The most stunning design element of this taco shop is the line of humans that winds through the middle of it. Much more lively and interesting than a plant wall or an ostrich lamp, the line has predictable surges during meal hours, but will also just randomly appear at 10 a.m. or 3 p.m. A crushing little wave of people will materialize with a boom, corporealizing to appreciate what this family—chef Jose L. Garcia, his wife Veronica Perez, sometimes their kids helping out—can do with tortillas, meat, spices, cheese, chiles, and generational recipes (the birria is made according to abuela’s method).
Tacos are $1.99 each. They are small, simple, excellent things. You won’t get a farmers market on a tortilla here, nor cremas seasoned with bourbon and rare Indonesian herbs. Just deliciously marinated meat of your choice (carne asada, adobada, carnitas, al pastor, suadero, cabeza, lengua… you get it), onions, cilantro, and three salsa options from that little buffet cart over by the Takis snack chips, to the left of the toilet paper, near the three Virgin Mary statuettes.
Photo Credit: James Tran
For 13 years, Mi Rancho Market has been the taco dispensary for Escondido. One of the riskiest risks a person can take—defying their wife—paid off for Jose. The couple immigrated to California from Jalisco as teenagers in the ’80s. They’d worked in a grocery store in Pasadena—Jose was a butcher; Veronica, a cashier. In 2007, they bought this little box in a parking lot, right next to beloved donut shop Peterson’s. They merely intended to be the neighborhood convenience store, where you stopped real quick if you forgot tortillas or paper towels at the main supermarket.
Jose had cooking in his blood. He kept bugging his wife to let him make and sell tacos. The store had a built-in kitchen, he pleaded. No, no, no, she said. Then, one day, she showed up and carne asada was sizzling on the plancha. “He only sold $16 worth of tacos all day,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘SEE!?’”
But Jose’s tacos were very, very good. Word spread.
Photo Credit: James Tran
San Diego’s biggest Latino communities are mostly clustered at the fringes of the county, both south (Chula Vista, National City, Bonita) and north (Vista, Escondido). Since 2010, Latinos have made up the largest part of Escondido’s population (52 percent). Escondido’s large agricultural community has at least something to do with that, since 92 percent of California farmworkers are Latino. This is where San Diego grows most of its avocados and citrus and wine (agriculture in Escondido accounts for 20 percent of the county’s total output).
Mi Rancho became an unofficial town hall, where whole families regularly commune over al pastor, between soda coolers. Affordability is a crucial, key element for any place to become a cultural hub (think churches and donut shops)—and at two bucks a taco, Mi Rancho excludes very few. Sitting here over two days, I watch friends, families, coworkers spend not the big moments of life, but the small, mundane, connective-tissue moments that make the strongest human bonds.
Again, get the tongue, or lengua. It’s the best taco at Mi Rancho (and also at most other taco shops), long boiled in aromatics until tender, almost silky, in consistency. Tongue doesn’t bother those raised near the deeper end of Mexican food culture (or cuisines including, but not limited to, Portuguese, British, German, Albanian, Russian, and Jewish). But it’s fairly easy to understand why those who are unfamiliar flinch. “I don’t want to French-kiss my food,” is the common dissent.
This is because many of us in the US have a complicated, almost farcical relationship with our meat. Humans are far from the only species on the planet that eats meat (63 percent of species are carnivores), but we are the most burdened with our bucket-sized brains and that organ’s ability to philosophize about eating animals and bum ourselves out about it.
That bleeding-heart function is crucial, keeping us from consuming gross amounts of meat, inspiring us to respect the life that was given for our steak (and its impact on the environment), making us give a damn about not being a quadruple-cheeseburger, top-of-the-food-chain jerkwad. But where the brain goes wrong is to overcompensate, to rationalize, to fake us out.
Case in point: We smoke-and-mirror the process of eating meat. Most American grocery stores moved the butcher sections out of sight around the 1980s. (We also stashed them away because customer-facing butchers were expensive.) Then we yanked them from the stores altogether. We butcher in secrecy, then present perfect pork chops and thighs and ribeyes wrapped in packaging on the shelf, neatly stacked as if they’re just another consumable product, no different than an iPhone.
I’ve long had a lot more respect for markets in other cultures, where animals are hung on display—not as a dumb flex of food chain supremacy, but as a tacit acknowledgement of the realities of this transaction.
Photo Credit: James Tran
In the corner of Mi Rancho, there are great piles of marinated beef in a case, un-preciously pressed up against the glass. In a smaller terrarium there are piles of deep-fried pig skin—glorious chicharrones, the original snack chip.
