Swimming above a thousand bluefin tuna in the deep waters of the Pacific, one feels a dizzying calm. Below, the fish move in endless, unhurried loops, slowly growing plump in their monotony. Weighing around 170 pounds each, the fish in this net-pen are considerable. Heavy as a man and as wide as a surfboard, they move like hydrodynamic refrigerators, pewter backs reflecting water-filtered light like suncatchers.
Not long ago, these fish were in the open ocean, gunning 18 miles an hour through cold currents, possibly detecting our planet’s magnetic field using mineral deposits in their snouts, and tracing ancient migration patterns through the largest ocean on Earth. But here, with a gringo in a wetsuit bobbing above them, the fish merely draw lazy loops inside a giant aquaculture cage tethered far offshore, awaiting their fate as some of the most sought-after and expensive cuts of protein on the planet.
This is Baja Aqua Farms (BAF). Located in Mexican waters southwest from San Diego, BAF is, at any given time, home to tens of thousands of tuna worth tens of millions of dollars, making it one of the largest tuna ranching operations in the world and a major player in a modern global fish farming industry that now supplies more than half of the world’s seafood.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Anchored in the deep waters of the Pacific, the main feeding vessel at Baja Aqua Farms pumps thousands of pounds of small fish into dozens of net pens filled with slow-circling bluefin tuna.
If one were to, say, fly a helicopter over this operation, the view through the omnipresent cloud of gulls would prove impressive. Thirty Olympic pool–sized net-pens float in an open-water grid, each filled with a single school of a thousand or more bluefin. Some are huge, weighing more than 400 pounds, and some are smaller, around 45 pounds (still a lot of fish). And anchored in the middle of it all is a sizable, computerized central feeding vessel where specialists sit on aging rolling chairs inside an air-conditioned cabin, monitoring each school’s food consumption and their pen’s water quality on screens 24/7. A ship that thousands of pounds of feeder fish visit briefly each day after being offloaded from sardine boats and before being pumped into the bellies of tuna.
I ventured here on an educational mission. As a lover of both the ocean and tuna, I wanted to find out how bluefin—an animal fished nearly to extinction within my lifetime—makes its way into the tartares and chirashi bowls of today. My search led me here, face down in the water, listening to the sound of my breath through a snorkel and contemplating the vast machinations that keep these incredible fish churning through the global food system.
Silent as they are, these tuna tell a story about the future of fish and the future of how we interact with the ocean.
All of which we’ll get to. But first, let’s eat.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Workers separate a select number of tuna from the school and stun them with electricity before bringing them aboard the harvest boat.
By the time the bluefin arrives on my plate as glistening, fatty slices of pink otoro at Ophelia restaurant in Ensenada, it has already crossed oceans, boundaries, and moral terrain.
This fish was part of a school of tuna born in the open Pacific from eggs laid off the coast of Japan, captured as juveniles in Mexican waters by BAF boats in vast purse seine nets, towed for months to the BAF ranch, and fattened for many more months with feeder fish harvested from our coastal ecosystem by the BAF sardine fleet, then efficiently and bloodily killed, refrigerated, and brought to shore here in Ensenada to be packaged and driven over the border to LAX, where they either get exported—mostly to Japan— or eaten in high-end omakase and strip-mall sushi joints throughout San Diego, once the world’s tuna fishing capital.
Bluefin tuna, recent developments have shown, is both a symbol of past overfishing and a surprising conservation success. And its future now lies in operations like Baja Aqua Farms, which represent the next phase of human seafood consumption.
With me at the table, talking tuna, is Rodrigo Armada Tapia, the head of sustainability at BAF. Having grown up in Ensenada, Tapia speaks with pride about the region’s food culture—where tuna is often a star ingredient. Before taking me to the farm the next day, he wanted me to try the product, which BAF packages under the name Bluefiná.
Photo Credit: Mateo Hoke Otoro at Ophelia in Ensenada.
“You can’t understand the fish until you taste it,” he tells me.
Ophelia is Michelin-recognized. It sources bluefin from BAF, as do some notable restaurants in San Diego.
This is because BAF fish is some of the best bluefin money can buy. Fast-swimming wild tuna store fat in their bellies; the rest of the meat is relatively lean by comparison. But with the caged and portly BAF tuna, pillowy fat veins run throughout the entire fish, like a spider got inside and spun a web of tallow.
Dishes arrive, highlighting meat from various parts of the fish—akami from the side, a pile of flesh scraped from the ribs. Bluefiná tuna is not frozen for transport (it can make it from the ranch to Japanese markets in 72 hours), and the freshness of the fish combined with the high fat content translates to a peach-skin, custardy episode on the palette. It’s distinctive, delightful, and somewhat disorienting. I love tuna, but I don’t always love eating it. For my entire adult life, the stakes have felt too high. Every fish consumed was one fish closer to zero.
But that story is changing. Fished nearly to extinction from the mid-1900s to the early 2000s, today’s Pacific bluefin populations are back to near-heyday levels.
“Not only have we met the rebuilding targets, but we’ve actually already exceeded them,” says Josh Madeira of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Global Ocean Conservation team. The bluefin population rebound is a full decade ahead of schedule, thanks to international conservation efforts.
For the first time since the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program began telling consumers in 1999 which fish are ocean-friendly to eat and which should be avoided, consuming certain Pacific bluefin populations—like those caught in California waters—is considered only a moderate environmental risk. That may not sound like much, but it signals a major step for bluefin.
