A woman sits on her porch, squinting into the sun. Across the street, workers in masks use loud machines to move mountains of recycling—soda cans, yogurt cups, bottles of wine. The air smells slightly fermented. It’s not offensive in the guttural way garbage is; just humid and biological, the unsexy part of a city’s environmental efforts. Two blocks south, giant cranes lower their necks, plucking shipping containers like food from a trough and loading them onto semitrucks, which will gargle diesel as they haul away through Barrio Logan. This neighborhood has one of the highest asthma rates in California.
In other words, it’s a logical place for CloudKitchens—a future-of-food concept whose inaugural location was built across from a Los Angeles cemetery. Nondisclosure agreements prevent anyone associated with CloudKitchens from saying so, but the DBA (“doing business as”) in the paperwork makes it clear: “Barrio Food Hub” is their regional alias.
At Willie Wingz, “Willie P” Stewart and his family sold out on their first day operating at the Hub. Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
CloudKitchens’ idea is to round up the country’s ghost kitchens. On third-party delivery apps, ghost kitchens look and read like traditional restaurants. They’ve got a name, a logo, a menu. But at the physical address, there are no chairs or tables, no dining room, no humans except the kitchen staff. Ghost kitchens are, essentially, restaurants whose front-of-house positions have shuffled off this mortal coil.
Opened in February, Barrio Food Hub’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse is lined with 25 cooking cubicles, each about 200 square feet. The warehouse resembles a self-storage facility where the door to each unit is open and, instead of Grandma’s furniture and sad-clown art, there are stoves and fryers. Some call the model “WeWork for restaurants.”
Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
For now, BFH is home to mostly small operators. Willie Wingz is an Asian-style chicken concept started by local cook and rapper “Willie P” Stewart with his uncle and grandmother (her recipe is the star). Spring Valley’s Cali Comfort BBQ has an outpost here, using BFH to expand distribution of their barbecue to downtown San Diego, which would’ve been logistically impractical from their East County location. There’s a popular vegan startup, Cultivated Greens. A former chef for the San Francisco 49ers is R&D’ing a Hawaiian-food spot called Big Kahuna Grill. All of them cater almost exclusively to the booming third-party delivery market dominated by Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates, and DoorDash.
Even the flip-phone people know what DoorDash is by now. The pandemic made sure of it. Quarantined, hungry, and personally offended by the dishwashing requirements of self-sustenance, Americans more than doubled their spending on food delivery apps in 2020 ($2.5 billion to $5.5 billion, according to MarketWatch). Enough for some of the world’s largest companies to place their bets that our food spending habits have permanently changed. Last year, Amazon invested $575 million for a 16 percent stake in Deliveroo, a ghost kitchen hub in the UK. In the US there’s Kitchen United, backed by Google’s venture branch, GV. And Barrio Food Hub—aka CloudKitchens—is backed by Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber.
According to the LA Times, the framework for CloudKitchens dates back to 2015, when tech entrepreneur and USC professor Diego Berdakin, under the name City Storage Systems, purchased unwanted, inexpensive commercial real estate (old parking lots, warehouses across from cemeteries) and turned them into affordable HQs for online businesses. Berdakin spent two years installing 27 ghost kitchens into a single LA warehouse and called it CloudKitchens. Berdakin sold controlling interest in City Storage Systems for $150 million to Kalanick, who’d overseen the rollout of Uber Eats four years earlier. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, by last October Kalanick had spent more than $130 million on 40 commercial properties across the US—including this one.
Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
Some call it a land grab by technocrats (virtual businesses don’t need sexy footprints, so acquisitions are cheap). Some call it a data grab by technocrats (CloudKitchens collects data from tenants and uses it to launch concepts of its own). Some call it the future and the low-key savior of restaurants, providing an optimized revenue stream for an industry whose existing streams are more like trickles over dust.
Proponents of ghost kitchens say the lower cost allows entrepreneurs a more affordable entry point to the increasingly cost-dumb world of restaurants. Danny Fitzgerald, principal of San Diego–based real estate developer Endeavor, estimates that opening a modest local restaurant (1,000–1,500 square feet, turnkey, spending just the basics on new decor) requires about $300,000 to $400,000 and a 5-to-10-year lease commitment. By comparison, CloudKitchens requires only a 6-to-12-month lease, with rent somewhere around $4,000 a month (though it varies based on the size and location of the rented kitchen).
