Salt & Cleaver San Diego

Restaurants are the new bait of the retail herd these days. For its impressive overhaul, Flower Hill Promenade pulled in Urban Solace chef/owner Matt Gordon with his third restaurant, Sea & Smoke. Blowing out a wall of the former Paradise Grill, the subterranean den (with a painting of Johnny Cash giving the world the bird) spills out into a patio that’d charm the most precious among us. The share-plate menu keeps local Pilates bodies in mind with salads (vanilla-scented beet) and vegetarian options (achiote-marinated cauliflower). But go predator and try Gordon’s excellent wood-roasted Maine lobster with jicama-corn chili and drawn butter. A dish for Del Mar, and Puerto Nuevo. 2690 Via de la Valle, Del Mar

Sea & Smoke

Gang Kitchen

Gang Kitchen

A pizza guy does Asian fusion and it’s nowhere near as bad as that sounds

The only thing alive in here is the people.

No Flowers. No plants. Just concrete walls and black beams and menacing industrial fans that spin at a morbidly slow pace. Then there’s a 20-foot graffiti art of an Asian woman who looks like maybe she knows where the dead bodies are because she put them there.

Gang Kitchen is severe. The aesthetic of owner Jon Magnini (who’s  also behind BASIC and URBN) seems to be: Find an industrial building, gut it, put in chairs.

It’s real sexy, though-one of the last creations from modernist local architect Graham Downes, who tragically died this year. Chains dangle 20-plus feet from the ceiling, holding the hostess stand like a biker wallet. The stair banisters leading to the second level are semi- rusted slabs of metal. Blacksmith- chic. There is zero to no reclaimed wood, thanks be to the gods.

Gang also represents Mangini’s most ambitious culinary effort. BASIC and URBN are mostly pizza-and-drinks joints (highly suc- cessful ones). For Gang, he pulled in longtime chef pal Jo Ann Plympton, whose long career includes two of her own restaurants (one of which, Bridge Café, got kudos from the New York Times) and a bit of training at three-star Michelin Le Gavroche. During the last 12 years she’s been a chef at CB5 Restaurant Group, creating high-end concepts (Asian, Italian, American) for fancy hotels.

CB5 is where she met Mangini, who pulled her back into the restaurant kitchen full-time for this Asian fusion concept.

Asian fusion. It makes food snobs break out in blotches. Under- standable. Americans don’t have centuries of culinary bedrock to an- chor our identity. When we see an American chef do Asian food, it not only feels like artifice, but also like we’re dismissing our own uniquely national cuisine. It also seems like a cheap way to add cultural cachet to a concept.

The solution is to not give a damn. Authenticity has its place, which is not in a fusion restaurant. Joël Robuchon and David Chang both fuse. And Plympton brings a little cream, butter, and Culinary Institute of America-grad saucing skills to Asian dishes at Gang. The white woman also makes one hell of a scallion pancake.

Her menu starts with a bevy of Eastern gluten. The edamame wontons are excellent, puréed with butter, cream, and white truffle oil and finished with mushroom broth and nori. Truf- fle oil—a potent, crude chemical imitation of the real thing—can destroy dishes, but Plympton uses the right amount of restraint. It also shows up in her mushroom potstickers, filled with diced por- tobello, white, shiitake, and por- cinis, plus cream and panko and finished with ponzu sauce. This is excellent, just different enough from the truffle-edamame. The steamed shrimp dumplings were pretty uninspiring by comparison.

Like kale chips? Then you gotta try Plympton’s crispy spinach. Dried, crispy, lightly fried with oil, it’s basically a really healthy green disguised as fair food. Kindly resist shoving your face into the bowl.

Lobster crêpes are unsurpris- ingly good. Maine lobster is tossed with shiitakes, shallots, chiles, ginger, and garlic in a lobster- coconut sauce, then tucked into housemade scallion crêpes. Her barbecued pork spare ribs are fine, daintily messy with a citrus- sweet glaze. The only misstep we found at Gang was noodles. A buckwheat noodle salad in roasted peanut sauce is mistakenly served hot and a little dried out. The pork belly pad Thai is also a little dry. Too bad, because the fatty pork cubes are perfectly cooked and the dish otherwise pops with flavor, with veggies, sunflower sprouts, fish sauce, and peanuts. Crispy calamari salad, though not terribly crispy mixed in with the miso vinaigrette, has excellent flavor, and it’s not shy with the heat index.

For entrees, the barbecued salmon couldn’t have been cooked better, with a blowtorched honey-soy-miso skin that lifts easily off to barely pink-centered meat (even if the accompanying greens in Chinese mustard sauce were fairly bland). The roasted Peking duck with black vinegar sauce (black and balsamic vin- egar, cream, stock, cream, pepper) is served with sake and spiced pineapple, plums, grapefruit, and orange. It’s a chippier riff on the traditional sweet-fruit accompani- ment for duck. And again with the scallion cakes, good enough to eat out of hand by themselves. The whole fried fish was just so- so—a striped sea bass deep-fried in tempura and served with a red chile sauce that was a little too tart (sugar, fermented black beans, fish sauce, rice vinegar).

But that Shanghai beef—a dish so stereotypically gringo- Asian that Minute Rice has an official version—is a real swooner. Seven ounces of aged beef in its whoa-Jesus sauce (shallot, ginger, garlic, red chile, mirin, soy, good ol’ butter). A heap of fried potato strings under Chinese mustard vinaigrette make it one hell of a meat-and-potatoes offering.

