It had been open six weeks when it got the Michelin star. At six weeks, a restaurant is a newborn. Newborns wail and struggle to breathe. They’re cracking open their first panic attack. Nine months in the flotation tank of the mom spa, then—blammo—the landlord shuts off the water and fairly traumatically evicts them into a drafty world that has no clue about mood lighting.
It’s old food critic wisdom that restaurants need six months to get running and ready for real analysis. Crew members will have lied on their resumes, narcissists will find themselves bored, the strangely emotional demands of diners will break newbies. It’s a fresh organism dedicated to executing nightly public theater, and it takes time for all the parts to learn how to operate as a fluid whole—develop mutually beneficial roles, nail the timing, speak the unspoken language.
Granted, the team at Lilo in Carlsbad aren’t newcomers, and they’ve had way more time than they ever wanted to plan this out. Plus, the partners—restaurateur John Resnick and chef Eric Bost—helped earn their restaurant across the street, Jeune et Jolie, a Michelin star (and they run its raved-about sister restaurant, Campfire, down the block).
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Analog music helps set the mood in here.
“We’re lucky,” Resnick says. “About 80 percent of the people on our team, we either worked with immediately or they came back because they were excited about this project.”
The project is a 22-seat, tasting menu–only restaurant featuring Bost, longtime chef de cuisine Dusan Todic, wine director Savannah Riedler (formerly of Post Ranch Inn and two-Michelin-starred Saison), and beverage director Andrew Cordero (Jeune et Jolie and Campfire). It’s four years in the making. When a 10,000-square-foot building became available on State Street in 2021—the last of its kind on one of Carlsbad’s most up-and-coming drags—they jumped at it. The plan was to build a massive all-day restaurant (Wildland, now open) and, behind it, tiny Lilo, where they could showcase what their vision of the ultimate San Diego dinner experience could be. It’s the kind of James Beard Award and Michelin bait that ambitious restaurateurs dream of and makes basic sense when they have a chef-partner like Bost.
“Campfire and Jeune—from the time leases were signed to opening doors—took about 12 months,” Resnick says. “So I kind of felt like, alright, 18 months should be doable.” He pauses. “It was not.”
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos Your meal begins in the serene courtyard.
At that time, the pandemic was still slowly releasing its chokehold. Supply chains had been shot with a billion tranquilizer darts. Building two restaurants at a time while exhibiting a noble American amount of ambition was no picnic. The week after the project finally broke ground, the construction lead on the project—“the only person more essential to the buildout than us as owners,” Resnick says—departed. A fun idiosyncrasy of construction in North County is that most contractors live 40 minutes away and prefer freelance gigs closer to home. So, finding help was hard. Plus, a new ordinance had been passed in Carlsbad since Resnick opened his first two restaurants.
“I was down in Baja having lunch when I got an email about needing a ‘minor site development plan,’” Resnick remembers. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s got the word minor in it; it’s probably not a big deal.’ That one thing added nine months to the project.”
Project costs ballooned. Hems were hawed. The buzz on this project had been loud, and now the scene wondered and whispered. I ask Bost and Resnick if there was a time they considered giving up or drastically reducing the vision.
“It came up, yeah,” Resnick says. “At the end of the day, it was a ‘the only way out is through’ type of thing.”
They thought they’d launch in July 2023. The doors opened in April 2025.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost A tartlette made with vin jaune, or “yellow wine,” a dry French white aged for years under a film of yeast.
The Redemption
For Bost, the unveiling of that restaurant was especially redeeming. In 2020, he’d lost what felt like everything. He’d spent 20 years working his way through some of the world’s best kitchens: Le Cirque, The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, Alain Ducasse, and both The Lodge at Torrey Pines and The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego. He hit the top when he was named executive chef for Guy Savoy, launching the famed French chef’s elaborate Vegas restaurant and then overseeing his places in Singapore. In 2017, ready to do his own thing, he returned to SoCal and spent two years developing the idea for his dream restaurant. He finally opened his unpretentious tasting-menu place, Auburn, in LA in 2019.
The world’s best chefs came to eat: René Redzepi of Noma, Grant Achatz of Alinea, Savoy. It was widely, widely loved. Then, on the day of Auburn’s one-year anniversary, all LA dining rooms were ordered to shutter due to Covid. They tried takeout and all the things, but money ran out and it didn’t work. That chapter, the one he’d written in sweat and blood and life savings, was closed. He’d reached the top, and now he needed a job.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost After a courtyard amuse-bouche, you take a seat at the chef’s counter for 16 or so more courses.
“I had worked so hard for so long, and it felt like my whole world collapsed,” Bost says.
Down here in San Diego, Resnick had lost a rudder, too. His longtime partner—chef Andrew Bachelier, who opened and ran Campfire and Jeune et Jolie—left to be with his family during the pandemic. So Resnick reached out to Bost and brought him back to San Diego. A few months after his return, I took my family to Jeune et Jolie. I’d never tried Bost’s food, and it was a revelation. I wrote a nearly unhinged rave for SDM.
Jeune was awarded its Michelin star a few months later and has retained it for four years. Lilo is the duo’s second star, and it seems destined for at least one more.
“Five years after I lost Auburn, we’ve reached a success that, at the time, seemed impossible,” Bost says.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Lilo’s delicate île flottante (“floating island”), meringue suspended in a pool of crème anglaise.