“This is a great success story,” Madeira says. “But there’s much more work to be done.”
Tuna, of course, means a lot to San Diego. And to understand how we got here, it helps to look back.
Throughout most of human history, tuna were seasonal, wild, and revered—an oceanic mystery glimpsed briefly, then gone. For millennia, various peoples chased tuna with harpoons and caught them in elaborate stone weirs. Aristotle wrote of their migratory patterns hundreds of years before Christ was multiplying fishes, marveling at their strength, speed, and uncanny navigational sense. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when canned tuna became a pantry staple, that the fish transformed into a mass-market American commodity.
In San Diego, bluefin were hauled in by immigrant fishermen from Portugal, Japan, and Italy; packed in salt; and canned—cheap protein for various war efforts and school lunches. Forty-thousand San Diegans worked in the tuna trade. Communities lived off it; entire neighborhoods came to be defined by it. Two of the largest canneries in the country were here. The city smelled, quite literally, like tuna.
But overfishing soon led to declining populations. By the 1980s, the canneries were gone. Tuna didn’t disappear, though. It simply went upscale.
Sushi—once an exotic, niche cuisine—became not just popular but aspirational. Bluefin prices soared. By 2012, Pacific bluefin populations had plummeted to around two percent of historic levels.
Which is where strict regulations came in.
As Tapia tells it, today’s tuna industry is largely controlled by a complex system of catch quotas heavily regulated by international agencies referred to by five-letter acronyms. Only certain countries are permitted to commercially fish for bluefin. Japan—which consumes 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna—gets the highest quotas. Mexico’s quotas are respectable, higher than those of the US.
It’s a system that’s imperfect, controversial, and not overly friendly to American fishermen in San Diego and beyond, but something about it is working to contribute to species recovery. In the US, catch limits for commercial Pacific bluefin tuna vessels increased almost 80 percent for the 2025–26 season. Bluefin, it seems, are back. The question is, will they last?
According to Gardner, tuna ranching operations like BAF and other similar operations in Japan, Spain, and Australia are able to abide by catch-weight quotas while still providing large amounts of fish. Essentially, they catch skinny and sell fat.
“Tuna aquaculture means that people still get to eat bluefin tuna without fishing the stock to commercial extinction,” he says.
But tuna farms are not without their problems. BAF, and other smaller, seasonal Mexican operations, rely on wild tuna stocks to fill their pens (closed-loop, egg-to-plate tuna ranching is still in its nascent stages, with only one company in Japan claiming to have figured it out), and the ranches require large amounts of wild feeder fish stocks to fatten their fancy fish once they’re caged. Concentrated waste can negatively impact nearby habitats.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farm
All this means that, despite the potential benefits of tuna ranching, as of its last report in 2021, Seafood Watch categorizes Mexican net-pen tuna as a fish to avoid eating. But that, too, could change soon when the next Seafood Watch report comes out, Madeira suggests.
“We have an update in progress, and we do know there’s a lot of new information,” he says.
Crunching a Bluefiná tuna tostada, Tapia explains that BAF is doing all it can to improve its sustainability, working with a staggering number of regulatory and certification bodies.
“Everything that we catch at sea, we report. You can trace every single catch. We have observers on board all our tuna boats and cameras that are audited by a third party,” he says. “It would be borderline insane to not make sure that the tuna and sardine resources are there for the prolonged future.” He adds that BAF is also working closely with the Marine Stewardship Council toward a certification for its sardine fleet and is certified dolphin-safe by the Friend of the Sea program and the International Marine Mammal Project.
“I know Baja Aqua Farms is working hard to try to make improvements and is paying close attention to things like the Seafood Watch assessment,” Madeira says. “Consumers are saying that sustainability matters. I’m encouraged by that.”
Finally, the otoro—the benchmark of bluefin—hits the table. Served as sashimi, rosé-colored and ribbed with blubber, it dissolves like a pat of cold butter dipped in the sea. For a moment I turn off my mind, allowing myself to simply and blissfully enjoy one of the ocean’s greatest gifts.
“Quality-wise, Bluefiná tuna is [expletive] amazing,” one highly regarded SD chef of a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant tells me. “It’s crazy fat, even on the top loin. Every sushi chef’s dream.”
But, he adds, he doesn’t want to be associated with Bluefiná fish, no matter how chubby.
“As a Southern California restaurant owner who believes in sustainability and buying local, farm-raised bluefin is not in line with our ethos,” he says. “We wait for our wild bluefin to come in, and we know where it was caught and when.”
That tension—between wild and farmed—remains at the core of the modern bluefin story.
Gardner doesn’t buy it. “People have this perception that a farmed fish is bad, but they eat farmed everything else. Why not fish?” he says. “These operations can be good for bluefin tuna when they’re regulated and overseen.”
The otoro is simple and divine, a near-perfect meal. Fighting an urge to order more, I am reminded that we live in an age where to eat seafood is to make a series of quiet negotiations: between ocean and operation, local and global, sustainable and extravagant. And no species captures the contradictions and complexities of modern seafood like the Pacific bluefin. A single fish can sell for millions of dollars. This is the Wagyu of the sea: a delicious, fatty luxury that relies on an even more complex system than its bovine counterpart.
So, full of tuna and questions, the next morning, I board a speedboat for an up-close view of the ranch.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Upwards of 100 people work at the floating Baja Aqua Farms operation on a given day.
