To celebrate all that 2023 has brought us, we’re taking a look back at some of your favorite stories by our editors and contributors. Here are SDM‘s top 10 most-read articles from this year:
Photo Credit: Eric Wolfinger
1: San Diego’s Best Restaurants, 2023
We asked, you answered. And the votes poured in like good, crisp hard kombucha on a sunny San Diego day. Here’s the best of the best in the food world, according to you (and us).
Courtesy of the San Diego County Fair
2: 10 Wild, Weird, Damn Good Eats at the SD County Fair
By Troy Johnson
Y’all are weird. And we like it. When we put out a list of the wildest foods to try at this year’s county fair, you grabbed your stretchy pants, coastered up the 5, and chowed down on Hot Cheeto sandwiches and mermaid floats like the youthful folks you are.
3: The Best Liquor Store Sandwiches in San Diego
By Emily Blackwood
Forget national chains and sub shops—you devoured our list of local markets with delis inside. From heroes to hoagies, San Diegans proved that they’re just as obsessed with sandwiches as everyone’s favorite pal, Joey Tribbiani.
Photo Credit: Jared Cross
4: The LaFayette Hotel San Diego Reopens Following $31M Renovation
By Jared Cross
Since it was one of the most anticipated openings of the year, we weren’t surprised that this SD icon’s rebirth caught our reader’s attention. Zebra prints, ostentatious furnishings, and velvet everything—The LaFayette returned under Consortium Holdings as an amusement park for the eyes.
Photo Credit: Johanna Siring
5: The Newly Renovated Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel Opens Its Doors
By Mara Altman
This year, Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel made its debut with a huge facelift and a fascinating story that started with a group of friends who wanted to purchase the property and ended up with an entire town instead. It’s a must-read.
Courtesy of Tanner’s Prime Burgers
6: Three-Star Michelin Chef Opens New Burger Joint in San Diego
By Troy Johnson
We love a good burger. So when we heard that Brandon Rodgers of The French Laundry was joining up with Brandt Beef to open Tanner’s Prime Burgers, we were eager to break the news. And you ate it up, too!
Honestly, no notes. This one was an obvious choice for a city that loves its craft brews. Beer guru Beth Demmon picked her favorite breweries in San Diego, and you took note. Sharpen your pitchforks—it’s a “best of” list.
Photo Credit: Stacey Keck
8: San Diego Mag’s Ultimate Spa Guide, 2023
SDM Staff
One of our most-read pieces each year is always our spa guide. It’s hard assignment for us staffers—we head into the city to check out the newest, best, and most interesting treatments in the spa world, just for you, our readers. Your very own ahhh guide, if you will.
Courtesy of Gilly’s House of Cocktails
9: Incoming: Gilly’s House of Cocktails
By Troy Johnson
When a beloved SD institution goes through a change in ownership, you watch, listen, and pray that it doesn’t lose its heart and soul. The brains behind some of San Diego’s top cocktail bars ushered in a new era for Gilly’s Cocktails recently, promising to keep it nearly the same—save for a few modern touches.
Courtesy of Corvette Diner
10: 20 Top Family-Friendly Restaurants in San Diego
By Beth Demmon
Topping out our top 10 list is a guide for families dining out. From thoughtful kid’s menus to toys and games, these eateries around town are parent- and kid-approved.
Nicolle Monico is an award-winning writer and the director of creative projects, digital editor for San Diego Magazine with more than 16 years of experience in media including Outside Run, JustLuxe and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Unleash your local loves and insider favorites once again in 2024, Powered by You! It’s time to nominate and vote for San Diego Magazine’s Best of San Diego Reader’s Choice Award. The winners will be revealed in the upcoming Best of San Diego issue this July and showcased on our website.
Your nomination and vote play a crucial role in giving your favorite businesses the recognition and bragging rights they deserve for the year ahead. So go ahead, show some love to your cherished local spots.
As a token of our appreciation, every vote enters you for a chance to win 2 tickets to The Best of San Diego Party on Friday, August 2, 2024.
How to Win
A business, place, or person must be nominated at least once to appear on the voting ballot. Once the voting period concludes, the business, place, or person with the most votes within their respective category will be selected as the Reader’s Choice category winner.
