If San Marcos–born company Plantible has its way, the story of food’s future will begin with two friends who met as kids in the Netherlands. Tony Martens Fekini was in agricultural commodity trading. Maurits van de Ven was an investment banker—but they wanted more. Could they start a company together? They brainstormed. A banking app? Nah. Software of some sort? Maybe, but what? Renewable energy? It’s already so commoditized!
Then, as one does, they decided they wanted to change the world by reimagining the agricultural supply chain via the introduction of a novel ingredient that could revolutionize how bakers emulsify and chefs bind, all while keeping an eye on sustainability.
You know, no big deal.
Courtesy of Plantible The company’s trademark Rubi can replace animal proteins for a fluffy meringue without the eggs.
After much research, they landed on RuBisCO (the much shorter abbreviation for the mouthful that is ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase). It’s likely the most abundant protein on the planet. It’s older than oxygen. Pound for pound there is more RuBisCO on Earth than there is human mass. You’ve consumed it before; it’s in your salad. It’s the catalyst for photosynthesis—it captures CO2 and converts it into sugars, which enables plant growth. It’s also a complete protein, with all nine of the essential amino acids the human body needs but does not make on its own.
Also, it just so happens that RuBisCO, when isolated, is kind of like the valedictorian of proteins. Free of the FDA’s top eight food allergens (plus 12 more common ones), it acts as a weirdly fantastic egg substitute, foaming agent, and sensory-enhancing addition to plant-based dairy and meats. In trials, it can even make gluten-free baked goods—drum roll—moist. “They usually taste so dry, right?” Martens (his preferred name) says.
RuBisCO, Martens and van de Ven fantasized, could take the place of other functional ingredients—animal proteins and hydrocolloids like methylcellulose—that impact food consistency. “The digestibility is better, and you need less of it for the desired effect,” Martens explains.
Courtesy of Plantible
But if the duo was going to sell RuBisCO, they needed a sustainable source of it. Then they heard of lemna, a small aquatic plant that doubles in size every 48 hours. It doesn’t need arable land (unlike, say, soybeans), can be cultivated year-round, and uses up to 90 percent less water than many other crops.
“So, we connected these two dots, [lemna and RuBisCO],” Martens says. “And then we quit our jobs.”
Through their network, they learned about a defunct algae farm in San Marcos in North San Diego County. The owners offered it for free to these Dutchmen with a dream. “We packed all our stuff up, and here we are,” Martens says. “Honestly, if [the farm] had been in Alabama, we’d be in Alabama.”
The plot just off Twin Oaks Valley Road is lined with greenhouses, a couple trailers, and some dusty RVs. Martens jokes that it looks like the perfect starter set-up for a cult, but no—it’s the world headquarters of the duo’s company, Plantible.
When they first arrived in 2017, however, they had a big problem: “We had no idea how to extract RuBisCO,” Martens says.
Courtesy of Plantible
Martens spent the first year-and-a-half in an RV, trying to crack the code—he had beakers and Vitamixes galore, even mini spin dryers stuffed with juice-filled vacuum bags. He felt like Walter White from Breaking Bad (sub green smoothies for meth).
Then, the pandemic struck. Plantible’s six (very) devoted employees podded together on the farm and perfected the process: Harvest the lemna, rupture the chloroplast cells, toss the mixture into a centrifuge, do some other top-secret chemistry stuff to separate the RuBisCO from its chlorophyll, and dry what is left— then, voila, the company’s trademark Rubi Protein.
Courtesy of Plantible Plantible grows lemna year-round in its San Marcos greenhouses.
Six years after its humble beginnings, Plantible expanded into a new 100-acre commercial facility in Texas and now employs 70 people. Last November, the company scored $20 million in series B funding. It has already promised several hundred metric tons of Rubi Protein this year. Martens can’t divulge which companies currently use Rubi, but he can say that Chipotle and Kellogg invest.
Recently, he gave me a tour of the OG farm in San Marcos. We entered a quiet, humid greenhouse where tiny plants floated around a pond of water like it was a slow-mo lazy river. I envisioned myself jumping in and chilling like a contented capybara in a Japanese onsen.
