A butterfly-inspired roof with dramatic angles and clerestory windows, a concrete wall with glass inserts, and a style reminiscent of a bed and breakfast in Maui were at the top of the wish list that Mike and Tami McNerney had for their new home. It was a short list they’d been making—and editing—for years.
The couple bought their 1,000-square-foot Leucadia home in 2000 from a couple at their church who’d had it built in the 1940s. It was a simple Hawaiian-plantation-style home with lots of tropical landscaping. “We fell in love with the feel of the home and the yard,” Tami says. The three-quarter-acre property provided loads of room for their 100-pound Akita to run and lots of green space for Tami, who fosters and trains dogs and loves to garden.
The McNerneys lived in that two-bed, one-bath home for 18 years, keeping a binder of images they liked all the while, intending to remodel at some point. “We always planned to expand—add on, build up, or split the lot,” Mike says, “but we weren’t ever in a rush. We never felt cramped in the little house.”
That changed in 2016, when Tami was knocked off her feet at a dog park, broke her knee in seven places, and had to use a wheelchair for four months. The couple quickly realized the limitations of their bungalow when Tami couldn’t navigate the narrow hallways or doorways in the chair.
Adding on wasn’t going to cut it. The McNerneys needed a home that would allow them to one day age in place. They decided to build a larger single-story home—with much wider passages—on the same lot, behind their little house. They also wanted their new home to be environmentally focused. “We wanted to find an architect who would help us think through a green build,” Tami says.
Leucadia home – entrance
Leucadia Home – exterior
Peaceful ParadiseMike and Tami wanted their home to feel like an escape, so Tami created a landscape filled with lush palms, fruit trees, and more. Designer Erica DeLorme created cozy spots where the couple can take in the view—outside, where they sit with Roxy and Jax, their dogs, and inside, on chairs covered in a custom Peter Dunham fig-leaf fabric.
After interviewing several, the couple hired French-born Jean-Louis Coquereau, owner and principal architect of JLC Architecture. Tyler Van Stright served as the project manager. But before they could plan the layout and features of the home, they had to address the site’s well-developed landscape. “There were over 100 trees on the property, and here we were talking about which ones had to be cut down,” Tami says. “I planted almost everything except the avocado trees. I trudged through ditches installing irrigation and worked late into many nights using my headlamp to see what I was doing in the yard. These trees meant something to me.”
Tami negotiated to save what she could, asking Van Stright to work around the avocado trees, a wisteria vine, and a smattering of other large trees. And when it came time to remove the others, she had to be the one holding the chainsaw. “It felt like I was destroying memories,” she confesses. “I’m sentimental, so I had to be the one to do it.” The trees that remained became a focal point of the new design.
Van Stright explains that the real challenge wasn’t in preserving vegetation, but in giving the couple’s traditional tropical style a modern interpretation: “We didn’t want the Hawaiian elements to feel forced; we wanted to retain all the best aspects of its design—the vaulted roof, deep overhangs, and warm wood.” The result is a home that marries the images from the McNerneys’ inspiration binder with modern architecture.
Inside, beyond the entryway, a wall of windows and glass doors provides sight lines from the spacious living, dining, and kitchen areas out to the lush landscape and Balinese-inspired pool the couple built in 2006. Above, an ipe wood ceiling dramatically dips, soars, and comes to a peak in the center of the room. The hallway that runs in opposite directions from the entry is just as striking. Made of concrete, it’s modeled after one Tami spotted at a winery in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It was made of cinder block and had green pieces of glass in it that let the light through,” she says. “I had never seen anything like it. Mike and I agreed that we wanted to somehow incorporate it into the house.”
Leucadia home – kitchen 2
Eco KitchenThe FSC-certified maple kitchen cabinets were built by Brad Adelman Custom Cabinetry using a soy-based glue and a plant-based stain. The Stahl + Band bar stools are made from saddle leather, and the pendant lights from Arteriors are made from hand-woven natural sea grass.
The hallway was reinterpreted as a poured-in-place concrete wall with ribbons of clear glass, rather than green. In the morning light, the east-facing wall makes a rainbow path that travels from the home office and guest suite to the primary bedroom and bath.
The couple’s commitment to a sustainable, health-conscious build meant not using anything that would off-gas, sealing the concrete floors with a nontoxic coating that still lets the texture of the rock show through, finding insulation made of recycled denim, sourcing FSC-certified maple cabinets that use a soy-based glue, and staining them with a plant-based product from Rubio Monocoat, a Belgian company.
The McNerneys requested to use AFM Safecoat, a paint that’s available only through Colorama Paints & Supply in San Diego. They installed solar panels on top of the little house to power both homes, and they treat their water with the Wellpure Water Treatment System from Wellsprings Water Technologies out of Escondido.
All for ArtDeLorme and Tami sourced the ceramic wall hanging by Michele Quan (above the couch) on a road trip they took prior to the pandemic. DeLorme left space on the TV wall for the art-loving couple to grow their collection. In the mudroom, DeLorme painted one wall Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron. Tami purchased the David Alan Collection bench that sits in front of it.
