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SDM’s staff shouts out our favorite food finds this month including bites from Nómade, a classic Julian pie shop, and Little Fox Cups & Cones
Raw fish and raw beef, seven-day pastrami, caramel corn ice cream, and a sweet San Diego staple? Is this the room-service menu you get when you finally unpack after passing through the pearly gates? Or is this simply another SD odyssey of choice eats compiled by your humble, hungry editors? Pull out your bucket list; you have a few additions to make. Go get some.
Twenty-seven-year old Aidan Owens is one of the top rising talents in San Diego—he is whip-smart, looks forever 18, learned the art of butchery young, and gives a damn about local food. He’s splitting duties right now as culinary director of both Herb & Sea in Encinitas and Herb & Wood in Little Italy. Between the two restaurants, they go through about 2,000 pounds of local tuna every week.
To waste nothing, Owens’ team turns the (awesome) scraps into nduja—a spreadable sausage arguably created in Spain or Calabria, Italy, usually made with pork and Calabrian chiles, garlic, and pepper. It’s the hummus of protein. Owens double-grinds fatty tuna scraps with fermented Calabrian chiles, smoked paprika, fennel seeds, and a not-shy amount of salt, then slow cooks it all in olive oil.
He serves it with actual hummus, blending garbanzo beans with caramelized onions, garlic confit, tahini, and ice for a full 15 to 20 minutes to reach apex creaminess. Then, he passes it through a super-fine strainer to fluff it up. Add tzatziki, a riot of herbs (dill, parsley, mint, chervil), and za’atar with charred whole-wheat pita—it makes store-bought hummus taste like America went wrong. –Troy Johnson
Blessed be these final moments of locals’ summer, when the sunned patios transition into San Diego’s long winter season of similarly sunned patios. All our oceanview perches have been returned to us, freshly polished by the purifying ointment of Arizona tax dollars. Few are better than Monarch Ocean Pub atop Del Mar Plaza.
With views like that, the restaurant could serve mozzarella sticks deep-fried in carpet shards and warm Hamm’s. But, instead, the kitchen’s taking Angus beef boneless short ribs and house-brining them for five days, coating them with pastrami rub, resting them overnight to let the spices set down some roots, and slow-smoking the whole shebang with a blend of cherry and apple woods for three hours, then cooling the end product overnight.
It’s a weeklong project that’s finally served on toasted marbled rye with gruyère, chimichurri, house mustard, pickles, and pickled red onions. Del Mar’s pastrami renaissance is now. –Troy Johnson
When a storm ripped through Grammy winner Jason Mraz’s orchard in O’side, a creamy artillery of ripe avocados fell. Not wanting to let a good avo die, North County scoop shop Little Fox took them in, turning them into a sugary riff on avocado toast called SoSoCal (avocado cream, toasted brioche cream, Graza olive oil swirl, lime zest).
Oceanside’s Little Fox is a mostly local–ingredient ice cream shop where owner Meghan Koll (ex-Jeune et Jolie) is pasteurizing her own base (a rarity, since most shops get the base delivered ready to go) and has a story behind each flavor. The true intoxicant, though, is the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Koll toasts coarse cornmeal to the point of smoke for a popcorn flavor, then swirls in honeycomb and caramel. Like dessert elote or a bowl of caramel corn. –Troy Johnson
Purportedly, it was Turkish nomads who invented steak tartare. They’d stick meat under their saddles while they traveled on horseback and devour the tenderized results at the end of the ride. Nowadays, the dish is the kind of appetizer enjoyed at five-star hotels and upscale restaurants like The Fairmont Grand Del Mar’s Amaya—a far cry from its equestrian roots. Topped with avocado and soaking in beef tallow dressing and salsa macha, this tartare feels like the snack of champions, no matter how it found its way onto our plates. –Nicolle Monico
The Japanese-inspired katsu sando (pillowy milk bread, bright slaw, a sizable slab of chicken fried as crispy as a Canadian tourist at Tourmaline) clings to Nómade’s Spanish-ish tapas concept by arriving in four crustless, sharable squares, like tea sandwiches with protein goals. Dunk your portion in the sidecar of sweet, addictive dipping sauce while an eclectic rotation of records spins softly on in the Adams Avenue restaurant’s date-night-ready space, styled like your coolest friend’s midcentury living room. –Amelia Rodriguez
Accursio Lota is so indelibly from there that he doesn’t sound Sicilian. Sicily sounds like Accursio Lota. The chef who raised snails under the stairs at his family home as a kid (feeding them herbs and pasta to make the perfect escargot) and was named the Barilla “World Pasta Champion” in 2017 is about to open his new La Jolla restaurant, Dora. This dish at his original North Park trattoria, Cori Pastificio, is a reminder of how good it will be.