When submitting your nomination, please provide as many details about the business as possible, including its name, address, website, and phone number. Businesses and individuals that cannot be verified will not be eligible for voting.
Deadlines for Nominations and Voting
Nominations: March 11 – 24, 2024 Voting: March 25 – April 14, 2024
This is your chance to gather support from your biggest fans and followers to nominate and vote for your business. You know that you’re the obvious choice (and we agree), so we’ve put together this marketing toolkit to help you promote your business and win.
The winners will be announced in San Diego Magazine‘s Best of San Diego issue this July and posted online. And let’s not forget, bragging rights all year!
If you’re looking to amplify your marketing efforts, email our team at [email protected]. We’ll help you further your message with our most engaged readers.
How to Win
Secure at least one nomination for your business from March 11 – 24, 2024.
Start Promoting: Invite your biggest fans and followers to vote for your business from March 25 – April 14, 2024.
The nominee with the most votes will win “Reader’s Choice” in their respective category.
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Logically, the restaurant scene should’ve been dead-silent this year. Food costs went berserk. Labor costs swelled. We all knew how to cook because we were marooned in our own homes for a few years. And yet San Diego’s food scene unveiled a few dozen more pretty fantastic restaurants in 2023. This is what I love about restaurants and the people behind them. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Sure, money is to be Danny Meier’d for the few and the lucky and the ulcered.
But financial analysts who are not sadistic would advise you to put your money into the stock market, into real estate, into off-brand Beanie Babies before putting it into the restaurant industry. That means all you’re left with are people who do it because they have to, or because the dream of creating a hospitable place that makes humans happy is just too compelling to ignore.
Here are the new arrivals that won me over in 2023 and became part of my own personal hit list of the best new restaurants in San Diego.
Photo Credit: James Tran
Kinme
Omakase-only sushi spots took over the whole dang scene (omakase means you eat what chef deigns their best and most creative stuff that day, with no menu to choose from). Azuki in Bankers Hill has long been one of the city’s favorite sushi spots. It was never hype-trained. It just quietly, consistently snuck up on us all, probably because of owner Shihomi Borillo and chef Nao Ichimura’s obsession with the good-food movement.
Kinme is their tiny (900 square feet), 10-seat, omakase-only concept a block up the hill. It’s a mix of Edomae-style sushi and kaiseke, a seasonal, multi-course Japanese meal. The menu changes all the time, but it has included things like grilled corn with koji miso and tomatillo salt, A5 wagyu in ginger shoyu, and chawanmushi, plus Japanese whiskys, rare sake, and top-notch tea to finish.
Courtesy of Fish Guts
Fish Guts
A hell of a fish-taco-and-sammy shop. San Diego born and raised, Pablo Becker helped open some of the bigger Mexican restaurants in the country with his cousin, famed Mexican chef Richard Sandoval. He needed a break, so he moved to Chicago for five years and became a line cook. He was offered management roles, refused. Head down, cooking. Five years.
Fish Guts is his return home, a small-but-mighty corner spot in Barrio Logan. It serves sandwiches during the day, tacos at night, using almost all sustainable fish from local boats. Get the blackened whitefish with the jalapeño-cabbage slaw, the mushroom taco, or the fantastic Negra Modelo beer–battered lunch sammy with Mexican tartar sauce.
Photo Credit: Cole Novak
MAKE Projects
MAKE Projects is one of the city’s most inspiring food nonprofits, helping low-income refugees and immigrant women learn farming, cooking, and catering skills and earn a living as they acclimate to their new life in the US.
During the weekends, the women cook and sell specialties from their native countries—East African mandazi (they’re like beignets), halloumi with farm veggies, pancakes with Cambodian orange syrup, Afghan chicken tacos with Haitian pikliz—made with ingredients from their urban farm. Now they have a permanent home in North Park.
Lia’s Lumpia
I could hang on this back porch all day, joy-shoveling lumpia with a couple beers. Chef Spencer Hunter’s grandma owned one of the first Filipino restaurants in San Diego decades ago and was famed for her hand-rolled lumpia (being lazy, but real close to accurate, let’s call it the egg roll of the Philippines).
