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How Rubio turned a recipe on a scrap of paper into the official dish of San Diego
The billiard-green strips of poblano peppers on the paper plate in front of me are potentially worth millions of dollars. A member of the culinary team has used a black Sharpie to divide the plate into two sections. On one side, the veggies are roasted, on the other they’re sautéed. If the two men sitting at the corners of this table like either option enough, a biblical flood of poblanos will flow into the American marketplace.
One of the men is culinary director Justin Mosel. The other is the snowy-haired version of a college kid who, in the ’70s, returned from a Mexican surf trip with a tan and a recipe. Scribbled on a piece of notebook paper and carried unused in his pocket for years, that recipe would create an empire.
“I like the sautéed peppers better, more vibrancy,” Ralph Rubio says to his team before adding, to me: “We just launched a vegan option. The whole flexitarian thing is growing. You don’t have to be a vegan to want a vegan meal.”
Now 64, Ralph has a preternatural calm usually seen in spiritual leaders or at last call. His cheekbones aren’t merely pronounced, they are geological. So when he smiles, he expresses something both grandfatherly and childlike—a Venn diagram of trust. And he smiles a lot.
“This is Ralph’s seat,” Mosel told me when I entered the test kitchen for Rubio’s Coastal Grill. Having a seat at the table is important to Ralph. Eventually, during the three-to-six-month process of testing each new item, Rubio’s “Beach Club Members” will be invited in to try the dishes and give feedback. The test kitchen has its own Yelp page (five stars).
Rubio’s corporate headquarters is in Carlsbad, at the geographic center of their 117 quick-service restaurants throughout Southern California. (There are 196 Rubio’s total through five states, mostly in the Southwest, but also Florida.) One wall of the waiting room has a blue-lit tank populated with tropical fish. The opposing wall—above lime-green chairs, on brand with Rubio’s color scheme—is one of the world’s most famous recipes on how to batter and fry a fish.
Ralph Rubio fish taco king
One of Ralph’s favorite fish taco stands in San Felipe.
While a freshman in Zura Hall at San Diego State University in 1973, Ralph was invited by some upperclassmen on a trip for spring break. “San Felipe, what’s that?” he remembers saying. “They said, ‘We’re going to camp on the beach in Mexico, drink beer, dance, and party.’ I said, ‘Well, sign me up.’”
When they arrived at a little fishing town outside of San Felipe, makeshift stands everywhere were selling fish tacos—beer-battered and fried whitefish, served in a corn tortilla with cabbage and crema and salsa and lime. Unlike many Americans, Ralph didn’t flinch at the concept. He and his friends ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with ice-cold Corona (whose distributor was four doors down from their favorite stand). Every year they went back and did it again.
“One night in 1975, we took a break about 10 p.m.,” he recalls. “It’s dark, it’s festive, and I go, ‘Why is no one serving these in San Diego like this, with cold beer? Look at all these college students loving the experience.’ That’s when the light bulb went off.”
Ralph Rubio fish taco king
A young Ralph with his dad, Ray.
Ralph felt if he could open a fish taco stand in the US near college kids and the beach, he might not need his backup career plan—becoming a teacher, like many of his relatives. He asked Carlos, the cook at his favorite fish taco stand, if he wanted to come to San Diego. Carlos said no, not really, thanks. “‘Ok, well… then can you tell me what’s in the batter recipe?’” Ralph asked. “All the rest—the crema, the lime, the cabbage, I could figure out—but the batter was the key.”
Carlos gave it to him—flour, mustard, garlic, oregano, pepper, water.
“I carried that piece of paper around with me for eight years,” Ralph says. “Being 28, 30 years old, you’re not too organized. Thank god I kept it. It was obviously important to me.”
Ralph amassed restaurant experience as a busser, waiter, and manager at chains like The Old Spaghetti Factory, Hungry Hunter, and Harbor House. Eventually his dad, Ray (who immigrated to San Diego as a teen, took a job sweeping floors at a plastics factory, and eventually became one of the top plastics industry consultants in the country) offered to give Ralph $70,000 to start his “fish taco idea.”
The Rubios found an ad in the paper for a spot on Mission Bay Drive, a Mickey’s Burgers that had previously been an Orange Julius. Mickey wanted $80,000. Ray said they couldn’t afford it, since they’d need money for improvements and operating capital. He told his son to sit in the 7-Eleven across the street and count the customers at Mickey’s to get a real evaluation of its worth.