“As a full-service restaurant in Spring Valley, we’re profitable—doing $3.3 million before the pandemic,” says Shawn Walchef, owner of Cali Comfort BBQ. “But we only had a net-net of six percent. That’s not a great pitch to investors, especially when we’d have to raise another $1.5 million to open a new location. So how do we expand? We weren’t actively pursuing it until we started understanding digital hospitality. The model works. For less than $100,000, we can go to a new market.”
Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
On the Rise
Willie P and his grandma started Willie Wingz in her kitchen in 2019. They’d take preorders and distribute on Sundays. He would bring trays of chicken downtown and serve them, pop-up style, in parking lots outside nightclubs. When a residency at Phantom Club kicked the business into gear, the family’s next logical step was a commercial space.
“We ran our numbers,” explains Willie P’s uncle, James Clark Jr. “A brick-and-mortar was way too much for us. So we decided to do a food truck. We had a business plan ready— and then this came along.”
The ghost kitchen market is not small. In August 2020, Research and Markets estimated that the industry will grow to $71.4 billion by 2027 (it generated $43.1 billion in 2019). According to Restaurant Business, 63 percent of consumers, and 73 percent in the 18–34 age range, said they were likely to order from a restaurant that had no storefront. Restaurant Business also reported that before the pandemic, only 15 percent of restaurants claimed to use ghost kitchens. During? 51 percent.
Even the biggest restaurant chains have entered the game. On Postmates, It’s Just Wings sounds like a real place where sports people spend afternoons sipping beers over bones. But in reality, It’s Just Wings is just Chili’s. The national chain owns the ghost kitchen. Applebee’s has a ghost brand called Neighborhood Wings. Pasqually’s Pizza? Chuck E. Cheese.
Barbecue drizzled on a sandwich from Cali Comfort BBQ Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
It smacks a little of catfishing—that phenomenon when people present a dreamy fiction of themselves online (Alessandro, rock-climbing architect, enjoys capoeira) and then show up as their very different real selves (Jerry, water-bottle flipper, enjoys Fortnite). Some brands are more transparent about their app-based counterparts than others. Regardless, last August the parent company of Chili’s told CNBC it expected It’s Just Wings to generate $150 million in its first year.
The question is: What happens to the delivery market when the pandemic is over? We all seem desperate to eat and drink in loud, crowded rooms with other humans again. Surely, fewer of us will enjoy restaurant meals à la couch, and demand will dip. But how far?
Willie P and Clark are aware of the impending market correction. But right now they’re willing to play with the numbers in front of them. They sold out their first day at the Hub, and were turning a profit within the first two weeks. Part of their success is due to their social media savvy. They use Willie P’s music to drive attention to the brand. Talking to them in the BFH parking lot, both are covered head-to-toe in Willie Wingz gear. To make it in Cloud- Kitchens, most say, requires digital branding and good old-fashioned hustle (one of the Hub’s tenants, an unrelated sushi concept, already left due to slow sales).
Clark says they’re working 13 to 18 hours a day. His feet are numb. But they’re planning to sign up for CloudKitchens’ next location, slated for the SDSU area.
Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
Walchef is so sold on ghost kitchens that he plans to convert part of Cali Comfort’s original restaurant to the model. “I don’t see the third-party going anywhere,” he says. “We’re projected to do half the volume that we do in Spring Valley, but be three times more profitable. That’s all because of technology. So we went all in on digital. Before the pandemic, we had 64 employees. I can open 10 ghost kitchens, pay those existing employees way more, give them time off.”
There’s no romanticizing work at the Hub. What you can see past the to-go counter (customers can pick up, and many do) looks like a cubicle farm with steam. It has none of that famed restaurant sizzle. But a cook’s life has never been a leisurely one near a picture window.
“Most people who work in the heart of the house aren’t people-people,”Walchef adds.“So this is almost the ideal working environment for some. Ghost kitchens remove a lot of the problems people deal with in hospitality— namely, problem customers.”
Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
The Future of Food
From a community perspective, ghost kitchens like the Hub turn dead commercial spaces into moneymakers. This long-dormant warehouse now contributes to the tax base, gives entrepreneurs a home, and supports jobs. Critics of ghost kitchens point to the fact that the jobs they support (and rely on) are delivery-app drivers—gig workers without health insurance, whose fair treatment became a hot-button issue in the 2020 California election. Prop 22—which exempts app-based transportation and delivery companies from having to classify their drivers as employees—won by a 9 percent margin. But the debate is far from over. Those apps also charge prohibitively high fees (20–30 percent of the total order, wiping out a good chunk of the profit). Finally, ghost kitchens don’t provide employment for hosts, servers, bussers, or bartenders like brick-and- mortar restaurants do.
