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.
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.
Finding a gift that feels truly personal can be surprisingly difficult. In a sea of generic options — flowers, gift cards, candles, and the like — Xplosion Box offers something more lasting: a customized keepsake built around the photos, messages, and memories that matter most.
Founded by Southern California entrepreneur Jay Vijay, Xplosion Box LLC creates fully customized explosion gift boxes that arrive professionally designed, printed, assembled, and ready to gift. Each box opens layer by layer to reveal personal photos, heartfelt messages, pull-out albums, origami-style photo pockets, and hidden notes, turning a simple gift into an emotional reveal.
The brand was built for people who want to give something meaningful without spending hours printing photos, cutting paper, folding cardstock, or assembling a DIY project. Customers simply choose a box, upload their favorite photos, add personal messages, and the Xplosion Box team transforms those details into a polished keepsake that feels thoughtful, personal, and beautifully made.
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Customers can choose from flexible customization options starting at $27. The Mini Surprise Box includes 10 photos, three message cards, and one hidden secret note, while the Mega Surprise Box offers a fuller keepsake experience with 40 photos, three message cards, and one hidden secret note.
What sets Xplosion Box apart is its high level of customization combined with convenience. Filled with personal photos, custom text, decorative details, and layered surprises, each box gives customers the freedom to create a gift that feels one-of-a-kind — without having to make it themselves.
At its core, Xplosion Box helps people turn favorite photos, stories, and words into something tangible: a keepsake that can be opened, revisited, and remembered long after the occasion has passed. asion has passed.
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.
If you’ve ever squeezed yourself into a pair of black skinny jeans with a studded belt, sported a track jacket under a band t-shirt, or swept your Manic Panic-hued hair so far to the side that your part got caught in your cartilage earring, I have good news: Ocean Beach will get a shot of emo and pop-punk nostalgia when Drink 182 opens this July.
The pop-punk bar and pizza spot comes with bonafide scene points. Co-founder Jay Nightride runs the music production studio Nightride Visuals, has worked with artists like Steve Aoki, Lil Jon, and Fall Out Boy, and also plays in Death Cab for Karaoke, a live karaoke band that performs every month at Soda Bar (among other venues). His partner Tony Jaw is easier to spot—he’s the guy with the sky-high mohawk manning the karaoke booth at Redwing Bar & Grill who’s been in the local bar and hospitality business for over a decade.
Nightride says he’s had the idea for an emo enclave for years, but it wasn’t until after Covid that he partnered with Jaw and got the funding to move forward. “What I was looking to build was a place that I would want to be, where would I want to go to remember these nostalgic songs,” he says.
Pending permits and final inspections, Drink 182 is slated to open the second half of July. The vibe will be dive bar meets emo night, with memorabilia from different bands who have supported the project splashed across the walls, plus a few arcade games, TVs, and (I assume) a decent sound system. The hours are still undetermined, but Nightride says they tentatively plan to be open until 2 a.m. on weekends and Wednesdays for the OB Farmers Market. In the mornings, they’ll serve fresh pastries and coffee from the similarly music-aligned James Coffee Company (whose co-owner David Kennedy is a member of Angels & Airwaves with blink-182’s Tom DeLonge).
But it’ll be the pizza that really stands out—or at least, they hope. “We’re doing New England beach pizza… a really niche pizza that not a lot of people would know about, unless you’re from North Shore, Massachusetts,” says Nightride, a former Bostonian. “It’s a thin crust, very sweet sauce, very simple, fast, go-to-the-beach kind of thing.”
“Beach pizza” is characterized by its rectangular shape, very thin crust, sweet tomato sauce, and slices of Provolone cheese with minimal toppings. Drink 182’s version will feature homemade dough and sauce, as well as freshly sliced Boar’s Head Provolone. And yes, they are aware there are already a lot of pizza options in the area. It won’t be the same, Nightride promises.