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
Ralph with his sister, Gloria (left) and dad, Ray (right) at their graduation from SDSU in 1978.
“So I did, with a pad and paper on my lunch breaks,” Ralph recalls. “And come to find out, he had no business. The figures he had shown us weren’t real. My dad told me to offer him $15,000 cash. I said, ‘Are you serious? C’mon, that’s insulting.’”
Again, Ralph did as his dad asked. Mickey yelled at him—called him a rude young punk—and hung up. Later that night, Mickey called back in tears. He needed the cash, and agreed to sell.
Next, Ralph met his dad at Spiro’s Greek Cafe and negotiated terms for their new venture. “I just wanted a loan, but my dad said, ‘Oh no, I think equity’s going to be better,’” Ralph laughs. “So I offered 70/30. Nope. 60/40. Nope. He got me down to 50/50.”
Over the next few months, the entire Rubio family—Ralph, Ray, mom Gloria, and siblings Gloria, Robert, Richard, and Roman—painted tables and signs and built a fish taco stand. They didn’t do a soft opening, where you test your concept with a small and forgiving number of friends.
“We just opened the doors and figured we’d let a few people in to test it,” Ralph explains. “Well, turns out all those cars driving by had been watching us. There was a line out the door. None of us had made food to scale. Probably half the orders I made were mistakes. I had to give people money back. It was a disaster. I was almost in tears.”
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
The first Rubio’s location, which opened in January 1983 on East Mission Bay Drive.
The initial rush didn’t last. They were only doing $200 a day in the beginning. The idea of a fish taco doesn’t seem strange these days, but in 1983, it sounded pretty weird/gross/oh-hell-no to Americans who hadn’t surfed in Baja (which was almost all Americans).
“If you didn’t go to San Felipe, you didn’t know what it was,” says Ralph’s brother Robert. “A lot of our promotional budget was giving a free fish taco. All the testing we did, 75 percent of people who tried it ordered it again. The whole slogan was ‘One bite and you’re hooked.’”
Slowly, the buzz about Rubio’s and their weird fish tacos grew. Ralph still has the sales charts from that first year, and he says the line goes up steadily every month. Then, after they opened their second store near SDSU around year two or three, Rubio’s exploded.
“We had people drive down from LA and Orange County just to go to Rubio’s,” says Robert. “It was a destination. That first store was like the first Tommy’s burgers in LA.”
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
Ralph and his wife, Dione, at the grand opening for Rubio’s Encinitas location, 1989.
To understand the zeitgeist Rubio’s tapped into with its first store in Pacific Beach, we have to imagine a time before the internet—specifically social media. Nowadays, Instagram and Facebook are indexes of what the world eats, shown in high-resolution photos, often with recipes. Food discovery has become a global obsession. This second-by-second archiving means there are very few dishes in the world, even in the most remote villages, without a hashtag.
In 1983, however, the internet was still futurist babble. The only way you could find out about fish tacos in Baja was to get in your car and drive to Baja. In the ’70s and ’80s, Americans viewed Baja as Shangri-La, a dusty, remote otherworld for the bare-chested and free. Surf culture was taking over the American dreamscape, American surfers in Baja became heroes of wanderlust, and what those heroes ate was fish tacos.
Historically few food combos have received such mystique by association. At Rubio’s, Americans could be transported to San Felipe without ever crossing the border.
Had Instagram existed back then, it’s unlikely that Ralph could’ve kept the recipe in his pocket for eight years. Fish tacos would’ve trended. Another entrepreneur would’ve seen how much surfers and travelers romanticized them, and beat him to it. Rubio’s success is in many things—the recipe, the people, a cleanliness not often seen in fast food (“Ralph is a clean freak,” says Robert), marketing, real estate, investors who believed in them (Union Bank, Rosewood Capital, Mill Road). But at least part of their success is because the pre-social-media age allowed fish tacos to remain largely unknown in the US until Ralph was ready to capitalize on them.
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
Rubio’s IPO in May 1999.
And boy, did he ever. The plan was always to make a scalable, quick-service restaurant model and replicate it. Ralph mentions McDonald’s as the ideal. Over four years, Rubio’s raised $9.6 million in capital and expanded to 63 locations. Fish tacos became San Diego’s most iconic food, as cheesesteaks are to Philly and pizza is to New York.