Courtesy of Plantible Rubi Protein
Martens dipped his finger in and presented some tiny green specks—lemna is adorable. The taste is crisp and planty, like watercress or purslane. I knew it was all going to become white dust, but if given the opportunity, I’d pesto the crap out of that stuff, get it all up into a sandwich.
Plantible is now setting its sights on more Rubi discoveries: Could it work in body products like masks or scrubs? And, more importantly, can the company develop Plantible farms all over the world to help populations maintain their own renewable protein source?
Though the product is not yet available to the casual consumer, Martens also envisions a world in which Rubi Protein becomes a household name and a shopping-list regular. He can almost hear it now: While you’re picking up the milk, can you also grab more Rubi?
Mara Altman is the author of two nonfiction books, Thanks for Coming and Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front (and Back), which was a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Altman also wrote eight best-selling Kindle Singles and has written for publications such as The New York Times and New York Magazine. Earlier in her career, she was a staff writer for The Village Voice and daily newspapers in India and Thailand. She lives in North Park with her husband and twins.
There’s a place in heaven for a steakhouse that remakes chicken nuggets but uses Jidori instead of whatever glum bird is proffered in the children’s section. And then they top it with caviar. That, plus an editor with an obsession-level ranking of chai in Carlsbad, and a whole fish from one of San Diego’s OG top chefs who has mercifully returned to the kitchen. These are the very best things we’ve found from another month of eating professionally in San Diego. Go get some.
Stake Chophouse & Bar
Caviar Chicken Nugget
One of my favorite experiences at Stake in Coronado is that—if the patio is chilly enough to warrant heaters—they’ll surround you with towers of flame. Paired with the retaining wall of heat against the glass railing overlooking Orange Avenue, there is so much surrounding fire that it feels like dining in a much nicer version of the Elmo meme, in which the nasally puppet’s whole world has amusingly arsoned.
Three things you have to get here: first, the Wagyu popcorn (kernels popped in melted Wagyu beef fat, salted with paprika); second, the Snake River Farms Wagyu skirt steak (its Gold grade means incredibly high marble), one of the best steaks in the city; third, the Jidori chicken nuggets with herbed crème fraîche, pickle, and a perm of caviar. A childhood food, deliciously adulted. —Troy Johnson
Flying Pig Pub & Kitchen
Tri-Tip Sando
It’s been 15 years since married folk Aaron and Roddy Browning opened Flying Pig Pub & Kitchen in a hidden south Oceanside hovel—using vinyl records as placemats, the decor an assortment of welded metal weirdities. One thing has always remained: Pork is their native tongue.
This sandwich pries open long-dormant pleasure receptors in most alive human bodies. Brandt Beef tri-tip is rubbed with its “Pig Spice” (hint: good paprika and celery seed do wonders), sleeps for 24 hours, then is seared and rested for an hour—sliced and seared again, placed on a mini baguette wet with fresh chimichurri and smoked tomato aioli, then topped with melted aged provolone, grilled peppers, onions, and gremolata (parsley, garlic, lemon zest). Order two, or be prepared to fight. —Troy Johnson
Valentina
Pan Tomaquet
Pintxos are Basque-country bar snacks, finger foods for Real Sociedad games. The appropriate utensils are a couple of fingers and a toothpick. But Valentina’s in Leucadia are done with just enough culinary school ambition (not too much, fuss has no place in pintxos) from exec chef Enrique Ñol, who worked at the estimable Wrench & Rodent.
Its tomaquet (tomato bread) could be underestimated as a stacked pile of quality ingredients, but it’s undeniably great—toasted pan de cristal (light, airy, Catalan “glass bread”) dressed with tomato, garlic, salt, EVOO, and a layer of one of the world’s greatest meats: Cinco Jotas Iberian jamón. Eat it with a minor winefall of porrón, and ask for Todd—a certified sommelier and one of the most knowledgeable food minds in the local scene. —Troy Johnson
Ironside Fish & Oyster
Whole Fish
Get the whole fish. Doesn’t matter the catch, just trust that chef Jason McLeod’s got you. When CH Projects opened Ironside in Little Italy in 2014, the restaurant group took over the old Farkas furniture store and turned it into a replica of an ocean liner, tapping McLeod (a chef who’d earned two Michelin stars in Chicago) to oversee its menus.