“Everybody’s first reaction when they hear ‘pizza’ is like, ‘Oh great, another pizza place in OB,’” he laughs. “But we’re trying to do something different, just enough to differentiate it and give people another option.” If you’re not keen on the style, try one of their “drunkables,” another nostalgic riff they hope the pop-punk and emo crowd will appreciate. And if you still need a reason to give Drink 182 a try, I have more good news—you don’t actually have to break out your old skinny jeans. (In fact, please don’t.)
Drink 182 opens July 2026 at 5049 Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach.
Courtesy of Margaritaville Hotels & Resorts
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
If the steak hype wasn’t hot enough already, The Heritage Steakhouse in Santee just announced Meredith Manée will serve as executive chef of the New York-style steakhouse when it opens in August. Her star-studded kitchen resume spans over 25 years, with stints at the Hotel del Coronado, the Four Seasons, and The Ritz-Carlton Maui, so I think it’s safe to assume we’ll be in good hands.
Rather than waste away in Margaritaville, you have the chance to support the San Diego Music Foundation at the annual Jimmy Buffett-inspired Day of Service at Margaritaville Hotel San Diego Gaslamp Quarter. On September 4 starting at 5 p.m., the rooftop bar will be rocking with live music and plenty of flowing cocktails, plus a silent auction and other activations to raise money for the local music education organization. I’ll drink to that.
The early bird gets the worm and you can get the early ticket to Celebrate the Craft, the annual culinary festival that takes place at The Lodge at Torrey Pines on October 18. If you snag your ticket before the end of June, you can save $50 (which is nothing to sneeze at), plus you’ll be helping support the San Diego Food Bank.
Mani e Grani, the pizza spot from the same people behind Ciccia Osteria, seems to be inching ever closer to opening its doors in Barrio Logan. I know I’m not the only one anxiously awaiting sinking my teeth into some wood-fired, chewy but crispy, hot-from-the-oven, authentic Italian pizza.
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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’ve Tracked Your Macros, Your Sleep, Your Steps. What About Your Drinking?
The Unconscious Moderation app is helping health-conscious professionals take an honest look at their drinking, without pressure, and without quitting as the only option.
San Diego runs on optimization. Early mornings, clean eating, training logs, sleep scores. The people here take their health seriously and the results usually show. Most of them also have two drinks most nights, not because anything is wrong, but because the day was long and the glass is right there and it has always been right there.
That routine doesn’t get the same scrutiny as the rest of the stack. It doesn’t feel like something to examine. It feels like a reward.
Which is exactly what your brain has decided it is. When something reliably moves you from one state to another, your brain files it under things to repeat. Do it consistently enough and the cue stops requiring a decision. It’s 6pm, the laptop is closed, and some part of your brain has already placed the order.
Most habit-change tools work on the number. They count drinks, set weekly targets, send check-in texts. That’s useful for seeing what the pattern looks like. It doesn’t tell you where the pattern came from, or change it at that level.
Unconscious Moderation works underneath the habit. The app uses guided hypnotherapy sessions, structured journaling, and daily movement to address the subconscious associations that make reaching for a drink feel like the obvious next thing. The journaling isn’t a diary. It’s built to surface what your brain is actually reaching for, so you can meet that need directly rather than through a substitute.
The program runs 90 days. At day 30, you choose your own direction: cut back, drink more intentionally, or stop altogether. The app treats both as equally valid outcomes. The point isn’t to follow a rule you set on a Sunday. It’s to understand the pattern well enough that whichever path you choose, you’re choosing it clearly.
The people who tend to get the most out of it are not in crisis. They’re the ones who have tried tracking apps and found the count drifting back up regardless. They know exactly how much they drink and why. The awareness just hasn’t moved the habit. At some point, the work needs to happen somewhere the count sheet can’t reach.
San Diego’s wellness culture already knows that surface numbers tell only part of the story. What you eat matters, but so does why. How much you sleep matters, but so does the quality. The same logic applies here.