Spencer went to college for sustainable hospitality and cooked in huts in South America, then came home to work through some top-notch kitchens (Searsucker, Waters Fine Foods + Catering). He and his mom, Benelia Santos-Hunter, started doing lumpia pop-ups at festivals, including Coachella. They went on Great Food Truck Race, nearly and probably should’ve won (a contestable second place), and found a permanent spot in Barrio Logan in an old house filled with pop-culture and Filipino cultural knicknacks.
It’s a total work in progress, design-wise. This is two family members ad-hoc’ing a dream, and I like that. Spencer will do seasonal riffs (ramen lumpia, Thanksgiving lumpia), but get “Lola’s Lumpia,” stuffed with a mix of beef and pork marinated in oyster sauce and various things. And don’t miss their ube-coffee ice cream with white chocolate shavings.
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.
Stake Chophouse & Bar isn’t your average steakhouse. Blue Bridge Hospitality’s Coronado outpost is a modern interpretation of a big-city steakhouse nestled in the heart of the small coastal community. The team at Stake has reimagined the whole steakhouse experience. By prioritizing a seasonal farm-to-table sourcing philosophy, a personalized guest experience, and unique service touches, like a formal steak presentation and a bespoke knife selection process, Stake distinguishes itself in a sea of steakhouses.
Exceptional steaks, including Wagyu from Japan, Australia, and the U.S., and fresh seafood flown in daily form the core of Stake’s culinary identity. The menu features a five-course omakase-style steak experience highlighting house favorites, plus an array of cuts, and classic steakhouse staples—think a wedge salad, baked potato, or pasta carbonara—refined for a contemporary palate without losing their traditional appeal. Stake focuses on seasonal sourcing from the region’s best family farms and specialty purveyors, and incorporates intentionally unexpected touches to create something truly unique.
“I challenge our chefs and myself to take it a step further in sourcing,” says Chef Ronnie Schwandt. “It’s important to us to highlight different farms, unique one-off farms—whether it’s cattle, strawberries, a local fisherman or from anywhere in the United States, we’re always trying to find that niche.”
Beyond the menu, Stake emphasizes outstanding service, says Vinny Spatafore, Director of Hospitality Operations. Staff maintains detailed notes, allowing them to remember guests by name, recall previous orders such as a favorite martini (also memorable for the customer since it’s served in an extra tall, distinctly-shaped glass), and celebrate special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries.
“When you have those points of topic that you remember about a guest, they appreciate that,” he says. “Our servers are really good with that—we have a couple servers who have been here since the beginning and they’ll remember somebody from years ago, their name, their kids’ names, where they live. I’m really thankful to have a great front of house staff.”
Award-winning wines, rare whiskeys, special events, and a complementary black car service that provides transportation for guests throughout Coronado add to Stake’s appeal.
Schwandt stresses that Stake offers more than a meal; they aim to give patrons something unforgettable.
“It starts when you walk up the stairs and are greeted by the hostess—that sets the tone for the night. Then you’re greeted by a server, who may know you by name, and can guide you through the menu and curate as they get to know you,” says Schwandt. “Most people leave kind of blown away; they leave feeling like they just had an experience. That’s the goal, right? Whether you’re serving smash burgers or high-end steak, you want somebody to leave thinking, Wow, that was awesome.”
“There are four elements in hip-hop, and the vision of the exhibit was to go ‘beyond the elements’ and embrace the multicultural roots that are a huge part of hip-hop,” he says.
Through airbrushed jackets, throwback posters, and VHS footage, those four elements—deejaying, emceeing, graffiti art, and breakdancing—mix together at the Liberty Station showcase, telling the story of rap’s local beginnings.
“These are my friends,” Lopez says. “I’ve always wanted to show the art.” It’s a short answer to a long question about inspiration and ideas, about what goes into putting something like this together.
Photo Credit: Michael Brunker
As we continue through, he points out a face. “There’s Zodak,” he says, gesturing toward a framed, black-and-white Tribal ad featuring the legendary local graffiti artist holding a name plate. Highlighting his own work (he’s a graphic designer), Lopez motions to the cover of Aztec Tribe’s cassette single Diego Town. The artifacts are a dense tapestry, a timeline four decades long of rappers, breakdancers, DJs, and painters, spread across two rooms.