It quickly became a San Diego staple for seafood. After leaving for a few years to help concept and launch some big-name restaurants in Vegas, McLeod is back again getting his hands dirty in the kitchen. And his fish? They come in fresh from local fishermen who he’s established relationships with over the years. So yeah, get the whole damn thing. —Nicolle Monico
Steady State Roasting
Indian Summer
I have a running spreadsheet of chai rankings in Carlsbad. The chai that stays on the highest shelf? Steady State’s gingery, nutmeggy Indian Summer with an almond milk base and fresh nutmeg shavings on top. Juiced ginger gives the drink deeper, warmer notes, but not so much spice that your throat closes on the first sip.
Too often, coffee shops advertise authentic chai, then uncork that carton of sugar-bomb concentrate from an artisanal wholesaler called Costco. This is the real deal; it’s mildly sweet, a little more spicy, and in my opinion, best served hot. If I could order a keg of it, I would. (Can I?) —Emma Veidt
After 10 years of rooftop dining and brewing award-winning beers, OB Brewery is for sale. A local fixture on Newport Avenue, OB Brewery owner Mike Tajran is ready to retire and hand over the reins. “It’s got so much potential,” he says, pointing to the accolades the brewpub has collected throughout the last decade (it’s more than a few).
At the 2017 Great American Beer Festival, OB’s Hidden Gem Dunkelweizen won silver in the German-Style Wheat Ale category, followed by a World Beer Cup silver medal as a South German-Style Dunkel Weizen in 2026. In 2018, GABF named OB Brewery Small Brewpub of the Year, brewer Jim Millea earned Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year, and the B. Right On pale ale nabbed a gold medal in the American-Style Pale Ale category. The Elevator Red IPA also took bronze that year at the San Diego International Beer Festival, and earlier this year, they won gold for Couple’s Therapy chili beer and silver for Rauch Me smoked beer at San Diego County Fair Craft Brew Competition.
It’s a solid foundation for the right buyer, he says—someone with brewing and business chops ready for a turnkey operation in a favorable location a block from the beach on Ocean Beach’s busiest street. (And while he’s letting go of the brewpub business, he’s also open to selling the building as part of the deal.)
Originally from Iraq, Tajran’s family ran restaurants in Baghdad, but “they were decimated by Saddam Hussein,” he explains. Once in the United States, he launched Giant New York Pizza at 5050 Newport Avenue in 1984, which eventually became Newport Pizza & Ale House. Newport Pizza felt long ahead of its time, proudly proclaiming they served “no crap on tap” years before the craft beer craze caught fire in San Diego.
Courtesy of OB Brewery
When the building’s owners passed away and their son cut his lease short in 2020, Tajran says he was disappointed, but he had a nagging feeling that would happen eventually—which is why he already purchased 5041 Newport Avenue back in 2009 and opened Ocean Beach Brewery in 2016.
“For 42 years, I have been in this location in this area, the same block,” he says with pride. Ocean Beach has gone through some changes since 1984 (the OB farmers market launched in 1992, Starbucks came in 2001 and left in 2022, ADUs crept in, and the iconic OB Pier closed in 2023), but Tajran says the heart of the beachside town has remained the same.
So has most of his staff. Millea has been brewing since day one, and longtime manager Megan Schuster has worked for Tajran for 19 years, first at Newport, then at OB Brewery. Most of the employees are locals, and Tajran says he doesn’t plan on closing the business until he finds the right buyer to carry on the baton.
The property itself comes with some unique features for the area—three stories with a rooftop deck and ocean views from every level. And if you’re wondering if those uninterrupted views will remain that way, Tajran assures me they will. Part of his original building purchase included language that prohibits the three buildings between him and the ocean from building up. He also leases space next door, which would allow a new owner to expand brewing capacity with more tanks and fermenters.
“I just wanted to make sure this goes in good hands,” he says. He and his wife both hope to retire soon in order to spend time with their children. But he’ll make sure his other baby is taken care of first.
