Navajo rugs, Mexican textiles, and folk art abound at the East County ranch of designer and restaurateur Diane Powers and husband Brent Gilman
The ranch house was built around this pine tree, which is at least 200 years old.
By Kimberly Cunningham | Photography by Jen & Bec
Diane Powers and Brent Gilman
GUEST ROOMS 8, each with its own theme, such as the All Saints Room and the Pendleton Room
HORSES 12, including a foal that was born this spring
Their Story
For most San Diegans, Diane Powers will always be the woman who pioneered the birdbath margarita and made Old Town the place to eat chimichangas beneath a sea of colorful umbrellas. But at the East County ranch she shares with husband Brent Gilman, Old Town feels a million miles away. Of course, there is color (lots of it) and tequila (plenty of that, too), but here, the rolling pastures and natural meadows offer a quiet serenity. Inside, the décor is what fans of her Bazaar del Mundo Shops might expect: vivid Guatemalan textiles, Talavera china, and entire rooms of folk art collectibles—a passion that began when a college professor gave Diane her first Mexican Tree of Life. That gift spawned a deep love of Mexican and Southwestern culture that inspires nearly everything she does. At home, she’s created a space that’s distinctly Diane (after all, her aesthetic is part of this city’s history). With a recently remodeled kitchen, separate catering room, and multiple dining areas, it is primed for what this San Diego icon does best. Bring on the chips and salsa!
formal living area
Navajo Niche
The formal living area features original redwood paneling and hand-hewn rafters tied with rawhide joinery. The room showcases Diane’s extensive collection of vintage Saltillo serapes. Some drape decoratively, while others are used as upholstery. Most of the accessories date back to the ’30s and ’40s, when the ranch was built. “I really tried to keep to what was done in those times,” Diane says. “But I put a contemporary spin on it.”
bedroom
Rustic Retreat
The couple’s custom headboard is made from two posts that once served as structural support columns in Mexico. Diane and her team then drew the rest of the design on the wall and filled it in with golden yellow and turquoise paint. The same design continues above the French doors and window treatments. On the left, Pendleton fabric covers an antique armchair. “Everything just evolves,” says Diane, who frequently travels to the Southwest, Guatemala, and Mexico, buying items for her stores and clients. “There’s a ribbon of continuity and vibrancy, those things that your eye responds to. It’s a style and a lifestyle that’s colorful, vibrant, and cultural.”
boots
These Boots Are Made For Riding
Diane turned one of the property’s spare bedrooms into a dressing room, where a sampling of her leather riding boots lines the floor. They are just as vivid as the rest of her life. “I love color,” she says. “That always attracts my eye when they’ve added something more radical.”
horses
Wide Open Spaces
“You don’t know you’re in San Diego when you’re here,” Diane says. This is one of her favorite views, from the main house overlooking the valley. “Everything is so natural,” with miles of hiking trails, live oaks, and roving wildlife. The cedar barn (not pictured) stands behind the pool house on the far right. The couple’s Arabian horses are their pride and joy, and have taken the duo all over the country to various competitions. Below, Kimberlite and her filly Karma Link frolic in the meadow and await dinnertime.
the ranch house
The ranch house was built around this pine tree, which is at least 200 years old.
The ranch house was built around this pine tree, which is at least 200 years old.
What’s Cooking
The kitchen features an array of bright Mexican tile work, a large island with a built-in griddle, and an original copper hood. Nestled inside the ranch house cabinetry are stacks of colorful platters and Talavera china. Diane laughs as she sifts through a shelf in search of the perfect bowl. “It looks like my store, right?” For further color, the restaurateur chose shiny cobalt Viking appliances. “I thought it would complement the other colors I have everywhere. I didn’t want to overdo the red, but the blue accents the red.” When asked if she ever gets sick of Mexican food, Diane, who is constantly working with her chefs to create new menu items, replies: “Never! I get addicted to it.”
kitchen
Colorful Corner
In this sunlit breakfast nook, ceremonial masks, a Guatemalan runner, and other festive textiles add cultural flair. Chevrons, stripes, and florals blend together—a thick border here, a thin accent there, some fringe to garnish. “Color is my passion, but I’d be hard pressed to answer if someone asked what my favorite color is,” Diane says. “I love color combinations. I like hot colors—red, orange, fuchsia—and then I love to contrast those with cobalts and blues.” (Fabrics available at Bazaar del Mundo)
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.
San Diego summers can be brutal. But since the hottest period is typically late summer into early fall, San Diegans still have time to prepare. The pros at Mauzy Cooling, Heating, Plumbing, and Electrical are standing by to help homeowners fortify their homes against the elements and ensure their air conditioning is as frosty as the penguins that serve as the company’s mascots.
Many homeowners underestimate the load their AC system faces, especially in the inland valleys where temperatures regularly top 100 degrees. San Diego regularly sees multi-day heatwaves each summer, and a system that struggles on the first day will likely fail by the third.Longer run times, unusual sounds or smells, and uneven cooling from room to room are all signs that your system may not survive the next hot spell.
Systems typically last 12 to 17 years, but there are exceptions. If a system is approaching that, or is already there, a professional evaluation is recommended before summer really heats up. A good rule of thumb: If you can’t remember when your system was last serviced, it’s due.
“As technology changes, systems become smarter and smarter,” says Sean O’Connor, an install manager at Mauzy with 42 years of experience. “There are a lot of people out there who will say a system’s only good for 10 years. I don’t buy that—these systems are built to last as long as they’re taken care of.”
There are also a few steps homeowners can take between services to extend the life of their system. Regularly changing a dirty filter—especially if you have kids or pets—and keeping an outdoor unit clean can help head off problems in the future, says O’Connor.
Also, be realistic about whether it’s time to replace a unit. O’Connor likens pouring money into salvaging a faulty unit with patchwork repairs and replacement parts to “tripping over a dollar to pick up a dime.” When one part fails, others are sure to follow, and newer parts may not be compatible with older units. Mauzy recommends homeowners use the 50% rule: If a repair costs more than 50% of the system’s replacement value, and the equipment is over 10 years old, replacement is usually the better long-term value. And don’t forget the ducting. An older house that was built with heat and later had air conditioning added may not have sufficient airflow, regardless of how good the system is.
Last but not least, homeowners should know who to trust when it comes to their homes. Built on three generations of professional integrity, Mauzy has grown into not just a leader for cooling, heating, plumbing, and electrical services, but a leader in the community known for supporting local nonprofits across an array of causes. To ensure complete peace of mind, Mauzy stands behind a comprehensive 12-point guarantee that outlines its commitment to outstanding service, quality equipment, expert technicians who understand how the local microclimates affect HVAC performance, and no upsells or surprises on the bill.
“We go the extra mile. That’s what sets us apart,” O’Connor says. To get a free quote today, visit mauzy.com.
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.
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.
Daniel A. Kaplan is a founding partner of Panakos LLP with more than three decades of civil litigation experience in both state and federal courts. Mr. Kaplan pursues and defends legal claims on behalf of companies, entrepreneurs, and business owners in high-stakes disputes. He focuses on business disputes including breach of contract, unfair competition, trade secret theft, securities disputes, fraud/misrepresentations, and employment matters.
“The best advocacy combines preparation, perspective, and a client relationship built on trust and candor.” — Daniel A. Kaplan
His clients include real estate investors, private and public corporations, and individuals seeking sophisticated legal counsel. Known for practical judgment and strategic advocacy, he works closely with an experienced and diverse legal team to protect, enforce, and defend his clients’ interests.
555 W. Beech Street, Ste. 500, San Diego, California 92101 619-8000-LAW Panakos.law