Since his first investors needed an exit strategy—and the tech boom had made IPOs the sexy business play in the late ’90s—Rubio’s went public in 1999. Buca di Beppo and P. F. Chang’s had recently done it and thrived. Ralph and his family flew to Rosewood Capital’s offices in San Francisco to watch Rubio’s enter the stock ticker. The IPO raised $23 million, allowing them to expand to 204 stores. It provided Ralph with lifelong financial security—and some grand delusions.
“The IPO was a massive thing—my wife, Dione, was there, my kids,” he remembers. “But looking back on it, it was a bad day in another way. I ran into this thing called ‘hubris’ and it knocked me on my ass. I got caught up in the fame and fortune and Rubio’s doing so well. I’m tracking my stock price. You can calculate your net worth every five minutes. I was foolish.”
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
The grand opening of Rubio’s third location in Pacific Beach in 1986.
The Rubios all liquidated their shares. Dad’s original $70,000 investment turned into a fairly massive number. Ralph was the last Rubio left standing when things got ugly in 2001. “We hit a wall,” he says. “After a year of underperformance, we had to close 11 restaurants. Harder, we had to let 100 team members go.”
They had grown too fast, venturing into markets they didn’t understand, making poor real estate decisions. Fish tacos sold better closer to the border, where Mexican food is familiar. Ralph even tried franchising, an idea he’d always disliked for quality control reasons. “When things are good, the relationship is great,” he says; “when things go bad, franchisees start cutting corners.”
His trusted friend Kyle Anderson, at Rosewood Capital, advised him to step down as CEO. “Those were dark times emotionally,” says Ralph, sitting in the backyard of his idyllic home in Rancho Santa Fe, which you must admit is a pretty safe place to admit past business faults. “I was full of too much pride. My feelings were hurt. I had some growing up to do. But it didn’t last long. I came around. One of the things that’s served me well is I’m very pragmatic. I was never trained to be the CEO of a publicly traded company. I had a good run.”
Ralph remained as chairman and cofounder, and worked alongside Mark Simon, who’s been CEO for eight years, “was trained to do this, and is a brilliant leader.” The company slowed its growth, massaged its marketing (they’ve gone through four name changes), and “operated our way out of it,” in Ralph’s words. In 2010, they sold for $91 million to Connecticut-based Mill Road Capital, which bought out the remaining public shares and made Rubio’s a private company once again.
Ralph is still a minority owner. He shows up every day, working closely with the culinary department. Half of his week is spent making unannounced visits to stores to inspect quality, to make sure they’re clean and customers look happy, to listen to the managers and inspire them, and to be the face of the brand.
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
Ralph serving street tortas and fries at the Mission Bay location.
Rubio’s menu has grown to over 40 items. Though the wild Alaskan pollock fish tacos are still their biggest seller, bowls represent their biggest growth—many Americans have now learned that tortillas, while delicious, are about 270 calories a pop. Two trends in the US—increased seafood consumption, and the better-for-you food movement—are leading more and more customers their direction. In the test kitchen, we try a vegetarian, grainless version of a bestseller, the California Bowl. No one seems especially smitten with it. “This is just a disaster test,” Rubio says. “There’s enough promise there to keep working on it.”
In 2015, Consumer Reports asked over 32,000 readers to name their favorite Mexican fast food chain. Rubio’s came out on top, ahead of Chipotle and Taco Bell. In 2016, the city of San Diego declared April 5 “Ralph Rubio Day.”
“Awards are cool, but I’m just not into it, to be honest,” he says. “I love it more when I walk into a restaurant and they recognize me and say, ‘Hey, Mr. Rubio, I just want to say thank you. Me and my family come here every week.’ That’s what I live for.”
After opening their next location in Las Vegas (No. 196), they plan to pause growth and focus on operations at existing stores, making sure they’re solid. Eventually, Ralph thinks Rubio’s could open 400 stores in the western US. As a private company, they can wait until the timing is right, as opposed to when it’s necessary to meet quarterly forecasts. At some point, as dictated by life and age, the fish taco king will reduce his role—but not until he feels Rubio’s and “the people in the Rubio’s family” are set up for long-term success.
“I stayed for a couple reasons,” he says. “First, our name’s on the building. But really, I just love what I do. Not every day’s amazing, but I love getting up every day and going to work.”
As of print time, Rubio’s has sold 249 million fish tacos.
Ralph Rubio Is the Fish Taco King
Photo by Nate Hoffman
No gatekeepers, no creative rules, no perfect definition—the city’s DIY publishing scene makes room for anyone with something to say.