“I love Ocean Beach,” he says. “I can say nothing but thank you, OB.”
OB Breweryis still open at 5041 Newport Avenue. Hours are Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Interested parties should contact Next Wave Commercial.
Along the same vein of iconic businesses, Tribute Pizza is celebrating 10 years in North Park this week with different events every night. Good luck getting a reservation if you haven’t already, but you can still take part in the silent auction on behalf of Feeding San Diego. Owner Matt Lyons’ goal is to raise $100,000 for the nonprofit and is offering some pretty sweet stuff to do so—think a full weekend buyout of Tribute, a private event with Lyons and chef Travis Swikard of Callie and Fleurette, a year of access to a VIP hotline for reservations, and even more. Time is ticking away on your chance to bid, so be sure to make your best offer before time runs out.
La Corriente continues its expansion across San Diego with lucky number three coming to Oceanside. Located next to Tanner’s Prime Burgers and PopUp Bagels, a restaurant rep says that at the rate the restaurant is opening new spaces, it wouldn’t be wild to see a few more pop up along the coast in the future.
Kitchens for Good has big plans on the horizon, including their sprawling new Culinary Impact Center coming to Bankers Hill next year. Now, it should be a bit easier to accomplish their (many) goals with the help of a $50,000 grant from the Jacques Pépin Foundation. Kitchens for Good is one of four awardees this year and will receive the funds over the next two years, allowing them to launch their Market Cafe initiative in the new center and continue their mission of hospitality training programs and ending food insecurity across the city. It’s a pretty awesome award, given by a pretty awesome group to another pretty awesome group, so it’s just mega-awesome all the way around.
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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.
San Diego has lost a number of ambitious concepts lately—Vulture and Dreamboat in University Heights, Wildflour Delicatessen in Liberty Station, Deckman’s in North Park, Matsu in Oceanside. All have different reasons for closing (some outgrew their space, some overshot their costs), but none of them suffered for quality. Ditto for the next casualty. On July 19, Cellar Hand in Hillcrest will close its doors.
Unlike the other closures, there’s actually a silver lining. The Perr family, who owns both Cellar Hand and Pali Wine Co., announced they will relocate Pali’s tasting room from Little Italy to take over the vacated Cellar Hand space.
Cellar Hand opened just over two years ago with a promise to source 100 percent of their produce locally. Ambitious, but admirable. Logan Kendall, the original executive chef, launched with a menu centered around lots of funky fermentation, tinned fish preserved in-house, a bevy of fun dips like labneh and whipped tahini, and a ridiculously fantastic pork chop from Thompson Heritage Farms. Wine Enthusiast named the 120-seat eatery one of the top 50 wine-focused restaurants in the country in 2025—not a shock, considering the mega wine chops behind the project.
Following Kendall’s tenure, chefs Ashley McBrady and then Sable-Tanya Wentwoord took over the reins, keeping things rolling with expanded brunch offerings, chef’s dinners, and all the usual accoutrements of a hyped spot. Before joining the Pali Wine/Cellar Hand team, Wentwoord worked and staged at multiple James Beard Award–recognized and Michelin-starred restaurants in Boulder, Colorado (Frasca Food and Wine); San Francisco, CA (Coi, Che Fico); Providence, Rhode Island (Persimmon); and Fredericksburg, Tex. (Southold Farm + Cellar). She will continue to head the food program at Pali Wine Co.
Bad luck or bad timing, the reasons behind closing Cellar Hand don’t really matter. But I, for one, will really miss that pork chop.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
Still, Cellar Hand’s loss is Pali Wine Co.’s gain, or at least a small balm on the sting of closure. The tasting room in Little Italy opened 10 years ago, bringing its Central Coast wine and vibes to an area smack in the middle of a craft beer boom. When it came time to renew the lease, the Perrs say the landlord did the landlord-y thing and tried to nearly double the rent. (Tale as old as time—just ask Wildwood Flour.)