“That system makes it so we don’t need chlorine in the pool, we can drink the water right from the tap, and the plants are doing so much better on it, too,” Mike explains. The McNerneys sourced most of the greener building materials after doing lots of research and seeing
some of the products in action. Mike is a commercial real estate developer for Lowe, the company behind the IDEA1 residential building downtown and the renovation of the Town and Country Resort in Mission Valley.
For builder Kerry Rutherford, of KR Building, it was the first time he’d used some of the materials, so he had to figure out how to guarantee his work on products that were unfamiliar to him. It took some rethinking. “We usually spray foam insulation into a vaulted ceiling to prevent condensation,” he says, “but we couldn’t do that, so we added venting instead.”
Let There Be LightAt an Arizona winery, Tami saw a cinder-block-and-glass wall she loved. “I liked that you couldn’t see people through it, but you could see light,” she says. The McNerneys wanted this feature incorporated into their home. The interpretation is a concrete wall flanking one side of the home’s only hallway, and Tami says the colorful spectrum of light it casts in the morning is her favorite.
During the framing phase, the McNerneys hired interior designer Erica DeLorme of E+D Design to bring their style indoors, creating resort-like nods to island life. She hung woven light fixtures above the island, made outdoor living spaces under the overhangs, and commissioned a set of chairs from Cisco Home (an LA–based company known for its eco-friendly pieces) in a fig-leaf print from Peter Dunham.
Though the home is rather neutral, DeLorme played with Tami’s two favorite colors—green and blue—in impactful ways. The guest bath wears a sea-glass green custom concrete tile from Modern Earth Tile Company. DeLorme and Tami laid out the arrangement together; it’s intentionally devoid of repetition. In the primary bath, one wall of which can be seen from the hall, DeLorme chose a navy Clé cement tile.
The art throughout the home was a joint effort between the owners and the designer. The McNerneys bought what speaks to them—a photo of Willie Nelson’s hands playing his guitar, Trigger; a painting by local artist Andy Davis done on a reclaimed surfboard; and a print by John Lennon—in addition to several pieces already in their collection.
Leucadia home – bedroom
Color CornerTami’s favorite colors (green and blue) make subtle appearances throughout the house but go bold in the guest bathroom, where the shower features a light green tile. For balance, DeLorme kept the primary bedroom neutral with a bed from Kalon Studio, nightstands from Faithful Roots, and a bench from Shoppe by Amber Interiors.
For her part, DeLorme filled in a few blanks by helping the couple find the three-dimensional wall hanging for the living area and commissioning local artist Nancy Fraser to create a few paintings. But DeLorme still left plenty of space for the couple to add, which they plan to do.
Though she loves the entire home, Tami admits spending most of her time in the yard with the dogs and her plants. She and Mike agree that the concrete wall and ceiling feel the most unique: When Van Stright visited after the home was complete, he came through the entry and lay down on the concrete floor to take in the view above.
“That level of comfort speaks to the nature of this living space,” Van Stright says. “They have this finely crafted home, and yet nothing feels untouchable. It’s a home that’s meant to be enjoyed and lived in.”
Guides
JULY 6, 2026
6 Perfect Days in North County
We found a handful of inspiring people who live in, and truly know, these 'hoods and asked them how they’d spend their time out and about
Growing up in Carlsbad, I never quite understood why people vacationed there. What, so you want to check out the field where I have soccer practice? Pay my orthodontist a visit? Carlsbad just felt like a town by the beach, no better or worse than any other in the country. It took going to college out of state for me to actually understand just how rare a place like Carlsbad is.
Thanksgiving break my freshman year, my first time coming home after three months in the Midwest, my shoulders dropped. I rolled down the windows and drove to lifeguard tower 37—the hangout magnet for Carlsbad’s youths (and, in the summer, tourists)—and the smells of the ocean woke me right up like smelling salts do. I finally got it.
Carlsbad isn’t just a stopover town on your way to something better. It is the destination. Travel + Leisure named Carlsbad one of the top 50 places around the world to travel in 2026. From the whole globe, the travel magazine picked my home. Sure, we’ve got the Flower Fields and Legoland—but now it’s the smaller ships and indier dreams that are giving it street-level character.
It’s not just Carlsbad, either. People have talked about the “North County bubble” for decades—a force field that prevents its residents from traveling south of the 56. It’s often used derogatorily, and it’s a fairly accurate burn.
For decades, living up in North County meant giving up on culture, or at least culture within close proximity. But now, the main expansion of San Diego culture is happening up north. Central San Diego restaurants have started taking notice and are expanding into the area—spurred no doubt by Oceanside’s food boom and the Jeune et Jolie–Campfire–Wildland–Lilo constellation in Carlsbad. City Heights burger joint Key & Cleaver opened a new spot in Oceanside; the owners of Parc Bistro-Brasserie in Bankers Hill opened Parc Lounge in Rancho Santa Fe. Possibly the strongest market indicator is that Sam Fox—one of the most successful restaurateurs west of the Rockies—has started focusing on North County for his concepts. In 2025, he opened both The Henry in Carlsbad and Culinary Dropout in Del Mar.