If magazines are like the adultier eldest daughters who know exactly how much anarchy they can get away with, zines are the far less predictable younger siblings going on whim and instinct. Those who draw on the walls around the house, DIY their own piercings, and experiment with different emo/straight-edge/back to emo phases (or not-phases). Boundaries and routines are what zines were created to rail against.
Walk into Verbatim Books’ zine corner, and this rebellion is immediately clear. Zines have no singular form, no clean category or definition. Vintage magazine scraps are collaged into new meaning alongside mini fandom zines. Single sheets of plain white printer paper are covered in nothing but black ballpoint pen. Repurposed hardback book covers are folded into something entirely new. Some are duct-taped together, others stapled. Some glossy, others matte. There are guides to anything and everything, comic panels, photography, hand-drawn cartoons, poetry, recipes, diaries, and ramblings that only make sense to the person who made them—and that’s on purpose.
Zines are creative magic. And with no rules, they’re incredibly accessible. Anyone can zine and have a voice, regardless of artistic training or work life experience.
You are your own Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, Ruth Whitney.
San Diego–based zine creator Lyssette Williams specializes in mini zines—often limited to eight pages, they’re meditations in abbreviation. Outlining, thumbnailing, and revision all move quickly from idea to page. Larger projects, including Williams’ long-form graphic novel thesis, move at a slower pace. For those, she often returns to pen and ink, a choice that resists the over-editability of digital work.
Raised by a single mother and navigating mixed-race identity in a predominantly white town, she finds a home for processing it all in zines. Her work deals in identity, belonging, self-definition, and punk-rock childhood. But it isn’t always heavy; Williams creates a mini duck-themed zine called Backyard Duck Propaganda that’s hard not to love. “When I create, I think about what would have helped me find the words back then, what my younger self would’ve needed,” Williams says. “[Zines] put the tools in your hands and democratize art. They’re translations of memories and identities.”
For Williams, a big reason she keeps creating is being surrounded by other creatives—a scene that extends across the border. She points to Verbatim and Comicbook Artists of San Diego, plus events like Zine Fest (October 17–18 this year at Woo in Barrio Logan) and Black Comix Day at the WorldBeat Cultural Center.
Zines have always been a road for subcultures. During the Harlem Renaissance, Black creatives like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston self-published one issue of Fire!!, which inspired other Black authors. In the 1930s, zines (then called fanzines) were hubs for sci-fi nerds to write fanfiction, address the fandom, and create new characters. Superman actually made his public debut in a fanzine called Science Fiction (he was originally cast as a villain with a fully receded hairline). A couple decades later, zines about feminism and riot grrrl became subculture de rigueur.
The internet nearly killed zines, of course. But now, people tired of the algorithm’s firehose are finding comfort and renewed inspiration in analog. Zines, a salve for digital fatigue.
A giant figure in San Diego zine culture is Burn All Books. Founded by Amanda and Nick Bernal, BAB started as a risograph (digital screen printing) studio and turned into one of those places that keeps expanding the whole scene around it, even forming its own archive group, SCANNNERS. Since opening in January 2023, it has published over 35 works and collaborated with more than 100 artists, writers, and zinesters.
For Duophobia, the pseudonym for local twin sisters Alora and Kiani Dotson (affectionately known as the “possum twins”), zines make room for experimentation and play that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Room for eclectic cartoons and dirty jokes. For sticker-covered sketchbooks.
It’s that same brand of nostalgia you might feel when, say, you walk past the carcass of an abandoned mall and see a faded cartoon mural. Their work lives somewhere between childhood and adulthood, where being unserious is taken very, very seriously.
“We’re born and raised in San Diego, and the community of artists here is a main reason we started publishing,” Kiani Dotson says. “There are people here like Trixxie Land who run open art gatherings. Show up, and you’re part of it.”
Land, a zinester herself (she made 250 single-page zines during 2020’s lockdown), is all about storytelling over hierarchy. Art shouldn’t be about gatekeeping or intimidation, she says. So she holds open-invite arts shows at Subterranean Coffee.
Duophobia regularly share their work at local galleries like Subterranean, filling that lowbrow space with pieces that answer: “What would’ve made us laugh as kids?” Children are often the first to pick up their zines, unfolding them in every direction while parents briefly panic at the impulsive destruction. The twins always step in. “No, no, it’s okay,” they say, before showing how one sheet of paper folds into an entire little book. “It’s like magic.” More often than not, the kids leave with a tiny zine tucked under a tiny arm, future San Diego zinesters in the making.