Rather than suffer a double-whammy, the Perr family instead decided to shift their focus (and finances) to the heart of their businesses: wine. And despite losing a very cool rooftop patio in one sizzling hot neighborhood, they are gaining a pretty prime spot in a different sizzling hot neighborhood with a not-too-shabby patio of its own accord. (One more silver lining: no more jet noise from the airport!)
By moving Pali Wine Co. to where Cellar Hand used to be, they could at least keep a toehold in San Diego, says Nick Perr, managing partner. His family has made wine in Santa Barbara county for over two decades, with 10 of those years in the San Diego market—an investment they refused to lose. “That’s why it’s impossible to separate our winery from our San Diego community,” he explains, adding that the new location will allow Pali Wine Co. to offer programming designed around the nearby Hillcrest farmers market.
Guests can expect the same wine selection, wine club perks, private tastings, and similar food offerings Pali Wine Co. offers in Little Italy to transfer to Hillcrest. And maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll bring back the pork chop (please?)
“We are extremely proud of what we accomplished at Cellar Hand,” said Perr in a statement. “Running an independent restaurant with real values is hard, and we gave it everything we had.”
Cellar Hand will permanently close on July 19. Pali Wine Co. will cease operations at 2130 India Street on July 19 and will move to 1440 University Avenue.
Pali’s new location in Hillcrest will soft open on August 12 with a grand opening on August 22. Operating hours will be Wednesday through Friday, 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. Happy hour will run Wednesday through Sunday (hours to be determined).
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.
Implementing a farm-to-table model hardly deserves acknowledgement these days. It’s not a stretch. It’s not innovative. “It’s the bare f**king minimum,” says Herb & Sea‘s executive chef Aidan Owens.
When I arrive at the Encinitas restaurant, I’m ready to talk sustainability, farm-to-table stuff, with Owens. “Did you see the chin on that?” he says of the extra big jiggly chin on the sheephead that just arrived with the day’s fresh catch. I did. It was Jay Leno adjacent.
I learn quickly that he somehow oozes both charm and stone-cold honesty. Maybe he could construct a new dish with chin goo, like he did when he had a bunch of tuna scraps and voila’d it into a smooth and crowd-pleasing ‘nduja. “I want to know what’s in there,” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The instinct to look closer, to dig into what others might discard, says a lot about the chef’s approach. I guide him back to our topic, but he has something else on his mind. “We’re overcomplicating food—what happened to just cooking good food and having fun with it?”
Owens grew up on a farm in Byron Bay, Australia, where sustainability wasn’t a concept you chat about so much as a way of life. Think dirt roads, backyard chickens, pulling vegetables straight from the ground, and a mother who believed that if you couldn’t pronounce the ingredients on a package, you shouldn’t eat what was inside.
Food wasn’t precious or performative. Making it was what you did because you were hungry and that’s still what inspires Owens today. “I like to cook good food because I like to eat good food,” he says.
His approach to sustainability at Herb & Sea began so naturally that it felt just like instinct. “I was just like, ‘Let’s order food from the people who live and work here,’” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
And why wouldn’t he when lives in San Diego? Cities all over the world vie for our goods. Our tuna is sent overseas. Our spiny lobsters hit dinner plates in China and Japan. Not to mention California’s producing a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.
“Why would we outsource when it’s all here?” Owens asks.
Sustainability, in this context, is about cooking what exists in abundance, nearby, right now. “I love the local fish here. It’s f**king delicious and San Diego citrus, I mean, it is so f**ing good,” he says.
Instead of importing ingredients, Owens also looks for nearby alternatives. “You can find really cool things in the local waters,” he says, pointing out that stingray cheeks taste similar to scallops.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
Whatever he finds in that sheephead chin might just be the next substitute for marrow. But to make this work, it means getting diners amped up about the slightly unfamiliar.
Tasting menus, where diners are completely in his hands, become an opportunity to gently push boundaries. “I’ll serve mackerel, because people think they hate it,” Owens says, noting that the abundant local fish can have some fishiness. “But when it’s fresh, it’s arguably one of the best fish in the ocean.”
He also tweaks the language on the menu so people might feel more compelled to give dishes a try without preconceived notions. He might use “lengua” instead of “tongue.” “Whelk” instead of “snail.” When he puts “stingray throat” on the menu, he disarmingly calls it “skate.”
