle of 2021, and now they’re joining forces again for their second location, a to-be-named French restaurant in La Jolla Commons. Much has been made of Swikard’s experience, and rightfully so—more than a decade alongside Daniel Boulud in New York tends to draw eyes—but in terms of pure tonnage of resume fireworks, Sim might have him beat.
She’s worked at some of the most well-respected places in New York and Los Angeles, including a marquee stint as a captain at Eleven Madison Park, what was—at the time, by every metric available—the best restaurant in the world.
You wouldn’t know it to talk to her. The SoCal native is approachable with an easy laugh. But to watch her at the restaurant is to witness a pro at work. You see it in the way she adjusts a napkin or pushes in a chair, the way she glides between tables or opens a bottle of wine. But you also sense it in the warmth with which she greets guests, touches tables, and coaches her staff.
The front of house at Callie is, like the cuisine, a union of world-class refinement and California vibes. The synthesis of these apparent contradictions is a big part of why Callie is such a local treasure—and why it has earned it national and international recognition (as well as this magazine’s award for Best Restaurant two years in a row). It’s an impressive CV for a woman whose main professional goal throughout college was to get out of restaurants for good.
The daughter of Korean immigrants-turned-restaurateurs, Sim was born and raised in Orange County. As a kid, Sim was “free child labor,” she quips—she worked the counter, grilled chicken, waited tables, whatever her parents’ business needed that day. She stayed in restaurants through college, serving and bartending, and graduated from UC Irvine sans debt. The tradeoff: They were bad places with toxic cultures. She had different ideas of success.
Prawns al ajillo from Callie
After college in 2011, she took her meager savings and moved to New York, something she had wanted to do since she was a kid. Though she had planned to change industries, she needed a job, so a friend got her an interview at Daniel Boulud’s celebrated Mediterranean restaurant, Boulud Sud, as a host.
For all her experience, she was completely unprepared. “I didn’t know who Daniel Boulud was,” she says. “I didn’t know what fine dining even meant. I never heard the phrase.” What she did know, however, was how to work hard and learn. She absorbed everything she could, bouncing from the host stand to the events team to management.
It was there that she first met a young Swikard and other high-caliber restaurant pros, and it opened her eyes to what this life could be. “They were so good at what they did that I was like, ‘Oh, this is actually a career. This is a profession. This is actually something very respectable,’” she recalls.
Her next job was at Eleven Madison Park. The restaurant already had three Michelin stars, and, during her tenure, it earned an exuberant review from the New York Times, a James Beard Award for outstanding service, and the title of Best Restaurant in the World from the World’s 50 Best.
When Eleven Madison Park closed for renovations, Sim took the opportunity to come back to California. She arrived in LA at the end of 2017 to open the area’s NoMad Hotel, and did a stint as the GM of Maude in Beverly Hills. After the start of the pandemic, she got a random text from Swikard, her old Boulud Sud colleague, who was trying to open a restaurant in San Diego and had just lost his GM. Did she know anyone who might want the job?
Callie is theirs. It is her and Swikard’s united vision of hospitality and what a restaurant should be. She’s not courting the 50 Best awards—she’s too “old and jaded,” she says, and those things come at too high a human cost (she still can’t watch The Bear, for example). To her, success comes from working hard, taking care of her people, and connecting with the community. Nearly two and a half years after she and Swikard opened the restaurant’s doors, the reservation list at Callie is still full pretty much every night.
“I genuinely care about the business as well as every single one of my employees,” she says. “So I don’t care if anyone’s like, ‘Oh, you wear a necklace with the name of your job?’ I don’t think it’s weird, because for me, it’s like, ‘I also pushed this baby out.’”
And with her and Swikard’s second culinary progeny incoming, she may have to add another charm.