A raw, steak-sized portion of Japanese hamachi is sliced ultra-thin and cured for just a few minutes in olive oil, basil, parsley, mint, lemon, orange zest, and salt, then plated with citrus oil, dry black olives, arugula, stone fruit juice (apricots most recently), sliced Fresno peppers, and the kicker: a savory red-onion granita (flavored ice). A crudo with a small, cheffy ICEE up top. –Troy Johnson
Sweet, sour, spicy, salty—if you nail all those in a sauce, finely shredded fraudulent tax documents would taste pretty good in it. That’s why mambo sauce—a specialty of Chicago or DC, depending on who’s bragging, and almost assuredly inspired by Chinese cooking—is one of the greats. At Quixote, the LaFayette Hotel’s North Park cathedral of Oaxacan food, chef José Cepeda makes his with habañero and clam juice (replacing the traditional recipe’s call for a hot sauce of your choice), lime juice, onion ashes, ketchup, and tamari.
He tosses it with sweet bay scallops and a lighter supporting cast of octopus and poached shrimp, plus a diced medley of Persian cucumbers, red onion, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and mango. Served with crackers, it’s the ceviche for fans of Kansas City barbecue or creative riffs on The Love Boat–era shrimp cocktails. –Troy Johnson
Fall means football, spices in our lattes, and—most importantly—fresh apple pie in Julian. This treat is a microcosm of what makes San Diego food so special, with each bite telling us a story about our ecology and culture. The apples carry the memory of our sun and soil; the crust reflects the hands that shaped it. Baked together, they are more than dessert.
Julian pies are a celebration of tradition and a reminder that real food has root and meaning. At Moms (which has locations in Julian and Wynola), your slice comes warm with ice cream or cheddar cheese. I’m gassing up the truck to make the trip as we speak. I suggest you grab your coziest fall sweater and do the same. –Mateo Hoke
Along with other Filipino culinary icons, Ashley del Rosario is making Filipino pastries a category of their own
Baker Ashley del Rosario estimates she makes five people cry every day. It’s not because she’s some salty old grump. In fact, del Rosario is such a delight to talk to that we ended up chatting in the sunshine for 20 minutes after my two-hour parking meter ran out. (I got lucky—no ticket!) It’s because her baking philosophy, which centers around spotlighting her culture as a Filipina-American and using some of her mom’s recipes as inspiration, seems to uniquely touch a nerve in her community.
“People message me every day saying… ‘Oh my God, my mom loves your stuff. Oh my God, this made me so emotional. This reminds me of my childhood,’” she says. “I must be doing something right.”
We’re sitting outside at Michi Michi in Bankers Hill, where she finished up a two-month residency as the in-house guest baker on June 30. Her menu of Filipino-inspired pastries feature ingredients like mango, ube, pandan, calamansi, and taro leaves in items like French croissants and Italian maritozzos. But she’s also pushing flavor boundaries with pastries like a champorado tart, a Filipino chocolate rice pudding topped with a dollop of anchovy paste.
Love it or hate it, to del Rosario, the point is that she introduced champorado to a new audience. “If you don’t like Filipino food, or you’re not interested in it, or you don’t even get it… you [still] came into this bakery and you saw Filipino desserts,” she says. So the next time you come across champorado, your brain will already recognize it and hey, maybe you’ll give it a try.
San Diego is home to the fifth-largest Filipino population in the United States, with enclaves in Mira Mesa, National City, southeast San Diego, and Chula Vista. That’s led to a rise in popularity of Filipino food in San Diego, as well as across the country.
In 2021, Phillip Esteban—San Diego Magazine’s “Chef of the Year” in 2020—opened the first location of his fast-casual Filipino concept White Rice, which now has locations in Normal Heights and Sorrento Valley. Kristin Cleavinger’s coffee and matcha pop-up One of One draws inspiration from her own Filipina-American heritage. Tara Monsod, executive chef at Animae and Le Coq, is a three-time semifinalist for Best Chef in California by the James Beard Awards and one of the leading champions of Filipino-American cuisine. She was also del Rosario’s boss at her first kitchen job, which was doing pastries at Animae. (Nothing like jumping straight into the fire!)