The Arrival
A college textbook on architecture that perfectly explained my childhood also explains the physical experience of Lilo. As a pre-internet teen in suburban North County, if I wanted social interaction outside of school, I went to the indoor mall then known as North County Fair. The odyssey started in some remote hinterland of the parking lot (malls were jammed in the ’80s). You’d traverse the sweltering asphalt acreage in the irrational Escondido sun, broiled from underfoot. The exterior of North County Fair was no eye candy, just beige stucco with fancy retail logos. You’d finally arrive, hot and sweaty and uninspired, and open the doors to the mall… and a wave of air conditioning and lights and joy and music would save you. You never wanted to leave, and your estimation of this mall had some messianic-capitalistic undertones. Turns out this is an actual form of architectural strategy and psychology.
Lilo is the same. (Okay, not exactly.) It’s in Carlsbad, for chrissakes, where even concrete is somehow charming. But the emotional experience of entering feels shockingly transportive. It’s tucked in a parking lot behind its sister restaurant, Wildland. Your journey includes pilgrimaging across the 50 feet of asphalt under temperate, marine air toward a tall, soft, slatted wall of curved wood that looks like it’s got a skincare routine, embossed with small black letters that say “Lilo” in a retro sans-serif font (in the constantly fonted psyche of modern humanity, a nice font is the underrated eye Prozac). You turn the corner into the courtyard and… salvation. Pleasure vertigo. A billowy tree billows. A handful of tables speckle the courtyard, which feels like it should have an earthen sauna with steamy rocks and Wim Hof sipping shrubs in an ice bath. You could stay here forever.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Each of the restaurant’s 22 seats offers front-row views of the whole choreographed show.
This is where the meal starts, with a trio of amuse-bouches and a welcome cocktail or zero-proof creation. It’s the naturalist decompression chamber. Then you enter the single dining room through a massive wall of glass, Mos Def or Lou Reed or Nina Simone playing on the reel-to-reel. “Dining room” is the wrong phrase. It’s essentially just 22 barstools at a U-shaped counter that surrounds the chefs and drinks people. They’ve trapped themselves into this experience.
You’ll be fed approximately 16 courses over the next couple hours. And you start to see the theater evolve. The crew is trained and guided on 73 sequences of service, under which are about 350 subnotes and thoughts on how to enhance the guest experience and handle the unexpected free radicals of placing 22 humans in a glass box. There are notes on how to open the door, where to stand when it is open, how far apart the seats should be (19 inches), how to pull out the chair (not a small feat; it’s all heavy, one-of-a-kind barstools). Ironically, the goal of these obsessive guidelines is to undo the roboticism of the formal restaurant experience.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Gougères—savory pastries made by mixing choux dough and cheese—get waffled at Lilo.
“The whole point is for our team to not have to think about it,” Resnick says. “Things will fail during service, and if you have to think about how to handle it, you’re not going to be able to be in the moment and connect with our guests and just have fun. You don’t want a guest to notice that all the chairs are lined up and spaced out exactly 19 inches apart from each other. But they are. The whole point is, ‘How do we make this feel super effortless and lovely for the guest?’
“I’m the kind of person that, when I leave a restaurant, no matter how exceptional it was, a couple weeks or years later, I really don’t remember what I ate—but I remember how I felt. I was really excited about doing something that made you feel like you were having a special evening but you could be yourself. You wouldn’t have to be on your best behavior or feel like you had to be contrived to fit into what we were doing. We want it to feel communal, like we’re all doing this together—a chef’s counter can do that a little bit, I think.
“Just have fun. There’s good music playing. You can come in and laugh and have this rad night, and it’s also one of the best meals of your life. That’s the hope, at least.”
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Spot prawns, a California delicacy, come to the restaurant straight from the boat.
The Feel
So, how does it feel?
You get the sense that, if your chi was dirty here, the staff would figure out how to wash it in botanical water hauled from a natural spring noted for its good omens, then clarify that omen water in a centrifuge and mix it with a cocktail shrub that’s been calibrated to the type of chi you possess.
There’s a dish that Bost and Todic created at Jeune et Jolie as part of the dreaming and R&D’ing for Lilo. It is one of the best things you’ll ever eat—ultra-local Californian and lightly Asian (both central tenets of how they cook); unexpected; bordering on weird; both a challenge to what we expect of food and an embrace of its base, comforting flavors.
Photo Credit: Elodie Best Orgeat ice cream, crowned in caviar.
It’s the orgeat ice cream with ossetra caviar. Orgeat is a cocktail ingredient that tastes like candied almonds and orange blossoms. The key to the dish is a celery root bushi, made from curing celery root in a mixture of brown sugar, tamari, and salt for two days. Then the root is smoked over almond wood for another two days. The chefs spend another couple days completely drying the root. They finally shave it over the top of the dish with a drizzle of freshly pressed almond oil (they make it daily in-house). It takes the standard idea of fine dining— caviar and crème fraîche—and puts a little Michelin-starred Ben & Jerry’s into it.
“That dish was from way back in the process, when we thought we were going to open earlier,” Bost says. “We had orgeat ice cream on the menu at Jeune for a time. I was just ruminating about what the food at Lilo would be. I knew we were going to have a caviar course at Lilo, and for some reason, I just made the connection with the ice cream. I grabbed one of these big Japanese ice cubes we had at the bar, dropped the quenelle of ice cream on that, put caviar on top, and took a bite. It was jammy, sweet, salty, fun. And I’m like, ‘Dusan, this is what I think the food should be, you know? It’s thoughtful and incredibly delicious, a little playful. Now how do we do things like this through 17 courses?’”