In the US, too, we tend to steer away from anything having to do with the “face” of food animals, only eating the back (sirloin) and other “prime” cuts. Which is ridiculous, wasteful, and simply less delicious. Lengua and cabeza (head)—most often, beef cheeks—are rife with connective tissue, which melts and lends incredible umami to the dish, much in the same way it does in oxtail. Mi Rancho slow-cooks these cuts until the meat is like shredded short ribs, the moistest roast.
Fight your instinct to order carne asada (a strong compulsion, but you can do this). Instead, try the two dishes that feature their fantastic, tomatillo-based chile verde: the suadero taco (suadero is a leg- and loin-area meat, smooth and flavorful) and their costillas de puerco (tender pork braised in green salsa).
And then their soups. The birria de chivo—goat, the original protein of the dish that seems to have become the official food of San Diego—is redolent with chiles and oil and just the right amount of gaminess.
Photo Credit: James Tran
As for menudo, I’ve found it hit-or-miss in San Diego. The special-occasion soup and hangover cure—made of tripe (stomach) with chiles, onions, oregano, and lime juice—can be thin, rushed, pleading for more time and patience to develop its flavors. After tasting Mi Rancho’s, I took it to a family friend. Born and raised in Guadalajara, she’s a fantastic Mexican cook and very honest about any food I beg her to taste. She didn’t care for Mi Rancho’s quesabirria tacos (“too oily”).
But the menudo? “Oh, my god,” she said. The best she’s had in San Diego, she reports—and while I haven’t tried them all, I have to agree with her.
Mi Rancho’s is intensely reduced, flavorful, a genuine cure.
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.
I’m sitting in a slab of concrete under a freeway, eating a ceviche black as eyeliner.
There might be seven seats in this restaurant. Or maybe it’s 12 minus five. That area under the stairs might also be a couple seats, or it might just be a very inviting storage area with a flower vase. The restaurant is so small your core instinct is to count seats and tabulate if Alchemy – Choose Thy Poison is a real place with a sane business plan or if it’s a social art project designed to question the reality of restaurants and business plans.
There’s a large, floor-to-human-height window near our table. Through it, I notice someone didn’t make their bed this morning. It’s a decision I deeply empathize with. It’s moments like this that make you acutely aware that Alchemy is also technically the courtyard of a six-room micro-hotel called Narcissus. Not the kind of massagey boutique hotel you’re thinking of with soft woods, obscene amounts of linen, and opinions on bonsai therapy. It’s a near-Brutalist cube of base industrial materials—concrete and acrylics bent and molded into a series of alcoves, with pods to sleep in. Sculptures lie behind glass like Tilda Swinton circa 2013.
The window to the unmade bed forcibly crams light voyeurism into the dining experience. The hotel and Alchemy feel like the parts of Mexico I love the most. Although Mexico has its multimillion-dollar restaurants, a vast majority of the best street-level places feel like you’re temporarily recreating in a very lovely construction project.
Alchemy’s location is what most people comment on (“I can’t believe a place like this exists on a block like this.”)—jammed at the bottom of the freeway embankment on the northeast side of Barrio Logan. But that makes it distinctly Barrio, the historic cradle of San Diego’s Hispanic and Chicano culture. The I-5 freeway was built through Barrio in 1963—a fairly traumatic gashing of the neighborhood—and residents responded by painting epic murals on the ugly concrete belly of eminent domain. Where some would’ve just accepted the industrial blight, locals saw shade for a park. There is a deep history here of turning concrete into art, and Alchemy carries that on.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The vision for the property came from owner Benjamin Longwell, whose company—The Society of Master Craftsmen—sounds like it wears a monocle. Longwell is part of the new guard of developers who focus on urban infill. Instead of adding to the city sprawl, they find unused or underutilized parcels of land in established neighborhoods, then build creative mixed-use spaces that, in perfect scenarios, add something of value for locals.
I’m not making a case for architectural sainthood, but there isn’t a huge list of developers who would look at the line of cars exiting the freeway in front of Alchemy and think, “We must build here.” So in that sense, Narcissus and Alchemy feel additive to the community, not extractive.
I stare back at Alchemy’s ceviche negro, a glossy mound of halibut that looks inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits or melted vinyl records. Chef-owner and Mexico City–native Eddy Cortes saves all the trimmings of his dishes (garlic and onion skins, vegetable shavings), then chars them into an ash to create a recado negro—a Yucatán specialty that usually involves toasted chiles, achiote paste, vinegar, and a ton of warm spices. He tosses local halibut with squid ink, tamari, charred pineapple, and citrus. The usual charm of ceviche is that it’s light, bright, full of color. Not here.
It is fantastic—acidic but with a whole world of toasted, warm flavors, like ceviche that’s seen some things.
The menu from Cortes—a home cook his whole life, only having taken it professional a few years ago with his popular pop-up, Barracruda—is really a tour of specialties from various states in Mexico.