Del Rosario says Monsod became a cultural and culinary mentor, pushing her to explore new and bigger opportunities. When she got the chance to study at the illustrious Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy, Monsod encouraged her to go. It changed del Rosario’s life—so much so, she’s moving to Italy later this year to continue honing her pastry skills.
In the future, she says she hopes to split her time between Italy and San Diego, continuing collaborations and pop-ups while developing what she sees as an entirely new lane within pastry: Italian pastry technique with distinctly Filipino flavors.
Italian pastry technique is different from classic French. Take croissants, for example. The Italian version, called cornetto, is often filled with creams, jams, or savory fillings, and tends to feel softer than its buttery, flakier French counterpart. They’re also more regionally driven, with different areas utilizing local specialties like citrus for the filling—an ideal vehicle for launching a Filipino-fusion creation.
There are plenty of globally-inspired bakeries in San Diego with their own specialties—Azúcar in Ocean Beach is Cuban, Su Pan offers traditional Mexican pastries, and Asa Bakery is modeled after Japanese kissaten cafés. There are even a number of local Filipino bakeries like Valerio’s 1979 (formerly Valerio’s City Bakery), Kababayan Bakery, and Starbread Bakery. But a Filipino-Italian bakery? Not yet. And even if there were, del Rosario says the more, the merrier.
“There is no competition,” she says. “It’s just showing our culture.”
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
The Mexican restaurant continues the Barrio Logan tradition of art in unexpected places
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.
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.
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.
Photos Credit: Dee Sandoval
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.
After building a loyal following through coffee shop pop-ups, Scoopy Scoopy is putting down roots in Leucadia
There’s a saying in business that if you’re not evolving, you’re dying. I personally have a saying that if you’re not eating ice cream, you’re also probably dying, but of sadness.
Scoopy Scoopy doesn’t have either of those problems. The premium ice cream pop-up launched last year with the idea of setting up in coffee shops after hours, helping those businesses maximize their profitability while also avoiding the costs of a brick and mortar. But it turns out, a lot of people in Leucadia really like ice cream—so much so that Scoopy Scoopy decided to open their own scoop shop in the same building as Moto Deli and Cadence Cyclery (in the former Queenstage Coffee House space) on July 8.
Evolving doesn’t mean leaving the old ways behind. Zach Zien, who runs Scoopy with his partner Steven Segal and wife Sophia, says they will continue to pursue the shared space model on weekends at Coffee Coffee in Leucadia through the summer and are still open to popping up at other venues. “That’s still a core part of our business,” he says. But with steady demand in the Encinitas area, it gave them the confidence to put down roots of their own.
“People have really welcomed us and we’ve been well-received,” he explains. “We think this is the market to succeed in.”
The super-premium ice cream is still sourced from Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream in Wisconsin, but instead of the eight flavors they’re limited to for popups, the permanent storefront will be able to offer 12. “There will be three or four that regularly rotate, with probably eight staples that are our best sellers,” says Zien, pointing to flavors like peanut butter, oatmeal cookie, and the alternating vegan options. They’ll also be able to fill pints to order, something they haven’t been able to do in the past.
Currently, Moto Deli closes at 4 p.m. daily, but once Scoopy Scoopy is up and running, it will offer beer and wine until 8 p.m. for a shared drinks-and-dessert Happy Hour. “We’re hoping to get a food truck vendor on regular rotation to have food options available after hours as well,” says Zien.
The spontaneity of pop-ups can be as exciting as it is efficient. But when it comes to ice cream, I like knowing exactly when and where I can get a scoop—before the sadness kicks in.
Scoopy Scoopy soft opens on July 8 at 190 N. Coast Hwy 101 in Encinitas. Initial operating hours are Wednesday and Thursday, noon to 8 p.m.; and Friday through Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. (subject to change).
Speaking of pop-ups, San Diego’s culinary entrepreneurs keep ramping things up with more concepts launching every week. But after a parade of pastry prodigies and brilliant breadmakers, it might be nice to sink your teeth into something with a bit of protein. (Shoutout to all my carboholic brethren out there.)