Photo Credit: Elodie Best Roasted California squab (a young pigeon).
Bost’s and Dusan’s menu—hyper-local, hyper-seasonal, leaning Californian and Japanese (plenty of koji and fermenting)—evolves constantly based on farmers’ and fishers’ hauls, and whim. For instance, the most recent includes big-eye tuna and Wagyu tartare with yuzu, black radish, ginger, and spruce; gougères filled with comté Mornay, barrel-aged maple syrup, and Iberico lardo; abalone brushed with fermented pepper and guanciale in a broth of chicken and bone marrow; blackened banana with Koshihikari rice, medjool date, shiro miso caramel, and a roasted rice donut.
Each person on staff has an eleven-and-a-half hour shift—first, a meeting to go over every guest and special occasion or need, then a shift meal where work is not discussed, then the show and the post-show wrap. Every dish is assembled at guests’ eye-level, a few feet away, not unlike sushi omakases, except with way more moving parts to the dishes. A different cook or chef or beverage person delivers each dish as it is ready, which means everyone is responsible for the story.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Delicate white fish becomes a Daniel Buren painting.
“That actually takes a special kind of chef and kitchen staff, because not every chef got into this to be guest-facing,” Bost says.
I went opening night, part of a crowd of friends and family asked to give as much useful criticism as possible and help Bost and Resnick and their team see it from outside eyes. Day one—the first rough draft—wasn’t perfect, but damn if it wasn’t close to it. One of the best meals you’ll find in San Diego.
It works because of Bost and Resnick and their staff’s decades of thankless experience. It works because Bost is one of the most talented chefs in the city. But it feels somehow casual because of all the detail-gargling and obsession ahead of time—and then, doors open, cue the Jurassic 5, and just be.
“In the beginning, we thought about maybe bringing in a dancer to help with training,” says Resnick. “We didn’t, but there are so many things when you’re in this intimate of a space—when you need to bend down to open a drawer as guests are sitting right there staring at you. It’s all those little things, and sometimes we talked for hours about them.”
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
Ina Garten Inspired This SD Baker to Open His Own Pop-Up
After a childhood obsession with the Barefoot Contessa and years in Michelin-starred kitchens, Juan Lopez is bringing Poppy Bakeshop to Liberty Station
It wasn’t his mother who inspired Juan Lopez to start baking. Nor was it pandemic boredom. It was Ina Garten. Lopez remembers it clearly—he was in third grade, watching TV at home in San Diego when the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa appeared on the screen. She was in Paris, France, making profiteroles, which are essentially French cream puffs. He’d never seen them before. “That stuck with me forever,” Lopez says.
Forever, or at least present day. It was enough inspiration for him to launch his own pop-up bakery this June: Poppy Bakeshop, which now appears every weekend from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (or sellout) at Moniker Coffee in Liberty Station.
But let’s not fast-forward how he went from a third-grader to burgeoning bakery entrepreneur. After falling under Garten’s spell—I mean, who among us hasn’t at one point or another—Lopez decided to try his hand at making cookies, which proved equal parts satisfying (making something from scratch) and frustrating (not actually knowing what on Earth he was doing). But that itch never went away through high school, when he decided to pursue culinary school. But before enrolling, prospective students had to complete a six-month internship in a professional kitchen.
So Lopez went to the first French restaurant he ever visited—Cafe Chloe in East Village, where chef Katie Grebow took him under her wing. School didn’t pan out, but his education was just beginning.
In the early 2010s, San Diego’s culinary scene was still an afterthought on the national scale. Lopez recalls Grebow encouraging him to move to San Francisco to really hone his skills. “I was 18 and was like, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else to do,’” he laughs. He walked into the one Michelin-starred La Folie in the Russian Hill neighborhood, resume in hand, and asked chef Roland Passot for a job. He started the next day.
After a few years in San Francisco, he returned to San Diego with the intention of moving out of restaurants and focusing on perfecting the foundations of pastry. After stints at Con Pane Rustic Breads, Herb & Wood, and Hommage Bakehouse, he landed at Wayfarer Bread & Pastry in 2023.
The Bird Rock bakery was already well on its way to national acclaim—it was named one of the best 100 bakeries in America by Food & Wine Magazine in 2020, not to mention the Critic’s Pick for “Best Bakery” by San Diego Magazine in 2022, 2024, 2025, 2026, runner-up in 2023, critic’s pick and runner-up in 2021, and then I stopped counting (because I’m pretty sure we all get the picture).
He still works part-time at Wayfarer while growing Poppy, but Lopez says he hopes to increase his pop-up schedule and collaborate more with other local makers. “The ultimate goal is to get a storefront,” he says. Normal Heights would be ideal, but he’s flexible on location and timeframe.
One thing he’s not flexible on is boxing himself into one type of pastry or flavor profile. “I really want Poppy to be this overwhelming abundance of items with different colors and different textures… I don’t want to be known for one thing,” he says. French-inspired, Mexican-influenced, and yes, even taking cues from the fashion industry. Take his plum cornbread, for instance. It’s an homage to Belgian designer Dries Van Noten’s vibrant palette.