It would be easy to recognize the players if this were New York or LA, but rap stars aren’t traditionally plucked from around these parts. There’s talent, for sure; however, most of it has had little influence outside of SD. That’s to say that this is a self-contained history, based on a homegrown ecosystem held together by storytellers, smooth talkers, and colorful personalities.
There’s no defining sound or even a single approach. Aztec Tribe carved out a lane as Chicano rap pioneers in the early ’90s, while San Ysidro’s Legion Of Doom (LOD)—who are featured prominently throughout the exhibition—worked their tag-team, Run-D.M.C-like chemistry into a formula that repped South Bay.
And while the vocalists were manipulating rhymes, local dancers were adopting the movements and body contortions of hip-hop’s B-boy element: a choreographed set of ticks, spasms, and spins that, in our neck of the woods, was part West Coast pop lockin’, part East Coast footwork. They’re represented, too, in the exhibit.
Courtesy of X
A wall marked “80’s Breakdance Era” shows off hand-drawn flyers and pictures of teenagers frozen mid-routine, rocking on linoleum. Inside a glass square stands a July 2, 1984, copy of Newsweek magazine that reads “BREAKING” in bold, white letters. And resting near the top sits a black medallion from the Universal Zulu Nation, an international awareness group and official fraternity of hip-hop—a true mark of legitimacy. The pieces speak for themselves. The hometown B-boys were the real deal.
That’s how Lopez got his start: managing a group of breakers called the Floor Masters. “My mom’s house was kinda like the home base,” he says. They were unique on their block, but the culture reached beyond his ’hood. It wasn’t until he and his squad ventured past their side of town that any of them realized breakdancing was everywhere.
Photo Credit: Michael Brunker
“We didn’t know that it was happening in other neighborhoods,” Lopez says. “So, when we would go and perform at Balboa Park or something and put out the hat to make money … then [we] had other crews coming and [trying] to battle.”
Just as hip-hop in NYC was a byproduct of its boroughs (even though it started in the Bronx), rap’s local vernacular differed depending on its enclave. Aztec Tribe was based in Spring Valley, while Mario and the Floor Masters grew up in Sherman Heights.
From the county’s eastern edge to its downtown hub, there’s an extensive history documented in Beyond The Elements. The exhibit captures our rich heritage, one that’s worth exploring. And, as a narrative, this isn’t a nostalgia exercise or a trip down memory lane. Instead, it’s a commemoration, a nod to the hometown trailblazers who helped mold local culture through sound, art, and dance with imagination and virtuosity. A powerful message as hip-hop celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Photo Credit: Michael Brunker
As my visit winds down, Lopez and I are joined by Zard One, an original member of the Floor Masters. We’re seated in the gallery space across the hall, and I notice his fingertips are stained with paint. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, he’s an artist and lifelong friend of Mario’s.
The docents are making their rounds, turning off lights and securing items. It’s a signal that I’ve overstayed my welcome. But, before I head out, I ask them both what they hope visitors take with them.
Lopez is first to answer. “We have tours coming in from different schools that are interested. It’s [about] educating the kids,” he says.
Just like hip-hop, the exhibit serves as a generational legacy. Each one teach one, as they say.
In a gallery space in Balboa Park’s Timken Museum, a group of kindergarteners stares, riveted, at a dirty cotton swab. Paintings conservator Alexis Miller is showing them how one cleans a masterpiece—very carefully, basically, and very slowly. The painting she’s working on is more than 90 inches tall and 75 inches wide.
It’s likely these kids’ first brush with conservation. But they’re learning about the potential career much earlier than most.
“There’s very little public info [about it],” says Bianca Garcia, an associate conservator of paintings at the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC). She graduated from the University of Delaware’s conservation masters program, one of four in the US. “It’s not a traditional career path.”
Photo Credit: Cole Novak
Founded in 1975, BACC is among just nine art conservation nonprofits in the United States and the only on the West Coast. They serve museums, arts institutions, and private collectors in California and surrounding states. In April of this year, they received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, which will allow them to further expand their work and help increase access to the field of conservation.