Few expect ghost kitchens to replace Mister A’s or Morning Glory. But they may replace functional restaurants that don’t offer much in the way of art or music or social experience. It’s simply a new model serving the very different delivery market. And when we order food delivered, who cares if the restaurant has ostrich-feather chairs or an Instagram-bait plant wall, or even “exists”? When the Big Mac arrives, we only care that it’s relatively warm, there’s no bite out of it, and it tastes like a Big Mac. So why would a restaurateur— already operating in an industry with notoriously small margins, staring down incremental raises to the minimum wage—pay for chairs, tables, art, Muzak, or even employees?
“There’s a lot of pushback, sure,” says Walchef. “But we can’t discriminate in how people get our food.”
Possibly the most salient criticism of ghost kitchens—the one that seems to have real potential to bring down this burgeoning industry— is the traffic. Hundreds of delivery drivers (and some to-go customers) are constantly coming and going. CloudKitchens is already facing backlash in Chicago, where delivery drivers are reportedly double- parking, acting badly (smoking cigs), and creating traffic issues for residents.
A small seating area outside the Hub Photo Credit: Valerie Durham
There’s currently no traffic impact analysis for Barrio Food Hub (multiple emails to CloudKitchen reps went unanswered), but the general manager of the Chicago location told local news site Book Club that each restaurant had 50–75 orders per hour. Chicago’s a bigger city than San Diego, so it doesn’t directly compare. But even if Barrio Food Hub manages to do half the amount of orders (let’s say 25) at full capacity (25 kitchens), that would be 625 orders every hour. In early March, BFH reportedly had staff on location to handle pickups from 7 a.m. to midnight (17 hours). So over a given day—that’s 10,625 extra cars coming through the neighborhood, past that woman I saw on her porch who was out for some fresh air.
Granted, drivers often pick up multiple orders at a time. But it’s a concern, especially for a community like Barrio Logan, which is already struggling with air pollution due to commercial vehicles and activity. Parking was already an issue in the barrio before CloudKitchens arrived. Workers from the nearby shipyards were using the neighborhood as an employee parking lot. Locals recently convinced the city to make their streets permit-only—which is a win, and potential problem for BFH if its popularity grows.
On a Monday night, I’m able to find parking right in front. I eat a poke bowl from Blue Poke, one of the ghosts, in the front seat of my car. I watch a smattering of delivery drivers pick up food. It’s mellow, orderly. I empathize with most of the drivers as they hesitate, looking a little lost, trying to make heads or tails of this new situation.
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.
Midway through my phone conversation with Shannon English, owner of The Delicate Squash, I hear an alarm shrilling in her background.
“Sorry, I’ve got to pull some cookies out of the oven right now!” she apologizes. After a few beats, she picks the phone back up and laughs. “I feel like I’m bouncing around all over the place.”
After hearing her run through a list of her professions and current hobbies, I’d have to agree. English runs The Delicate Squash, a gluten- and dairy-free bakery; teaches cooking demos; pops up at farmers markets; wrote a book of poetry (Deep Water came out this month from Beyond the Veil Press); hosts a monthly open mic night; dipped her toe into ballet; recently joined a running club; volunteers at local farms; and finally, teaches at a play-based, nature-based preschool.
I’m tired just talking to her.
Surprising no one, English seems to have unlimited energy and enthusiasm for all this work, notably in education. Early childhood education is one of the most pivotal times for nurturing lifelong learning, but she also aims to educate the public on how to eat cleaner, feel better, and support your local food systems. She started The Delicate Squash in late 2023 after discovering she has a chronic illness, going through the typical standards of care and even strict elimination diets, to no avail.
Courtesy of Shannon English
“I’m not going to say I found a diet that has ‘cured’ me, but I have found that taking a more mindful approach to a lot of things, including diet, has made symptoms far more manageable for me,” she says.
Even people with dietary restrictions deserve a little treat from time to time, but she had a hard time finding anything that tasted good and made her feel good. Thus, The Delicate Squash was born.
All of her baked goods avoid gluten and dairy, and use natural sweeteners like coconut sugar or maple syrup as well as herbs, fruits, foraged flowers, and other natural flavorings. Her signature cookie, the “Delicate” cookie, is a sea salt dark chocolate cookie that’s soft, a little salty, a little sweet, and made with oatmeal to keep it gluten-free. Other crowd favorites are thumbprint jam cookies with jams made from scratch with change seasonally; breakfast pastries like orange, dark chocolate and cardamom scones; brownies; orange and black sesame banana bread; seasonal pies; and custom and seasonal cakes (currently, the late summer flavor is a dark chocolate coconut milk ganache with berry jam).