For the ultimate insider guide, we found a handful of inspiring people who live and create and truly know six North County neighborhoods—San Marcos, Escondido, Oceanside, Leucadia, Rancho Santa Fe, and Vista—and asked them how they’d spend a dream day out and about in their town.
Courtesy of North City Farmers Market
San Marcos
San Marcos is in full renaissance mode. The biggest story is that the grand North City vision is starting to peek through the scaffolding. It’s essentially the North County Downtown that’s been written in the tea leaves and discussed whenever someone gets stuck in traffic at the 5/805 merge: a 200-acre, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use face-changer that’s slated for 2,600 homes, 350,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, 250 hotel rooms, and about a million square feet of offices and labs. Its most recent manifestation is 222 North City—a 12-story residential tower with over 450 residences, rooftop garden, pool cabanas, art installations, and almost 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail (Necessity Coffee, Buona Forchetta, Draft Republic, Milonga Empanadas, and a grocery store anchor on its way).
Which means Restaurant Row is no longer burdened with being the primary caregiver for the hungry or the socially inclined. Patricia Prado-Olmos has watched the city morph during her nearly three-decade tenure at CSUSM, having spent the past six years as the school’s chief community engagement officer. She also just announced her forthcoming retirement at the end of the 2026–2027 school year, so she’ll have even more time to haunt local haunts.
Meet the Local: Patricia Prado-Olmos
Those in the know call the university “Cal State StairMaster” from the Sisyphean amount of stairs on the hillside campus. So, any day at or around CSUSM should start with a homestyle carbo-load (biscuits and gravy) from Mama Kat’s.
“There’s something about this breakfast spot that immediately puts me in a good mood,” she says. Mama Kat’s is also known for its pie (strawberry-rhubarb), which is breakfast if you change your perspective.
After a few hours on campus—with a break to pet the university’s official therapy goldendoodle, Frank, who helps ease finals tremors or apprehension of on-campus stairs—Prado-Olmos will wander into North City, just steps away. She says the almond croissant and coffee at Christophe Rull Patisserie rival Parisian cafés: “It feels like the kind of place you’d stumble across in a much bigger city.”
Rull, a Michelin-trained pastry chef who’s done stints on Netflix (Bake Squad) and Food Network (Super Mega Cakes, Halloween Wars), opened his patisserie last fall. The hype hasn’t cooled off yet: Get there early because the crowds do.
Emma Veidt is an editor at San Diego Magazine. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism. She loves running, hiking, and rock climbing, but really, she mostly loves encounters with the street cats around North Park.
Edna Harper asked for one thing before she died: that the next owner of her iconic Mission Hills home keep the street-facing “garden.” Which is essentially asking the future residents to be curators of a whimsical and obsessive, delightful and strange, classic, cartoony and slightly unhinged sculpture museum. Harper, who died in January at the age of 87, poured her heart into this topiary bonanza, and it’s right there for everyone to see.
Like thousands (or millions, there’s no formal estimation) of others, I had scrolled through the photos of this topiary fantasia before I ever stood in front of it. As of this writing, Harper’s Topiary Garden is No. 227 of 2,686 Things to Do in San Diego on Tripadvisor, making it a popular tourist stop between fish tacos, a day at the beach, and a stroll in nearby Presidio Park. But crowdsourced photos quickly snapped in direct overhead sunlight tend to flatten the shapes that, while meticulously manicured, refuse to behave. In person, Harper’s figures seem to be in motion and, given that they’re sculpted out of bushes, they literally are. (I’d love to see a maintenance timelapse.)
Animals emerge out of shrubs as if they have impish ideas. A fanciful whale, a man in a sombrero, a random spiral twisting skyward, otherworldly creatures that defy categorization—all of these exist together in a neatly trimmed cascade pouring down the steep front slope of the property.
You don’t accidentally end up with a yard like this. You decide to create it and choose to cultivate it, and then you keep deciding and cultivating—for decades.
Although a consistent parade of looky-loos have visited over the years, most have never been inside the home, which is on the market for the first time since Harper and her husband, Alex (who died in 2020), bought it in 1969.
Courtesy of Christopher Delgado
“It was and is a landmark,” says Christopher Delgado, Harper’s cousin and trustee of her estate. “She specialized in Chinese brush art and Japanese art called ‘sumi-e,’ a form of Zen art. She was a creator … she was very, very talented.”
I can’t stop thinking about Harper, sitting at the kitchen window, looking down at her masterpiece and the watchers watching it. The image of Harper enjoying the joy the public took from her handiwork makes me want to understand the woman behind the work. Because topiary, as an art form, has always been a little… loaded.
Topiary has always had a bit of an identity crisis—and that’s part of its charm.
When I think of topiary, I immediately think: Fancy. French bourgeoisie. Palace of Versailles. Mais non! Topiary has its origins in Rome. According to the Center forArchitecture, the word “topiary” has its origins in late 16th century English, which combines the Greek word “topos” for place and the Latin word “topiarius” for ornamental gardner.
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
Topiary started as a flex, really. A Julius-Caesar-adjacent pastime for the most ancient one-percenters; an expression accessible only to those with land, labor (or, put more plainly, enslaved people), and spare time. In its earliest form, topiary was about control: bending nature into submission. It’s where symmetry and precision signaled order, taste, and money.