Getting to the farm means two hours of cold, rough porpoising from Ensenada. With me as chaperone is Tapia, plus a handful of other workers simply needing a ride to the ranch where they live and work for weeks at a time. I can hear Gardner’s voice in my mind: “They call it tuna ranching, and there are definitely people [at the ranch] you could associate with a kind of cowboy mentality,” he’d told me. “You have to be a little bit out there to do it.” No one speaks much during the loud trip in the dawn light.
The prevalence of gulls and sea lions hunting for scraps hint at the operation before the floating circles of the tuna pens come fully into view, each topped with chain-link fencing sticking many feet into the air for sea-lion defense—a hard-learned requirement, Tapia tells me as our boat slowly approaches the colossal main feeding barge, stained with rust and gull droppings. The place smells of fish flesh. We climb a ladder up the side of the vessel; hoist our bags up to the deck; and make our way over and around various tubes, ropes, riggings, and machinery to the main operations room.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms The main deck of the feeding boat offers an inside view of the modern food system. Here, specialists remotely monitor water quality and feed the tuna through tubes. Underwater cameras show a glimpse of life inside the cages.
Here in this room and out these windows, a large, invisible part of the contemporary tuna trade becomes visible. At the head of the operation, marine science experts point to giant screens displaying views from the dozens of underwater cameras that BAF uses to keep tabs on the fish in each pen. Specialists monitor when the fish have ceased eating and turn off the hose, so to speak. The screens show oxygen levels and temperature, checked three times a day at three different depths. BAF also routinely tracks phosphorus and pH levels below the pens, Tapia says. Behind us, with the help of AI, a specialist pauses a video to count each fish that came in from the most recent capture. Out on the water, small boats zig-zag from pen to pen.
Divers are consistently in the water with the fish, hand-cleaning and repairing nets (Tapia tells me BAF does not use the industrial net protectants that many operations do) and keeping a close eye on the product. On any given day, upwards of a hundred people—deckhands, divers, engineers, captains, maintenance crews—are out here working. The scale takes time to process, partly because I was not prepared for just how many small fish are required to fatten tens of thousands of large fish.
I suppose I had never seen literal tons of fish in person before—that is, until a sardine boat ties up alongside the floating warehouse on which we stand and begins pumping a few thousand pounds of burrito-sized fish into the big boat’s refrigerated hold like loose ammunition.
The sardines are dead, but not frozen. This is a big selling point for BAF, Tapia tells me—that its tuna don’t eat frozen fish or any of a number of fish-feed slurries that other tuna ranches around the world at times have to rely on and then medicate around.
“We don’t use antibiotics because we don’t need to,” Tapia says. “Because we’re feeding them only fresh fish like they get in the wild, our tuna don’t get sick.”
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Baja Aqua Farms relies on costal sardine populations to keep its operation running. It takes about 25 pounds of small fish to convert to a single pound of bluefin.
The operation requires so many feeder fish because bluefin are not efficient weight-gainers. They have to keep swimming to force water through their gills and stay alive, so they are constantly burning calories. According to Gardner, this means it takes upwards of 25 pounds of small fish to produce one pound of bluefin. Not the most efficient farm animals.
“Compared to other species of fish aquaculture, bluefin are expensive to run,” Gardner says. “It’s like taking the Ferrari to the corner store to get milk, instead of your Volkswagen.”
During our time at the ranch, Tapia explains that, due to timing, I can either swim with the tuna or see the tuna harvest up-close. Rather than watching hundreds of tuna be killed, I choose life. I want to pay my respects.
But, before departing back to Ensenada, our cold little speed boat stops by the harvest ship to pick up a hitchhiker, so I end up with a view of the marine slaughterhouse after all. On board, men in waterproof bibs move with a kind of practiced urgency. The harvest is still in progress, precise and bloody.
First, divers section a specific number of fish off from the rest within the chosen pen and stun them with electricity to make them safe to handle. Then comes an assembly line of efficient killing. In the humane ikejime fashion of dispatching fish, crew members drive steel spikes into the tuna’s brains and a wire through their spinal cords to preserve the quality of the meat. The fish are bled and gutted. The gills and guts go to a fish meal plant. The blood spills quickly into the sea.
Tapia tells me BAF only kills fish it’s already sold, harvesting around 1,500 tuna per week.
As we motor away, I run some back-of-the-napkin math. According to the Bluefiná website, wholesale bluefin starts around $20 to $40 per pound and goes up from there.
Tapia won’t disclose how many tuna BAF has at any given time, but he does say the pens can hold upwards of 1,500 tuna each. If each of the 30 pens contain, conservatively, 1,000 tuna, and each fish weighs—again conservatively—say, 80 pounds, that’s a modest estimate of $48 million in the water. Today’s global tuna industry is worth $40 billion. The ocean is rich.
And bluefin, it seems, reveal not just the complexity of a single industry, but a larger moral calculus now embedded in every bite of seafood in our modern food systems: the shift from hunting to ranching, from wild to managed. We’ve already done it with pigs, chickens, cows, and corn. Now, for better or worse, we are doing it with the sea.
Still, you can net a fish but not the current.
The ocean resists our domestication. It is too vast, too unwieldy. So we improvise—floating pens, AI tracking, revered fish in holding patterns, constant feeding, and massive amounts of labor to ensure that sushi bars and seafood restaurants stay stocked with the good stuff.