When asked what a zine really is, Alora Dotson’s response was simple: “It’s anything. Literally anything. The more genuine you are, the more people are going to hear what you have to say. Your voice matters, even if it’s just a silly joke or story. People want to hear about it.”
Not a perfect definition? Exactly. Zines inherently resist categories. Want to turn a single playing card into a storybook? Do it. What about your favorite graffiti artist’s signature tag at Prince Memorial Skatepark? Turn it into a zine.
Everything’s a zine.
Isabella Dallas is a freelance writer for San Diego Magazine and the Arts and Culture Editor at The Daily Aztec in her final year at San Diego State University. She previously worked as an editorial intern for SDM, but when she’s not writing, you can find her trying the best coffee spots in SD, devouring the latest rom-coms, and indulging in anything and everything pop culture.
From tacos to tailors and trainers to travel, these are the businesses, people, and places that earned San Diego readers' votes
San Diego Aesthetics and Med Spa
Elicia Soltesz, Elicia Marie Beauty
Ashley Fierro, Ashley Fierro Makeup
Michelle Langston, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, HNB-BC, Starlite Aesthetics
Alysa Espiritu, Afterglo Beauty Lounge
Ronnie Page, Gold Comb Barbershop North Park
Ryleigh Hunter, Headbang Salon
Ann Teresa Degischer, Maen the Salon
Lindsay Axelrod, Pixiedot Salon
Lauren Skinker, Lucky Cat Tattoo
Father Joe’s Villages Turkey Trot
The Camp Transformation Center, West Chula Vista
Singing Hills Golf Club at Sycuan
Camila Casanueva, The Yard Gym
Austin Harrington, Captain’s Quarters
Bivouac Ciderworks, Savoy Dry Apple Cider
Missi Burns, Et Voila
Prospera Internal Medicine and Aesthetics
From handmade goods to one-of-a-kind finds, these local shops prove the best souvenirs are the ones with a story
Almost everything in this Oceanside shop is made by local artists and independent weirdos, and almost none of it requires a gallerist’s budget. Goblin Shark Emporium rotates a new featured artist every month between the vinyl crates, blacklight posters, and hilariously specific stickers, so you can walk out with original work and a tarot reading to contemplate as you sip your Banana Dang Coffee from a couple storefronts down.
Tucked within the potting tables and ferns of Mission Hills Nursery, the oldest nursery in Southern California and a Kate Sessions original, sits Through the Fold, the sweet indie bookstore that mother-daughter team Gail Levine and Jennifer Medeiros hand-built and opened in late April. Two retired educators and lifelong bibliophiles run it like a neighborhood living room: three book clubs, toddler story time, and a summer camp for the 7-to-12 set. It’s the rare retail run that smells like soil and new paperbacks, which is to say, like a very specific kind of heaven.
Open since 1993 under the unbeatable tagline “Books of Martians, Murder, Magic, and Mayhem,” this Rosecrans Street institution is the city’s portal for anyone who would rather be on a different planet. Load up on sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, then stick around for the weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign, because the only thing better than reading about another universe is rolling a d20 inside one.
On the ground floor of the downtown Central Library, tucked into the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Common, sits the Library Shop, a tightly curated gift store stocked with presents and trinkets you didn’t know you needed: wind-up kitchen timers, specialty pencils, felt coasters in colors cheerful enough to overcome the first half of the Padres’ season—you get it. Every dollar funds the San Diego Public Library system, which makes the shop’s official “Guilt-Free Shopping” motto the rare slogan that holds up. Come for a paperback, leave having formed a genuine emotional attachment to a $4 pencil.
The window at this North Park shop is alive: a front-of-house catio where adoptable rescue cats audition for your heart while you pretend to be just browsing. From there, a literal catwalk runs along the ceiling to a back resting room (because existing around inferior beings is exhausting for cats). Owner Vera Blatchley of Purrgatory stocks the full cat-lover arsenal, plus a wall of gifts for the feline who already has nine of everything. Fan favorite: a retro-style, bubblegum-pink Kit-Cat Clock.
Surf art’s everywhere, but it’s somehow always a little kooky. Painter Andy Davis’ style captured that elemental soul, making him one of the most successful surf artists of the last few decades (check his giant mural at Town and Country Resort). His tiny Encinitas storefront, Club Paradise, is a gallery-slash-gift shop that stocks his paintings and prints—and he’s using the space as a culture club for local and touring creatives.