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]]>The post 28 of the Best Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants to Try in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
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Try it all–you can’t go wrong with this galactic feast
Photo Credit: James Tran
Vegan Restaurants in San Diego
Mothership
The public posed Kory Stetina with a lifetime’s worth of questions regarding his plans for a follow-up to Kindred. He answered with a self-described crashed starship, an otherworldly vessel containing reimagined vegan street food and memorable cocktails. Located in a nondescript building in South Park, Mothership is decked with all the whimsy expected in a spaceship-themed build-out: an original soundtrack pressed into vinyl, a mirrored bathroom bathed in red light, and a star-speckled ceiling.
2310 30th St, South Park
Underdog Food Truck
This vegan, fire-engine-red food truck is developing quite a reputation from its perch outside a North Park gas station. The name of the game is street food, and the rules don’t exist. Queue up and choose buttermilk-battered corn dogs, brown mustard– smeared NYC hot dogs, or a Beyond patty burger.2404 El Cajon Blvd, University Heights
El Veganito
Perpetual lines at the Sunset Market in Oceanside heralded El Veganito’s residency within the Grossmont Center food court. With vegan cheese that actually melts, burritos the size of a first-grader’s arm, and cilantro- and onion-topped street tacos, El Veganito swiftly became a cornerstone for those wanting to transition to a plant-based lifestyle without sacrificing their culture and the foods they love.
5500 Grossmont Center Dr, La Mesa
Photo Credit: Lindsay Kreighbaum
Donna Jean
Even more comforting than chef and owner Roy Elam’s cast-iron mac and cheese, his 72-hour fermented pizza doughs, and his seasonal selections of handmade pastas is the realization that he named his restaurant in homage to his late mother. Drop in for weekend brunch or daily lunch, or take a pizza-, pasta-, or vegan cheese–making class at the Banker’s Hill locale.
2949 Fifth Ave, Banker’s Hill
Eris Vegan Food Co.
After Eve Encinitas shuttered a few years ago, the staff took a brief hiatus, then reopened under the name Eris Vegan Food Co. They’re bringing the same upbeat and cheery hospitality in new Oceanside digs with similar bistro-inspired fare as Eve. Think sunflower mozzarella-loaded fries, cast iron-seared veggie patties, and cilantro-lime rice–filled veggie bowls.
302 Wisconsin Ave, Oceanside
The Tiger Roll
Gorilla Eats Sushi
Had Gorilla Eats Sushi been in the Aztec Food Hub during my days as a plant-based but cash-strapped SDSU marketing student, my life would have included fewer instant noodle packets and a lot more shiitake-and tempura asparagus–stuffed specialty rolls. Located in a midnight-blue building with white trim, the eatery also showcases a selection of two-piece nigiri, hand rolls, and classic rolls.
6334 El Cajon Blvd, College Area
Evolution Fast Foods
If you pull up to your local drive-thru and request something plant-based, prepare to make a meal out of ice cubes, wilted trimmings from a head of iceberg, and the three french fries that took a swan-dive to the bottom of your brown paper bag. But why bother, when you could instead head to Evolution Fast Foods in Bankers Hill, San Diego’s first vegan drive-thru, and have your pick of burgers, fries, tacos, and burritos served with compostable packing and utensils.
2965 Fifth Ave, Banker’s Hill
Grains Cafe
A curry-scented plume embraces those opening the doors to Grains Cafe in University Heights. Inside, sibling co-owners Napatr Chayodom and Katiya Hendricks are serving reimagined versions of the aromatic Thai dishes that defined their upbringing. They’re pairing bites with a local draft beer selection, honoring our illustrious craft brew culture.
2201 Adams Ave, University Heights
Enmoladas
Phatties Vegan Mexican Restaurant
Around these parts, culinary magic can be found adjacent to convenience stores, across the street from the post office, or, like Phatties, in a nondescript Escondido strip mall. Phatties’ menu has everything from jalapeno-marinated oyster mushroom aguachiles to banana leaf-wrapped, rajas-stuffed tamales and cinnamon-sugar-dusted churros.