But with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages that followed, the topiary almost preceded the Dodo Bird in extinction. Monks quietly kept the art alive by growing herbs and manicuring the gardens and hedges within the courtyards of their monasteries.
It wasn’t until the Renaissance nine centuries later when topiary saw a resurgence—ah, Versailles!—and this form of pleasure gardening went into overdrive. Nature became architecture. The French pruned their foliage into iconic cones and obelisks, walls to keep out the riffraff, and ornamentation designed to impress. The Dutch got a little freaky, as they do, and sculpted complicated figures, animals, and even furniture.
Inevitably, the pendulum swung again, and topiary fell out of favor once it became viewed as excessive and even absurd. Even so, it never really disappeared. It just migrated to exist in a completely different paradigm. It was less Versailles and more, “What if this bush were a mouse?”
Fast forward to Disneyland in 1963. That year, the park opened a topiary garden in Fantasyland with verdant sculptures of giraffes, camels, elephants, and hippos all inspired by Denmark’s Tivoli Gardens.
Disney’s interpretation of topiary—which is still a fixture of park decor today—falls more into the realm of imagination and possibility than restrained aristocratic performance.
That’s one of the stranger throughlines of topiary: It moves from elite to everyday, from stiff and formal to playful and silly, from symbol of control to something steeped in personal expression.
Which is what makes a place like Harper’s Topiary Garden so compelling and the woman behind it utterly intriguing.
Courtesy of Christopher Delgado
Born in 1938, Edna Harper was something of a Renaissance woman. She worked for two decades as a dental assistant, and she later became a notable painter, calligrapher, and stained glass artist (the house itself is adorned with her work). But she was also savvy in other ways.
“She graduated [with a degree in dental assisting] from San Diego City College and wanted to have her own money and her independence,” says Delgado. “Most people didn’t know that she was such a great businessperson, and for many years, she managed all of [the couple’s] properties on her own. She was great at building relationships … she touched a lot of people’s lives.”
Her friend and fellow artist Julie Roth attributes her artistry to her relationship with Harper. The pair met two decades ago at an art class at Oasis in Mission Valley.
“She was just the most encouraging person,” Roth says. “I didn’t know I could paint, but apparently I can. She was a tremendous person.”
I asked Roth what she’d want people to know about her friend.
“Her empathy and diplomacy,” she says. “[She had] a sharp eye for other talent. She spotted me, but I’m not the only one she encouraged.”
That sharp eye suggests attention, the same kind it takes to look at a bush and also see a whale. Or a spiral. Or something that doesn’t exist yet, but could.
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
Nothing about Harper’s life suggests someone chasing attention. And yet, she ended up creating something that demanded hers, and she took great pleasure in seeing people enjoy her creations.
The garden didn’t happen all at once. It grew out of years of travel, observation, and collaboration. Harper often traveled without her husband, always returning from trips to Japan, Thailand, and other parts of Asia with ideas and impressions captured through sketches in a notebook.
“She would get creative ideas from her travels … she’d come back with ideas and pictures, and they’d go about cutting that topiary bush into shape,” Delgado says.
For the past 25 years, she had the help of her gardener, Pedro Duran—who’s still employed by the trust and has maintained the garden since Harper’s passing.
In the early topiary years, Harper worked closely with Duran in what Delgado describes as a kind of shared “labor of love.” She would share her sketches and together the pair would shape the bushes into something deliberate.
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
“As she got older, she would increasingly draw her ideas and [Duran] would [carry them out],” Delgado says.
That collaboration reinforces that her garden was not an act of control, but one of creative collaboration and translation. From memory to sketch. From sketch to shrub. From something seen, somewhere else in the world, to something rooted in the soil of a steep hillside in Mission Hills.
Harper also made sure that the lawn’s boisterous energy made its way into the house on Union Street. Apparently, she threw legendary parties.
“Fairly regularly, in the late ’70s and ’80s, she would host Super Bowl parties with 200 people. She had TVs everywhere,” Delgado says.
It’s not hard to square that image with the stillness of the garden which, despite the careful pruning and intentional design, is voluminous and nearly vibrating.
And, damnit, I wish I’d watched some sportsball on her shocking number of TVs and wandered out front to the topiary—slightly wine-drunk with an orange smear of wing sauce on the corner of my mouth—to marvel at the leafy hippo and this woman’s elaborately creative life.
Photo Credit: Casiel Sanchez
I can hear Delgado smiling as we talk on the phone. He’s going back to his childhood, when he talks about being one of the cousins Harper doted on when he visited.
“The adults were inside, and we’d be out in the camper,” he says, “and [Harper] would come check on us, make sure we were okay. She always had gifts for us. If it was Easter, there were chocolate eggs. If it was Christmas, stockings. We were the beneficiaries of them not having kids because they showered us with all their love.”
Knowing this and taking a look at her garden again, you can see it’s not the work of a shut-away curmudgeon. It’s wondrous, inviting, and the right kind of weird.
“Ultimately, she did it for herself and family, first and foremost,” Delgado says of Harper’s Topiary Garden.