English says some people are surprised she can produce such a variety of goods with the dietary restrictions she adheres to. “A lot of feedback I get is ‘I could never do that,’” she says. But if she can do it, she assures me that anyone can. “I like to say ‘practice makes progress, not perfection.’”
Her advice? Focus more on being present than presentation, and don’t be afraid to experiment to keep things interesting. And if that doesn’t work, you can always hit her open mic night to ask for tips.
Escondido is getting in on the listening bar phenomenon. On September 5, musicians Mat Rakers, Kevin Capacia, and Billy Petty will open Plot Armor, a Japanese-style vinyl listening bar that Rakers says they aim to feel “curated and intelligent.”
“Currently, there are not a lot of ‘cool’ spots in Escondido,” he says. Backed by The San Diego Music And Art Company and The Escondido Music And Art Company, Plot Armor will soon offer sake, wine, beer, and soju cocktails, plus Japanese non-alcoholic options and cold brew. Eventually, they’ll add Japanese-inspired snacks, but the focus will be creating a small place (very small—the seating capacity is 20) where vinyl junkies can come listen, linger, and libate.
Courtesy of Fairmont Grand Del Mar
Beth’s Bites
Ocean Beach has a new watering hole. The Jetty opened in July at 4934 Voltaire Street (where Voltaire Beach House used to be), and while I don’t think OBceans were hurting for where to get a drink, the more the merrier.
Chinese restaurant powerhouse Chef Fei is finally making it to the U.S., opening a spot at Westfield UTC mall on September 5. Known for Hunan-style stir fry dishes, it’s often lauded as one of the most consistently solid chains in the world—in fact, in 2018 chef Fei Lianghui took home the highest honor a Chinese chef can earn, the China Golden Chef Award. Again, I don’t think mallgoers were hurting for great places to slurp some noodles, but there’s always room in my heart for more stir fry.
In past years, Fairmont Grand Del Mar didn’t exactly jump to mind when I looked for different Día de Muertos celebrations around San Diego. That changes this year, when the five-star resort will debut its first Día de Muertos celebration on November 1. Michelin-recognized chefs like Javier Plascencia (Erizo, Animalon), Roberto Alcocer (Valle), Drew Deckman (Deckman’s En El Mogor), and more will come from both sides of the border for one night only, with proceeds going to Fundación Tijuana Sin Hambre. Get ready for what will undoubtedly be San Diego’s most upscale take on the Mexican holiday.
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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.
Basque grandmothers have not been making it for centuries. If you’re a millennial, there’s a strong possibility you’re older than the dessert itself. Yet somehow in less than 40 years, the Basque cheesecake—a half-pudding, half-cake creation with a top that looks like a mistake—managed to ooze its way onto menus all over the world.
It became the undisputed dessert star of San Diego’s restaurant world this year. So we invited 19 of the top restaurants, pastry chefs, and bakers to bring their best to the San Diego Magazine office for a blind taste test to find the best in the city.
First, a little history and context.
In 1987, after failing to find a job as an electrician, Santiago Rivera started working as a bartender at his parents’ unassuming pintxo bar La Viña, in San Sebastián, Spain. He was a naturally curious, self-taught cook who spent his free time testing recipes, tinkering with ingredients, and tweaking techniques.
So when it came to the cheesecake—which hadn’t changed much since its invention (a rudimentary version was served at the first Olympics in Greece 4,000 years ago, and the modern New York version in 1872)—he got radical with it.
He removed the crust (partly just to speed up the process because time is money for a small business). Without the crumbly crust, the experience was far creamier, less granulated. Then he cranked the oven to 400 degrees, nearly 100 degrees hotter than the normal baking temperature.
The result? The top became deeply caramelized, almost burnt, while leaving the center luxuriously soft and loosely set. The restaurant became a legend because of this breakthrough in the dairy arts, and his father never let him stop making it after that.
Now, 67 years after the restaurant’s opening, La Viña stands out for the unceasing line spilling onto the street, and the remarkable amount of curd cultists standing nearby, hovering over cream-smeared plastic containers. It’s the kind of scene that makes you stop and think: What the hell are they eating?
Now, the blind tasting. To keep things fair, the contenders were divided into four categories: Restaurant Traditional, Restaurant Flavored, Bakery Traditional, and Bakery Flavored. (It’s a tad unfair to pit a baker who specializes in the one glorious thing against a restaurant that cooks dozens of things.) Each entry was served blind and judged on texture, flavor, and number of vaguely inappropriate food moans.