As a child, Chantal Partolan never considered cooking as a viable job route. Rather, it was a passion she could turn to as a way to flex her creative muscle, from the time she was in school all the way into adulthood working in a corporate space.
“I never felt like [cooking] was a chore, like some other people feel,” she says. To feed that passion, she started hosting supper clubs in 2022, creating menus and full tablescapes to bring together friends and family. With each successful gathering, she wondered: Could she take this further?
In 2024, she did. Officially launching as Bik-Lun, she began small, hosting baking pop-ups in Long Beach before moving back to her hometown of San Diego in 2025. Now, Partolan still mostly pops up at small local businesses like Moniker General and Joon Shoppe, but now also offers small batch catering and private chef services, all centered around her father’s Filipino and her mother’s Chinese heritages.
Photo Credit: Megan Jane Burgess
Bik-Lun (pronounced bik-LUHN, like “fun”) is named for her mother. “When she migrated to America when she was younger with all her siblings, they all got American names,” Partolan says. She doesn’t strictly adhere to rigid culinary rules—instead, she lets memories drive her creations.
“Now that my grandparents are no longer here, trying to revisit those memories and share them with others has been a really important part of this journey for me,” she explains. Ingredients like red bean and black sesame reflect her Chinese roots, while more savory items like sinigang (a sour and savory Filipino soup) pay homage to her father’s family.
You can next catch Bik-Lun on September 27 at Home Ec + Best Bud with Magnaye (formerly One of One), October 3 at Patine’s new location in Bankers Hill, and October 10-11 at the Mingei Museum for Merkado Kultura, a makers market for Filipino producers. Partolan says since most customers are familiar with her sweet products, she’s planning to offer more savory items—like a breakfast sandwich—at the Home Ec event to give people a taste of her creative versatility.
Eventually, she hopes to add some permanent residencies to Bik-Lun’s schedule—a few are already in the works, so stay tuned—while also looking for ways to combine her food and photography expertise. (A cookbook? Maybe, she says.) But in the meantime, Partolan will remain curious about where she comes from—and how it can take her to where she’s going.
Courtesy of Izola Bakery
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Izola Bakery has long discussed its expansion plans, and at long last, there’s finally some traction. The award-winning East Village bakery will officially move into its second location at the former California English space in Sorrento Valley, hopefully by the end of the year, according to owner Jeffrey Brown. In the meantime, the downtown location will continue to churn out plenty of buns, croissants, sourdough, and more to keep your carb cravings at bay.
Why settle for beer at Oktoberfest when you can have cider? Bivouac Ciderworks is throwing their version of Septemberfest, on Saturday, September 26 from noon to 5 p.m. at their North Park taproom and restaurant. Entry is free, and there will be plenty of German-inspired bites and eats to enjoy. I’m particularly eyeing the apple strudel cider float and Bavarian cider-kraut, but in all likelihood will also be getting a soft pretzel or two as well.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
As a kid, Jacob Chen scrounged up whatever odd jobs he could—running lemonade stands, organizing garage sales, reselling appliances on Facebook Marketplace. But there was something about cooking that kept him coming back to the kitchen. “It started as a way for me to spend time with my mom,” he says. “In a way, I think it was inevitable that I would begin a food-based business.”
That business ended up being Made for MeiMei, a line of low-sugar, high protein and fiber mochi flavors like ube, matcha, red bean, black sesame, peanut butter and jelly, and chocolate hazelnut. “‘Mochi’ is derived from ‘mochigome,’ which is the special type of short grain rice that gives mochi its stretchy, chewy texture,” he explains. Traditionally served in Japan as a dessert to celebrate the new year (similar to bibingka in the Philippines and nian gao in China), American-style mochi tends to taste sweeter and often comes as mochi ice cream. However, Chen points out that wasn’t always the case.
Courtesy of Made for MeiMei
“Before mochi was synonymous with ice cream and refined sugar, it was simply a rice based snack filled with whole food ingredients,” he says. “That’s the version of mochi we’re trying to bring back.”
Made for MeiMei’s primary ingredients are rice flour and coconut milk, plus the featured ingredient for each flavor. But rather than using refined sugar, Chen sweetens his mochi with monk fruit and uses organic pumpkin seed protein and chicory root fiber to create what he calls “the first better-for-you mochi.”
Recent collaborations include a mochi-wrapped gelato with An’s Dry Cleaning, strawberry daifuku cream puff with Mon Chourie, and a funfetti chantilly cream dip mochi with The Clovery, but Chen has his sights set on retail expansion. Currently, Made for MeiMei products are available online, locally at Easy Does It Cafe, Bodega Market, or at upcoming events like Embolden Beer Company’s Taste of Shogun on September 27 (admission is free!) and a pop-up with Organic Oren on October 5.
Courtesy of Made for MeiMei
Besides being better for you nutritionally, Chen’s goal for the business is to also be better for the world. He’s worked in rehabilitation clinics and volunteered at San Quentin when he lived in Berkeley—experiences that transformed his worldview. “It really doesn’t take much to be on the other side of the fence,” he says. That’s why he donates portions of proceeds to organizations like Second Chance San Diego (which helps formerly incarcerated people find steady employment), Immigrant Defenders Law Center (a nonprofit deportation defense law firm), and Border Angels, an advocacy group working to reduce fatalities of people crossing the United States and Mexico border.