242 W Mission Ave ste d, Escondido
Green Door Cafe
Green Door Cafe lies along a potted plant-lined patio tucked beneath exposed wood beams on a beachy La Jolla block otherwise abounding with yoga studios and boutiques. Chef and owner Martin Hall is to credit for the entirely from-scratch menu, which includes carrot lox bagels, a red chard and leek quiche, and tempeh-topped mushroom flatbread.
7644 Girard Ave, La Jolla
Hazel & Jade Bakery
The aromas inside Hillcrest’s Hazel & Jade are a chorus of spices, freshly brewed espresso, and buttery croissants singing in three-part harmony. Walls paneled with floor-to-ceiling subway tiles assist the bits of natural light popping in from the patio in brightening the space. Display cases and a pastry shelf proudly house the day’s bounty, which might be white cake filled with strawberry buttercream and pistachio-rose cookie pieces, twice-baked pistachio chocolate croissants, or cheddar chive biscuits.
3852 Fourth Ave #100, Hillcrest
Strawberry Cheesecake
Peace Pies
Peace Pies is San Diego’s only dedicated raw, vegan sit-down restaurant, and owner JP Alfred is entering his phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes era. He’s in the thick of rebuilding the Encinitas branch of Peace Pies, which suffered unrecoverable fire damage a few years ago. He’s bouncing back with an open, airy space in the same previously scorched structure while simultaneously running the inaugural Peace Pies on Voltaire in Ocean Beach.
4230 Voltaire St, Ocean Beach
Kula Ice Cream
A myriad of nuts (peanut, almond, cashew), seeds (sunflower), and olive oil are the unifying anchors helping Kula Ice Cream achieve its creamy, luscious mouth feel. Kula is a word of Sanskrit origin with widespread adoption in the yoga community, where it signifies togetherness and inclusion. It’s the same unity Kula spreads with its gluten-free, vegan ice cream sandwiches and pints (all of which are available at grocery stores throughout the county) that help bridge dietary gaps with dessert.
9883 Pacific Heights Blvd Suite F, Sorento Valley
Eggroll Burger
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra
Kindred
Our favorite gothic cocktail bar recently reopened in South Park after undergoing cosmetic enhancements. The results are a mosaic floor with brass inlays, high-top bar seating, and a dinner menu brimming with international influences, like carbonara dressed in bucatini cream, an eggroll burger filled with cilantro and sweet chili aioli, and a crème brûlée with macadamia crumble and preserved citrus.
1503 30th St, South Park
Maya’s Cookies
Maya Madsen founded Maya’s Cookies in 2015 to craft what she felt the market lacked: an irresistible, soft-baked vegan cookie with imaginative flavors. Every variety is grounded in her travels and life experiences and can be found at her storefronts in Grantville and San Marcos, under her vibrant hot-pink tent at Saturday and Sunday farmers markets, or at your doorstep (if you opt for nationwide shipping).
4760 Mission Gorge Pl, Allied Gardens
Coconut Cortado
Trilogy Sanctuary
Rooftop aerial silk classes and infrared heated yoga adjacent to an organic, gluten-and soy-free café—did we even have to tell you it’s in La Jolla? At Trilogy Sanctuary, downward dog your way into a plate of Sunset Tacos (housemade corn tortillas, roasted red peppers, kale, mole-marinated jackfruit), or sip and savor one of their dozen-plus superfood smoothies.
Rooftop & Level 3, 7650 Girard Ave Suite 400, La Jolla
Plant Power Fast Food
Plant Power Fast Food has locations sprinkled across San Diego in neighborhoods like Ocean Beach, Encinitas, and Escondido and on the SDSU and UCSD campuses. Plant Power sees its burgers as catalysts for chang—a means of demonstrating how care for the environment does not have to come at the expense of flavor or convenience.