Harper’s one request of whomever buys her home may seem like a focus on basic maintenance, about hedges and upkeep and preserving something visually striking. But it’s really about attention. And maybe, too, about legacy. Not hers, per se, but the legacy of community, relationships, art, creativity, possibility, adventure, culture, dedication, and love.
For now, it’s there for anyone to see, and its future is in the hands of whomever comes next.
Aaryn Belfer is a writer and editor specializing in nonfiction across art, architecture, and culture. Once upon a time, she wrote a provocative column for San Diego CityBeat (RIP). She was a runner up in the 2025 Matchbook Stories contest at the San Diego Central Library and is irrationally happy about it. Currently in her Soft Girl Era, Aaryn has expensive taste in (mostly flat) shoes and will choose a great art exhibit or live jazz concert over almost anything else. Except, possibly, Javier Bardem.
The floor is made of glass. Under your feet, you can see the cellar—15-foot ceilings, soft light, and stained white oak walls the color of desert silt.
Tucked behind the wood, inside the doors, and in the ceiling is a highly advanced and very specific network of tech assembled in San Marcos—perfectly calibrating the room for humidity and temperature with vapor barriers, specialized insulation, and LED lights. Along the walls on matte blag pegs lay 1,000-plus bottles of wine—some iconic collector vintages, some with stories, some earmarked for major life moments.
This is a very serious wine home, built by someone whose obsession eventually leads to a call with Chris Noel.
“We have some clients who have been collecting wine since the ’60s and the ’70s, and they have collections of 15,000 or 20,000 or more bottles,” says Noel, owner of Vintage Cellars, the San Marcos–based designer of custom wine vaults for some of the region’s top restaurants and super-collectors. “[For them], collecting wine is similar to Jay Leno collecting cars.”
Courtesy of Vintage Cellars
Before the wheel, there was wine. Fermenting fruit sugars into alcohol was a thing as early as 4100 B.C. (wheel, circa 3500 B.C.), most likely a happy accident. Unsurprisingly, the tipsy breakthrough in juice arts was a huge hit. The challenge was that it was also hugely perishable.
The first efforts to save it from spoil were clay vessels called amphora, often fully or partially buried to create a sun-proof, temperature-stable environment. The terra-cotta pots were pointy-bottomed, which stacked and traveled better, encouraged gas circulation (thus preventing oxidation, the famed wine ruiner), and helped separate sediments.
Once basic preservation was figured out, makers noticed the aging process ushered in a moodier magic. So they engineered structures to tinker with the possibilities of the long haul. Those first wine holes in the dirt evolved into entire catacombs, tombs, quarries, and caves.
Courtesy of Vintage Cellars
Ancient Romans engineered wine storage rooms called fumariums, built facing north to avoid the sun and filled with smoke to speed the aging process (no doubt rapidly aging the cellar workers in the process).
For centuries, specialized wine storage was mostly a commercial venture. Serious wine people would (and still do) outsource their collections to a bonded storage facility or turn to professional cellarers who run giant chilled warehouses of cabernets.
A few major social moments sparked a more serious at-home cellar trend. First, the “Judgment of Paris” in 1976 (California wines famously besting the French in a blind tasting) established US wineries as worthy of collections.
A few years later came the 1982 Bordeaux, one of the most-coveted vintages in history. It was championed by a US lawyer named Robert Parker, whose 100-point scale rating system would quickly become the gold-standard for grading wines, creating a huge boom of wine collectors for the next few decades (wine as an economic investment became a thing).
The US economy also boomed in the ’80s, while France hit a skid. With the dollar trading 6-1 against the franc, US collectors had a rare chance to pick up Grand Crus at serious bargains, which demanded equally serious storage.
Courtesy of Vintage Cellars
Given that framing, 1990 was a fairly great time for Vintage Cellars to get into the game. Noel—who worked his way up at the company and then eventually took over as owner in 2020—and his team work with architects, designers, and builders to create cellars that both fit the space and act as an attraction in multimillion-dollar homes across the region, and at top restaurants like Pamplemousse Grille in Del Mar and Avant Restaurant in Rancho Bernardo Inn. They hide cooling systems in brick-walled enclosures, bend bottle racks around curved walls, create standalone pavilions—engineer structures for cabs.
Their cellars hover between 50 to 70 percent humidity to keep the cork appropriately moist. Air too dry, and a cracked cork will give up the ghost—O2, in excess, turns wine into vinegar. If the air’s too dry, it can shrink the cork, eventually evaporating the wine and creating a low pressure that will pull in destruction. Too humid, and mold contaminates the works.
Light’s a big no-no for wine, too. Incandescent or halogen lights were the norm for cellars 20 years ago, but they emitted heat. Like Schrödinger’s Cat, these bulbs would risk the subject in order to view it. Vintage Cellars adopts LED lighting and, for glass cellars in the sightline of bright windows, mechanized shades that lower during UV exposure times.
Custom circumference-cut cove trays, leather saddles, and pegs stabilize bottles in Vintage Cellars storage areas; movement disturbs the tannins and upsets the aging process. And these cellars are smart, with app-based monitoring, remote temperature monitoring, and eSommelier cellar management. Don’t fret, Siri’s got your Syrah.