Tulux is the Pacific Beach swimwear label out of Cass Street, where designer Yamhed Torres turns the whole Tulum fantasy into bold, limited-run bikinis. This year, Vogue México y Latinoamérica named her one of just 10 emerging designers to watch, so each suit comes with the kind of credentials that practically books its own sunset getaway. Everything is one and done: When a piece sells, it’s gone for good, which is either smart scarcity or the universe telling you to commit.
Free lotto tickets at crystal shops? Yes, please. Pacific Beads owner Shlomo Gruer greets you at the door of this Clairemont Mesa warehouse with 4,000 square feet of crystals, geodes, and beads by the bin. You come for wholesale amethyst and sterling findings; you leave holding a fistful of healing stones and a statistically remote shot at early retirement. Need another reason to visit? Owner Gruer has his own line of jewelry, and Pacific Beads also hosts jewelry-making classes.
El Cajon’s Parkway Plaza could look radically different in the near future, as city officials are hatching plans to reinvent the one-time community and commercial center. Inflection points of iconic structures are always compelling times to visit and tabulate your own urban-planning daydreams. As you do, hit the first NAMA-certified automatic cotton candy vending machine in the country. Push a button, and 123 Sweetsss spins you a fresh cloud of childhood in under a minute. No carnival, no county fair admission, no sweaty teenager in a paper hat required.
Behind every beautiful space is a thoughtful process, and ASID San Diego is helping homeowners understand the value of professional design.
A perfectly designed home rarely happens by accident. Those kitchens that feel effortless and rooms that seem to tell a story the second you walk in? They’re usually the work of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
It’s knowing which ideas will actually work, which materials will hold up over time, and how to turn a collection of choices into a space that feels intentional. That’s where a professional interior designer comes in.
For the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) California San Diego Chapter, the goal is to help people see interior design as more than just the finished look. Behind every well-designed space is a process built on technical expertise. Designers are educated in everything from professional software and construction details to building codes, space planning, materials, and functionality.
“People don’t always realize how much goes on behind the scenes,” Kirsten Recce , current president of the ASID California San Diego Chapter, says. “Our designers are not just doing furniture placement and color selection and picking out new fluffy pillows. That’s not what they’re trained for.”
ASID members bring formal education, continued learning, and industry knowledge to their projects, helping create spaces that are not only beautiful, but designed to work. A paint color that changes completely depending on the lighting. A material that looks beautiful in a showroom but doesn’t make sense for everyday life. A layout that photographs well but doesn’t function for the people living there. These are the details where professional guidance can make all the difference.
Still, one of the biggest misconceptions about hiring an interior designer is that it’s reserved for massive renovations, luxury homes, or people who already know exactly what they want. The process can feel intimidating. Where do you begin? Is a designer worth the investment? What if you only need help with one room?
ASID’s answer: start with one hour.
ASID’s Spruce Up events break down one of the biggest barriers between homeowners and professional design: knowing where to begin. Held twice a year, the community program gives homeowners the chance to work directly with an ASID designer through a one-hour, $125 consultation in their own home. Whether you’re looking for advice on furniture placement, window treatments, kitchen and bath updates, remodeling ideas, vacation rentals, color selections or something else entirely, the upcoming September 2026 event offers an approachable way to get expert guidance before committing to a full project. Signups are open through Sept. 7, with consultations taking place Sept. 21 through Oct. 31. Proceeds benefit ASID San Diego’s educational and community programs. Register here!
“It’s a great opportunity for people who are in that exploratory phase,” Recce says. “Maybe they’re not sure they want to hire an interior designer yet, or they think it sounds daunting or expensive. This gives them a chance to discover what working with a designer is actually like.”
Design is personal. A good designer isn’t just creating a beautiful room; they’re helping create a space that fits the way someone lives.
“We’re a resource to all of San Diego County,” Recce says. “It doesn’t cost anything to pick up the phone and call and ask. We’ll answer.”
Follow ASID San Diego on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook for updates on upcoming events, or connect with the chapter directly at [email protected] or 619-548-8847.
From getting your sweat on at hip-hop class to celebrating with a zero-proof cocktail, here are San Diego's top fitness and wellness spots
For thousands of years, the Kumeyaay who lived in this area called a mountain south of Julian Cush-pii, meaning “sharp peak.” Then, after the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers saw that same mountain and decided to rename it Stonewall Peak—after General Stonewall Jackson. The name stuck for nearly a century and a half, until Cuyamaca Rancho State Park announced earlier this year that the name will return to its original, Cush-pii. Hike to the summit for expansive views of the Coronado Islands to the west and Mexico to the south.