A crema de poblano has the blended ghost of rajas at its core: an emulsion of roasted poblanos with butter-sautéed onions and garlic, plus a touch of milk that’s topped with queso fresco, chile ancho, and morita oil. Morita—a smoky Mexican condiment made from dried and smoked red jalapeños for a less intense, fruitier cousin of chipotle—is the key here. It specializes in spiking fats (guacamole, fried eggs, burritos). Sop up the crema with house-baked garlic-rosemary sourdough, blackened from the ash of a corn husk.
Smoked tuna is a Baja gift that’s become an anchor for most San Diego taco shops, and Alchemy combines mesquite-smoked yellowtail with caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and Chihuahua cheese (the OG quesadilla filling), then stuffs it in a perfectly baked masa empanada. The result is somewhere between a TJ Oyster Bar taco, a calzone, and a tamale—but with extra flavor and more black hue from cuttlefish ink.
Alchemy’s huaraches de res is Cortes’ ode to where he’s from. Huaraches are the New Haven–style pizza of Mexican food—thick, oblong masa flatbread layered with refried beans and a payload inspired by the Mexico City markets the chef grew up roaming with his dad: braised beef (braseado), avocado salsa, pickled vegetables, salsa macha, and jocoque (Mexico’s fermented dairy product, like a cross between crema and labneh).
Alchemy’s seared tuna crudo gets a tad abused by the riot of big flavors: charred hibiscus salsa, avocado salsa, pickled grapes, pomegranate salsa macha, and chipotle aioli. It’s a fate that also tempers the joy of the zarandeado, with the adobo marinade on the shrimp fighting a bit with recado negro and chipotle crema. Sticking with curmudgeonly food critic notes, flies are a part of the Alchemy experience, at least during our visit. They’re fairly hard to evict from the outside world, but more measures could be taken to discourage their participation.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The oxtail tetelas—like a Mexican pupusa—are a diary note from Cortes’ travels to Tlaquepaque, where they famously superboost their salsa with a touch of instant coffee. First, Cortes braises the oxtail with beer and Mexican spices. Then he blends that braising liquid into a salsa with beef tallow, guajillo, charred onions, tomatoes, and black garlic. Keeping with the goth food theme, the oxtail goes into masa negra infused with squid ink.
Desserts are where you realize just how deeply Alchemy is committed to the art bit. Rarely do you see a neighborhood bistro trying to pull off trompe l’œil—the French specialty of making pastries and other desserts look like fruit or other everyday objects. (The phrase means “to deceive the eye” and is the historical precedent for the Is It Cake? phenomenon.) Pastry chef Catherinne Avila does, though. A “Naranja” comes out in the form of a mandarin, but inside is orange blossom mousse, apricot jelly, and sablée (a delicate, crumbly shortcrust). A “Philosopher’s Stone” comes in the form of a brick of gold with a serpent on top; inside are mango mousse, mango-Tajín jelly, and a coconut dacquoise.
As Barrio Logan enters an apprehensive phase—its creative culture and restaurant scene growing rapidly, bringing economic promise face-to-face with the need to protect the Chicano way of life—this concrete tuckaway from a Mexico City kid feels like a good step. The Barrio has a long history of making art in unexpected places, and Alchemy carries that a little further.
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.
The Perfect Order:Vulture Martini | Potato Pavé | Crab Cake
Kory Stetina is a long way from learning what vegan food was through a pamphlet at punk-rock shows in his teens. He stands in his dream restaurant, Vulture, wearing a non-sportsy sports coat. He’s married with a child. There’s a very non-punk potato pavé on the monogrammed plate, the servers are in tux-adjacent attire, and this whole building in University Heights has been turned into a plant-based funhouse with formidable, obsessive style.
Photo Credit: James Tran Visitors stroll through the white-and-bright diner Dreamboat before stepping into Vulture’s moody bar.
Despite the earmarks of midcentury continental formalism, five out of 10 people in here wear arcane t-shirts. Word got out early on that Vulture was a fine-dining experience, and while there’s a tableside Caesar and velvet curtains and soft, artful furniture, that was never the intent. Stetina had to do some PR legwork to pop the “special occasion” balloon that floated over the project—another collaboration between himself and Arsalun Tafazoli of CH Projects—and it seems to be working.
One of the t-shirt people I recognize: Justin Pearson of The Locust and Three One G Records. A thoughtful and progressive punk force in SD, he’s seated at a corner table with individuals who look like they’ve at least dabbled in if not dedicated their lives to graphic design and can casually play a theremin near a rare fern. Vulture captures that same dinner-party-for-creative-people mood that the Middletown bar Starlite first brought to the city.
Photo Credit: James Tran Every upholstery in Vulture is tufted, every bust underlit for drama, every detail obsessively detailed.
It’s a place for grown-up punks, for ideas and ideals.