Chen has his sights aimed high, hoping to bring Made for MeiMei to more local grocery stores and cafes before hitting national retail shelves. Will he stop at mochi? Maybe not.
“There are so many childhood treats that could use an ingredient upgrade,” he says. “Mochi is just the beginning!”
Courtesy of Roppongi Restaurant & Lounge
San Diego Restaurant News & Events
Leave It Up To The Chefs at Roppongi
There’s no such thing as too much omakase, and we’re leaning in. On September 24, chef Davin Waite (The Plot, Wrench & Rodent) will join chef Mark Correa at Roppongi Restaurant & Lounge for a one-night-only, eight-course omakase experience with an optional (but personally recommended) beverage pairing curated by sommelier Humberto Ramirez. You definitely need to snap up a reservation for this one before they’re gone—and with a dream team like this, they will be gone.
Courtesy of Swells Sourdough Bakery
Beth’s Bites
Another weekend, another food festival—not that I’m complaining! On October 3, the 15th annual Taste of North Park hits the streets with over 50 tastings and 15 beverage stops awaiting your arrival. The event sells out every year (for real), thanks to participants like the newly opened One of Us, Falafel Heights, Finca, and many, many more. (Leave the parking stress at home—this is the ideal time to take advantage of the not-utilized-enough North Park parking garage.)
Swells Sourdough Bakery is movin’ on up—to Little Italy, that is. The farmers market favorite officially opens at 2254 India Street on October 1, but eager patrons can stop by during the soft opening starting September 26. Swimsuit season is over, people. It’s time to get our bagel on.
Longtime Point Loma watering hole Paradise Lounge & Grill is closing its doors, but only temporarily. I’m keeping an eye out for an official opening date, but the business has posted they hope by the end of September. Hopefully, it’ll be in time for the Padres to make the playoffs—manifestation!
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
At Del Mar Wine & Food Festival’s Grand Tasting, the walk between food tents can take a while. You might stop to watch a chef competition, get pulled toward the DJ, or find yourself playing mini golf before you remember which bite you were after.
Across the Del Mar Polo Fields, there’s also line dancing, a 1961 red Beetle ready for photos, and an aviation-themed pop-up with Reno Tahoe chefs and mixologists. Need a slower stretch? Check out the wellness stops or browse the shops. Here’s what to look for as you make your way through the festival’s zones:
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
VIP First Bites & First Sips
VIP ticket holders get a head start, with the VIP Reception running from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. and serving first bites, first sips, and a few surprises before the Grand Tasting officially gets going. Champagne Telmont will make the festival’s first pour, while Cohn Restaurant Group brings carajillos alongside pours from Karl Strauss, Licor 43, Tap Truck San Diego, Bebemos Tequila, and Devil’s Grin Gin.
The bites are just as good. Celebrity chef Beau MacMillan will serve a first bite, while Warung RieRie is bringing one of its highly coveted dishes. Yes, this is the restaurant that currently has an eight-month waitlist. You’ll also find bites from The Shellfish Affair, The Waverly, Wolf in the Woods, Dora Ristorante, Cori Pastificio Trattoria, An’s Gelato, Pacific 333, Vintana, and more.
And because every good first act needs a soundtrack, there will be live painting and music, with Courtney Govan bringing live jazz to the reception. It’s the perfect opening act before the main event.
Live Cooking & Culinary Moments
During the VIP Reception, chefs Tommy Gomes and Jeff Roberto will conduct a live ahi cutting. Plant Paradise brings another culinary angle, with celebrity chef Zuliya Khawaja joining the plant-based lineup. The area combines chef talent with plant-forward restaurants and brands, giving guests a chance to see just how creative plant-based cooking can get.
Throughout the weekend, The Stage keeps the cooking demonstrations coming, with celebrities and chefs sharing techniques, recipes, and plenty of inspiration for anyone who plans to actually cook something when they get home. Before you know it, you’re watching a chef demo, casting your awards vote, and sipping mezcal on the grass with friends you just met in line.
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
DJs, Music, & The Party
At the Grand Tasting, dancing just sort of… happens. A DJ drops the right song. Someone’s holding a taco in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. The country zone breaks into a two-step. Friends convince friends. Strangers become temporary dance partners. By the end of the day, everyone’s forgotten they were ever worried about looking cool.
DJ TENAX will be spinning in Plant Paradise, bringing house, techno, and UKG to an open-air dance floor that’s hard to leave. Chris Cantore, a veteran San Diego broadcaster, takes over the VIP Tent, while BootScootin Line Dance and PVO Events bring country-style line dancing to the Polo Fields, so you can work off your tasting itinerary one two-step at a time.
Then a live guitar hum in the distance leads you to a fuchsia boa over at the Pride Zone, where you’ll find yourself covered in sequins and having the lawn party of a lifetime.
Sports, Tailgates, & Games
Not every activity at the festival requires a tasting glass (although it’s certainly encouraged).
The Matchday Experience brings San Diego FC and San Diego Wave FC into the Grand Tasting, complete with interactive tents and plenty of game-day energy. Athletic Brewing is also sharing activation space with San Diego Wave FC, bringing a fun nonalcoholic option into the mix.
For golf fans, the Los Angeles Golf Club is bringing a Dryve Box golf simulator to the festival. And if your competitive streak is less fairway and more miniature windmill, SD Pop Up Mini Golf has you covered.