“They had this one outfit that had this very, very bright kind of burgundy with this khaki-ish color. Then I went to the farmer’s market, and one of my favorite farmers, Heritage Family Farms, they had these gorgeous, gorgeous plums, and I was like, ‘Well, those are literally the color of that.’” The result? A sweet slice of rich reddish-purple plum cake.
He also draws inspiration from his own family. Every year, he makes coffee cake for Mother’s Day. Cinnamon rolls for Christmas. Basically, anything and everything that makes it onto his shelves is “based on what I’m craving,” Lopez laughs.
And he’s ready to share his cravings with you. “I’ve had so many bad days, and so many of them have been made better through pastry or through food,” he says. “I think as long as everyone just takes the time to just really enjoy what’s in front of them, that’s kind of all I hope for.”
Courtesy of Good Pressure Brewing
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Partnering with Bay City Brewing Company and the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), the ecologically-minded Good Pressure Brewing just brewed an American Wheat Beer using 100 percent California-grown barley to raise money for the plant preservation program. The 20bbl batch will be available at the Mission Gorge taproom the week of July 13, with a yet-to-be-announced release event featuring CPC reps on hand to talk about their efforts. That’s about as easy-drinking as a beer style can get, and with some plant power supporting the initiative, it’s a no-brainer to swing by.
For as many coffee shops San Diego has, there’s only a small number of tea houses that really focus on a genuine tea experience. (We see you, Paru.) But Chagee Modern Teahouse just soft opened its first location in the county at Westfield UTC, which will be followed by a second location at the new Zion Market later this year. Based on early reports, paying a visit to the whole leaf milk tea maker just might be worth dealing with the new parking costs at the mall.
Every summer break, around 240,000 K-12 students across San Diego County lose access to school-provided meals. That’s around half of the total number of students enrolled across the entire county, so yeah, it’s a problem. For the sixth year, Regents Pizzeria in La Jolla partnered with Feeding San Diego to launch the chunkily-named, but uber-generous “Dough-nate to Fuel for Summer” campaign. Following the “buy one, give one” model, the pizzeria will donate one meal to Feeding San Diego for every meal purchased through July, as well as matching any customer’s donations. I’m always happy to eat a slice of ‘za, but if I can make sure others can too, that tastes even better.
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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.
Baker Ashley del Rosario estimates she makes five people cry every day. It’s not because she’s some salty old grump. In fact, del Rosario is such a delight to talk to that we ended up chatting in the sunshine for 20 minutes after my two-hour parking meter ran out. (I got lucky—no ticket!) It’s because her baking philosophy, which centers around spotlighting her culture as a Filipina-American and using some of her mom’s recipes as inspiration, seems to uniquely touch a nerve in her community.
“People message me every day saying… ‘Oh my God, my mom loves your stuff. Oh my God, this made me so emotional. This reminds me of my childhood,’” she says. “I must be doing something right.”
We’re sitting outside at Michi Michi in Bankers Hill, where she finished up a two-month residency as the in-house guest baker on June 30. Her menu of Filipino-inspired pastries feature ingredients like mango, ube, pandan, calamansi, and taro leaves in items like French croissants and Italian maritozzos. But she’s also pushing flavor boundaries with pastries like a champorado tart, a Filipino chocolate rice pudding topped with a dollop of anchovy paste.
Love it or hate it, to del Rosario, the point is that she introduced champorado to a new audience. “If you don’t like Filipino food, or you’re not interested in it, or you don’t even get it… you [still] came into this bakery and you saw Filipino desserts,” she says. So the next time you come across champorado, your brain will already recognize it and hey, maybe you’ll give it a try.
In 2021, Phillip Esteban—San Diego Magazine’s “Chef of the Year” in 2020—opened the first location of his fast-casual Filipino concept White Rice, which now has locations in Normal Heights and Sorrento Valley. Kristin Cleavinger’s coffee and matcha pop-up One of One draws inspiration from her own Filipina-American heritage. Tara Monsod, executive chef at Animae and Le Coq, is a three-time semifinalist for Best Chef in California by the James Beard Awards and one of the leading champions of Filipino-American cuisine. She was also del Rosario’s boss at her first kitchen job, which was doing pastries at Animae. (Nothing like jumping straight into the fire!)
Del Rosario says Monsod became a cultural and culinary mentor, pushing her to explore new and bigger opportunities. When she got the chance to study at the illustrious Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy, Monsod encouraged her to go. It changed del Rosario’s life—so much so, she’s moving to Italy later this year to continue honing her pastry skills.
In the future, she says she hopes to split her time between Italy and San Diego, continuing collaborations and pop-ups while developing what she sees as an entirely new lane within pastry: Italian pastry technique with distinctly Filipino flavors.
Italian pastry technique is different from classic French. Take croissants, for example. The Italian version, called cornetto, is often filled with creams, jams, or savory fillings, and tends to feel softer than its buttery, flakier French counterpart. They’re also more regionally driven, with different areas utilizing local specialties like citrus for the filling—an ideal vehicle for launching a Filipino-fusion creation.
There are plenty of globally-inspired bakeries in San Diego with their own specialties—Azúcar in Ocean Beach is Cuban, Su Pan offers traditional Mexican pastries, and Asa Bakery is modeled after Japanese kissaten cafés. There are even a number of local Filipino bakeries like Valerio’s 1979 (formerly Valerio’s City Bakery), Kababayan Bakery, and Starbread Bakery. But a Filipino-Italian bakery? Not yet. And even if there were, del Rosario says the more, the merrier.