(Obtrusive but important note about punk rock and plant eaters: The rather genuine punk music of the 1970s and ’80s that eventually birthed Green Day and Nirvana and even, I guess, My Chemical Romance emerged from a philosophical and creative instinct to challenge status quos, which often meant expressing unpopular and political opinions in an excessively loud and urgent manner—pretty much exactly what Simon & Garfunkel were doing but far more invigorating and annoying. There were plenty of bands who got big because they had great hair and a good producer; there were other bands who got cult-famous based on the holy-wow way they expressed uncomfortable ideas, making people question the way they lived. Eating only plants was a part of this live-different worldview, and, like any good movement, it got co-opted by the tad too righteous, moral, and shame-mongery. It should be said that Stetina made his name in San Diego by being a philosophical vegan who’s un-mongery.)
Photo Credit: James Tran The Vulture martini, the result of a year of tinkering—a near-frozen booze concerto of three different gins and four vermouths.
To get to Vulture, you enter through Dreamboat, a well-lit, bright, Mr. Clean-ish, ’60s-era, plant-based, romantically American diner that’s all white and chrome and charm—poodle-skirt notions and connoisseur coffee and smoked potato latkes and Impossible burgers and baked goods and milkshakes and cocktails. Seating occupancy: one-and-a-half people on Ozempic (fine, it’s 10).
In the back corner of this tiny diner is an antique host stand. The host takes you through a velvet curtain, down the short hall, and through a door, until you enter into, what?
Photo Credit: James Tran Bedecked in red velvet, Vulture was five years in the making.
Some will call it a speakeasy, but it’s really just a fun surprise restaurant (“speakeasies” do still exist, but they’re not on OpenTable, and almost everyone with a project they call a “speakeasy” will, on their most honest days, admit it’s not a speakeasy).
You’ll step into cavernous, amber-glow, lava-lamp darkness. So, the first experience Vulture offers all of us is temporary blindness, followed by the opportunity to behold the shockingly slow ability of human eyes to adjust to radical shifts in light. The music is on point, a mix of obscure indie tracks and guilty-pleasure soft-rock bangers. Thanks to listening bars, restaurants have become the stereo-system showrooms of America. Remember that guy in high school who one day showed up with box speakers in his trunk and a $6,000 head unit, an amp, subwoofers, and EQs, and his car sounded like Dr. Dre’s and Rick Rubin’s place of business? That guy is restaurants.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra The “crab” cake, made with hearts of palm.
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.
It had been open six weeks when it got the Michelin star. At six weeks, a restaurant is a newborn. Newborns wail and struggle to breathe. They’re cracking open their first panic attack. Nine months in the flotation tank of the mom spa, then—blammo—the landlord shuts off the water and fairly traumatically evicts them into a drafty world that has no clue about mood lighting.
It’s old food critic wisdom that restaurants need six months to get running and ready for real analysis. Crew members will have lied on their resumes, narcissists will find themselves bored, the strangely emotional demands of diners will break newbies. It’s a fresh organism dedicated to executing nightly public theater, and it takes time for all the parts to learn how to operate as a fluid whole—develop mutually beneficial roles, nail the timing, speak the unspoken language.
Granted, the team at Lilo in Carlsbad aren’t newcomers, and they’ve had way more time than they ever wanted to plan this out. Plus, the partners—restaurateur John Resnick and chef Eric Bost—helped earn their restaurant across the street, Jeune et Jolie, a Michelin star (and they run its raved-about sister restaurant, Campfire, down the block).
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Analog music helps set the mood in here.
“We’re lucky,” Resnick says. “About 80 percent of the people on our team, we either worked with immediately or they came back because they were excited about this project.”
The project is a 22-seat, tasting menu–only restaurant featuring Bost, longtime chef de cuisine Dusan Todic, wine director Savannah Riedler (formerly of Post Ranch Inn and two-Michelin-starred Saison), and beverage director Andrew Cordero (Jeune et Jolie and Campfire). It’s four years in the making. When a 10,000-square-foot building became available on State Street in 2021—the last of its kind on one of Carlsbad’s most up-and-coming drags—they jumped at it. The plan was to build a massive all-day restaurant (Wildland, now open) and, behind it, tiny Lilo, where they could showcase what their vision of the ultimate San Diego dinner experience could be. It’s the kind of James Beard Award and Michelin bait that ambitious restaurateurs dream of and makes basic sense when they have a chef-partner like Bost.
“Campfire and Jeune—from the time leases were signed to opening doors—took about 12 months,” Resnick says. “So I kind of felt like, alright, 18 months should be doable.” He pauses. “It was not.”
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos Your meal begins in the serene courtyard.