The most important decision, however, is deciding when to uncork that special bottle.
“[A lot of times, people] are saving those wines for specific moments in life—maybe a 50th anniversary or when their firstborn turns 21,” says Noel. “That’s how they look at it: as social and also to create memories.”
Pete Peterson has served as high as Editor-in-Chief of an enthusiast media magazine and as low as writer of his own bio… In addition to contributing to San Diego Magazine, Pete authored the YA novel One Tiger One Teen and is working on his second novel. Slightly more info is available at petepetersonauthor.com.
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.
Entrepreneurs typically launch businesses because they’re passionate about a product or service, not because they want to manage its finances. While working to carve out a niche in their respective industries and drive their companies forward, many business owners find themselves bogged down by day-to-day accounting. Their existing accounting tools don’t provide the necessary visibility or insight, and they don’t have the time or resources to hire additional staff or a chief financial officer. That’s where NOW CFO comes in.
For more than 20 years, NOW CFO has been pairing businesses across the country with experienced accounting and finance professionals. Its outsourced model allows clients to customize solutions that match their individual needs, size, and financial challenges, whether that’s fractional or interim support, project-based services, or full-time placement.
NOW CFO’s clients range from startups preparing for rapid growth to established companies that need additional financial leadership without the commitment or expense of building an in-house team. However, many of these companies don’t fully understand their needs until they experience a “trigger” event: preparing for an acquisition or capital raise, navigating a first-time audit, or another period of transition. With a team of over 300 consultants nationwide, NOW CFO can start quickly and match the right expert to the right business.
“It’s important for companies to have financial visibility, and we can help them avoid a lot of the potholes that companies often run into,” says Mariah Block, a partner at NOW CFO’s San Diego branch. “Roughly half of our clients have an in-house finance person or department, and we’re resourced for more bandwidth when they need an extra set of hands at the staff or senior accountant level, or the controller or CFO level. Some clients use this a few hours a month and others use multiple people close to full-time. Our model is solution-based and customizable. We’re like a faucet you can turn on and off.”
With NOW CFO, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Solutions are based on the client’s individual goals, challenges, needs, and budget, meaning a client never pays for more than they need. Whether it’s a few hours of executive-level guidance or a full accounting team to support daily operations, NOW CFO meets businesses where they are and grows alongside them.
“We pride ourselves on providing our clients with the right resources at the right rate and being able to evolve as their needs evolve,” says Block.
And clients appreciate on-demand access to cost-effective support designed to improve performance and profitability.
Luxury car storage service Auto Concierge has partnered with NOW CFO to support growth over the past year. The arrangement began with a staff accountant who covered a leave of absence, but as the client’s needs changed, they also added a controller role. This allowed Auto Concierge to put effective processes in place and navigate operational challenges. Lori Church, Auto Concierge’s chief operating officer, says NOW CFO has been an “outstanding resource” and a “true strategic partner.”
“From the controller to the bookkeeper, every professional they’ve placed has brought a high level of expertise, responsiveness, and professionalism to our organization. Their team took the time to understand our business of high-profile clients and needs, adapted quickly to our fast-paced environment, and became a trusted extension of our team,” she says. “As Auto Concierge continues to grow, having a reliable financial partner like NOW CFO has allowed us to strengthen our financial and business operations while remaining focused on delivering exceptional service to our clients.”
Just south of Lake Hodges near 4S Ranch and Poway, Rancho Bernardo is a suburban community that blends residential neighborhoods with industrial pockets, elevated by a decidedly diverse food scene.
Over 60 years ago, this North County neighborhood was once part of a family ranch. Since that time, big tech companies have taken up residence here, including Amazon, Sony Electronics, Oura Ring, HP, Teradata, and ASML. Rancho Bernardo Inn serves as a community hub, with locals frequently meeting at the hotel’s restaurants, golf course, and spa.
Whether it’s work or a round of golf that brings you to Rancho Bernardo, we’ve taken care of the agenda planning with our guide to the area’s best restaurants, activities, and shops.
Courtesy of Avant Restaurant
Rancho Bernardo Restaurants, Bars, and Coffee Shops
Avant
Sample ingredients plucked straight from Rancho Bernardo Inn’s onsite garden and served at their signature restaurant Avant. One of the neighborhood’s most upscale dining options, they serve a French-inspired menu with nods to California, including many seafood options. Don’t miss their more casual sister restaurant Veranda for al fresco dining.
Wood-fired pizzas and handmade pastas are standouts at The Kitchen, Bernardo Winery’s counter-service restaurant specializing in Sicilian flavors. Charcuterie boards and bruschetta make for great starters or snacks while wine tasting.
13330 Paseo Del Verano Norte
Bushfire Kitchen
Fast-casual and family-owned eatery Bushfire Kitchen recently opened a location in Rancho Bernardo, serving sandwiches, bowls, salads, burgers, protein plates, and housemade empanadas. Bushfire prepares comfort food with healthy ingredients, and offers plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.