“There is no competition,” she says. “It’s just showing our culture.”
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.
I’m sitting in a slab of concrete under a freeway, eating a ceviche black as eyeliner.
There might be seven seats in this restaurant. Or maybe it’s 12 minus five. That area under the stairs might also be a couple seats, or it might just be a very inviting storage area with a flower vase. The restaurant is so small your core instinct is to count seats and tabulate if Alchemy – Choose Thy Poison is a real place with a sane business plan or if it’s a social art project designed to question the reality of restaurants and business plans.
There’s a large, floor-to-human-height window near our table. Through it, I notice someone didn’t make their bed this morning. It’s a decision I deeply empathize with. It’s moments like this that make you acutely aware that Alchemy is also technically the courtyard of a six-room micro-hotel called Narcissus. Not the kind of massagey boutique hotel you’re thinking of with soft woods, obscene amounts of linen, and opinions on bonsai therapy. It’s a near-Brutalist cube of base industrial materials—concrete and acrylics bent and molded into a series of alcoves, with pods to sleep in. Sculptures lie behind glass like Tilda Swinton circa 2013.
The window to the unmade bed forcibly crams light voyeurism into the dining experience. The hotel and Alchemy feel like the parts of Mexico I love the most. Although Mexico has its multimillion-dollar restaurants, a vast majority of the best street-level places feel like you’re temporarily recreating in a very lovely construction project.
Alchemy’s location is what most people comment on (“I can’t believe a place like this exists on a block like this.”)—jammed at the bottom of the freeway embankment on the northeast side of Barrio Logan. But that makes it distinctly Barrio, the historic cradle of San Diego’s Hispanic and Chicano culture. The I-5 freeway was built through Barrio in 1963—a fairly traumatic gashing of the neighborhood—and residents responded by painting epic murals on the ugly concrete belly of eminent domain. Where some would’ve just accepted the industrial blight, locals saw shade for a park. There is a deep history here of turning concrete into art, and Alchemy carries that on.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The vision for the property came from owner Benjamin Longwell, whose company—The Society of Master Craftsmen—sounds like it wears a monocle. Longwell is part of the new guard of developers who focus on urban infill. Instead of adding to the city sprawl, they find unused or underutilized parcels of land in established neighborhoods, then build creative mixed-use spaces that, in perfect scenarios, add something of value for locals.
I’m not making a case for architectural sainthood, but there isn’t a huge list of developers who would look at the line of cars exiting the freeway in front of Alchemy and think, “We must build here.” So in that sense, Narcissus and Alchemy feel additive to the community, not extractive.
I stare back at Alchemy’s ceviche negro, a glossy mound of halibut that looks inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits or melted vinyl records. Chef-owner and Mexico City–native Eddy Cortes saves all the trimmings of his dishes (garlic and onion skins, vegetable shavings), then chars them into an ash to create a recado negro—a Yucatán specialty that usually involves toasted chiles, achiote paste, vinegar, and a ton of warm spices. He tosses local halibut with squid ink, tamari, charred pineapple, and citrus. The usual charm of ceviche is that it’s light, bright, full of color. Not here.
It is fantastic—acidic but with a whole world of toasted, warm flavors, like ceviche that’s seen some things.
The menu from Cortes—a home cook his whole life, only having taken it professional a few years ago with his popular pop-up, Barracruda—is really a tour of specialties from various states in Mexico.
A crema de poblano has the blended ghost of rajas at its core: an emulsion of roasted poblanos with butter-sautéed onions and garlic, plus a touch of milk that’s topped with queso fresco, chile ancho, and morita oil. Morita—a smoky Mexican condiment made from dried and smoked red jalapeños for a less intense, fruitier cousin of chipotle—is the key here. It specializes in spiking fats (guacamole, fried eggs, burritos). Sop up the crema with house-baked garlic-rosemary sourdough, blackened from the ash of a corn husk.
Smoked tuna is a Baja gift that’s become an anchor for most San Diego taco shops, and Alchemy combines mesquite-smoked yellowtail with caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and Chihuahua cheese (the OG quesadilla filling), then stuffs it in a perfectly baked masa empanada. The result is somewhere between a TJ Oyster Bar taco, a calzone, and a tamale—but with extra flavor and more black hue from cuttlefish ink.
Alchemy’s huaraches de res is Cortes’ ode to where he’s from. Huaraches are the New Haven–style pizza of Mexican food—thick, oblong masa flatbread layered with refried beans and a payload inspired by the Mexico City markets the chef grew up roaming with his dad: braised beef (braseado), avocado salsa, pickled vegetables, salsa macha, and jocoque (Mexico’s fermented dairy product, like a cross between crema and labneh).
Alchemy’s seared tuna crudo gets a tad abused by the riot of big flavors: charred hibiscus salsa, avocado salsa, pickled grapes, pomegranate salsa macha, and chipotle aioli. It’s a fate that also tempers the joy of the zarandeado, with the adobo marinade on the shrimp fighting a bit with recado negro and chipotle crema. Sticking with curmudgeonly food critic notes, flies are a part of the Alchemy experience, at least during our visit. They’re fairly hard to evict from the outside world, but more measures could be taken to discourage their participation.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The oxtail tetelas—like a Mexican pupusa—are a diary note from Cortes’ travels to Tlaquepaque, where they famously superboost their salsa with a touch of instant coffee. First, Cortes braises the oxtail with beer and Mexican spices. Then he blends that braising liquid into a salsa with beef tallow, guajillo, charred onions, tomatoes, and black garlic. Keeping with the goth food theme, the oxtail goes into masa negra infused with squid ink.
