Swimming above a thousand bluefin tuna in the deep waters of the Pacific, one feels a dizzying calm. Below, the fish move in endless, unhurried loops, slowly growing plump in their monotony. Weighing around 170 pounds each, the fish in this net-pen are considerable. Heavy as a man and as wide as a surfboard, they move like hydrodynamic refrigerators, pewter backs reflecting water-filtered light like suncatchers.
Not long ago, these fish were in the open ocean, gunning 18 miles an hour through cold currents, possibly detecting our planet’s magnetic field using mineral deposits in their snouts, and tracing ancient migration patterns through the largest ocean on Earth. But here, with a gringo in a wetsuit bobbing above them, the fish merely draw lazy loops inside a giant aquaculture cage tethered far offshore, awaiting their fate as some of the most sought-after and expensive cuts of protein on the planet.
This is Baja Aqua Farms (BAF). Located in Mexican waters southwest from San Diego, BAF is, at any given time, home to tens of thousands of tuna worth tens of millions of dollars, making it one of the largest tuna ranching operations in the world and a major player in a modern global fish farming industry that now supplies more than half of the world’s seafood.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Anchored in the deep waters of the Pacific, the main feeding vessel at Baja Aqua Farms pumps thousands of pounds of small fish into dozens of net pens filled with slow-circling bluefin tuna.
If one were to, say, fly a helicopter over this operation, the view through the omnipresent cloud of gulls would prove impressive. Thirty Olympic pool–sized net-pens float in an open-water grid, each filled with a single school of a thousand or more bluefin. Some are huge, weighing more than 400 pounds, and some are smaller, around 45 pounds (still a lot of fish). And anchored in the middle of it all is a sizable, computerized central feeding vessel where specialists sit on aging rolling chairs inside an air-conditioned cabin, monitoring each school’s food consumption and their pen’s water quality on screens 24/7. A ship that thousands of pounds of feeder fish visit briefly each day after being offloaded from sardine boats and before being pumped into the bellies of tuna.
I ventured here on an educational mission. As a lover of both the ocean and tuna, I wanted to find out how bluefin—an animal fished nearly to extinction within my lifetime—makes its way into the tartares and chirashi bowls of today. My search led me here, face down in the water, listening to the sound of my breath through a snorkel and contemplating the vast machinations that keep these incredible fish churning through the global food system.
Silent as they are, these tuna tell a story about the future of fish and the future of how we interact with the ocean.
All of which we’ll get to. But first, let’s eat.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Workers separate a select number of tuna from the school and stun them with electricity before bringing them aboard the harvest boat.
By the time the bluefin arrives on my plate as glistening, fatty slices of pink otoro at Ophelia restaurant in Ensenada, it has already crossed oceans, boundaries, and moral terrain.
This fish was part of a school of tuna born in the open Pacific from eggs laid off the coast of Japan, captured as juveniles in Mexican waters by BAF boats in vast purse seine nets, towed for months to the BAF ranch, and fattened for many more months with feeder fish harvested from our coastal ecosystem by the BAF sardine fleet, then efficiently and bloodily killed, refrigerated, and brought to shore here in Ensenada to be packaged and driven over the border to LAX, where they either get exported—mostly to Japan— or eaten in high-end omakase and strip-mall sushi joints throughout San Diego, once the world’s tuna fishing capital.
Bluefin tuna, recent developments have shown, is both a symbol of past overfishing and a surprising conservation success. And its future now lies in operations like Baja Aqua Farms, which represent the next phase of human seafood consumption.
With me at the table, talking tuna, is Rodrigo Armada Tapia, the head of sustainability at BAF. Having grown up in Ensenada, Tapia speaks with pride about the region’s food culture—where tuna is often a star ingredient. Before taking me to the farm the next day, he wanted me to try the product, which BAF packages under the name Bluefiná.
Photo Credit: Mateo Hoke Otoro at Ophelia in Ensenada.
“You can’t understand the fish until you taste it,” he tells me.
Ophelia is Michelin-recognized. It sources bluefin from BAF, as do some notable restaurants in San Diego.
This is because BAF fish is some of the best bluefin money can buy. Fast-swimming wild tuna store fat in their bellies; the rest of the meat is relatively lean by comparison. But with the caged and portly BAF tuna, pillowy fat veins run throughout the entire fish, like a spider got inside and spun a web of tallow.
Dishes arrive, highlighting meat from various parts of the fish—akami from the side, a pile of flesh scraped from the ribs. Bluefiná tuna is not frozen for transport (it can make it from the ranch to Japanese markets in 72 hours), and the freshness of the fish combined with the high fat content translates to a peach-skin, custardy episode on the palette. It’s distinctive, delightful, and somewhat disorienting. I love tuna, but I don’t always love eating it. For my entire adult life, the stakes have felt too high. Every fish consumed was one fish closer to zero.