Several Locations
Cräb Cake
Photo Credit: Israel Palacio
The Plot
Here, “zero-waste” isn’t some trendy food marketing moniker, but the tangible efforts of co-founders Jessica and Davin Waite. They help combat the United States’ vexing food waste issue by operating an entirely vegan kitchen in Oceanside (a Carlsbad location is opening soon), composting, recycling, making plant milk in-house, and convincing farmers to deliver produce without first wrapping it in plastic.
1733 S Coast Hwy, Oceanside
The Purple Mint
The words “Vietnamese fusion” conjure visions of slurping phở and completing the ritual of squeezing a lime wedge and dunking bean sprouts into a deeply savory broth. Chefs often achieve phở’s signature richness by simmering bones with herbs and aromatics, so discovering a completely meatless version feels like finding a rare gem. The Purple Mint in Allied Gardens serves its phở with shiitake mushroom and rice noodles resting in a vegetable-based broth with your choice of soy protein.
6171 Mission Gorge Rd UNIT 118, Allied Gardens
Conchas
Split Bakehouse
Find Split Bakehouse on the patio portion of the Grossmont Center food court, where panes of plexiglass are the only things separating you and a cache of fresh-out-the-oven pastries. You can go savory (jalapeño cheeze galette, jalapeño popper pocket) or sweet (conchas, cinnamon rolls, donuts), but don’t get attached. Split’s menu rotates seasonally, so a handheld peach tart today may be a lemon-and-powdered-sugar danish tomorrow.
5500 Grossmont Center Dr #219, La Mesa
San Diego Vegan Market
Squinting while trying to read and pronounce the multi-hyphenated ingredients on a nutrition label can feel like studying for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which explains why San Diego Vegan Market has become a cornerstone for the plant-based community. Leave your readers at home and close your Google app. It’s all vegan, all the time, and waiting for you off Mission Gorge in Grantville.
The Yasai – Vegetarian Vegan Restaurants Guide San Diego 2023
The Yasai
The Yasai is chef Junya Watanabe’s ode to fermentation. With locations in Little Italy and Convoy District, chef Watanabe, who also helms Convoy’s RakiRaki, collaborates with chef Hajime Matsuoka, crafting menus packed with vegetable-forward takes on ramen and specialty sushi rolls. Veggies assume a starring role on each plate and waste no time idling in the shadows for their shot at mimicking meat.
Little Italy and Convoy District
Veganic Thai Cafe
Thai curry is a revelation. A savory and aromatic reminder that some of life’s greatest joys are in a kaffir lime–and coconut milk–filled bowl with carrots, basil, and a sidekick of steamed rice. Veganic Thai Cafe in Hillcrest offers a varied curry selection (red, green, yellow, pumpkin, panang) with the option to add an array of soy proteins. The remainder of the menu features the classics: pad thai, drunken noodles, tom kha soup, and veggie stir-fries.
1417 Suit A, University Ave, University Heights
Sabudana Vada
Vegetarian Restaurants in San Diego
Sattvik Foods (VG + VE)
Chef and owner Kanta Jina draws on her home culture of Kenya and her international travel experiences to craft Sattvik’s dangerously flavorful paneer curry, pea-packed samosas, and handmade, whole-wheat rotis. When Jina isn’t tending to her Miramar storefront, she’s out catering weddings, birthday parties, and corporate events.
8650 Miramar Rd ste b, Miramar
Liticker’s Mexican Grill (Vegan Options)
To avoid running the risk of offending the entire state of New York, I won’t call Liticker’s a bodega. What I will say is that this Ocean Beach outpost has it all: beer, wine, spirits, and convenience store goodies on one side, and a small-but-mighty kitchen on the other. With a menu where almost everything can be converted into a vegan-friendly offering, I’ll compromise by saying Liticker’s is bodega-ish (sorry, New York).