Jim Adamski is joining the ever-swelling ranks of MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen) businesses alongside the likes of The Hidden Gazebo Eatery in Lemon Grove and Warung RieRie in Serra Mesa with his new venture, Cold Smoke BBQ. He’s not following a specific regional barbecue style like Central Texas, Kansas City, or St. Louis—he’s driven by whatever inspires him at the time (or, whatever he’s craving). He’s also not following a specific schedule. “My loose plans are weekends… then eventually maybe during the week,” he says. His menu and pick-up schedule get updated regularly, with pre-orders available to pick up from his house in 4S Ranch. So far, he says the dry-rubbed ribs and rib tips have been the best-sellers. But if you absolutely can’t resist adding a bread-adjacent item, you’re still in luck—he’s got cornbread.
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
The 29-year-old culinary director at Herb & Sea is making seafood sexy (and approachable) again
Implementing a farm-to-table model hardly deserves acknowledgement these days. It’s not a stretch. It’s not innovative. “It’s the bare f**king minimum,” says Herb & Sea‘s executive chef Aidan Owens.
When I arrive at the Encinitas restaurant, I’m ready to talk sustainability, farm-to-table stuff, with Owens. “Did you see the chin on that?” he says of the extra big jiggly chin on the sheephead that just arrived with the day’s fresh catch. I did. It was Jay Leno adjacent.
I learn quickly that he somehow oozes both charm and stone-cold honesty. Maybe he could construct a new dish with chin goo, like he did when he had a bunch of tuna scraps and voila’d it into a smooth and crowd-pleasing ‘nduja. “I want to know what’s in there,” he says.
The instinct to look closer, to dig into what others might discard, says a lot about the chef’s approach. I guide him back to our topic, but he has something else on his mind. “We’re overcomplicating food—what happened to just cooking good food and having fun with it?”
Owens grew up on a farm in Byron Bay, Australia, where sustainability wasn’t a concept you chat about so much as a way of life. Think dirt roads, backyard chickens, pulling vegetables straight from the ground, and a mother who believed that if you couldn’t pronounce the ingredients on a package, you shouldn’t eat what was inside.
Food wasn’t precious or performative. Making it was what you did because you were hungry and that’s still what inspires Owens today. “I like to cook good food because I like to eat good food,” he says.
His approach to sustainability at Herb & Sea began so naturally that it felt just like instinct. “I was just like, ‘Let’s order food from the people who live and work here,’” he says.
And why wouldn’t he when lives in San Diego? Cities all over the world vie for our goods. Our tuna is sent overseas. Our spiny lobsters hit dinner plates in China and Japan. Not to mention California’s producing a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.
“Why would we outsource when it’s all here?” Owens asks.
Sustainability, in this context, is about cooking what exists in abundance, nearby, right now. “I love the local fish here. It’s f**king delicious and San Diego citrus, I mean, it is so f**ing good,” he says.
Instead of importing ingredients, Owens also looks for nearby alternatives. “You can find really cool things in the local waters,” he says, pointing out that stingray cheeks taste similar to scallops.
Whatever he finds in that sheephead chin might just be the next substitute for marrow. But to make this work, it means getting diners amped up about the slightly unfamiliar.
Tasting menus, where diners are completely in his hands, become an opportunity to gently push boundaries. “I’ll serve mackerel, because people think they hate it,” Owens says, noting that the abundant local fish can have some fishiness. “But when it’s fresh, it’s arguably one of the best fish in the ocean.”
He also tweaks the language on the menu so people might feel more compelled to give dishes a try without preconceived notions. He might use “lengua” instead of “tongue.” “Whelk” instead of “snail.” When he puts “stingray throat” on the menu, he disarmingly calls it “skate.”
To reduce waste, scraps aren’t always discarded but rather turned into something new. Sometimes they’re smoked, cured or fermented. Apples going bad turn into apple ponzu. Lemons turn to marmalade, which stretches their usefulness far beyond peak season. “And it’s super tasty on our pizza,” he says.
What makes the food even richer, is the relationships he’s built with farmers. Though it didn’t always feel natural, Owens sought personal connection first. He recalls approaching a fisherman at the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market. “I was awkward,” he says. “I went up to him and said, ‘I like your fish.’”
Owen’s is now so close to his suppliers—like fishermen Ryan Sebo and Joe Daly—that he gets texted pictures of fresh catches right as they flop on the boat. The messages always ask if he wants first dibs. “I say yes to a lot of fish,” Owens says, noting that Herb & Sea can go through 2,000 pounds of seafood a week.