Don’t skip desserts here. The housemade spicy gingerbread ice cream sandwich (actually crème fraîche gelato) with a side of pineapple-mango-habañero salsa, yuzu curd, and cilantro is excellent. Sip your tea and wait for it to soften just right, because it’s served rock hard. If you’re more of a churro/baked goods type, try the banana spring rolls with a walnut frangipane, fried and dusted with cinnamon and sugar—served with ginger gelato and miso caramel.

Plympton doesn’t shy away from a few restaurant kitchen shortcuts—namely truffle oil and butter—but it doesn’t matter when it tastes this good. Combine that with the Blade Runner-meets- Japanese horror flick décor and creative cocktails from URBN bartender Jason O’Bryan (try the Broken Oath, with chamomile-in- fused bourbon, lemon, and apricot liqueur)… and, well, I couldn’t find much of anything to complain about at Gang.

Oh, the chairs are shorter than the banquettes, so whoever sits on the banquette is taller than their dining companion (good for the Tom Cruises of the world, I guess). There, that’s persnickety. Otherwise, just go.

Abe Froman’s is still bringing sausage to Hillcrest. The 5th Ave spot will focus on gourmet sausage and craft beer behind chef Carlos Sanmartano, but they’re going through a few pre-open makeovers. Most notably, the name. Abe Froman’s will change their name to Salt & Cleaver after a snafu. Mama didn’t raise no rocket scientists, but we’re guessing it has something to do with the fact that Froman was a cult-loved figure in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and that Paramount has more lawyers than Octomom’s got babies. They’ve also moved the storefront back several feet and will include a small patio; they’re planning on opening doors in a month. They recently did a segment with KUSI News outlining a few of their sausages and side dishes. Two not-so-sausage highlights: the faceless vegetarian sausage with quinoa, cauliflower, eggplant and peppers rolled in a cauliflower leaf topped with fennel slaw, and a quinoa, red pepper and sausage salad. “Sausage doesn’t always have to hit you in the face,” says Sanmartano.

INCOMING: Salt & Cleaver

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). 

August 8, 2026

First Look: Zuma San DiegoRELATED ARTICLE

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. 

August 4, 2026

Restaurant Review: Mitch's SeafoodRELATED ARTICLE

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.

Ten years ago, restaurant design centered around sleek minimalism. Fonts lacked serifs, clean lines dominated, and any manufacturer that made globe-shaped chandeliers must have made an absolute killing.

Things have changed since then, and Jeff Fink says it’s time for Madison on Park to glow up. On September 7, Madison will temporarily close its doors for a top-to-bottom renovation of the space and concept. Fink hopes to reopen this fall ahead of the busy holiday season, with a new look he calls moody mid-century maximalism. 

“We have to take into consideration what’s going on culturally,” he says. When Madison first opened, TikTok wasn’t a thing in the U.S. and craft cocktails felt relatively cutting-edge. Today, he sees a resurgence in the vintage look, handmade goods, and low-to-no ABV drinks dominating menus everywhere. 

Fink and his partner Matt Sieve have already dabbled with that sort of motif at Sonny’s Pizza, their Brooklyn-inspired joint around the corner. Fully half of the cocktail menu is made up of spritzes, mocktails, and Negronis. Madison 2.0 will take it further.

The new concept doesn’t have a name yet—Fink says they have to feel out the vibes as they make progress with the design. “The name comes when you see it appear,” he says. But he has a few design elements in mind: things like more artwork and more uplighting. “Not cluttered and overstuffed… I want to keep it intimate, sexy, and immersive.”

August 10, 2026

9 Must-Try Meals in San Diego Right NowRELATED ARTICLE

Madison rightly earned its rep as one of the best-dressed eateries in San Diego, nabbing an Orchid Award for interior design its first year. The returning designers Anna and David Sindelar originally transformed the space from weird padded walls and fake greenery at Lei Lounge into a mid-century modern wonderland, complete with a signature arched ceiling and geometric patterns aplenty. Michelin-recognized chef Mario Cassineri (Ciccia Osteria, Bice Ristorante) built a menu heavy on Mediterranean flavors mixed with California classics. 

The new menu shouldn’t feel completely jarring, but will take cues from Fink’s recent travels in Spain with his family. Expect shareable plates with lighter ingredients. “Americans eat way too much, and our portions are way too big,” he says. “I like the idea of smaller plates, healthier plates, and being creative… I’d rather see 15 items on the menu that are all less than $20 so that I can try different ones.” Bar manager Danny Kuehner will continue developing craft cocktails and mocktails for the new venture, as well as curating a selection of wine from Europe and locally. 

This isn’t the only project on their plate. Besides running Sonny’s in University Heights and Madi in Normal Heights, later this fall, Fink and Sieve will also open Josie’s, a modern all-day, Midwestern-style diner inspired by Sieve’s Minnesota roots. Like all their restaurants, it’ll hold a special part of their families’ legacies—something Fink hopes people feel as soon as they enter.

“You walk into Sonny’s, you’re like ‘Oh, Jeff’s at home,’” Fink laughs. “[Josies’] will be ‘Matt’s at home.’” The next version of Madison? We’ll have to wait and see. 

Madison on Park will temporarily close on September 7 until October (barring any unexpected delays). Keep up with the newest updates on Madison’s Instagram.

Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene

Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].