4955 Voltaire St, Ocean Beach
Ranchos Cocina (VG + VE)
North Park’s Ranchos Cocina has been family-owned and -operated since 1994, so I figured they’d know a thing or two about making a killer agua fresca. What I wasn’t expecting was for the silky, rice-based bev to hit my table in a king-sized glass chalice. Sure, their 50-plus-item menu packed with tacos, tamales, and tortas galore keeps me coming back, but it’s the horchata (which left a constellation of warming spices across my beard) that really does the trick.
3910 30th St, North Park
Plumeria Vegetarian Restaurant (VG + VE)
Situated along the main University Heights drag, Plumeria shares a city block with coffee shops, ice creameries, breweries, and cocktail bars. As a Thai-fusion bistro, Plumeria distinguishes itself with noodle-forward entrées and family-sized vegetable stir-fries known for pops of lemongrass against the sourness of freshly squeezed lime balanced by the zing of Thai chilis.
4661 Park Blvd, University Heights
Sipz Vegetarian Kitchen (VG + VE)
Sipz is a San Diego–based pan-Asian chain with locations in Clairemont, La Jolla, and North Park. The nearly identical menus lean into the defining flavors of tamarind, garlic, lime-flavored coconut milk, charred veggies, and toasted peanuts to achieve herbaceous dishes bursting with umami.
Several Locations
The post 28 of the Best Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants to Try in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>The post SDM’s Guide to San Diego Food & Drink appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>Check back each week to catch our newest video:
Herb & Sea
Encinitas
Ranch 45
Solana Beach
Ambrogio by Acquerello
La Jolla
Matsu
Oceanside
George’s at the Cove
La Jolla
Arlo
Mission Valley
Beeside Balcony
Del Mar
Crab Hut
Kearny Mesa, Downtown, Mira Mesa
Tribute Pizza
North Park
Gwynn Foods
Catering
Civico 1845
Little Italy
Le Parfait Paris
Gaslamp, Point Loma, Mission Valley
Gwynn Foods
Little Frenchie
Coronado
Mujer Divina
Barrio Logan
Nine-Ten
La Jolla
Jeune et Jolie
Carlsbad
Marisi
La Jolla
Rosemarie’s
Mission Beach
Avant
Rancho Bernardo
Cesarina
Point Loma
The post SDM’s Guide to San Diego Food & Drink appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>The post Incoming: Shawarma Guys appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
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Shawarma Guys, Guy Fieri
You might think Bryan Zeto is paying with Monopoly money after reading his plans for expansion. He is evolving from his pretty incredible Shawarma Guys food truck into three separate brick-and-mortar locations.
First is a 1,500-square-foot storefront in La Mesa projected to open in three months and 1,600 more square footage will land in Mira Mesa around the new year. Zeto will cement his small empire with a two-story, 1,586-square-foot build-out in South Park in early 2024.
Zeto had a career in sales, but the thought of selling phones until retirement was unsavory. He’s known amongst friends and family for being a restaurant-quality home cook, so he began leaning into that skill set. “I always liked to cook. People said I cooked good, but that was just my friends and family,” he says.
Shawarma Guys, interior, San Diego
He was aware of the steep barrier to entry many first-time restaurateurs face and unsure how the public would respond to his food, so he decided to open his concept on wheels. He also reconsidered his original Mexican fusion menu.
“I wanted to do Mexican fusion food in South Park, but I talked to a friend who said, ‘Nobody wants that, there’s already so much Mexican food down here.’” Zeto refocused and began laying the foundations for recipes for his halal-friendly chicken shawarma and falafel pita plates.
“I had never cooked Middle Eastern food. I just come from a Middle Eastern background,” Zeto says. “I ate this food every day for a month, trying to see what tasted good. Even when we opened, I was still testing things to see what people liked.”
shwarma-guys-interior-cases.JPG
The Shawarma Guys’ success in South Park was swift and came with a feature on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and being named the number one place to eat in the country by Yelp in 2020. Zeto initially wanted to use the media-fueled momentum to go brick-and-mortar but resisted until he could observe any pandemic-related industry trends. “I knew the industry was changing, so I waited a year and a half before moving forward,” he says.
