Restaurant Week is back, taking place from Jan. 19-26. You have eight delicious days to try 180 restaurants all over San Diego County. Each establishment is offering lunch, dinner, or both.

Dinners are three-course prix-fixe menus priced at $20, $30, $40 or $50; lunches are two-course prix-fixe menus of $10, $15 or $20.

Can’t make it to all of them? Fret not. We’ve got a manageable approach. A half-dozen participating restaurants had the distinction of finding themselves in the winner’s circle of last year’s annual Best Restaurants poll. Below we’ve given you a taste of their Restaurant Week offerings, with links to the full menu. Choose one of these spots, and you’re guaranteed to pick a winner.

Mister A’s

Winner: Best View (Urban) (Critic’s Pick and Reader’s Pick), Best Mac’n’Cheese (Critic’s Pick 2019)

Dinner, $50

Choice of starters including lobster bisque and sweet potato agnolotti

Choice of mains including prime hanger steak and local roasted swordfish loin

Choice of desserts including citrus crème brulee and chocolate-praline bar

Whisknladle

Winner: Best Salad (Critic’s Pick), Best Chilaquiles (Reader’s Pick), Best of the Best Casual (Runner-up)

Dinner, $50

Choice of share plate options including beef tartare, local ahi tuna crudo, or local mussels

Choice of pasta alla norma, pork Bolognese, or Maine lobster taglierini

Choice of several mains including braised pork barbacoa, pan roasted flat iron steak, or burger

Café Gratitude

Winner: Best Healthy Eats (Runner-Up), Best Vegetarian (Runner-Up)

Lunch, $20

Choice of four starters including green Romanesco, and broccolini and edamame

Choice of four mains including eggplant parmesan focaccia, farmer’s market salad, and oyster mushroom asado bowl

Dinner, $30

Choice of four starters including Delicata squash, and roasted brussels sprouts

Choice of four entrees including samosa chaat and creamy puttanesca pasta

Choice of two desserts: banana cream pie and warm berry crumble

Solare Ristorante

Best Service (Runner-up), Best Italian (Reader’s Pick), Best Wine List (Reader’s Pick)

Lunch, $20

Choice of three primos including Solare classica Cesare and caldo freddo

Choice of four secondos including Italian sliders and scaloppini di pollo ai funghi

Dinner, $40

Choice of three antipastis including bruschetta alla mano and ciccia cruda

Choice of several secondis including gnocchi viola e asparagi and pesce del Giorno

Plus panna cotta all lavanda and a craft cocktail

Coasterra

Winner: Best View (Water) (Reader’s Pick)

Dinner, $40

First course choice of tortilla soup, macho salad, or mussels and clams “Michelada”

Choice four mains including cauliflower al pastor and roasted chicken “divorciadas”

Choice of three desserts: pineapple buttercake, churros calientes de la casa, or brownie tres leches

Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens, Liberty Station

Winner: Best Brewery (Reader’s Pick)

Lunch, $20 (includes a beer)

Choice of three salads including Little Gem Caesar, Fruity Goat, and SoCal Superfood

Choice of several mains including a burger, bruschetta BLT, and The Angry Chicken

Dinner, $30 (includes a beer)

Choice of several starters including Jidori Wings, 4-Square Grilled Cheese, and Yellowfin ahi poke “nachos”

Choice of several mains including True Craft Burger, Stone Brewing Medianoche, and The Angry Chicken

More from the 2014 Best Restaurants
The State of Restaurant Criticism / The Art of Presentation: The Marine Room’s Chef Bernard Guillas / Handle With Care: Juniper & Ivy / Where the Chefs Eat / Reader-voted Best Chef Accursio Lota / Food Blogger Favorites / Find the Winner Nearest You!

San Diegans love food. We pledge allegiance to the fish taco, go nuts for farm-fresh salads, and are big on burgers. In fact, the bigger, the better. Stir-fry, Korean barbeque, sashimi, pho—the list goes on and on. Thousands of readers voted for their favorites, which we collected, compiled, taste-tested, and tallied. The result: an insanely delicious guide, with expert picks from food critic Troy Johnson. Here, the best of the best—and then some.