To reduce waste, scraps aren’t always discarded but rather turned into something new. Sometimes they’re smoked, cured or fermented. Apples going bad turn into apple ponzu. Lemons turn to marmalade, which stretches their usefulness far beyond peak season. “And it’s super tasty on our pizza,” he says.
What makes the food even richer, is the relationships he’s built with farmers. Though it didn’t always feel natural, Owens sought personal connection first. He recalls approaching a fisherman at the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market. “I was awkward,” he says. “I went up to him and said, ‘I like your fish.’”
Owen’s is now so close to his suppliers—like fishermen Ryan Sebo and Joe Daly—that he gets texted pictures of fresh catches right as they flop on the boat. The messages always ask if he wants first dibs. “I say yes to a lot of fish,” Owens says, noting that Herb & Sea can go through 2,000 pounds of seafood a week.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The next evolution of sustainability, in his view, will be chefs working directly with producers such as his alliance with Sebo, cutting out middlemen and purveyors where possible. “It will put more money in the pockets of the people doing the work,” he says.
It will mean that chefs can’t just know their local farmers and producers, but they’ll choose to work with the ones who have the best practices. Dining and sustainability will become much less about the final plate. “It will be more about the impact that plate has on the Earth,” he says.
Ultimately, he believes sustainability doesn’t need to be loud. It doesn’t need hashtags. It just needs to be honest.
“We aren’t saving lives. We’re feeding people good food,” he says.
And yet, in feeding people well—simply, thoughtfully, responsibly—something meaningful happens. Guests leave satisfied. Ingredients are respected. Local ecosystems are supported and food returns to what it has always been at its core: nourishment, pleasure, and a quiet reflection of the place it comes from.
How Scrojo Became One of Rock’s Most Prolific Poster Artists
The San Diego designer has created more than 3,000 concert posters over nearly 40 years for artists including the Rolling Stones and the Red Hot Chili Peppers
When he was in high school, he and his friends were trying to come up with the perfect name for their punk band that would encapsulate all their personas. Nicaragua. The Freds.
One of his friends said he was going to go by Jimmy Stacks and called it “the perfect rock and roll name.” Their names changed so much that Haskett erupted: “Fine, I’m f—ing Scrotum Joe, the true defender of the Open West.”
Their response: Wow, that’s a great name.
As a teenager, he drew chalkboards for Del Mar’s Pannikin coffee shop and would design T-shirts for surf/skate brand Life’s a Beach. He signed the shirts with his moniker, but even in punk rebellion, who wants a shirt with the words Scrotum Joe on it? “They just cut out the ‘t-u-m,’ and the next thing you know, a client referred to me as that, and it stuck,” he says.
Courtesy of Scrojo
Scrojo could have been part of a band as iconic as The Misfits—had he been able to learn the famously cumbersome bassline to The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.” Becoming one of the most renowned concert poster designers—someone who quite literally designed the cover of Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion—is a pretty good Plan B.
“To my knowledge, he’s done more rock posters than anybody else alive,” says Dennis King, whose D. King Gallery in Berkeley, California, serves as one of the largest private rock poster collections in the world. “He’s the hardest-working guy in the poster business.”
King not only co-authored the sequel to music historian Paul Grushkin’s The Art of Rock, but he also handles distribution and sales for all of Scrojo’s work. That’s more than 3,000 different posters over nearly 40 years. (That’s over one poster each week. For four decades straight.)
For anything from boxing matches to rodeos, posters have long been used as promotional items. Toulouse-Lautrec’s famous lithographs advertised Moulin Rouge in the late 1800s. Around the same time, Hatch Show Print in Nashville was making handbills for the Grand Ole Opry.
“I propose this: Cave paintings are the first poster art,” Scrojo says.
Courtesy of Scrojo
Rock and roll posters took off in the 1960s, when the hippie counterculture era replaced conformity and suburbia. Artists like Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead used their vibrant, psychedelic prints as a form of rebellion from the mainstream. Posters were promotional, commemorative, collectible, and especially expressive.