The logistics were chaotic, to say the least. Our fridge—not a walk-in, sadly—was packed to the brim. Each cake was sliced, secretly labeled, and shuffled onto plates while the team gathered in the conference room. The whole shebang was not in any way sponsored by Lactaid, despite our various attempts to convince them of this ripe marketing opportunity.
The judging became gloriously unhinged. We heard it all, from “I don’t care how the cheesecake gets in my mouth, it just needs to happen,” and “Is it supposed to be this jiggly?” to “Kind of a baby throw-up situation,” “Straight cheese,” and “I’m getting vague socks there.”
But four Basque cheesecakes stood out among the rest, earning themselves the title of Best Burnt Basque Cheesecake in San Diego.
Courtesy of Mesa Agricola
Restaurant: Traditional
Mesa Agricola
A restaurant for the people. Rosarito native chef Juan González and Megan Strom are the ideal married couple to be running a farm-to-table joint. She’s been a farmer for decades, selling top-notch produce to some of the best restaurants in California—which is how the two met. A couple years ago, she started working at the small organic farm in Valley Center run by Mike Reeske, who had spent decades breeding the perfect heirloom beans for SoCal’s climate. He recently retired, and gifted those strains to Strom—who grows them (and other crops) for their tiny Escondido taco/burrito shop specializing in guisados (Mexican stews).
A Basque cheesecake in a taco shop? You bet. Juan’s got family roots in Spain and has cooked in Spanish kitchens.
Mesa Agricola’s winning Basque is by far the most “burnt” of all contenders—so much so that an Instagram follower declared it a mistake. But as Chef Juan notes, there’s an art to hitting the sweet spot where “the bitterness of the char balances the richness and sweetness without turning it into ‘chicharrón.’” Plus, char is a core charm of Baja cooking. It’s the perfect Basque for the people who prefer setting their campfire marshmallows fully on fire.
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
Restaurant: Flavored
Moe’s Steakhouse
With red leather booths and a retro steakhouse vibe, Moe’s in Mission Beach is a good cheat day destination. The menu is flavor maximalism—dry-aged steaks, housemade pastas, brown liquors, and sides like the lobster truffle mac ’n’ cheese. Pastry chef Eli Peralta (whom some might remember as the creator of The Patio on Lamont’s “Twisted Elvis”—a peanut butter-banana brûlée stunner) brings that same intensity to the dessert menu.
Baked at sister restaurant Molly’s (6 feet away), his Basque is served on a bed of caramel with walnut brittle and a dollop of whipped cream, an indulgent recipe that converted the pastry chef himself. “I wasn’t crazy about cheesecakes,” Eli admits. “Then I started making different flavors, and I started to like them.” He’s not the only convert: During our blind tasting, one judge likened the cake to crème brûlée, concluding, “I don’t even like crème brûlée, but I like this.”
Courtesy of Muse Cheesecakes & Bakery
Bakery: Traditional
Muse Cheesecakes & Bakery
Every creative pursuit starts with a muse—and Lada Sadovnyk’s has been the Basque cheesecake for years. In Ukraine, she baked them for friends and family gatherings, never imagining she would one day build an entire bakery around them in the US. “When we moved to San Diego,” she explains, “I kept thinking, ‘What can I do? What do I really love to do?’”
The answer is pretty fantastic.
After obsessing over proportion and techniques, chasing that molten center and deeply caramelized top, what began as an online recipe evolved into something entirely of her own.
She moved from her home kitchen to a rented commercial kitchen close to Sports Arena. The orders kept coming, and so did the pressure. “At one point, I was thinking about divorcing my husband,” she says with a laugh (while sitting next to him). The grind paid off: Today, Muse Cheesecakes bakes roughly 1,200 cheesecakes a month and is planning to open its first brick-and-mortar home in Pacific Beach.
For our competition, the expectations met reality. Muse has made a quick name in San Diego as the Basque to beat. In a blind taste test, there’s no bias, no reputational shine to sway a room. The response on reveal: “Oh, of course.”
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
Bakery: Flavored
Bite Cheesecakes & Bakery
Husband-and-wife duo Alex and Anastasia Kiperband pulled off the number of failures (and then some) that are required of any search for the best recipe. After adjusting baking temps, sugar rations, and experimenting with different brands of cream cheese and heavy cream—they finally landed on something worthy of a business license.
“When we started this business in America, we were really nervous,” Anastasia says, co-owner of Bite Cheesecakes & Bakery.