But that story is changing. Fished nearly to extinction from the mid-1900s to the early 2000s, today’s Pacific bluefin populations are back to near-heyday levels.
“Not only have we met the rebuilding targets, but we’ve actually already exceeded them,” says Josh Madeira of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Global Ocean Conservation team. The bluefin population rebound is a full decade ahead of schedule, thanks to international conservation efforts.
For the first time since the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program began telling consumers in 1999 which fish are ocean-friendly to eat and which should be avoided, consuming certain Pacific bluefin populations—like those caught in California waters—is considered only a moderate environmental risk. That may not sound like much, but it signals a major step for bluefin.
“This is a great success story,” Madeira says. “But there’s much more work to be done.”
Tuna, of course, means a lot to San Diego. And to understand how we got here, it helps to look back.
Throughout most of human history, tuna were seasonal, wild, and revered—an oceanic mystery glimpsed briefly, then gone. For millennia, various peoples chased tuna with harpoons and caught them in elaborate stone weirs. Aristotle wrote of their migratory patterns hundreds of years before Christ was multiplying fishes, marveling at their strength, speed, and uncanny navigational sense. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when canned tuna became a pantry staple, that the fish transformed into a mass-market American commodity.
In San Diego, bluefin were hauled in by immigrant fishermen from Portugal, Japan, and Italy; packed in salt; and canned—cheap protein for various war efforts and school lunches. Forty-thousand San Diegans worked in the tuna trade. Communities lived off it; entire neighborhoods came to be defined by it. Two of the largest canneries in the country were here. The city smelled, quite literally, like tuna.
But overfishing soon led to declining populations. By the 1980s, the canneries were gone. Tuna didn’t disappear, though. It simply went upscale.
Sushi—once an exotic, niche cuisine—became not just popular but aspirational. Bluefin prices soared. By 2012, Pacific bluefin populations had plummeted to around two percent of historic levels.
Which is where strict regulations came in.
As Tapia tells it, today’s tuna industry is largely controlled by a complex system of catch quotas heavily regulated by international agencies referred to by five-letter acronyms. Only certain countries are permitted to commercially fish for bluefin. Japan—which consumes 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna—gets the highest quotas. Mexico’s quotas are respectable, higher than those of the US.
It’s a system that’s imperfect, controversial, and not overly friendly to American fishermen in San Diego and beyond, but something about it is working to contribute to species recovery. In the US, catch limits for commercial Pacific bluefin tuna vessels increased almost 80 percent for the 2025–26 season. Bluefin, it seems, are back. The question is, will they last?
According to Gardner, tuna ranching operations like BAF and other similar operations in Japan, Spain, and Australia are able to abide by catch-weight quotas while still providing large amounts of fish. Essentially, they catch skinny and sell fat.
“Tuna aquaculture means that people still get to eat bluefin tuna without fishing the stock to commercial extinction,” he says.
But tuna farms are not without their problems. BAF, and other smaller, seasonal Mexican operations, rely on wild tuna stocks to fill their pens (closed-loop, egg-to-plate tuna ranching is still in its nascent stages, with only one company in Japan claiming to have figured it out), and the ranches require large amounts of wild feeder fish stocks to fatten their fancy fish once they’re caged. Concentrated waste can negatively impact nearby habitats.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farm
All this means that, despite the potential benefits of tuna ranching, as of its last report in 2021, Seafood Watch categorizes Mexican net-pen tuna as a fish to avoid eating. But that, too, could change soon when the next Seafood Watch report comes out, Madeira suggests.
“We have an update in progress, and we do know there’s a lot of new information,” he says.
Crunching a Bluefiná tuna tostada, Tapia explains that BAF is doing all it can to improve its sustainability, working with a staggering number of regulatory and certification bodies.
“Everything that we catch at sea, we report. You can trace every single catch. We have observers on board all our tuna boats and cameras that are audited by a third party,” he says. “It would be borderline insane to not make sure that the tuna and sardine resources are there for the prolonged future.” He adds that BAF is also working closely with the Marine Stewardship Council toward a certification for its sardine fleet and is certified dolphin-safe by the Friend of the Sea program and the International Marine Mammal Project.
“I know Baja Aqua Farms is working hard to try to make improvements and is paying close attention to things like the Seafood Watch assessment,” Madeira says. “Consumers are saying that sustainability matters. I’m encouraged by that.”
Finally, the otoro—the benchmark of bluefin—hits the table. Served as sashimi, rosé-colored and ribbed with blubber, it dissolves like a pat of cold butter dipped in the sea. For a moment I turn off my mind, allowing myself to simply and blissfully enjoy one of the ocean’s greatest gifts.