Desserts are where you realize just how deeply Alchemy is committed to the art bit. Rarely do you see a neighborhood bistro trying to pull off trompe l’œil—the French specialty of making pastries and other desserts look like fruit or other everyday objects. (The phrase means “to deceive the eye” and is the historical precedent for the Is It Cake? phenomenon.) Pastry chef Catherinne Avila does, though. A “Naranja” comes out in the form of a mandarin, but inside is orange blossom mousse, apricot jelly, and sablée (a delicate, crumbly shortcrust). A “Philosopher’s Stone” comes in the form of a brick of gold with a serpent on top; inside are mango mousse, mango-Tajín jelly, and a coconut dacquoise.
As Barrio Logan enters an apprehensive phase—its creative culture and restaurant scene growing rapidly, bringing economic promise face-to-face with the need to protect the Chicano way of life—this concrete tuckaway from a Mexico City kid feels like a good step. The Barrio has a long history of making art in unexpected places, and Alchemy carries that a little further.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
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.
There’s a saying in business that if you’re not evolving, you’re dying. I personally have a saying that if you’re not eating ice cream, you’re also probably dying, but of sadness.
Scoopy Scoopy doesn’t have either of those problems. The premium ice cream pop-up launched last year with the idea of setting up in coffee shops after hours, helping those businesses maximize their profitability while also avoiding the costs of a brick and mortar. But it turns out, a lot of people in Leucadiareally like ice cream—so much so that Scoopy Scoopy decided to open their own scoop shop in the same building as Moto Deli and Cadence Cyclery (in the former Queenstage Coffee House space) on July 8.
Evolving doesn’t mean leaving the old ways behind. Zach Zien, who runs Scoopy with his partner Steven Segal and wife Sophia, says they will continue to pursue the shared space model on weekends at Coffee Coffee in Leucadia through the summer and are still open to popping up at other venues. “That’s still a core part of our business,” he says. But with steady demand in the Encinitas area, it gave them the confidence to put down roots of their own.
“People have really welcomed us and we’ve been well-received,” he explains. “We think this is the market to succeed in.”
The super-premium ice cream is still sourced from Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream in Wisconsin, but instead of the eight flavors they’re limited to for popups, the permanent storefront will be able to offer 12. “There will be three or four that regularly rotate, with probably eight staples that are our best sellers,” says Zien, pointing to flavors like peanut butter, oatmeal cookie, and the alternating vegan options. They’ll also be able to fill pints to order, something they haven’t been able to do in the past.
Currently, Moto Deli closes at 4 p.m. daily, but once Scoopy Scoopy is up and running, it will offer beer and wine until 8 p.m. for a shared drinks-and-dessert Happy Hour. “We’re hoping to get a food truck vendor on regular rotation to have food options available after hours as well,” says Zien.
The spontaneity of pop-ups can be as exciting as it is efficient. But when it comes to ice cream, I like knowing exactly when and where I can get a scoop—before the sadness kicks in.
Scoopy Scoopy soft opens on July 8 at 190 N. Coast Hwy 101 in Encinitas. Initial operating hours are Wednesday and Thursday, noon to 8 p.m.; and Friday through Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. (subject to change).
Courtesy of Cold Smoke BBQ
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Cold Smoke BBQ Is San Diego’s Newest Meat-Centric MEHKO
Speaking of pop-ups, San Diego’s culinary entrepreneurs keep ramping things up with more concepts launching every week. But after a parade of pastry prodigies and brilliant breadmakers, it might be nice to sink your teeth into something with a bit of protein. (Shoutout to all my carboholic brethren out there.)
Jim Adamski is joining the ever-swelling ranks of MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen) businesses alongside the likes of The Hidden Gazebo Eatery in Lemon Grove and Warung RieRie in Serra Mesa with his new venture, Cold Smoke BBQ. He’s not following a specific regional barbecue style like Central Texas, Kansas City, or St. Louis—he’s driven by whatever inspires him at the time (or, whatever he’s craving). He’s also not following a specific schedule. “My loose plans are weekends… then eventually maybe during the week,” he says. His menu and pick-up schedule get updated regularly, with pre-orders available to pick up from his house in 4S Ranch. So far, he says the dry-rubbed ribs and rib tips have been the best-sellers. But if you absolutely can’t resist adding a bread-adjacent item, you’re still in luck—he’s got cornbread.
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.
“This is insane!” the guy filming it seems to proclaim. “It’s the best fireworks show ever!” a companion confirms, inspiring a debate lasting over a decade.
All told, 7,000 fireworks exploded in the span of 25 seconds over San Diego Bay on July 4, 2012. A Michael Bay amount of unison. $125,000 worth of shells, cakes, Roman candles, and skyrockets had been placed on a barge—enough for 17 minutes of decorative sky flares—and…
Boom.
The sky looked like someone had set a giant Rorschach test on fire. Or as if whatever we all see in our Rorschachs—butterflies, clowns, tongue kissing, dads—was being electrocuted and lifted heavenward, amen. It was shocking how bright it was, how much it sizzled the local cosmos. Could’ve been one of those sci-fi films where a hole is ripped open between warring universes. But angstier, more metal—the work of some methy creator in a sleeveless concert tee.