Once they won over those first customers, their confidence grew enough to start tinkering. When Dubai chocolate took social media by storm, they developed their own version, making the pistachio paste from scratch before layering the buttery kataifi pastry beneath a glossy chocolate shell to create its signature Dubai Chocolate Basque Cheesecake.
“In a lot of situations, we’re converting cheesecake haters to cheesecake lovers,” they say. “That’s probably the best feedback that we get.”
Camila Ibarra Gallego is a CaliBaja native pursuing a master's degree in culinary journalism at the Basque Culinary Center. Shaped by the culturally rich, bicultural megaregion, she's passionate about sniffing out stories that connect people, territory and culture through food. When she's not tumbling down internet rabbit holes, you can find her pretending to be a wine connoisseur at a local wine bar or nose-deep in a good book.
There aren’t many places left in San Diego with a lack of specialty coffee options. This week, we can add La Jolla Shores to that list—Casa Del Lobo has arrived. Life-and-business partners Christine Silver and Saul Moreno came to San Diego the same route so many of us have: coming for vacation and falling in love with the city and each other.
Silver was working on Wall Street in New York City and decided to visit some friends in SoCal after the pandemic clouds lifted. Moreno happened to be visiting from Mexico City at the same time. The two met, moved here, got married, had a baby, and thought, “Hey, why not start our own business?”
Apparently, their whirlwind lives needed more windy whirls. (Windy whirls? They like to stay busy.) Casa Del Lobo isn’t either of their first rodeos, although it’s both of their first forays into the coffee space. “We’re both serial entrepreneurs,” laughs Silver. She runs a venture capital business that invests in women-owned wellness companies, and he runs his own logistics company out of Mexico City. “We keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s the last time we’ll start a business. Then all of a sudden, a year or two later, we can’t help ourselves.’”
The idea to open Casa Del Lobo initially started when the pair began decorating their house in Windansea. After looking for large-scale ceramic planters and outdoor fountains that met their quality expectations without egregious price tags (something Moreno was used to seeing in Mexico), they realized there simply weren’t any comparable options here.
So rather than continuing to drive over the border to go shopping, they decided to bring Mexican ceramic style to San Diego.
The partners now run a manufacturing facility in Tecate, specializing in large-format ceramics and specialty glazes. As they sought out potential locations to open a planter store, they realized they could go one of two routes. One, get a warehouse in an industrial area and rely on marketing to get the word out. Or two, they could diversify by opening a homey retail store where people have to walk through the shop area to get a cup of specialty coffee.
They went with option two, and coffee quickly became their primary objective.
“My husband and I, we love coffee,” she says, adding that whenever they go on vacation, no matter where they are in the world, figuring out where to get a java fix every day is their number one goal. (Side note: I can strongly relate.) Mexico City coffee and design culture lean heavily urban and industrial in feel, mixing both an Old World architecture with modern sensibilities—something Silver says they felt was missing locally, specifically in La Jolla Shores.
Casa Del Lobo, which translates to “house of the wolf” in Spanish, soft opened this week, with traditional coffee offerings like lattes, cappuccinos, and Americanos, along with four housemade syrups that will change seasonally (currently, they are vanilla, lavender, orange blossom, and brown sugar cinnamon). For now, the food is simple pastries from Knead Artisan Bakery, but Silver says they plan to add more options like breakfast burritos, paninis, and natural wine in the future. Eventually, customers will also be able to purchase their signature ceramics online, and one day, they may open more locations along the California coast.
But for now, they’re just getting started in La Jolla. “We’ll be here forever,” says Silver. “We want this to be the first of many.”
Casa Del Lobois now open at 2246 Avenida de la Playa every Tuesday through Sunday, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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.
The Best Gym in San Diego Isn’t Really a Gym Anymore
Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped "athletic" from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
There’s a version of San Diego that lives in two extremes. On one side, the 5 a.m. crowd: biohackers, marathoners, people who’ve already logged a cold plunge before your alarm goes off. On the other, the after-dark crowd, the ones chasing sunset happy hours and late dinners with friends. Everyone seems to be either optimizing or unwinding, and most of us feel like we’re failing at both.
Fit, San Diego’s reigning Best Gym for the third year running, has built its entire identity around erasing that divide.
Walk into one of Fit’s three San Diego locations on a Tuesday afternoon and the lines blur fast. Someone’s mid-set on the squat rack. Someone else has a laptop open at a café table a few feet away, half-working, half-people-watching. A group is trading plans for the weekend’s event by the recovery lounge. Nobody’s in a rush to leave.