The next evolution of sustainability, in his view, will be chefs working directly with producers such as his alliance with Sebo, cutting out middlemen and purveyors where possible. “It will put more money in the pockets of the people doing the work,” he says.
It will mean that chefs can’t just know their local farmers and producers, but they’ll choose to work with the ones who have the best practices. Dining and sustainability will become much less about the final plate. “It will be more about the impact that plate has on the Earth,” he says.
Ultimately, he believes sustainability doesn’t need to be loud. It doesn’t need hashtags. It just needs to be honest.
“We aren’t saving lives. We’re feeding people good food,” he says.
And yet, in feeding people well—simply, thoughtfully, responsibly—something meaningful happens. Guests leave satisfied. Ingredients are respected. Local ecosystems are supported and food returns to what it has always been at its core: nourishment, pleasure, and a quiet reflection of the place it comes from.
No buzzwords required.
Eighteen seconds, one unforgettable mistake, and a Fourth of July story that somehow gets better with age
There’s a famous video.
“This is insane!” the guy filming it seems to proclaim. “It’s the best fireworks show ever!” a companion confirms, inspiring a debate lasting over a decade.
All told, 7,000 fireworks exploded in the span of 25 seconds over San Diego Bay on July 4, 2012. A Michael Bay amount of unison. $125,000 worth of shells, cakes, Roman candles, and skyrockets had been placed on a barge—enough for 17 minutes of decorative sky flares—and…
Boom.
The sky looked like someone had set a giant Rorschach test on fire. Or as if whatever we all see in our Rorschachs—butterflies, clowns, tongue kissing, dads—was being electrocuted and lifted heavenward, amen. It was shocking how bright it was, how much it sizzled the local cosmos. Could’ve been one of those sci-fi films where a hole is ripped open between warring universes. But angstier, more metal—the work of some methy creator in a sleeveless concert tee.
The sound?
Lou Reed once released an entire album that contained 64 minutes of mindflaying guitar screeches and machine noises. No regular songs, just a fascinating amount of ear distress. His record label reps no doubt heard the melodic outro of their careers, but everyone else was in pain and stumped. That album still sounded better than the bay did that night. The bay sounded like a god who struggled with emotional regulation had blown his speakers and was working through the anger stage of AV grief.
In the left frame of the video, a middle-aged woman is attempting to drag her husband off by the hand. In no way does he want to go, possibly because he had missed the time Roseanne Barr sung the national anthem at a Padres game, simultaneously disemboweling and amusing America through the power of song. He would not willingly abandon an equally worthy San Diego trainwreck.
Another woman in the video appears to have just filled her beer, rushing to sit down for the show. She pauses mid-sit and returns to the full and upright position to properly bear witness. What was supposed to be prolonged entertainment has been so radically shortened that she will have to find another reason to drink. Lucky for her, drinking will be the only way to adequately process.
Locals remember the conspiracy theories. People wondered if the fuses had been tripped by a saboteur who was sympathetic to dogs, fish, or the growing suspicion that late-stage capitalism is a gorgeously branded but impossible dream sustained by remarkably efficient top-tier wealth retention and the soft compliance of fireworks-watchers who can no longer afford a house, a beer, or the personal impacts of human reproduction.
Speaking of being terrified of babies, babies were terrified. The children who witnessed it probably still can’t go near a candle store. But those kids will be tougher, perfectly scarred kids. They’ll write better songs.
That night helped us absolutely dominate the national news cycle. For a hot minute, we became America’s water-skiing squirrel. Now, years later, when you Google “fireworks gone wrong,” San Diego is always a top contender, along with that poor Nebraska family who nearly wiped out a couple generations in their front yard, their minivan somehow turning into a howitzer of recreational TNT.
There is still debate as to whether Big Bay Boom 2012 is the worst or greatest fireworks show of all time. But the advanced parts of civilization arrived at the truth as quickly as the women in the video did. It was undeniably amazing.
First of all, the point of Fourth of July fireworks isn’t “the intricate choreography of sky fire over a guaranteed amount of show time.” It’s about creating a vivid memory shared with some people you like, love, or would like to love.
BBB2012 used large-scale chemical fire to create the ultimate memory.
Sure, some people who iron their jeans subjected their family to a sermon about how San Diego managed to botch America’s birthday like a Disney princess-for-hire who smelled of quite a few Sauvignons.