The Beach Zone gets in on the action, too, with surfing-inspired elements and Playavole paddle courts. Hemlock Hats and other California brands add to the coastal atmosphere, but the real draw is having somewhere to actually play. And don’t worry, you can cool down in COOLA’s turquoise beach chairs, too, and when your bestie suggests reapplying sunscreen, obviously you do. Basically, there are plenty of ways to work up an appetite between tastings.
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
Photo Ops & Instagram Moments
You’re going to want to take photos, and the festival has made that extremely easy.
A Timeless Day is bringing multiple photo moments to the Grand Tasting, including a 1961 red Beetle at The Italian Getaway and a teal VW bus in The Beach Zone. For something a little more polished than the standard group selfie, head to the Locals Zone for Pixster Photo Booth and San Diego’s version of a Glam-Bot, complete with a grass red carpet.
Bebemos Tequila is also bringing back its festival-favorite hidden speakeasy. If there’s ever a time for a photo, it’s here. Otherwise, people might not believe you. The speakeasy serves bone marrow shots straight from the bone, with candlelight, a lounge area that makes it hard to believe you’re in a tent outside, and little orange shot glasses. This is “first slide of your festival photo dump” material.
You can also grab your squad and head to LaCroix’s bright and ridiculously cute setup, or swing by San Diego Magazine’s area, where you might stop for a photo in front of the larger-than-life SD Magazine sign and find yourself watching a painting come to life.
But really, you’re in Del Mar. The ocean is essentially your backdrop, and every zone gives you an excuse to stop for the obligatory “totally candid” photo. And yes, the best strategy is to get the group shot before everyone has been sampling wine for three hours.
Shop, Browse, & Take Something Home
The Grand Tasting also doubles as a little shopping excursion, with local makers, fashion, vintage finds, jewelry, and lifestyle brands scattered throughout the grounds. Smoke Revival Vintage Vault brings the thrill of vintage treasure hunting, while Nortte Hats and Hemlock Hat Company make a pretty good case for leaving with a new accessory.
Keep an eye out for jewelry and creative vendors, too, including Iris Studio Jewelry and New Nightfall Jewelry, plus local artists and makers featured throughout the festival.
You can come for an all day food and wine festival, but still leave with something shiny you definitely did not plan to buy.
Wellness & Reset Moments
We know, at some point, even the most dedicated grazer has to come up for air. The Novo Dia Wellness Zone is designed for exactly that, bringing together mocktails, coffee, hydration, wellness brands, and even bites from Parakeet Cafe.
Step away from the food and drink frenzy for a few minutes, relax in the shade, try some skincare, stretch with prAna, and maybe grab some Instant Hydration Electrolytes before round three.
There’s also nothing wrong with stopping to smell the roses at Green Air Botanicals while devouring a dairy-free cheese dip. It’s less about disappearing from the party and more about making sure you have enough energy to keep going.
The zones give you somewhere to wander, and the activities give you a reason to keep going. So grab your tasting glass, check the schedule, and leave a little room in your afternoon for something you didn’t plan on doing. At Del Mar Wine & Food, that’s usually where things get interesting.
Isabella Dallas is a freelance writer for San Diego Magazine and the Arts and Culture Editor at The Daily Aztec in her final year at San Diego State University. She previously worked as an editorial intern for SDM, but when she’s not writing, you can find her trying the best coffee spots in SD, devouring the latest rom-coms, and indulging in anything and everything pop culture.
Implementing a farm-to-table model hardly deserves acknowledgement these days. It’s not a stretch. It’s not innovative. “It’s the bare f**king minimum,” says Herb & Sea‘s executive chef Aidan Owens.
When I arrive at the Encinitas restaurant, I’m ready to talk sustainability, farm-to-table stuff, with Owens. “Did you see the chin on that?” he says of the extra big jiggly chin on the sheephead that just arrived with the day’s fresh catch. I did. It was Jay Leno adjacent.
I learn quickly that he somehow oozes both charm and stone-cold honesty. Maybe he could construct a new dish with chin goo, like he did when he had a bunch of tuna scraps and voila’d it into a smooth and crowd-pleasing ‘nduja. “I want to know what’s in there,” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The instinct to look closer, to dig into what others might discard, says a lot about the chef’s approach. I guide him back to our topic, but he has something else on his mind. “We’re overcomplicating food—what happened to just cooking good food and having fun with it?”
Owens grew up on a farm in Byron Bay, Australia, where sustainability wasn’t a concept you chat about so much as a way of life. Think dirt roads, backyard chickens, pulling vegetables straight from the ground, and a mother who believed that if you couldn’t pronounce the ingredients on a package, you shouldn’t eat what was inside.
Food wasn’t precious or performative. Making it was what you did because you were hungry and that’s still what inspires Owens today. “I like to cook good food because I like to eat good food,” he says.
His approach to sustainability at Herb & Sea began so naturally that it felt just like instinct. “I was just like, ‘Let’s order food from the people who live and work here,’” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
And why wouldn’t he when lives in San Diego? Cities all over the world vie for our goods. Our tuna is sent overseas. Our spiny lobsters hit dinner plates in China and Japan. Not to mention California’s producing a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.
“Why would we outsource when it’s all here?” Owens asks.
Sustainability, in this context, is about cooking what exists in abundance, nearby, right now. “I love the local fish here. It’s f**king delicious and San Diego citrus, I mean, it is so f**ing good,” he says.