It was never the plan to open new locations in such rapid succession, but when permit delays on one project coincide with finding the ideal locale for another, you take the leap. The aesthetic for the three spaces will be bright, open, and not too fussy. “I want the place to be a nice, modern, and clean environment,” Zeto says.
He’s in the midst of enhancing the menu by adding items like wagyu kebabs, but is not dissolving his OG food truck completely. “Once we’re open in South Park, I’ll probably use it for catering,” he says.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream
Quick Bites
Verdes El Ranchero in La Jolla is expanding to take over Carino’s Pizza next door in La Jolla. The cheery, brightly painted bar has been serving regionally influenced, home-style Mexican since 1945 with dishes like machaca burritos and chile rellenos.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is hosting a grand opening party June 5 in North Park, where they will serve complimentary scoops from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. The company was founded over 20 years ago by Jeni Britton (James Beard Award Winner) and has since expanded to include more than 60 stores nationwide.
Have breaking-news, exciting scoops, or great stories about San Diego’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
The post Incoming: Shawarma Guys appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>The post San Diego’s Best Restaurants of 2023 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>Overall | Specific Cuisines | Specific Dishes | Ambience | Drinks
This year’s “Top Five” is a chronicle of obsession. When Callie chef and San Diego native Travis Swikard learns local boats have fresh spot prawns, he drives to Scripps Oceanographic Institute, secures optimal seawater, and keeps the prawns swimming in his kitchen until dinner service.
On the other side of downtown, fellow hometowner Tara Monsod and her three main chefs at the heavy-draped, softly opulent Animae are Filipina a major local culture represented at the height of San Diego restaurant life.In Mission Hills, truckfuls of American red oak are stacked and set aflame at Fort Oak.
Live-fire chef Brad Wise is among the city’s most active and ascendant talents, and his surf-and-turf haven—charred bones with one of the best pokes on the planet in an Atomic Age car dealership—is still the one to beat. The gravity in Little Italy still leans toward Born & Raised, where F. Scott Fitzgerald meets rap culture, a maximalist revolt against old steakhouse tropes and warehouse minimalism.
And, finally, this year has to be Addison’s. They hauled in their third Michelin star, making them one of only 14 restaurants in the country to hold that esteem. No matter your feelings about the tire company, chef William Bradley put San Diego on a mythological culinary map. People who travel the world for food will come here—and, in the process, discover tiny charms like Muzita Abyssinian Bistro or Wolf in the Woods.
This is the 2023 “Best Restaurants” list. Not the ultimate list. Just mine. A notebook scribbled in and adjusted and fine-tuned all year—my fifteenth year of eating the city, obsessing over its details.
Overall
Best Restaurants in San Diego
Critic’s Picks
Reader’s Picks
Best New Restaurant in San Diego:
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Chef in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
(Trust, Fort Oak, Cardellino, Rare Society, Wise Ox)
Runner-Up:
(Bad Boyz of Culinary)
Best Restaurant Service in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Hotel Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Catering in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Chef Kelston’s Culinary Experience
Best Restaurant in Baja California
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Cheap Eats in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Healthy Food in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Farmer’s Market Food Vendor in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Breakfast in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Bar in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Brunch in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Bakery in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Seafood Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Barbecue Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Steakhouse in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Dessert Spot in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Food Truck in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Chain Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Specific Cuisines
Best Asian Fusion Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Caribbean Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Chinese Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Ethiopian Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Filipino Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best French Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Greek Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Indian Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Italian Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Japanese Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Korean Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Mediterranean Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Mexican Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Peruvian Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Southern Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Spanish Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Thai Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Vietnamese Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Specific Dishes