At that time, the pandemic was still slowly releasing its chokehold. Supply chains had been shot with a billion tranquilizer darts. Building two restaurants at a time while exhibiting a noble American amount of ambition was no picnic. The week after the project finally broke ground, the construction lead on the project—“the only person more essential to the buildout than us as owners,” Resnick says—departed. A fun idiosyncrasy of construction in North County is that most contractors live 40 minutes away and prefer freelance gigs closer to home. So, finding help was hard. Plus, a new ordinance had been passed in Carlsbad since Resnick opened his first two restaurants.
“I was down in Baja having lunch when I got an email about needing a ‘minor site development plan,’” Resnick remembers. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s got the word minor in it; it’s probably not a big deal.’ That one thing added nine months to the project.”
Project costs ballooned. Hems were hawed. The buzz on this project had been loud, and now the scene wondered and whispered. I ask Bost and Resnick if there was a time they considered giving up or drastically reducing the vision.
“It came up, yeah,” Resnick says. “At the end of the day, it was a ‘the only way out is through’ type of thing.”
They thought they’d launch in July 2023. The doors opened in April 2025.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost A tartlette made with vin jaune, or “yellow wine,” a dry French white aged for years under a film of yeast.
The Redemption
For Bost, the unveiling of that restaurant was especially redeeming. In 2020, he’d lost what felt like everything. He’d spent 20 years working his way through some of the world’s best kitchens: Le Cirque, The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, Alain Ducasse, and both The Lodge at Torrey Pines and The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego. He hit the top when he was named executive chef for Guy Savoy, launching the famed French chef’s elaborate Vegas restaurant and then overseeing his places in Singapore. In 2017, ready to do his own thing, he returned to SoCal and spent two years developing the idea for his dream restaurant. He finally opened his unpretentious tasting-menu place, Auburn, in LA in 2019.
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.
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Every year for the Best of San Diego issue, we ask readers to nominate and vote for a San Diego classic restaurant they want food critic Troy Johnson to review. Whichever they vote for, he goes. Last year, they sent him to Rocky’s Crown Pub. This year… Mexican classic, El Indio.
The Perfect Order: Taquitos with Everything | Chicken Tamale | Mordiditas
When you’re credited with inventing the entire concept of the taquito, pretty much every other dish you create is going to pout in that cigar-shaped shadow. Unless you sous vide a couple narwhals, the taquito is gonna dominate your story.
San Diego’s El Indio is widely cited as the global birthplace of the taquito. (Note from our nonexistent legal team: Like any food origin story, it’s contentious—many will tell you a small, rolled taco had been a staple in Mexico for generations; others claim an LA taco stand beat SD to it. But by and large, El Indio has been granted paternity for the word “taquito” and cited as the first in the US to both sell and widely popularize the iconic thing—which happens to fit our narrative nicely, so we’re leaning in.)
So, El Indio’s mordiditas are that almost-famous entourage dish that deserves more applause. Sliced segments of taquito, about the size of pigs in a blanket, are assembled in a heap on a plate and absolutely waterboarded with nacho cheese and pickled jalapeños. They’re essentially loaded taquito nachos, an idea whose glory, in a just world, will outlive us all and echo in Valhalla. They solve a longstanding problem with every single batch of nachos that has been made in humankind—that each and every chip is denied an equitable amount of cheese or load.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
Most nachos are built as an altar to American capitalism: The top couple of chips accumulate a vast majority of the cheese and the rest of the chips just keep hearing rumors of a trickle-down until they protest. If our species ever gets cut from the roster of the universe, the fact that we put a man on the moon but could never equally dress our nachos should be examined by our successor species as a possible cause.
El Indio’s taquito rubble comes in a biblical flood of nacho cheese. It’s a snack-bar treat for people whose therapists have listened to their fantasy of placing their open, eagerly receptive mouths beneath the queso pump—albeit with far better taquitos made from scratch.
The dish isn’t gonna knock your socks off, but it’s satisfying in a calorie-gargling way, a celebration of the fact that merely entering a taco shop releases us from acknowledging the physical limits of human arteries. Would El Indio’s mordiditas be better if the cheese was scaled back and partnered with a crema, or if the cheese was lovingly dirtied with chipotle in adobo, or if they came topped with a lawn-sized pile of cilantro and onions and activated charcoal ash from the sacred cenotes of Chichén Itzá? Shut up and eat your naquitos.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
It feels simultaneously excessive and absolutely correct to say El Indio is a San Diego legend and global food icon. In 1940, Ralph Pesqueira Sr. was working in one of the many aerospace headquarters that surrounded Lindbergh Field (the SD International Airport’s original name), building planes and war machines. As a side dream, he started making and selling fresh corn tortillas by hand on the corner of Grape and India Streets.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
As with most food success stories, there was a key moment of technological innovation (consider In-N-Out’s invention of the two-way speaker or Pizza Hut introducing online ordering to the pie masses). Around 1945, Pesqueira—who we might call the Thomas Edison of Mexican food—invented San Diego’s first tortilla-making machine. By hand, he could whip up 30 dozen a day; with the machine, he cranked out 30 dozen an hour. A full-fledged tortilla factory was born, the effect of which was massive for putting training wheels on the local Mexican food culture that would boom decades later.
