Raw fish and raw beef, seven-day pastrami, caramel corn ice cream, and a sweet San Diego staple? Is this the room-service menu you get when you finally unpack after passing through the pearly gates? Or is this simply another SD odyssey of choice eats compiled by your humble, hungry editors? Pull out your bucket list; you have a few additions to make. Go get some.
Herb & Wood
Tuna Nduja
Twenty-seven-year old Aidan Owens is one of the top rising talents in San Diego—he is whip-smart, looks forever 18, learned the art of butchery young, and gives a damn about local food. He’s splitting duties right now as culinary director of both Herb & Sea in Encinitas and Herb & Wood in Little Italy. Between the two restaurants, they go through about 2,000 pounds of local tuna every week.
To waste nothing, Owens’ team turns the (awesome) scraps into nduja—a spreadable sausage arguably created in Spain or Calabria, Italy, usually made with pork and Calabrian chiles, garlic, and pepper. It’s the hummus of protein. Owens double-grinds fatty tuna scraps with fermented Calabrian chiles, smoked paprika, fennel seeds, and a not-shy amount of salt, then slow cooks it all in olive oil.
He serves it with actual hummus, blending garbanzo beans with caramelized onions, garlic confit, tahini, and ice for a full 15 to 20 minutes to reach apex creaminess. Then, he passes it through a super-fine strainer to fluff it up. Add tzatziki, a riot of herbs (dill, parsley, mint, chervil), and za’atar with charred whole-wheat pita—it makes store-bought hummus taste like America went wrong. –Troy Johnson
Monarch Ocean Pub
Short Rib Pastrami
Blessed be these final moments of locals’ summer, when the sunned patios transition into San Diego’s long winter season of similarly sunned patios. All our oceanview perches have been returned to us, freshly polished by the purifying ointment of Arizona tax dollars. Few are better than Monarch Ocean Pub atop Del Mar Plaza.
With views like that, the restaurant could serve mozzarella sticks deep-fried in carpet shards and warm Hamm’s. But, instead, the kitchen’s taking Angus beef boneless short ribs and house-brining them for five days, coating them with pastrami rub, resting them overnight to let the spices set down some roots, and slow-smoking the whole shebang with a blend of cherry and apple woods for three hours, then cooling the end product overnight.
It’s a weeklong project that’s finally served on toasted marbled rye with gruyère, chimichurri, house mustard, pickles, and pickled red onions. Del Mar’s pastrami renaissance is now. –Troy Johnson
Little Fox Cups & Cones
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
When a storm ripped through Grammy winner Jason Mraz’s orchard in O’side, a creamy artillery of ripe avocados fell. Not wanting to let a good avo die, North County scoop shop Little Fox took them in, turning them into a sugary riff on avocado toast called SoSoCal (avocado cream, toasted brioche cream, Graza olive oil swirl, lime zest).
Oceanside’s Little Fox is a mostly local–ingredient ice cream shop where owner Meghan Koll (ex-Jeune et Jolie) is pasteurizing her own base (a rarity, since most shops get the base delivered ready to go) and has a story behind each flavor. The true intoxicant, though, is the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Koll toasts coarse cornmeal to the point of smoke for a popcorn flavor, then swirls in honeycomb and caramel. Like dessert elote or a bowl of caramel corn. –Troy Johnson
Amaya at The Fairmont Grand Del Mar
Steak Tartare
Purportedly, it was Turkish nomads who invented steak tartare. They’d stick meat under their saddles while they traveled on horseback and devour the tenderized results at the end of the ride. Nowadays, the dish is the kind of appetizer enjoyed at five-star hotels and upscale restaurants like The Fairmont Grand Del Mar’s Amaya—a far cry from its equestrian roots. Topped with avocado and soaking in beef tallow dressing and salsa macha, this tartare feels like the snack of champions, no matter how it found its way onto our plates. –Nicolle Monico
Nómade
Katsu Sando
The Japanese-inspired katsu sando (pillowy milk bread, bright slaw, a sizable slab of chicken fried as crispy as a Canadian tourist at Tourmaline) clings to Nómade’s Spanish-ish tapas concept by arriving in four crustless, sharable squares, like tea sandwiches with protein goals. Dunk your portion in the sidecar of sweet, addictive dipping sauce while an eclectic rotation of records spins softly on in the Adams Avenue restaurant’s date-night-ready space, styled like your coolest friend’s midcentury living room. –Amelia Rodriguez
Trattoria Cori Pastificio
Ricciola
Accursio Lota is so indelibly from there that he doesn’t sound Sicilian. Sicily sounds like Accursio Lota. The chef who raised snails under the stairs at his family home as a kid (feeding them herbs and pasta to make the perfect escargot) and was named the Barilla “World Pasta Champion” in 2017 is about to open his new La Jolla restaurant, Dora. This dish at his original North Park trattoria, Cori Pastificio, is a reminder of how good it will be.
A raw, steak-sized portion of Japanese hamachi is sliced ultra-thin and cured for just a few minutes in olive oil, basil, parsley, mint, lemon, orange zest, and salt, then plated with citrus oil, dry black olives, arugula, stone fruit juice (apricots most recently), sliced Fresno peppers, and the kicker: a savory red-onion granita (flavored ice). A crudo with a small, cheffy ICEE up top. –Troy Johnson
Quixote
Bay Scallop Black Cocktail
Sweet, sour, spicy, salty—if you nail all those in a sauce, finely shredded fraudulent tax documents would taste pretty good in it. That’s why mambo sauce—a specialty of Chicago or DC, depending on who’s bragging, and almost assuredly inspired by Chinese cooking—is one of the greats. At Quixote, the LaFayette Hotel’s North Park cathedral of Oaxacan food, chef José Cepeda makes his with habañero and clam juice (replacing the traditional recipe’s call for a hot sauce of your choice), lime juice, onion ashes, ketchup, and tamari.
He tosses it with sweet bay scallops and a lighter supporting cast of octopus and poached shrimp, plus a diced medley of Persian cucumbers, red onion, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and mango. Served with crackers, it’s the ceviche for fans of Kansas City barbecue or creative riffs on The Love Boat–era shrimp cocktails. –Troy Johnson
Moms Pie House
Apple Crumb Pie
Fall means football, spices in our lattes, and—most importantly—fresh apple pie in Julian. This treat is a microcosm of what makes San Diego food so special, with each bite telling us a story about our ecology and culture. The apples carry the memory of our sun and soil; the crust reflects the hands that shaped it. Baked together, they are more than dessert.
Julian pies are a celebration of tradition and a reminder that real food has root and meaning. At Moms (which has locations in Julian and Wynola), your slice comes warm with ice cream or cheddar cheese. I’m gassing up the truck to make the trip as we speak. I suggest you grab your coziest fall sweater and do the same. –Mateo Hoke