“Quality-wise, Bluefiná tuna is [expletive] amazing,” one highly regarded SD chef of a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant tells me. “It’s crazy fat, even on the top loin. Every sushi chef’s dream.”
But, he adds, he doesn’t want to be associated with Bluefiná fish, no matter how chubby.
“As a Southern California restaurant owner who believes in sustainability and buying local, farm-raised bluefin is not in line with our ethos,” he says. “We wait for our wild bluefin to come in, and we know where it was caught and when.”
That tension—between wild and farmed—remains at the core of the modern bluefin story.
Gardner doesn’t buy it. “People have this perception that a farmed fish is bad, but they eat farmed everything else. Why not fish?” he says. “These operations can be good for bluefin tuna when they’re regulated and overseen.”
The otoro is simple and divine, a near-perfect meal. Fighting an urge to order more, I am reminded that we live in an age where to eat seafood is to make a series of quiet negotiations: between ocean and operation, local and global, sustainable and extravagant. And no species captures the contradictions and complexities of modern seafood like the Pacific bluefin. A single fish can sell for millions of dollars. This is the Wagyu of the sea: a delicious, fatty luxury that relies on an even more complex system than its bovine counterpart.
So, full of tuna and questions, the next morning, I board a speedboat for an up-close view of the ranch.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Upwards of 100 people work at the floating Baja Aqua Farms operation on a given day.
Getting to the farm means two hours of cold, rough porpoising from Ensenada. With me as chaperone is Tapia, plus a handful of other workers simply needing a ride to the ranch where they live and work for weeks at a time. I can hear Gardner’s voice in my mind: “They call it tuna ranching, and there are definitely people [at the ranch] you could associate with a kind of cowboy mentality,” he’d told me. “You have to be a little bit out there to do it.” No one speaks much during the loud trip in the dawn light.
The prevalence of gulls and sea lions hunting for scraps hint at the operation before the floating circles of the tuna pens come fully into view, each topped with chain-link fencing sticking many feet into the air for sea-lion defense—a hard-learned requirement, Tapia tells me as our boat slowly approaches the colossal main feeding barge, stained with rust and gull droppings. The place smells of fish flesh. We climb a ladder up the side of the vessel; hoist our bags up to the deck; and make our way over and around various tubes, ropes, riggings, and machinery to the main operations room.
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms The main deck of the feeding boat offers an inside view of the modern food system. Here, specialists remotely monitor water quality and feed the tuna through tubes. Underwater cameras show a glimpse of life inside the cages.
Here in this room and out these windows, a large, invisible part of the contemporary tuna trade becomes visible. At the head of the operation, marine science experts point to giant screens displaying views from the dozens of underwater cameras that BAF uses to keep tabs on the fish in each pen. Specialists monitor when the fish have ceased eating and turn off the hose, so to speak. The screens show oxygen levels and temperature, checked three times a day at three different depths. BAF also routinely tracks phosphorus and pH levels below the pens, Tapia says. Behind us, with the help of AI, a specialist pauses a video to count each fish that came in from the most recent capture. Out on the water, small boats zig-zag from pen to pen.
Divers are consistently in the water with the fish, hand-cleaning and repairing nets (Tapia tells me BAF does not use the industrial net protectants that many operations do) and keeping a close eye on the product. On any given day, upwards of a hundred people—deckhands, divers, engineers, captains, maintenance crews—are out here working. The scale takes time to process, partly because I was not prepared for just how many small fish are required to fatten tens of thousands of large fish.
I suppose I had never seen literal tons of fish in person before—that is, until a sardine boat ties up alongside the floating warehouse on which we stand and begins pumping a few thousand pounds of burrito-sized fish into the big boat’s refrigerated hold like loose ammunition.
The sardines are dead, but not frozen. This is a big selling point for BAF, Tapia tells me—that its tuna don’t eat frozen fish or any of a number of fish-feed slurries that other tuna ranches around the world at times have to rely on and then medicate around.
“We don’t use antibiotics because we don’t need to,” Tapia says. “Because we’re feeding them only fresh fish like they get in the wild, our tuna don’t get sick.”
Courtesy of Baja Aqua Farms Baja Aqua Farms relies on costal sardine populations to keep its operation running. It takes about 25 pounds of small fish to convert to a single pound of bluefin.
The operation requires so many feeder fish because bluefin are not efficient weight-gainers. They have to keep swimming to force water through their gills and stay alive, so they are constantly burning calories. According to Gardner, this means it takes upwards of 25 pounds of small fish to produce one pound of bluefin. Not the most efficient farm animals.
“Compared to other species of fish aquaculture, bluefin are expensive to run,” Gardner says. “It’s like taking the Ferrari to the corner store to get milk, instead of your Volkswagen.”