The sound?
Lou Reed once released an entire album that contained 64 minutes of mindflaying guitar screeches and machine noises. No regular songs, just a fascinating amount of ear distress. His record label reps no doubt heard the melodic outro of their careers, but everyone else was in pain and stumped. That album still sounded better than the bay did that night. The bay sounded like a god who struggled with emotional regulation had blown his speakers and was working through the anger stage of AV grief.
In the left frame of the video, a middle-aged woman is attempting to drag her husband off by the hand. In no way does he want to go, possibly because he had missed the time Roseanne Barr sung the national anthem at a Padres game, simultaneously disemboweling and amusing America through the power of song. He would not willingly abandon an equally worthy San Diego trainwreck.
Another woman in the video appears to have just filled her beer, rushing to sit down for the show. She pauses mid-sit and returns to the full and upright position to properly bear witness. What was supposed to be prolonged entertainment has been so radically shortened that she will have to find another reason to drink. Lucky for her, drinking will be the only way to adequately process.
Locals remember the conspiracy theories. People wondered if the fuses had been tripped by a saboteur who was sympathetic to dogs, fish, or the growing suspicion that late-stage capitalism is a gorgeously branded but impossible dream sustained by remarkably efficient top-tier wealth retention and the soft compliance of fireworks-watchers who can no longer afford a house, a beer, or the personal impacts of human reproduction.
Speaking of being terrified of babies, babies were terrified. The children who witnessed it probably still can’t go near a candle store. But those kids will be tougher, perfectly scarred kids. They’ll write better songs.
That night helped us absolutely dominate the national news cycle. For a hot minute, we became America’s water-skiing squirrel. Now, years later, when you Google “fireworks gone wrong,” San Diego is always a top contender, along with that poor Nebraska family who nearly wiped out a couple generations in their front yard, their minivan somehow turning into a howitzer of recreational TNT.
There is still debate as to whether Big Bay Boom 2012 is the worst or greatest fireworks show of all time. But the advanced parts of civilization arrived at the truth as quickly as the women in the video did. It was undeniably amazing.
First of all, the point of Fourth of July fireworks isn’t “the intricate choreography of sky fire over a guaranteed amount of show time.” It’s about creating a vivid memory shared with some people you like, love, or would like to love.
BBB2012 used large-scale chemical fire to create the ultimate memory.
Sure, some people who iron their jeans subjected their family to a sermon about how San Diego managed to botch America’s birthday like a Disney princess-for-hire who smelled of quite a few Sauvignons.
The rest of us saw how perfectly it nailed the actual feeling of being an American. Because only a miniscule percentage of us bake postcard apple pies where every inch of crust is perfectly laminated like the wood in an Irish bar. Very few of us can paint on par with Picasso. The rest of us—despite truly believing in our America-activated abilities to achieve greatness in almost any field of our choosing—burn pies. We try to paint only to realize it looks like our fine motor skills have entered active death.
That’s why BBB2012 was the most perfectly American fireworks show ever: A wildly ambitious idea galvanized thousands upon thousands of people to both work on it and come to hold a beer and gawk at it, only to have it fail in the most glorious TMZ-level spectacle.
America isn’t about immaculate, storyless wins. It’s about how the framework of a country is solid enough that we can accidentally detonate our entire lives—a few times—and still probably be OK.
No one has America’d quite like San Diego did on that day. It was performance art. Lou Reed’s heart slow-clapped. Any brief municipal embarrassment quickly became a pride of our people. I can only hope the same for the Nebraskan yard family whose Dodge Aerostar became a hyperactive Death Star.
P.S. Local writer Maya Kroth compiled a quite great oral history of that night for Thrillist. The bottom lines for me were—it took nine months to prepare, no one was hurt, and even though the pyrotechnics company tried to zero out the bill, Big Bay Boom founder H. P. “Sandy” Purdon refused and paid them in full. This year will mark the 25th Anniversary of the yearly Big Bay Boom.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
If you’re anything like us, it can be easy to get so caught up in taking care of everyone else, that your own needs get lost in the ether. But while this may be a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true: You can’t give your best self to other people unless you’re taking care of yourself.
Sometimes, that looks like stopping in for your regular acupuncture or chiropractic appointment. Other days, it means giving your body the fresh, organic fuel it needs to truly feel and function at its best. And some other times still, it involves leaving your responsibilities behind for a weekend to pamper yourself at an incredible resort and spa.
Only you can decide what your truly need. We’re just here to help you find the best ways to get it.
Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa
Island living meets desert luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. When you step onto the 11-acre property, you’ll be surrounded by sweeping view of the Santa Rosa Mountains with olive trees and fragrant citrus groves decorating the grounds. In other words, everything about this relaxed but refined resort is primed to help you let go of the stress from home and enjoy easy sun-soaked days and gorgeous starry nights.
The rooms blend calming, woven textures with Tommy Bahama’s signature tropical prints and feature private lanais, making it easy unwind the moment you walk in the door. If you book one of the four Villa Suites, you’ll be treated to exclusive Tommy Bahama furniture and unique personal touches to further that feeling of instant ease.