If the name Scrojo is any indication, he doesn’t shy away from imagery that toes the line of being too provocative. He focused more on what inspired him instead of trying to be offensive for the sake of getting attention.
“Didn’t want to show it to my grandmother, but my parents were fine with it,” Scrojo says with a laugh.
“We’ve had to ask him to put a Band-Aid over a nipple every now and then,” says Chris Goldsmith, president of Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, where Scrojo started out and hundreds of his posters currently line the walls.
Scrojo spent six weeks at Otis College of Art and Design for a summer semester before drugs, alcohol, and a self-described lack of discipline prevented him from enrolling full time. Still, he taught himself concepts like text hierarchy and later found his niche at the Belly Up and in the surfing and skating world, working with brands like Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Scorpion Bay, and DGK.
His first concert poster was for North County band Borracho y Loco, of which Goldsmith was bass guitarist. Scrojo drew an abstract version of the Belly Up’s iconic shark with colorful calypso and tiki themes.
Early on, he would craft using a pencil, pen, non-reproduction blue pencil, X-Acto knife, rubber knife, and proportion scale to create each poster, and the finished product could take a week or even longer.
Courtesy of Scrojo
“I recommend every artist coming up to do that for like six weeks,” Scrojo says. “It forces you to think about every design decision as you’re going along.”
He has since mastered vector imagery through Adobe Illustrator to the point where, depending on the level of detail needed, he could finish two projects in a day. Still, he fills sketchbook after sketchbook to blueprint.
“I liked his line in particular, and he knows how to draw, which a lot of people don’t really know how to do these days,” King says.
Scrojo would research what each musician’s merchandise looks like to get a feel for each artist’s tone and voice. Once he has his central image in mind, he focuses on what and where to place the text.
He doesn’t have one specific style, ranging his talents from art deco to psychedelic and everything in between (and outside the lines). Want a pop surrealist comic book cartoon devil with splattered paint textures, halftone dot patterns, and pure chaos? Red Hot Chili Peppers, February 1986. Want a minimalist graphic portrait with bold strokes and graffiti text? P!nk, October 2023. Want a carnival sideshow style piece with a tasteful caricature of Jeff Bridges? The Big Lebowski, August 2011.
Scrojo calls himself a jack of all trades because he can create posters for all music genres. King calls him a chameleon for his ability to adapt his voice to new eras.
Courtesy of Scrojo
“The variety of his skillset makes it possible for us to put 50 of his posters on a wall next to each other and have it look compelling, not just a bunch of the same thing over and over,” Goldsmith says.
Some of Scrojo’s favorite posters are when he feels a personal connection to the artist or the album. He has a vivid memory as a child of being trapped in a closet filled with marijuana leaves while playing hide and seek and staring at Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” LP. “For whatever reason, as a kid, that sparked a desire to do graphic design,” Scrojo says.
Fast forward to February 2012, Cliff is performing at Belly Up. Scrojo decided to modify Cliff’s original album cover from rainbow gradient fills to classic reggae psychedelia while preserving Cliff’s striped pants and bold hat. Cliff’s manager called him and said they wanted to use it for the rest of their tour.
“We always get artists requesting that he does their posters,” Goldsmith says. “A lot of artists don’t want venues to go all rogue because they want to control how they’re being presented. With him, they’re like, ‘Let him go nuts.’”
Matt Eisenberg is an award-winning writer and photographer based in San Diego. A former ESPN editor, his work has also been published by CNN, Bleacher Report and the New York Daily News.
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
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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.
In 2004, Scripps orthopedic surgeons made history when they implanted the world’s first electronic prosthetic knee, replacing a patient’s failing joint and subsequently collecting valuable data on how everyday activities impact the knee. Now, research at Scripps is applying the same approach to the shoulder. Scripps Clinic researchers have secured grant funding to develop a prototype of a rechargeable “smart shoulder”—a Wi-Fi- and sensor-equipped device that will track shoulder usage and provide new insight into the joint’s inner workings. Click here for more about the smart shoulder and other innovative research taking place at the Shiley Center for Orthopaedic Research and Education (SCORE) at Scripps Clinic.
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