In 1993, Angie Bunch gathered a group of hip-hop dancers—called Culture Shock Dance Troupe—and gave them a space to practice and perform. As hip hop grew through the ’90s, so did Culture Shock. It has since become a nonprofit, a space for young and old, beginner and expert dancers. Culture Shock has also expanded to Los Angeles, Oakland, Las Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, and Washington, D.C., as well as Ottawa and Toronto, Canada.
In 2019, Amanda Leach created the Yoga Box method, which takes high-energy flows and adds strength-building poses in heated, vibey, lava-lamp-lit studios. What started on Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach has spread to 15 locations across the county, with even more trickling into Denver, Chicago, and Brooklyn. The best part? Mindfulness newbies who can’t touch their toes and six-packed contortionists can hang in the same class. You can customize each session based on your ability and fitness level.
A gym taking over a historic beachfront pool sounds like the setup for a new season of Love Island, but Fit Mission Beach operating the nearly 100-year-old Plunge at Belmont Park is real. The independent fitness brand has spent the past several years building a loyal following through group fitness classes, community events, and a members’ social club overlooking the ocean. Upstairs, members can work remotely, meet friends, or hang out long after their workout ends. Between the Plunge, the coworking-style lounge, and a packed calendar of events, Fit has evolved into something bigger than a gym. It’s a clubhouse for San Diego’s fitness crowd.
The wellness world is finally transitioning away from HIIT workouts and cult-like spin classes, where your heart rate hits Zone 5 within minutes and stays there until cooldown. Good. At Breathe Degrees, wellness takes the form of zenned-out communal breathing sessions or vagus nerve–activating cold plunges. Breathwork is said to boost your mood in the short term and improve your heart health in the long term, and maybe that’s why everyone’s coming back for more. You can’t run into someone in Carlsbad who hasn’t dropped into at least one breathwork session, and now the studio has opened a second location in Liberty Station.
Pilates wasn’t just popular this year; it was practically a requirement for maintaining your San Diego residency. New studios seemed to appear weekly across San Diego, each promising stronger cores and better posture, but Soul Pilates and Care found a way to stand out by addressing a challenge many parents know well: finding time to exercise at all. Fitness doesn’t have to compete with parenting responsibilities. Parents can drop their kids off with trained caregivers while they head into reformer classes, eliminating one of the biggest barriers to working out. The studio has earned strong reviews for both its instruction and family-friendly approach.
The Hotel del Coronado’s sweeping $550 million restoration touched nearly every corner of the historic resort, but one of the most anticipated unveilils was the debut of its redesigned spa. The oceanfront wellness destination now features 21 treatment rooms, a relaxation lounge, a sauna, steam room, and a treatment menu inspired by the coastal environment just steps away. The redesign blends the Del’s Victorian legacy with a cleaner, more contemporary aesthetic, creating a space that feels distinctly SoCal rather than generic luxury hotel. For locals who don’t have time for a vacation, it’s the next best thing.
As non-alcoholic beverages continue their meteoric rise, Good News Bar has become one of San Diego’s most compelling arguments for a booze-free evening. The University Heights hotspot serves a menu of carefully crafted zero-proof cocktails that borrow techniques and ingredients from traditional cocktail programs (it’s not just fancy juices and soda water), minus the hangover. The space also hosts regular community events and has quickly become a gathering place for everyone from sober San Diegans to the merely sober-curious. In a nightlife industry built around alcohol sales, Good News proved there’s plenty of demand for connection without the buzz.
From elephant encounters to escape rooms, these are the adventures that kept San Diego families busy all year long
If you can’t quite swing the cost of a trip to the African outback, the Safari Park’s new Elephant Valley is a pretty convincing Plan B. The 13-acre immersive habitat—the largest project in the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s 109-year history—is home to eight African elephants, but it’s the thoughtful details that steal the show. Keep your eyes open for intricate Kenyan-inspired artwork, native landscaping, and stop by the Mkutano House, where you can grab lunch with a front-row view of the herd.