Best Donuts in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Ice Cream/Gelato in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Pho in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Ramen in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Wings in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Burrito in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Chips & Salsa in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Birria in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Fries in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Poke in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Sushi in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Wrench and Rodent Seabasstropub
Best Fish Taco in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Taco in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Sandwich in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Pizza in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Burger in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Soup Dumplings in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Dumpling Inn & Shanghai Saloon
Runner-Up:
Best Pasta in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Ambience
Best Restaurant or Bar Design in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Date Spot in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Patio Dining in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Dog Friendly Restaurant in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Diner in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Restaurant for Big Groups in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Restaurant at Petco Park
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Restaurant with a Waterfront View
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Restaurant with a View of the City
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Restaurant Reinvention/Rebirth/Remodel in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Drinks
Best Dive Bar in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Bloody Mary in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Margarita in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Wine Bar in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Brewpub in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Coffee in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Cocktails in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Distillery in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Pacific Coast Spirits & Kitchen
Reader’s Choice:
Pacific Coast Spirits & Kitchen
Runner-Up:
Best Brewery in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best New Brewery in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Winery in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Wine List in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Juice Bar in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Alt-Drink, Alcoholic (Cider, Seltzers, Canned Cocktails) in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
Best Kombucha in San Diego
Critic’s Choice:
Reader’s Choice:
Runner-Up:
The post San Diego’s Best Restaurants of 2023 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>The post FIRST LOOK: Mister A’s appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
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Mister A’s
Kimberly Motos
We announced last year that Mister A’s had been sold—not to a multinational corporate restaurant group, not to the deepest pockets looking for a penthouse supper club for their private doings. But to longtime operations manager, Ryan Thorsen, the 34 year-old, loyal confidant of former owner Bertrand Hug, the guy who’d worked his way up, the steward who cared and earned it.
Today we reveal the redesign with a short film by Jeremy Sazon.
The remaking of the San Diego icon was a collaboration between Thorsen and designer Mauricio Courturier, whose art-school fever dreams are on display at more than a few rooms across San Diego (Wolfie’s Carousel Bar, Bang Bang, Camino Rivera, Noble Experiment, etc.).
Pearls will not be clutched. It’s not a drastically altered Instagram wall with some tables and lobster mac in it. You don’t take James Bond’s Aston Martin, paint it matte black and add fuzzy dice. To radically alter this restaurant—where for 57 years has been home to marriage proposals, big anniversaries, and IPO toasts—would be to blasphemously tinker with a city’s shared memory. It is still named in honor of founding owner John Alessio.
Instead, you tweak and gussy the stories in those antique bones. Thorsen and Courturier call their idea “high-end brasserie.” The furniture is softer, cooler-looking. Views have been maximized and they’ve built far more comfy nooks to take it in. They paid special attention to that famous deck, where you can wave at 747 pilots just hundreds of feet to the south, as they land at Lindbergh at sunset (pilots have called Mister A’s to let them know when a bulb was out on their giant marquee).
You still enter that elevator and push the famous button—capital “A”—for the penthouse. When the doors open, you’ll now land on a checkerboard of black and white tiles. They played up the F Scott-ian decadence of the original restaurant with a glittering ceiling-farm of crystal chandeliers—13 chandeliers in all, seven of which were relocated from the Alessio family home in Mt. Helix.
You can go right into the 180-seat main dining room, or left for the brand-new 18-seat bar and 72-seat indoor-outdoor lounge. That space, which in recent years had become a bit of a sideshow, has been raised to eye level. And the once-iconic Blue Room has been fully restored to its cooling original state—a gilded private dining room with larger-than-life drapery that feels like you’re eating coq au vin in a weighted blanket; blue carpeting is like a textural riff on the Kind of Blue album cover, and there’s an antique guéridon (a fancy old table). The rotunda—its aquarium windows facing Balboa Park and Downtown—has added ceiling frescoes from LA-based interiors painter, Charlotte Jackson (she hand-mixed the paint with earth pigments and essential oils).
There is ornate wood millwork throughout, the kind you’d expect to find on your boat friend’s prized floater. There is marble to give it that rock of Gibralter permanence—the feeling that, though the wine will surely disappear with the night, the place never will.