“We’re not competing for the same people,” says Emily Waybright, Public Relations Manager at Fit, addressing the arrival of a national luxury gym chain in San Diego this year. “We don’t really feel like we’re in the gym category. It’s this unique thing.”
That unique thing has a name now. Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped “athletic” from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
It’s a small wording change with a bigger idea behind it. Fit was never built around escaping the workday. It was built around the people who genuinely like what they do, and who want workouts, work, and friendships to happen in the same place instead of three separate ones. Because sometimes red light therapy with a stranger turns into weekend plans.
Fit’s philosophy traces back to its founder, who started the brand nearly two decades ago after failing to find a gym he actually wanted to belong to. He looked instead to the old-school country club, where people came for a shared interest and stayed for the community. His version was made for a younger generation, minus the golf, plus the loud music.
Which makes it a little ironic that the very award putting Fit back in the spotlight this year is Best Gym.
What does the best traditional gym look like when the definition of a gym is becoming less traditional? It’s a fair question, and Fit’s answer is that the fitness industry itself is shifting. The 45-minutes-in, 45-minutes-out model is giving way to something closer to a genuine third space, the kind of role the office and the bar used to play before remote work and changing nightlife habits rearranged how people spend their time
For Fit, community isn’t a marketing add-on to fitness. It’s the through-line. Members aren’t just paying for a treadmill; they’re paying for an entire day of social wellness that’s built on performance, recovery, connection, and a plan for the next event on the calendar. That’s a much harder membership to walk away from.
Ambition and ease aren’t opposites here, they exist side by side, where passion and play share the same morning. On September 12, Fit is hosting Sol, a full day wellness festival at Fit Social. The morning focuses on wellness classes and vendors and then the evening is a full party with multiple DJ sets and an open bar. Think of it as a kick-off to locals’ summer in San Diego.
Ready to see what a social wellness club actually looks like? Visit fitclubs.com, or follow along at @thefitclubs on Instagram.
After running El Agave Restaurant & Tequileria in Old Town for 30 years and opening Nómade Tapas & Records in North Park in 2025, owner Juan Carlos Gomez wasn’t actively on the hunt for a new project. But sometimes, you have to grab the opportunities as they come, unexpected though they may be.
He was taking a stroll in Bankers Hill last year when he noticed Barrio Star was closing after 17 years. “[It] was a neighborhood staple for a long time,” he says. So he figured he’d take a look. “We were talking with ownership and threw out an offer, and then it was accepted. So we were like, ‘Okay, cool, guess we’re going to get a new concept going!” (Much respect to the YOLO business style.)
That new restaurant is nearing completion. Filo will open early in September. The restaurant’s name, pronounced fie-low, references phyllo, the Greek word for “leaf” and an unleavened pastry dough commonly used in Mediterranean (often Greek) cuisines. Gomez says the menu will range from all over the Mediterranean region.
“I’ve always been a fan of European cuisine, obviously, but I can’t land on just one,” he laughs. “I’m part Spanish, so we wanted to do something Mediterranean, have a little bit of Spanish, have a little bit of French, Italian, Greek… a lot of olive oil, a lot of sea salt, and very, very light seasoning.”
Courtesy of Juan Carlos Gomez
Although the menu feels European, Gomez says expect the vibe and ingredients to feel very Southern Californian. There will be tapas, of course, and other small plates, along with housemade pastas, salads, with lots of seafood (like a whole branzino) coming from local purveyors. The accompanying beverage program will feel equally breezy, “fresh, very light, citrusy, salty,” he says. “We’re going to have a pretty hefty wine list and full bar.”
Gomez’s goal for Filo is for it to feel like a laid-back, seaside eatery on the craggy Mediterranean coastline—light colors, white oak, lime wash, flowing between the indoor dining room and outdoor patio. Personally, a European escape sounds pretty awesome right about now.
Filo opens at 2706 Fifth Avenue in early September. Initial operating hours are 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily, with lunch and happy hour coming soon. (Subject to change.)
Courtesy of Nobu Del Coronado
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
It’s hotter than a mile of Georgia asphalt in July, but relief is on the horizon. No, I don’t mean autumn (or as we San Diegans call it, “second summer”). I’m talking about the Sails & Ales Beer Fest at Kona Kai San Diego. The annual brew fest takes place on Saturday, September 12 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Polynesian-themed Shelter Island resort, with over 30 local beverage makers bringing their most refreshing products to the hot and thirsty masses. Look for names like Pure Project, Coronado Brewing, Ketch Brewing, and a whole lot more, all of whom are donating a portion of the proceeds to Surfrider Foundation San Diego. Tasty waves? A cool buzz? Sounds just fine.