When aero coworkers asked him if he could make a handheld, good-travelin’ food for lunch pails, he thought of flautas (a Mexican staple with global roots—a flour tortilla usually wrapped around meat and rolled into the shape of a flute, then fried).
He did a smaller version with fresh masa corn tortillas. The taquito entered the world. He sold each for 18 cents.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos A slice of El Indio’s storied past.
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.
The Perfect Order: Wedge Salad | French Fries | Steak of Choice
Don’t come here.
If you do, locals will TP my place of residence. If you’re going to go, go at 4 p.m. If someone waddles over in their bathrobe with that feral need-a-steak look in their eyes, consider offering your seat as a tribute to their OG-ness. Or maybe they’ll sit on your lap. This feels like the kind of place where strangers become fast, lap-sitting friends.
Juan Jasper Kitchen & Wine isn’t a restaurant as much as it is a porch with a stove, a pop-up that stayed popped. It’s a granny dining flat in Golden Hill, a clubhouse with ribeyes and wine. It started with the old-school butcher shop next door, Sepulveda Meats & Provisions. Opened in 2016, Sepulveda is run by John Sepulveda and his nephew Nick Swing.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
The shop serves the regional gold-standard Brandt beef (drug-free, source-ID’ed, ethically raised) in all its forms and in various marinades (prime cuts and off cuts, pâtes, bones, tri-tip, carne asada, sausages, ground beef, the whole meat rainbow), plus chicken and quail and turkey and pork and all the things, including housemade pastas and sauces. The sausages are local folklore, made fresh every Thursday (try the jalapeño-cheddar). Like The Wise Ox in North Park, the family-run joint is basically a house of high-quality protein consultants offering recipes and tips and tricks to people who know them by name. Indie butcher shops are a classic, more human American art form (with deep German immigrant roots) lost to the efficiencies of bulk grocering.
When the hairdresser beside Sepulveda closed, the team cut a hole in the wall, ripped out the salon chairs, and essentially built a test kitchen for the butchery’s array of goods. Named Juan Jasper in honor of the owners’ fathers, it quickly became the mighty, DIY meat-and-wine bistro that local food people tried to keep secret.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
It doesn’t have a phone number. No reservations. It doesn’t take credit cards—only Venmo or whatever “cash” is. At some places, you can rack up credit card points. Dine at Juan Jasper, and I’m pretty sure Amex deducts some.
It’s got one-and-a-half seats that masquerade as 20 or so, and it seems everyone—owners, cooks, servers, guests, dogs—lives in the apartment complex across the street, sharing sourdough starters, reverse-sear tips, and a love for Gavi wine and a screamin’ deal on good food. Some hyper-local spots like this can give off a get-off-my-lawn wariness to outsiders (hi there, Rocky’s Crown Pub), but Juan Jasper is friendly as hell. As if you were invited to crash the dinner party of a family who truly gets along and isn’t trying to salve deep generational trauma with taco night.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
We show up at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, and we have to hurry for a seat. By 5 p.m., servers are bringing folding chairs onto the sidewalk for the crowd that’s patiently waiting. A man carries out an extra table, slaps a not-serious tablecloth on it, and makes room for a couple more.
Whoever’s doing the wine list knows a thing or two and doesn’t care for the usual suspects, which is what you want out of a wine bar (the thrill of discovery). There are Gavis and roussannes, Blaufränkisch (a great chilled red from Austria), a red from Palestine (baladi grapes). And the staff raves about them in detail and without pretense.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
I’m not sure I’ve come across a more down-to-earth, likable, knowledgeable staff. There’s a certain “sit; chill; life’s pretty decent” that radiates from people when they genuinely dig working at a place. Solare in Liberty Station’s like that. Not since our dear, departed Cafe Chloe in East Village has a restaurant exuded so much plucky, open-arms charm. Chloe was San Francisco chic, had that art-major touch.
Juan Jasper’s charm is more “emotionally available dad in Home Depot.” You see it in the antique plates with floral patterns, in the wine bottles that have been turned into candle lamps for the outside tables (there are no inside tables, just a counter in front of the cooks). You see it in the photo of a dad teaching his son to pee on a side road (the manager’s dad and brother). Walking to the restroom, you often have to do the hands-up, “not trying to get fresh here” scoot.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
Juan Jasper changes the menu just about all the time but keeps some local favorites on there pretty consistently, like the deviled eggs with chorizo made in-house at Sepulveda. The ones that hit our table are nice, but they’re served a tad too cold and missing something. That something is definitely acid.