Instead of importing ingredients, Owens also looks for nearby alternatives. “You can find really cool things in the local waters,” he says, pointing out that stingray cheeks taste similar to scallops.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
Whatever he finds in that sheephead chin might just be the next substitute for marrow. But to make this work, it means getting diners amped up about the slightly unfamiliar.
Tasting menus, where diners are completely in his hands, become an opportunity to gently push boundaries. “I’ll serve mackerel, because people think they hate it,” Owens says, noting that the abundant local fish can have some fishiness. “But when it’s fresh, it’s arguably one of the best fish in the ocean.”
He also tweaks the language on the menu so people might feel more compelled to give dishes a try without preconceived notions. He might use “lengua” instead of “tongue.” “Whelk” instead of “snail.” When he puts “stingray throat” on the menu, he disarmingly calls it “skate.”
To reduce waste, scraps aren’t always discarded but rather turned into something new. Sometimes they’re smoked, cured or fermented. Apples going bad turn into apple ponzu. Lemons turn to marmalade, which stretches their usefulness far beyond peak season. “And it’s super tasty on our pizza,” he says.
What makes the food even richer, is the relationships he’s built with farmers. Though it didn’t always feel natural, Owens sought personal connection first. He recalls approaching a fisherman at the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market. “I was awkward,” he says. “I went up to him and said, ‘I like your fish.’”
Owen’s is now so close to his suppliers—like fishermen Ryan Sebo and Joe Daly—that he gets texted pictures of fresh catches right as they flop on the boat. The messages always ask if he wants first dibs. “I say yes to a lot of fish,” Owens says, noting that Herb & Sea can go through 2,000 pounds of seafood a week.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The next evolution of sustainability, in his view, will be chefs working directly with producers such as his alliance with Sebo, cutting out middlemen and purveyors where possible. “It will put more money in the pockets of the people doing the work,” he says.
It will mean that chefs can’t just know their local farmers and producers, but they’ll choose to work with the ones who have the best practices. Dining and sustainability will become much less about the final plate. “It will be more about the impact that plate has on the Earth,” he says.
Ultimately, he believes sustainability doesn’t need to be loud. It doesn’t need hashtags. It just needs to be honest.
“We aren’t saving lives. We’re feeding people good food,” he says.
And yet, in feeding people well—simply, thoughtfully, responsibly—something meaningful happens. Guests leave satisfied. Ingredients are respected. Local ecosystems are supported and food returns to what it has always been at its core: nourishment, pleasure, and a quiet reflection of the place it comes from.
Around the world, people prize wine from hyper-specific regions. We know that grinding whole coffee beans results in a richer cup than using preground beans. So why do so many of us rely on preground spices to flavor our food?
Dharti Jadav wants us to change that perception of spices, using her own childhood memories from growing up in Ahmedabad, a city in western India in the state of Gujarat. She’s lived in the United States for 20 years, but never had to settle for substandard, stale spices from an old spice rack in a random grocery store. Her mother, who visited every year, would always bring along as many spices from India as she would need until the next year.
Courtesy of Koshna
That changed with the pandemic. “I’m used to a certain freshness level in the spice,” she explains. When the world went into lockdown, she resigned herself to shopping at a large grocer to refill her shelves.
It didn’t go well.
The cumin tasted like cardboard—nothing like the piquant, aromatic herb her grandfather grew in India. “It literally felt like somebody was taking away my memories,” she says. She couldn’t let that happen. So she decided to launch Koshna to present spices in a way that actually showcases their depth.
Sharing a variety of fresh spices for people to fully experience their vibrancy is one thing. But Jadav’s business plan ensures all Koshna products are also sourced individually from small-scale farmers in India, who harvest and deliver the same year to ensure full potency. For comparison, mass-market spice brands can take two years or more to hit shelves, and every day in storage diminishes its vitality and flavor.
Plus, most spices aren’t just one flavor from one place, she explains. “There are varieties of specific turmeric that have their own nuances and grow in a specific region,” she says. But if you look at 99.9 percent of turmeric bottles on mass market shelves, the label will just say “turmeric.” We don’t simplify wines into just “white” or “red.” So why don’t spices, the commodity that literally launched global trade routes we still use today, get the same specificity, in stores or in restaurants?
Courtesy of Koshna
“All these restaurants, they’re all about farm-to-table,” says Jadav. The menu often says where the local lettuce was grown or where the fish was caught. “I have yet to find a restaurant that says ‘my spice comes from this farm.’” Most people don’t even know where black pepper originated from. (Hint: it’s also from India.)
Jadav sells Koshna spices online, various farmers markets in San Diego, seasonal pop-up events, and small shops like Home Ec, Bica, and Fox Point Farms. Currently, her product line features spices like Lakadong turmeric (from Umnari in the Meghalaya region), Chambal coriander (named for the Chambal River flowing through the Khera Rudhda in Rajasthan), Aaji fennel (named for the Aaji River flowing through the Ramod in Gujarat), Resham Patto chilli (from Ramod, Gujarat), and of course, the spice that started it all—Banas cumin (named after the Banas River flowing through Dungala, Gujarat).
She knows it can feel intimidating to go from a shaker of flavor to having to grind your own. But it’s worth it, she promises. “Just play with it,” she laughs. “Cooking, it’s like the simplest thing. Nothing wrong can come out of it.”