11962 Bernardo Plaza Drive, Suite 110
The Cork & Craft
Some might call The Cork & Craft an overachiever. This gastropub has an in-house craft brewery and winery: Abnormal Beer and Wine. The more, the merrier. Their sushi menu is definitely worth exploring, but don’t miss other specialties like garlic noodles, chicken wings, and pork belly.
16990 Via Tazon
Courtesy of Carvers Steaks & Chops
Carvers Steaks & Chops
You don’t have to leave Rancho Bernardo to get a white tablecloth steakhouse experience. Carvers Steaks & Chops has prime rib (their best seller), filet, ribeye, porterhouse, New York strip, and other cuts, served alongside crab-stuffed mushrooms, wedge salad, French onion soup, potato skins, and other steakhouse specialties.
1940 Bernardo Plaza Drive
Burma Place
This no-frills Burmese restaurant is known for its traditional tea leaf salad that’s topped with sesame and sunflower seeds, garlic chips, peanuts, tomatoes, jalapeños, fried yellow beans, and fermented green tea leaf dressing. Tucked into a nondescript strip mall, Burma Place is a great takeout option when you want to eat garlic noodles, fried rice, chicken curry, and samosas from the comfort of your couch.
16719 Bernardo Center Drive, Suite A
Phở Ca Dao
Find authentic Vietnamese cuisine at Phở Ca Dao, including favorites like phở noodle soup, vermicelli noodles, broken rice dishes, and spring rolls. One of eight locations throughout San Diego, this family-owned chain uses robot servers for food delivery.
11808 Rancho Bernardo Road, Suite 100
The Kebab Shop
It’s all about the sauce at fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant The Kebab Shop. Smothering your chicken shawarma, gyro, or falafels in garlic yogurt, cilantro jalapeno, fire chili, and dill yogurt sauce is practically a rite of passage. The hardest part is deciding whether to order a wrap, bowl, or salad.
11980 Bernardo Plaza Drive
Casa Lahori
Get a taste of South Asian flavors at Casa Lahori, a Pakistani restaurant noted for its grilled meat kabobs. Other best-selling dishes include beef nihari, chicken biryani, and shahi paneer— best enjoyed with naan bread.
11975 Bernardo Plaza Drive
Kangnam Korean BBQ
Grill your own meat on the tabletop at Kangnam Korean BBQ, an interactive, all-you-can-eat experience that’s well-suited for large groups. Marinated beef bulgogi, grilled galbi short ribs, and spicy pork are served alongside traditional banchan dishes like kimchi, japchae glass noodles, and flavorful stews. Weekday lunch specials provide a nice discount on these filling meals.
11828 Rancho Bernardo Road, Suite 117–119
Courtesy of Curry & More Indian Bistro
Curry & More Indian Bistro
Dig in to your favorite curries and kebabs at Curry & More Indian Bistro. Most entrees are served with a choice of two side dishes, including basmati rice, potatoes with cumin, daal, naan, or mixed greens. Help offset the spice with one of their sweet mango or strawberry lassi drinks.
Kai Oliver-Kurtin is a San Diego-based writer who covers travel, dining, events, and culture. Her writing has been published in USA Today, Condé Nast Traveler, Fodor's Travel, Marie Claire, and HuffPost, among others.
Some keep lists of favorite books, of quotes, of enemies whose time shall come. At SDM we keep vast, nuanced, hotly debated lists of the best food and drink in the city. Menus are our smut novels. From Michelin stars to mom and pops, our list constantly evolves over hundreds of new bites tried every year. Here’s the 2026 list from food critic Troy Johnson and 129,000-plus votes from our readers, who really, really know their food.
Scroll down for the full list of Best Restaurant winners
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.
If you’re anything like us, it can be easy to get so caught up in taking care of everyone else, that your own needs get lost in the ether. But while this may be a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true: You can’t give your best self to other people unless you’re taking care of yourself.
Sometimes, that looks like stopping in for your regular acupuncture or chiropractic appointment. Other days, it means giving your body the fresh, organic fuel it needs to truly feel and function at its best. And some other times still, it involves leaving your responsibilities behind for a weekend to pamper yourself at an incredible resort and spa.
Only you can decide what your truly need. We’re just here to help you find the best ways to get it.
Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa
Island living meets desert luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. When you step onto the 11-acre property, you’ll be surrounded by sweeping view of the Santa Rosa Mountains with olive trees and fragrant citrus groves decorating the grounds. In other words, everything about this relaxed but refined resort is primed to help you let go of the stress from home and enjoy easy sun-soaked days and gorgeous starry nights.
The rooms blend calming, woven textures with Tommy Bahama’s signature tropical prints and feature private lanais, making it easy unwind the moment you walk in the door. If you book one of the four Villa Suites, you’ll be treated to exclusive Tommy Bahama furniture and unique personal touches to further that feeling of instant ease.
At the award-winning Spa Rosa, the expert team will help reset and recharge your body and mind using methods and rituals inspired by the desert. The 12,000-square-foot retreat includes outdoor soaking pools, eucalyptus steam rooms, and outdoor cabanas, as well as massages, facials, and body masks—all aimed at creating a day dedicated to you. We’re particularly partial to the Day Long Escape, an indulgent all-day affair of CDBs soaks, renewing scrubs, life changing massages, and transformative facials.