The rest of us saw how perfectly it nailed the actual feeling of being an American. Because only a miniscule percentage of us bake postcard apple pies where every inch of crust is perfectly laminated like the wood in an Irish bar. Very few of us can paint on par with Picasso. The rest of us—despite truly believing in our America-activated abilities to achieve greatness in almost any field of our choosing—burn pies. We try to paint only to realize it looks like our fine motor skills have entered active death.
That’s why BBB2012 was the most perfectly American fireworks show ever: A wildly ambitious idea galvanized thousands upon thousands of people to both work on it and come to hold a beer and gawk at it, only to have it fail in the most glorious TMZ-level spectacle.
America isn’t about immaculate, storyless wins. It’s about how the framework of a country is solid enough that we can accidentally detonate our entire lives—a few times—and still probably be OK.
No one has America’d quite like San Diego did on that day. It was performance art. Lou Reed’s heart slow-clapped. Any brief municipal embarrassment quickly became a pride of our people. I can only hope the same for the Nebraskan yard family whose Dodge Aerostar became a hyperactive Death Star.
P.S. Local writer Maya Kroth compiled a quite great oral history of that night for Thrillist. The bottom lines for me were—it took nine months to prepare, no one was hurt, and even though the pyrotechnics company tried to zero out the bill, Big Bay Boom founder H. P. “Sandy” Purdon refused and paid them in full. This year will mark the 25th Anniversary of the yearly Big Bay Boom.
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.
Drink 182 will pair pop-punk nostalgia with New England-style pizza starting this summer
If you’ve ever squeezed yourself into a pair of black skinny jeans with a studded belt, sported a track jacket under a band t-shirt, or swept your Manic Panic-hued hair so far to the side that your part got caught in your cartilage earring, I have good news: Ocean Beach will get a shot of emo and pop-punk nostalgia when Drink 182 opens this July.
The pop-punk bar and pizza spot comes with bonafide scene points. Co-founder Jay Nightride runs the music production studio Nightride Visuals, has worked with artists like Steve Aoki, Lil Jon, and Fall Out Boy, and also plays in Death Cab for Karaoke, a live karaoke band that performs every month at Soda Bar (among other venues). His partner Tony Jaw is easier to spot—he’s the guy with the sky-high mohawk manning the karaoke booth at Redwing Bar & Grill who’s been in the local bar and hospitality business for over a decade.
Nightride says he’s had the idea for an emo enclave for years, but it wasn’t until after Covid that he partnered with Jaw and got the funding to move forward. “What I was looking to build was a place that I would want to be, where would I want to go to remember these nostalgic songs,” he says.
Pending permits and final inspections, Drink 182 is slated to open the second half of July. The vibe will be dive bar meets emo night, with memorabilia from different bands who have supported the project splashed across the walls, plus a few arcade games, TVs, and (I assume) a decent sound system. The hours are still undetermined, but Nightride says they tentatively plan to be open until 2 a.m. on weekends and Wednesdays for the OB Farmers Market. In the mornings, they’ll serve fresh pastries and coffee from the similarly music-aligned James Coffee Company (whose co-owner David Kennedy is a member of Angels & Airwaves with blink-182’s Tom DeLonge).
But it’ll be the pizza that really stands out—or at least, they hope. “We’re doing New England beach pizza… a really niche pizza that not a lot of people would know about, unless you’re from North Shore, Massachusetts,” says Nightride, a former Bostonian. “It’s a thin crust, very sweet sauce, very simple, fast, go-to-the-beach kind of thing.”
“Beach pizza” is characterized by its rectangular shape, very thin crust, sweet tomato sauce, and slices of Provolone cheese with minimal toppings. Drink 182’s version will feature homemade dough and sauce, as well as freshly sliced Boar’s Head Provolone. And yes, they are aware there are already a lot of pizza options in the area. It won’t be the same, Nightride promises.
“Everybody’s first reaction when they hear ‘pizza’ is like, ‘Oh great, another pizza place in OB,’” he laughs. “But we’re trying to do something different, just enough to differentiate it and give people another option.” If you’re not keen on the style, try one of their “drunkables,” another nostalgic riff they hope the pop-punk and emo crowd will appreciate. And if you still need a reason to give Drink 182 a try, I have more good news—you don’t actually have to break out your old skinny jeans. (In fact, please don’t.)
Drink 182 opens July 2026 at 5049 Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach.
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Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
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