Pepper Park became the emotional anchor of the bayfront overhaul when the National City park reopened this March with a 2.5-acre expansion. Hopefully that’s just the start. The California Coastal Commission also approved the city’s ambitious waterfront plan, clearing the way for a long-envisioned 77-acre bayfront makeover with more green space, better bike paths, and improved waterfront access. Money still has to be raised, but head to Pepper Park, sit on a brand-new bench, and gaze out at the future of the South Bay.
Not every family destination comes with roller coasters—sometimes, they have paint rollers. The Willie Henderson Sports Complex in southeast San Diego recently received a new paint job and major facelift (courtesy of San Diego FC, the Prebys Foundation, and community advocates), giving thousands of kids a safer, smoother, and more colorful place to play basketball or soccer. If your weekends revolve around sports gear, folding chairs, and orange slices, you’ll definitely appreciate the upgrade.
Parents come for the pizza. Kids come for the games. Sci-fi nerds come for it all. Killer Pizza From Mars is an Oceanside mainstay for families who love arcades, vintage Star Wars memorabilia, and piled-high pizzas with outrageously silly names like the “Mars”gherita pizza. Order a basket of Killer Fries, sink your teeth into a Martian Melt sandwich, and don’t be surprised if your kids clamor for a return mission.
After what must have felt like an eternity for Pacific Beach families, Fanuel Street Park’s playground is finally back. The old play structure got the heave-ho nearly two years ago, but this spring, the community raised enough donations to replace it with modern climbing structures, new swings, and better accessibility. It’s finally back to being a low-key locals spot perfect for picnicking, splashing around, and letting the kids burn off some energy.
If screen time has obliterated your attention span, try giving your brain a workout at an escape room. Lara’s Labyrinth provides a few options ranging from kid-friendly to “try not to pee your pants in fright,” where participants can attempt to escape an enchanted forest or decipher clues left by Leonardo da Vinci. (Some rooms have G, PG-13, and R-rated versions for your family’s comfort level, but maybe save the “Cannibal” room for an adults-only excursion.)
Birch Aquarium has always made a splash, but the $18.7 million Living Seas exhibit is a tidal wave of awesome. The immersive exhibit features different marine ecosystems throughout the Pacific Ocean, from the warm aqua waters of tropical zones to the frigid (but nourishing) Pacific Northwest. Bigger is better here: There are areas designated for the gigantic sunflower sea star and giant Pacific octopus, so prepare for oceanic marvels to wow you.
Forget “don’t touch the art.” At Artopia, touching, building, climbing, experimenting, and making a colorful mess are all exactly the point. Created by the museum’s in-house Creative Studios team, the interactive space invites kids to become artists through hands-on projects like weekend ceramics workshops and after-school programs. When creativity gets a little chaotic is when it’s at its most fun.
The Fairmont Grand Del Mar used to feel like someplace you admired from afar. Grand Social changed that. Three levels of outdoor space are now home to a bar and grill, bocce courts, and other lawn games, as well as a summertime concert series and other family-friendly events that welcome locals just as much as overnight guests. It’s proof that one of San Diego’s fanciest addresses also knows how to have a little fun.
You don’t need a cage to come face-to-face with sharks anymore. SeaWorld’s revamped Shark Encounter lets you get startlingly close to species like reef sharks, massive sand tigers, and endangered Australian leopard sharks, all inside newly redesigned habitats. It’s equal parts adrenaline and education, and a good reminder that these misunderstood predators are closer to Bruce in Finding Nemo than Jaws in… well, Jaws.
Houston, we have a new reason to visit LEGOLAND California. LEGO Galaxy is the plastic-brick haven’s biggest in-park investment ever, including the first new roller coaster in 20 years. Between the customizable Galacticoaster experience, build-your-own spacecraft stations, and interactive space adventures, aspiring astronauts can easily spend hours exploring this brick-built universe.
A new program guides new moms through high-risk pregnancy and into the “fourth trimester”
Mai Vue was just 34 weeks pregnant when she delivered her baby. Her pregnancy had been complicated, and she’d had a recent second trimester pregnancy loss, which led to her receiving specialized care from Sean Daneshmand, MD, a Scripps Clinic perinatologist who oversees high-risk pregnancies. Dr. Daneshmand and his team took care of Mai during her pregnancy, through the birth of her healthy baby girl and beyond. Mai was part of a program Scripps launched to provide support to new moms in the weeks and months after delivery. The postpartum program, known as Scripps Health’s Fourth Trimester Continuum of Care, provides care for women with high-risk pregnancies to optimize their health after childbirth and reduce the risk of complications in future pregnancies. Click here to learn more.
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