Following your treatment, continue the experience with a meal on the patio at Grapefruit Basil. We love the Hamachi Crudo, a light, citrus-forward dish featuring premium yellowtail, house-made ponzu, creamy avocado, and fresh seasonal garnishes.
Whether you’re strolling the gardens, relaxing beside its saltwater pools, or indulging in a restorative treatment, you’ll be able to escape in style and relax in luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa.
Healcove Chiropractic
There’s no shortage of ways to stay active in San Diego—but if you really want to enjoy everything the city has to offer, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving your body its tune-ups. Enter: Healcove Chiropractic. The board-certified chiropractors and wellness professionals at Healcove are experts at addressing that stage where you’re not injured, exactly, but you’re not at 100%, either. Maybe you’re feeling a bit tense or stressed out. Or it could be that you’re not quite moving the way you want to. Sometimes, it’s just that the accumulation of days, weeks, or even years of daily strain is starting to take a toll. No matter what stage you find yourself at, the Healcove Chiropractic team can provide integrated, preventative care centered on long-term, science-backed approaches that ensure you can always stay active and live the life you want to live pain-free.
This starts by providing truly individualized care. Every patient can expect a thorough 60-minute consultation session that includes a posture and movement screening. This allows the team to develop a completely personalized plan. That plan might include chiropractic care, acupuncture, or massage therapy, as well as functional fitness training, vibration and sound therapy, and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, a clinical rehabilitation method that retrains the body’s stabilization systems. Whatever the team recommends, you can be sure that it’s tailored to meeting your body’s needs today and the future.
There’s a reason that San Diego Magazine named Healcove the “Best Chiropractor in San Diego”—don’t wait until you’re struggling with an injury to find out why. Book an appointment today for holistic, integrated care that helps ground and heal your body before it reaches a crisis point.
Juice Holler
West Coast wellness culture meets the community feel of Southern Appalachia at Juice Holler. Juice Holler’s menu consists of made-to-order smoothies and smoothie bowls, as well as grab-and-go cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, salads, and more. It operates from the blissfully simple premise that fueling up with food and drink that’s guilt-free and good your body should be simple, accessible, and, above all else, delicious. And if you haven’t yet made it out to the Encinitas café, which opened just this year, let us be the first to tell you: Juice Holler delivers on each and every of these fronts.
We love the Supercharger smoothie, a mood-lifting and body-fueling option made with banana, almond butter, blue spirulina, maca, grass-fed whey protein, raw cacao nibs, medjool dates, and coconut milk. We’re also partial to the Thrive Alive smoothie bowl, where avocado, mango, sea moss, spirulina, mint, coconut milk, and agave are mixed and topped with coconut, chia seeds, strawberry, mango, and chocolate drizzle. The wellness shots include the Detoxifier, a cleansing blend of kale, cucumber, lemon and spirulina, plus a shot specially designed to fight inflammation (named, fittingly, Anti-Inflammation). Probiotic overnight oats, lemon turmeric bars, and strawberry shortcake chia pudding are other standouts on the grab-and-go menu.
Much of the vibe feels beachy North County chic—think green tile with orange and pink accents, grounded with greenery and natural wood—but Juice Holler founder Kelly Sergott, a longtime Encinitas local, has also enfused the space with her Kentucky roots. In Appalachia, a holler is small valley between hills and mountains, where nature reigns, community is king, and nourishment comes right from the land. At Juice Holler, Sergott has created a holler for the busy modern times, using local ingredients to create a spot for people to come together and enjoy fresh, fast, feel-good fuel for their day.
Everwell Acupuncture
We’ve all had that experience with a medical professional where we’ve felt rushed, ignored, or misunderstood—and ultimately, like we didn’t get the answers that we needed. But at Everwell, the holistic acupuncture practice located in Solana Beach, the care team wants to transform your understanding of what healthcare can look like.
Patients at Everwell experience care rooted in intentional listening and radical empathy—and trust us, those aren’t just corporate buzzwords. This place actually puts those ideas into practice. You will always be given the time you need to tell your story— initial in-take appointments are two hours long—and you can rest assured that your story will be believed. Every single question and concern will be addressed by a dedicated practitioner who wants to find the specific solutions that work best for you, and you’ll receive care that’s aimed at healing the body, mind, and spirit.
Everwell’s highly trained, doctorate-level practitioners blend evidence-based acupuncture with the practice of classical Chinese medicine. (If you’ve never tried acupuncture before or aren’t sure if the team will be a fit, we’d highly recommended Everwell’s complimentary 20-minute consultations.) Research shows that by stimulating specific points on the body, acupuncture activates a natural healing response in the body, helping to restore balance, regulate the nervous system, and improve overall wellbeing. This allows the practice to address an incredibly wide range of conditions from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to digestive issues, from stress and burnout to headaches migraines, fertility and postpartum struggles, hormonal imbalances, sleep concerns and more.
At Everwell, you can expect to feel heard, trusted, respected, and cared for. This is a space that doesn’t want to be just another healthcare provider you visit; it wants to provide patients with dedicated partner who will be there for their entire health journey.