The “devil” in deviled eggs has always been the mustard—the note that stings in the right ways; puts some welcome sado in the mouth masochism; offsets the big, fatty bass notes of eggs. This is why eggs are almost always better with hot sauce (or ketchup if you’ve got middle-America glory in your heart and you’re kinda nasty), because they need that foil. It looks like the arugula below is decorative, but it helps to eat the eggs with a few leaves.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
There are always daily specials up on the board. The day we were there, a cook (formerly of Nolita Hall) had whipped up a skin-on mackerel filet with blistered tomatoes and chili oil on charred toast. Mackerel’s an oily little sucker, which can make it taste a bit too proud of its own musk. But this is perfectly done.
The wedge salad? One of the best I’ve had, and it is absolutely because of the decadent, slutty lardons on top (and the dressing). I’m not a wedge guy, mostly because iceberg lettuce has been bringing near-zero flavor or nutrients to the table for far too long. It’s the LaCroix of lettuce, and we’re implicit in its slacker brassica success because “it’s crunchy” and makes a cool sound when we eat it. Iceberg slow-quit us years ago and did some light embezzling and we’re still inviting it to the company Christmas party.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
But I’ll order Juan Jasper’s every time. It’s more of a “loaded” wedge, with thin-sliced red onions, tomatoes, croutons, huge chunks of blue cheese, and a rough-chopped spice blend (a sort of Juan Jasper furikake or everything bagel seasoning that’s on a lot of dishes). Does the kitchen put too much blue cheese dressing on it? You bet. Know what a decent solution for that is? Scraping some off. But those lardons—thick, tender nubs of perfectly smoked pork—are party drugs.
The house-cut Kennebec fries are dreamy: sturdy and showing some skin, but fluffy on the inside. The fry scene is pretty evenly split between steak and shoestring, and these are the truce in the middle. They’re salted as fries should be—to aortically concerning levels.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
The corn and shrimp fritters are more corn and shrimp than fritters, and the moisture content of both of those things makes the interior a tad soupy rather than fluffy. But the poblano sauce underneath is a floral beaut.
Juan Jasper’s burger patty is phenomenally good, made from the ribeye and NY strip trimmings next door at the butcher shop. Order it however you enjoy your quality steak— pink, leaning bloody. If you prefer quality steaks well-done, consider corrective surgery. The burger is a Spartan thing, just a potato roll bun and melted gouda, served floating in an infinity pool of Bordelaise. It’s excellent… save for the bread. Juan Jasper is house-making the potato roll. Noble spirit and effort, but it’s a little airy—and a patty that special deserves an equally special co-host.
Is Juan Jasper the apex culinary menu in San Diego? No. Is the food pretty effing good and the vibe immaculate, and do the people and neighborly pricing make it taste like 13 Michelin stars? You bet. Juan Jasper is not a secret. But it sure as hell feels like a shared one. I’d eat here a thousand times out of 100.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
If you’re anything like us, it can be easy to get so caught up in taking care of everyone else, that your own needs get lost in the ether. But while this may be a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true: You can’t give your best self to other people unless you’re taking care of yourself.
Sometimes, that looks like stopping in for your regular acupuncture or chiropractic appointment. Other days, it means giving your body the fresh, organic fuel it needs to truly feel and function at its best. And some other times still, it involves leaving your responsibilities behind for a weekend to pamper yourself at an incredible resort and spa.
Only you can decide what your truly need. We’re just here to help you find the best ways to get it.
Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa
Island living meets desert luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. When you step onto the 11-acre property, you’ll be surrounded by sweeping view of the Santa Rosa Mountains with olive trees and fragrant citrus groves decorating the grounds. In other words, everything about this relaxed but refined resort is primed to help you let go of the stress from home and enjoy easy sun-soaked days and gorgeous starry nights.
The rooms blend calming, woven textures with Tommy Bahama’s signature tropical prints and feature private lanais, making it easy unwind the moment you walk in the door. If you book one of the four Villa Suites, you’ll be treated to exclusive Tommy Bahama furniture and unique personal touches to further that feeling of instant ease.
At the award-winning Spa Rosa, the expert team will help reset and recharge your body and mind using methods and rituals inspired by the desert. The 12,000-square-foot retreat includes outdoor soaking pools, eucalyptus steam rooms, and outdoor cabanas, as well as massages, facials, and body masks—all aimed at creating a day dedicated to you. We’re particularly partial to the Day Long Escape, an indulgent all-day affair of CDBs soaks, renewing scrubs, life changing massages, and transformative facials.
Following your treatment, continue the experience with a meal on the patio at Grapefruit Basil. We love the Hamachi Crudo, a light, citrus-forward dish featuring premium yellowtail, house-made ponzu, creamy avocado, and fresh seasonal garnishes.