Courtesy of Mike’s Red Tacos
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Bocktoberfest is coming! German-inspired South Park beer bar Bock is hosting a three-weekend shindig with different “tents” each weekend. Things kick off with Paulaner, followed by Seek Beer and Enegren Brewing, and culminating with Hacker-Pschorr. Come thirsty, ready to hold a stein for longer than you would think (!), and hungry for classic Bavarian bratwurst.
I’m biased in that I believe every season is cider season, but fall is when the juice really starts to flow. In San Diego, Newtopia Cyder is gearing up for the season and beyond, recently inking a distribution deal that will bring their ciders to nine states in the east and southeast, with more on the way. Part of their expanded lineup includes the flagship Venom Imperial Cyder, a collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan’s U-God, with rollout that coincides with the upcoming Wu-Tang tour. San Diego cider ain’t nuthing ta f’ wit.
U-God isn’t the only celeb tapping into San Diego food and drink. NBA superstar LeBron James just joined Mike’s Red Tacos as an investor, helping the Southern California birria brand keep up its rapid nationwide expansion. King James and birria? Now that’s a slam dunk.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
Not all monsters have to be scary. In fact, entrepreneur Pinyada “Ada” Primpray’s is delightful. Sea Monster, a small cafe that will serve poke bowls, fresh spring rolls, and matcha, will open in Mission Valley by the end of the year.
“The concept is a Hawaiian- and Japanese-style cafe,” Primpray explains. She calls it Sea Monster in homage to her friend’s popular restaurant Big Monster Sushi & Thai in Hawaii, but “the idea really started to take shape after I came back from a solo trip to Italy,” she says. The experience inspired her to start her own concept that mixed her culture, experience, and passion for food.
Sea Monster will be her first restaurant as an owner, but Primpray has worked in restaurants for 15 years in places like Kauai, Chicago, New York, and San Diego. She realized a similar health-conscious, seafood-forward, quick-service restaurant could work here, especially in that corner of Mission Valley where pizza and burgers reign. Plus, she points to the massive development plans for the area—between Riverwalk bringing thousands of new homes to the area and even more coming from San Diego State University, there are lots of new locals looming on the horizon.
She brought on Head Chef Wasu Gibb Palipote from Sushisamba in Los Angeles to develop the menu and signature sauces, like ink wasabi and a larb sauce. “Every couple of months, we plan to introduce a new signature sauce created exclusively for Sea Monster by [Chef Palipote],” she says. All the sauces will be homemade, including a basil creamy sauce and sesame vinegar.
Courtesy of Pinyada “Ada” Primpray
Sea Monster’s menu centers around fresh poke bowls—mostly locally-caught bluefin tuna and hamachi as well as salmon, served California-style rather than Hawaiian-style (the sauces are added to order rather than marinating on the fish, which can overpower its flavor). Toppings will range from the usual, like edamame and green onion, to upscale, like uni (sea urchin). She’ll also serve fresh salad rolls, a popular light snack in Vietnam and her native Thailand, with vegetables and seafood like salmon, shrimp, and imitation crab. Everything will be served to-go, although there will be very limited seating for people who want to dive in right away.
The matcha program will start small, with six iterations planned for opening and potentially more in the future. “I really want to have mango sticky rice,” she adds. Beyond adding items to the menu, Primpray says she hopes Sea Monster will be more than a restaurant. “I want it to grow into a lifestyle brand with its own little world,” she says, pointing to the restaurant’s mascot, Smoo. A monster with aspirations of growing bigger and bigger until it takes over? Yeah, sounds about right.
Sea Monsterwill open daily for lunch and dinner in late 2026 at 6110 Friars Road in Mission Valley.
Oktoberfest season is closing in fast, and one of the first dirndl-laced events of the year kicks off at AleSmith Brewing Company this weekend. AleSchmidt Oktoberfest runs every Saturday from September 12 through 26, and the family-friendly event is chock-a-block with German food vendors, live oom-pah bands, stein holding, and a whole lot more. The free event starts at 11 a.m. each Saturday, and from personal experience, I recommend posting up on the early side to snag a seat.
Japanese fine dining restaurant Shio soft opened in August, bringing elegant plates and sunset views to La Jolla. (The area was hardly hurting for either, but I think we could always use some more sushi in our lives.) Has anyone checked it out yet? Let me know what I should order by dropping me a line at [email protected].
Restaurateur brothers Danny and Dante Romero have been on a tear the past few years, consulting at places like Una Mas and taking over The Lion’s Share last summer. It’s understandable to see they recently decided to pause their recurring pop-up concept Two Ducks to recalibrate and figure out its future in a permanent location, but it’s still a bit bittersweet. If it’s “see you later” and not “goodbye,” I can live with that (for now).
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
NewBridge School is San Diego’s only school dedicated to the education of students with dyslexia and related learning profiles. For 30 years we have successfully served students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, receptive/expressive language disorders, ADHD, executive functioning and memory deficits. Students transition successfully into academically rigorous high schools and colleges across the country. Why NewBridge? Training, training, training (plus intensive individualization, and comprehensive program design). All teachers are trained and retrained biennially in Orton-Gillingham, the only approach proven to remediate dyslexia based on Science of Reading research, and complete a year-long training program. Every aspect of our program is designed around our students’ learning styles and needs. Every class is taught by a highly-trained expert, and our Speech/Language and Occupational Therapy teams embed throughout the day. Our multisensory, multi-tiered math program has been developed in conjunction with sister schools and experts across the country. Don’t wait—early intervention is magic!