The center’s staff members (who have different specializations, helping to maintain paintings, textiles, and other objects for future generations) usually do their delicate work tucked away in BACC’s lab spaces in the San Diego History Center. But, through late 2023 and early 2024, their team of paintings conservators is freshening up François Boucher’s 1758 work Lovers in a Park onsite at the Timken, giving visitors the opportunity to see the process happen live.
Photo Credit: Cole Novak Conservators use BACC’s vast collection of pigments to create perfect color matches when restoring works of art.
In the meantime, BACC is using a portion of the Mellon grant funds to update their offices. While the nature of the job will always demand a certain degree of insularity, the facelift will allow them to bring in more tours, teaching visitors about the conservation process.
A major—and perhaps particularly overlooked—aspect of the work is consulting with arts institutions to ensure that objects are being stored and displayed in the right conditions. Conservators assess light, humidity, and other environmental elements and suggest adjustments. “It’s similar to preventative care,” Garcia says.
Sometimes, though, individual pieces need more hands-on TLC. Each of the center’s projects begins with a proposal detailing a plan for analysis, cleaning, and restoration and the approximate associated costs. That proposal has to be approved by the object’s owner before the conservators can move forward, in part because some steps do have the potential (however slim) to damage the object. “We want people to understand that there’s some risk,” says Annabelle Camp, a textile conservator and BACC’s marketing and development associate. “And, also, we want to keep a record for future conservators and historians.”
Once stakeholders sign off on the plan, the fun begins. Conservators can assess the condition of a painting, for example, using different techniques to study its various layers: infrared reflectology, ultraviolet light, x-radiography.
Photo Credit: Cole Novak
As sci-fi as it all sounds, Camp is the first to admit that some of their current technology is, by industry standards, kind of quaint. BACC’s senior technician, Erick Gude, still develops x-rays in an onsite dark room. A slice of the grant funds went toward a tech refresh. “If we have people coming here for apprenticeships and training, we want to train them on the most up-to-date tools,” Camp says.
That’s not to say, though, that their retro x-ray machine hasn’t served them well. In 1986, BACC analyzed a particularly strange painting from the San Diego Museum of Art’s collection, one that depicted the Biblical figure David staring at an empty space on the ground. An X-ray revealed the severed head of Goliath beside him, invisible to the naked eye.
“What probably happened was that a dealer decided it was too gory and painted over it,” Camp explains. “[Conservators at BACC] were able to remove that paint and reveal the original painting.”
Photo Credit: Cole Novak
The team wouldn’t have been able to restore the 17th-century piece without vast interdisciplinary knowledge. Conservation is literally both an art and a science—in addition to having training in research and art history and the practical art skills required to fill in areas of paint loss, for instance, conservators must be careful chemists, understanding how paints, varnishes, and other materials interact and evolve over time.
“We want [the changes we make] to be reversible, so we have to know the material we’re working with, as well as the material we’re applying,” Camp says.
That’s the great irony of conservation: In order to help pieces last forever, conservators have to be comfortable with the idea of their own work being only an ephemeral moment in the object’s history. They maintain detailed files, daub on easily soluble paints, ensuring that, someday, the next conservator—maybe one of those 5-year-olds at the Timken—can wipe it all away and start again.
Amelia Rodriguez is a writer and journalist and winner of the San Diego Press Club's 2023 Rising Star Award and 2024 Best of Show Award, she’s also covered music, food, arts and culture, fashion, and design for Rolling Stone, Palm Springs Life, and other national and regional publications. After work, you can find her hunting down San Diego’s best pastries and maintaining her five-year Duolingo streak.
While glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agents have been used to treat Type 2 diabetes for more than 20 years, their recent emergence as weight-loss wonder drugs marked a new frontier in medicine. But their effectiveness has left some patients wondering what to do once they’ve reached their goal. Stopping the medication could mean regaining some, if not all, of the weight. A Scripps Clinic internal medicine physician recently conducted a small study of whether GLP-1 patients who had reached their goal weight could maintain that weight by taking their regularly prescribed injection every other week instead of weekly. Spoiler alert: 30 of 34 patients did. Read more about the study here and what that may mean as pharmaceutical companies roll out oral GLP-1s.
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