As for the food and the drinks, it’s still being overseen by the French stalwart, Stephane Voitzwinkler. The one change will be that dishes will lean more toward plant cookery, and there will be fare more share plates since that’s how we’ve always wanted to eat. Jerry Capozzelli is still maître d’, as he has been for 38 years. And marriage is still proposed at multiple tables on a nightly basis.
Mister A’s reopens to the public on Oct. 11.
The post FIRST LOOK: Mister A’s appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>The post Six Picks for San Diego Restaurant Week 2020 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
]]>Dinners are three-course prix-fixe menus priced at $20, $30, $40 or $50; lunches are two-course prix-fixe menus of $10, $15 or $20.
Can’t make it to all of them? Fret not. We’ve got a manageable approach. A half-dozen participating restaurants had the distinction of finding themselves in the winner’s circle of last year’s annual Best Restaurants poll. Below we’ve given you a taste of their Restaurant Week offerings, with links to the full menu. Choose one of these spots, and you’re guaranteed to pick a winner.
Mister A’s
Winner: Best View (Urban) (Critic’s Pick and Reader’s Pick), Best Mac’n’Cheese (Critic’s Pick 2019)
Dinner, $50
Choice of starters including lobster bisque and sweet potato agnolotti
Choice of mains including prime hanger steak and local roasted swordfish loin
Choice of desserts including citrus crème brulee and chocolate-praline bar
Whisknladle
Winner: Best Salad (Critic’s Pick), Best Chilaquiles (Reader’s Pick), Best of the Best Casual (Runner-up)
Dinner, $50
Choice of share plate options including beef tartare, local ahi tuna crudo, or local mussels
Choice of pasta alla norma, pork Bolognese, or Maine lobster taglierini
Choice of several mains including braised pork barbacoa, pan roasted flat iron steak, or burger
Café Gratitude
Winner: Best Healthy Eats (Runner-Up), Best Vegetarian (Runner-Up)
Lunch, $20
Choice of four starters including green Romanesco, and broccolini and edamame
Choice of four mains including eggplant parmesan focaccia, farmer’s market salad, and oyster mushroom asado bowl
Dinner, $30
Choice of four starters including Delicata squash, and roasted brussels sprouts
Choice of four entrees including samosa chaat and creamy puttanesca pasta
Choice of two desserts: banana cream pie and warm berry crumble
Solare Ristorante
Best Service (Runner-up), Best Italian (Reader’s Pick), Best Wine List (Reader’s Pick)
Lunch, $20
Choice of three primos including Solare classica Cesare and caldo freddo
Choice of four secondos including Italian sliders and scaloppini di pollo ai funghi
Dinner, $40
Choice of three antipastis including bruschetta alla mano and ciccia cruda
Choice of several secondis including gnocchi viola e asparagi and pesce del Giorno
Plus panna cotta all lavanda and a craft cocktail
Coasterra
Winner: Best View (Water) (Reader’s Pick)
Dinner, $40
First course choice of tortilla soup, macho salad, or mussels and clams “Michelada”
Choice four mains including cauliflower al pastor and roasted chicken “divorciadas”
Choice of three desserts: pineapple buttercake, churros calientes de la casa, or brownie tres leches
Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens, Liberty Station
Winner: Best Brewery (Reader’s Pick)
Lunch, $20 (includes a beer)
Choice of three salads including Little Gem Caesar, Fruity Goat, and SoCal Superfood
Choice of several mains including a burger, bruschetta BLT, and The Angry Chicken
Dinner, $30 (includes a beer)
Choice of several starters including Jidori Wings, 4-Square Grilled Cheese, and Yellowfin ahi poke “nachos”
Choice of several mains including True Craft Burger, Stone Brewing Medianoche, and The Angry Chicken
Six Picks for San Diego Restaurant Week 2020
Coasterra | Photo by Found Creative Studio
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