A NOTE TO OUR READERS: Accuracy is paramount. But we are a service publication, and the lists we print should inform people and help them decide where to spend their time and money. We don’t want this poll to show readers who has the biggest mailing list or marketing staff. We want it to show which restaurants the people like best. If a restaurant wins an obscene amount of awards, and it’s apparent that “ballot stuffing” has occurred, San Diego Magazine reserves the right to give one or all of their awards to other top vote-getting restaurants that make a little more sense in real life.

Overall

Atmosphere

Specific Dishes

Specific Cuisines

Drinks

You know the tuna I’m talking about. It’s easy to mistake for a cube of watermelon. It’s the color of a Lyft logo. Appears to be glowing a vibrant, tantalizing purity. Tuna that bright red or pink means it’s… what, extremely fresh? Bursting with nutrients?

Nope. It means it’s got carbon monoxide.

I thought this was widely known, but a chef recently told me very few of his staff members were aware of this, and almost none of his customers. So, especially with the recent proliferation of poke joints, I thought I’d be helpful with this PSA of sorts.

Bright red or pink tuna means it has been gassed. In its natural state, fresh tuna is dark red, almost maroon, sometimes even chocolatey-looking.

Don’t worry, you most likely will have no ill effects from eating gassed tuna, according to the FDA. They have deemed carbon monoxided tuna as GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe), though the practice is banned in Japan, Canada, and the EU. Plus, there is carbon monoxide in barbecue (given off by wood smoke).

But here’s why I personally tend to back away when I see bright red or pink tuna: 

1. IT’S MUCH HARDER TO TELL IF IT’S FRESH OR NOT.

It can be left out for days and it will not turn brown. In one study, the University of Florida found that carbon monoxided tuna kept its bright red color for 11 days in the fridge. “The carbon monoxide actually hides the quality of a fish,” says Tommy Gomes, fifth-generation San Diego fisherman, host of The Fishmonger on Outdoor Channel, and owner of seafood shop Tunaville in Point Loma. “It’ll make a poor-quality fish pretty like a rose. I’ve seen them take an old piece of brown tuna [and] put the gas on it, and it comes out looking like cherry lemonade.” The gas also masks the smell of old tuna (which is one way you can tell if tuna’s getting past its eat-by stage). “Since there’s no smell, it falsifies the freshness,” Gomes explains.

2. I TRUST GOVERNMENT HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS, BUT ALSO RECOGNIZE THEY’RE NOT PERFECT.

The 1992 USDA food pyramid suggested carbs should be the bulk of our diet (they corrected that in 2005 and 2011). The government approved the fat substitute Olestra, which gave people all sorts of tummy issues. Margarine and other trans fats were also approved, then banned in May 2019. There are some smart humans in the government, but even geniuses make mistakes. So I tend to go with my gut: tuna in its natural state, or tuna treated with carbon monoxide? Easy choice.

So why gas tuna at all? Because of us. Consumers don’t like brownish fish. Tuna oxidizes quickly. It’s difficult for tuna fishermen and women to get it to market quick enough before it turns that brownish or chocolatey color. Customers erroneously think all brownish-looking fish is old or bad and will pay more for “fresher-looking” fish. So in the 1990s, the FDA allowed companies to gas the tuna and keep it artificially bright red for long stretches at a time. 

“There’s nothing wrong with a hot chocolate–looking tuna loin,” says Gomes. “But, here in America, we want [it] seared on the outside, rosy pink on the inside.” 

Gassed tuna is also often imported and less inexpensive than fresh, un-gassed tuna, says Gomes. “So, to be fair and honest,” Gomes acknowledges, “for families on a budget, gassed tuna is one of the best alternatives out there for frozen seafood.”

In the New York Times article cited above, a sushi restaurant owner reported his sales of tuna tripled when he started using gassed tuna. So that’s obviously good for the small business owner, as well as grocery stores. Food waste is a massive epidemic—the US throws out about half of edible seafood. If gassed tuna gets Americans to eat perfectly edible tuna they otherwise might throw out, that’s a step in a good direction.

But it’d be better if we as consumers knew that fresh, non-gassed tuna is supposed to be dark red or maroon—not bright red or watermelon pink, like a majority of the tuna I’ve seen at local poke shops. Ideally, we would look at a piece of bright red/pink tuna and think “Oh, hey there, carbon monoxide.” 

The most important things about buying tuna is to trust the source (whether grocery store, fishmonger, or sushi joint). It also should be shiny and somewhat translucent, and not have slime or an off-smell. 

Long live maroon tuna.