At the award-winning Spa Rosa, the expert team will help reset and recharge your body and mind using methods and rituals inspired by the desert. The 12,000-square-foot retreat includes outdoor soaking pools, eucalyptus steam rooms, and outdoor cabanas, as well as massages, facials, and body masks—all aimed at creating a day dedicated to you. We’re particularly partial to the Day Long Escape, an indulgent all-day affair of CDBs soaks, renewing scrubs, life changing massages, and transformative facials.
Following your treatment, continue the experience with a meal on the patio at Grapefruit Basil. We love the Hamachi Crudo, a light, citrus-forward dish featuring premium yellowtail, house-made ponzu, creamy avocado, and fresh seasonal garnishes.
Whether you’re strolling the gardens, relaxing beside its saltwater pools, or indulging in a restorative treatment, you’ll be able to escape in style and relax in luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa.
Healcove Chiropractic
There’s no shortage of ways to stay active in San Diego—but if you really want to enjoy everything the city has to offer, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving your body its tune-ups. Enter: Healcove Chiropractic. The board-certified chiropractors and wellness professionals at Healcove are experts at addressing that stage where you’re not injured, exactly, but you’re not at 100%, either. Maybe you’re feeling a bit tense or stressed out. Or it could be that you’re not quite moving the way you want to. Sometimes, it’s just that the accumulation of days, weeks, or even years of daily strain is starting to take a toll. No matter what stage you find yourself at, the Healcove Chiropractic team can provide integrated, preventative care centered on long-term, science-backed approaches that ensure you can always stay active and live the life you want to live pain-free.
This starts by providing truly individualized care. Every patient can expect a thorough 60-minute consultation session that includes a posture and movement screening. This allows the team to develop a completely personalized plan. That plan might include chiropractic care, acupuncture, or massage therapy, as well as functional fitness training, vibration and sound therapy, and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, a clinical rehabilitation method that retrains the body’s stabilization systems. Whatever the team recommends, you can be sure that it’s tailored to meeting your body’s needs today and the future.
There’s a reason that San Diego Magazine named Healcove the “Best Chiropractor in San Diego”—don’t wait until you’re struggling with an injury to find out why. Book an appointment today for holistic, integrated care that helps ground and heal your body before it reaches a crisis point.
Juice Holler
West Coast wellness culture meets the community feel of Southern Appalachia at Juice Holler. Juice Holler’s menu consists of made-to-order smoothies and smoothie bowls, as well as grab-and-go cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, salads, and more. It operates from the blissfully simple premise that fueling up with food and drink that’s guilt-free and good your body should be simple, accessible, and, above all else, delicious. And if you haven’t yet made it out to the Encinitas café, which opened just this year, let us be the first to tell you: Juice Holler delivers on each and every of these fronts.
We love the Supercharger smoothie, a mood-lifting and body-fueling option made with banana, almond butter, blue spirulina, maca, grass-fed whey protein, raw cacao nibs, medjool dates, and coconut milk. We’re also partial to the Thrive Alive smoothie bowl, where avocado, mango, sea moss, spirulina, mint, coconut milk, and agave are mixed and topped with coconut, chia seeds, strawberry, mango, and chocolate drizzle. The wellness shots include the Detoxifier, a cleansing blend of kale, cucumber, lemon and spirulina, plus a shot specially designed to fight inflammation (named, fittingly, Anti-Inflammation). Probiotic overnight oats, lemon turmeric bars, and strawberry shortcake chia pudding are other standouts on the grab-and-go menu.
Much of the vibe feels beachy North County chic—think green tile with orange and pink accents, grounded with greenery and natural wood—but Juice Holler founder Kelly Sergott, a longtime Encinitas local, has also enfused the space with her Kentucky roots. In Appalachia, a holler is small valley between hills and mountains, where nature reigns, community is king, and nourishment comes right from the land. At Juice Holler, Sergott has created a holler for the busy modern times, using local ingredients to create a spot for people to come together and enjoy fresh, fast, feel-good fuel for their day.
Everwell Acupuncture
We’ve all had that experience with a medical professional where we’ve felt rushed, ignored, or misunderstood—and ultimately, like we didn’t get the answers that we needed. But at Everwell, the holistic acupuncture practice located in Solana Beach, the care team wants to transform your understanding of what healthcare can look like.
Patients at Everwell experience care rooted in intentional listening and radical empathy—and trust us, those aren’t just corporate buzzwords. This place actually puts those ideas into practice. You will always be given the time you need to tell your story— initial in-take appointments are two hours long—and you can rest assured that your story will be believed. Every single question and concern will be addressed by a dedicated practitioner who wants to find the specific solutions that work best for you, and you’ll receive care that’s aimed at healing the body, mind, and spirit.
Everwell’s highly trained, doctorate-level practitioners blend evidence-based acupuncture with the practice of classical Chinese medicine. (If you’ve never tried acupuncture before or aren’t sure if the team will be a fit, we’d highly recommended Everwell’s complimentary 20-minute consultations.) Research shows that by stimulating specific points on the body, acupuncture activates a natural healing response in the body, helping to restore balance, regulate the nervous system, and improve overall wellbeing. This allows the practice to address an incredibly wide range of conditions from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to digestive issues, from stress and burnout to headaches migraines, fertility and postpartum struggles, hormonal imbalances, sleep concerns and more.
At Everwell, you can expect to feel heard, trusted, respected, and cared for. This is a space that doesn’t want to be just another healthcare provider you visit; it wants to provide patients with dedicated partner who will be there for their entire health journey.