If you seek edible respite before September 12, Hotel del Coronado has you covered. On Friday, September 11 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., the man behind global sushi powerhouse Nobu—Chef Nobu Matsuhisa himself—will host Taste of Nobu, an immersive evening of sushi and signature cocktails on the Paseo Lawn. Prepare yourself for the famous black cod miso, Wagyu dumplings, hand rolls galore, and much more. (Personally, I will also prepare myself to be somewhat star-struck.)
I love a group grilling get-together, something Kingfisher must have known when the Golden Hill restaurant launched its Nướng Nights series. The recurring patio grill event brings patrons to the curb with a casual, but ridiculously delicious collection of skewers alongside special cocktails, this month coming from Realm of the 52 Remedies. Keep August 26 open for grilling glory (and save September 29 for the Mid-Autumn dinner with chef Helen Nguyen of NYC’s Saigon Social).
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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.
You have to be crazy or a genius to name a restaurant Fish Guts. You have to be even crazier to open a restaurant that holds maybe two dozen people at a time—if you don’t mind elbowing one other while scarfing down some of the best fish tacos in San Diego.
And yes, “best” is a relative term. But in Fish Guts’ case, it’s for real—and that’s saying something in a town literally world-famous for fish tacos.
Ever since Pablo Becker opened up his diminutive eatery in 2023 at the corner of Logan Avenue and Sampson Street in Barrio Logan, Fish Guts has been named one of the city’s best new restaurants in 2023, Critic’s Pick for the best fish tacos in San Diego in 2024, 2025 and 2026, as well as readers’ top pick in 2024. It’s like if Rubio’s married into the royal family.
Most of his ingredients come straight from the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean, which happens to be down the street. His de espada (blackened swordfish) taco is the stuff of legend. He’s kept Fish Guts operating at an elite level, which tends to happen when you work for five years in Chicago under chef Richard Sandoval (who, by chance, is also his cousin) and open an ahead-of-its-time high-end modern Mexican restaurant in East Village (El Vitral Restaurant & Tequileria, 2009-2013).
Now Becker is branching out again, opening two new concepts in Barrio Logan this fall.
The first will be upstairs from Fish Guts, which at one point was destined to become an intimate omakase counter. Santo Poco will be a lunch-only sandwich shop, offering takeout and delivery (no dine-in), and the sandwiches will be a little Mexican, a little French, a little Italian, a little from Chicago, a little from New York. Basically, a bunch of different styles all on really, really good bread.
“There’s probably going to be a Cuban-style sandwich in there with a touch of Mexican, some cold cut Italians, too, putting my touch on them,” he says. “That’s what I feel like is my style of cooking.”
Things will be traditional, but inventive. Like his fish & chips taco at Fish Guts: two classic dishes, one killer mash-up. There will also be a hat tip to the late, great Anthony Bourdain, a sandwich called the Antonio Bourdain.
The second will be across the street from Fish Guts in the former Lia’s Lumpia space. Concrete Cowboy will be a taco-driven joint on the same wavelength as Fish Guts (keep it simple, keep it special), but featuring land animals rather than sea brethren. Think tacos made with duck confit, ribeye, pork belly, skirt steak.
The inspiration behind Concrete Cowboy comes from Becker’s father, a lifelong Western obsessive, despite growing up in Mexico City’s urban metropolis. “He always liked that cowboy life, that vibe,” he says. “I always say ‘Dad, you just grew up in the wrong city.”
He’s aiming to open Santo Poco in October and Concrete Cowboy in November. Neither require massive renovations, and while the former Lia’s Lumpia space will keep the cabin-esque aesthetic, he’s creating more of an adobe-style exterior and an interior lined with Western-themed wallpaper and taxidermied animals. He’ll also tweak the bar layout to move from a fast-casual feel to full service.
Local designer Dane Danner is designing both spaces and visual direction for menu layouts, logos, and packaging, going for low-key, but high on vibes. Once Concrete Cowboy opens, Fish Guts will temporarily close to remodel the space to switch its white palette for a warmer feel, plus introducing a refreshed menu featuring some new tacos and other items.
Could another Fish Guts be on the way somewhere else in San Diego? Not likely, says Becker. “Fish Guts is cool, “ he says. “I feel once you start branching out, it’s more forced, not as organic.” So for now, count on Becker staying in the neighborhood.
Santo Poco opens for lunch daily October 2026, 2222 Logan Avenue (above Fish Guts). Concrete Cowboy opens Tuesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner November 2026, 2219 Logan Avenue.
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.
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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