Whether you’re strolling the gardens, relaxing beside its saltwater pools, or indulging in a restorative treatment, you’ll be able to escape in style and relax in luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa.
Healcove Chiropractic
There’s no shortage of ways to stay active in San Diego—but if you really want to enjoy everything the city has to offer, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving your body its tune-ups. Enter: Healcove Chiropractic. The board-certified chiropractors and wellness professionals at Healcove are experts at addressing that stage where you’re not injured, exactly, but you’re not at 100%, either. Maybe you’re feeling a bit tense or stressed out. Or it could be that you’re not quite moving the way you want to. Sometimes, it’s just that the accumulation of days, weeks, or even years of daily strain is starting to take a toll. No matter what stage you find yourself at, the Healcove Chiropractic team can provide integrated, preventative care centered on long-term, science-backed approaches that ensure you can always stay active and live the life you want to live pain-free.
This starts by providing truly individualized care. Every patient can expect a thorough 60-minute consultation session that includes a posture and movement screening. This allows the team to develop a completely personalized plan. That plan might include chiropractic care, acupuncture, or massage therapy, as well as functional fitness training, vibration and sound therapy, and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, a clinical rehabilitation method that retrains the body’s stabilization systems. Whatever the team recommends, you can be sure that it’s tailored to meeting your body’s needs today and the future.
There’s a reason that San Diego Magazine named Healcove the “Best Chiropractor in San Diego”—don’t wait until you’re struggling with an injury to find out why. Book an appointment today for holistic, integrated care that helps ground and heal your body before it reaches a crisis point.
Juice Holler
West Coast wellness culture meets the community feel of Southern Appalachia at Juice Holler. Juice Holler’s menu consists of made-to-order smoothies and smoothie bowls, as well as grab-and-go cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, salads, and more. It operates from the blissfully simple premise that fueling up with food and drink that’s guilt-free and good your body should be simple, accessible, and, above all else, delicious. And if you haven’t yet made it out to the Encinitas café, which opened just this year, let us be the first to tell you: Juice Holler delivers on each and every of these fronts.
We love the Supercharger smoothie, a mood-lifting and body-fueling option made with banana, almond butter, blue spirulina, maca, grass-fed whey protein, raw cacao nibs, medjool dates, and coconut milk. We’re also partial to the Thrive Alive smoothie bowl, where avocado, mango, sea moss, spirulina, mint, coconut milk, and agave are mixed and topped with coconut, chia seeds, strawberry, mango, and chocolate drizzle. The wellness shots include the Detoxifier, a cleansing blend of kale, cucumber, lemon and spirulina, plus a shot specially designed to fight inflammation (named, fittingly, Anti-Inflammation). Probiotic overnight oats, lemon turmeric bars, and strawberry shortcake chia pudding are other standouts on the grab-and-go menu.
Much of the vibe feels beachy North County chic—think green tile with orange and pink accents, grounded with greenery and natural wood—but Juice Holler founder Kelly Sergott, a longtime Encinitas local, has also enfused the space with her Kentucky roots. In Appalachia, a holler is small valley between hills and mountains, where nature reigns, community is king, and nourishment comes right from the land. At Juice Holler, Sergott has created a holler for the busy modern times, using local ingredients to create a spot for people to come together and enjoy fresh, fast, feel-good fuel for their day.
Everwell Acupuncture
We’ve all had that experience with a medical professional where we’ve felt rushed, ignored, or misunderstood—and ultimately, like we didn’t get the answers that we needed. But at Everwell, the holistic acupuncture practice located in Solana Beach, the care team wants to transform your understanding of what healthcare can look like.
Patients at Everwell experience care rooted in intentional listening and radical empathy—and trust us, those aren’t just corporate buzzwords. This place actually puts those ideas into practice. You will always be given the time you need to tell your story— initial in-take appointments are two hours long—and you can rest assured that your story will be believed. Every single question and concern will be addressed by a dedicated practitioner who wants to find the specific solutions that work best for you, and you’ll receive care that’s aimed at healing the body, mind, and spirit.
Everwell’s highly trained, doctorate-level practitioners blend evidence-based acupuncture with the practice of classical Chinese medicine. (If you’ve never tried acupuncture before or aren’t sure if the team will be a fit, we’d highly recommended Everwell’s complimentary 20-minute consultations.) Research shows that by stimulating specific points on the body, acupuncture activates a natural healing response in the body, helping to restore balance, regulate the nervous system, and improve overall wellbeing. This allows the practice to address an incredibly wide range of conditions from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to digestive issues, from stress and burnout to headaches migraines, fertility and postpartum struggles, hormonal imbalances, sleep concerns and more.
At Everwell, you can expect to feel heard, trusted, respected, and cared for. This is a space that doesn’t want to be just another healthcare provider you visit; it wants to provide patients with dedicated partner who will be there for their entire health journey.