During our time at the ranch, Tapia explains that, due to timing, I can either swim with the tuna or see the tuna harvest up-close. Rather than watching hundreds of tuna be killed, I choose life. I want to pay my respects.
But, before departing back to Ensenada, our cold little speed boat stops by the harvest ship to pick up a hitchhiker, so I end up with a view of the marine slaughterhouse after all. On board, men in waterproof bibs move with a kind of practiced urgency. The harvest is still in progress, precise and bloody.
First, divers section a specific number of fish off from the rest within the chosen pen and stun them with electricity to make them safe to handle. Then comes an assembly line of efficient killing. In the humane ikejime fashion of dispatching fish, crew members drive steel spikes into the tuna’s brains and a wire through their spinal cords to preserve the quality of the meat. The fish are bled and gutted. The gills and guts go to a fish meal plant. The blood spills quickly into the sea.
Tapia tells me BAF only kills fish it’s already sold, harvesting around 1,500 tuna per week.
As we motor away, I run some back-of-the-napkin math. According to the Bluefiná website, wholesale bluefin starts around $20 to $40 per pound and goes up from there.
Tapia won’t disclose how many tuna BAF has at any given time, but he does say the pens can hold upwards of 1,500 tuna each. If each of the 30 pens contain, conservatively, 1,000 tuna, and each fish weighs—again conservatively—say, 80 pounds, that’s a modest estimate of $48 million in the water. Today’s global tuna industry is worth $40 billion. The ocean is rich.
And bluefin, it seems, reveal not just the complexity of a single industry, but a larger moral calculus now embedded in every bite of seafood in our modern food systems: the shift from hunting to ranching, from wild to managed. We’ve already done it with pigs, chickens, cows, and corn. Now, for better or worse, we are doing it with the sea.
Still, you can net a fish but not the current.
The ocean resists our domestication. It is too vast, too unwieldy. So we improvise—floating pens, AI tracking, revered fish in holding patterns, constant feeding, and massive amounts of labor to ensure that sushi bars and seafood restaurants stay stocked with the good stuff.
If I have to choose between letting a trusted friend pick a bottle of wine or some random algorithm boosted by a faceless entity, I’m gonna go with the human 10 out of 10 times. And when you have friends like Amanda Sarich and Robert Blair, it’s pretty easy to trust their picks are going to be unique, tasty, and probably something I haven’t seen before.
Between the two of them, they have over three decades of experience working in wine. From buying to operations to building wine lists, they’ve worked together, wined together, and now, are going into business together with the Word of Mouth Wine Club.
Word of Mouth is a members-only monthly subscription that sends you two handpicked bottles each month, chosen entirely by the duo’s palates. It’s less “build your own box” and more “enjoy the surprise.” “The goal with the wine club was basically to get members that want to turn over their faith in our collections,” Sarich says. “Trust us—we’ll send you the cool stuff.”
The two first met while working at We Olive wine bar and shop in La Jolla, where Sarich joined the opening team in 2011 before eventually becoming a corporate wine director overseeing stores and franchises throughout California. Blair arrived the following year, after stints at Holiday Wine Cellar in Escondido and Alternative Wines in Carmel Valley, later spending nearly a decade helping build Village Vino in Kensington.
When Village Vino closed last November, Sarich had recently returned home to San Diego after years in the Bay Area and brought Blair on board for a project she’s working on—Serafino, a cafe and wine bar slated to open in Mission Hills next fall. But to bridge the gap between Village Vino closing and Serafino opening, the two partners kept the momentum going by launching Word of Mouth.
Blair says once Serafino opens, the team will launch a wine club for that business that will focus on everyday drinking wines from anywhere. Word of Mouth is for us “to geek out a little bit,” he says, with more adventurous or hard-to-find options from small production family farmers. (But as a bonus, Word of Mouth subscribers will become Seraphino’s founding members, receiving exclusive benefits for supporting the project from day one.)
Current memberships include two bottles delivered monthly—usually a red and a white, though sparkling, rosé, orange, or skin-contact wines are always fair game. Members can choose three-month, six-month, or annual subscriptions, and every shipment includes detailed tasting notes, producer stories, pairing suggestions, and fun extras like playlists, puzzles, and the occasional surprise.
The selections often revolve around loose themes. For instance, they used the idea of what wines they’d drink at a summer barbecue to select the two bottles in the July box—which happened to be a pale French rosé and Mourvèdre from the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France.
Over the last decade, places like Rumi, Clos, and Vino Carta have helped transform the San Diego wine scene from mainstream labels and a stodgy vibe to eclectic discoveries that break a lot of the former rules. Word of Mouth hopes to continue that evolution.
“I think it’s fostered a more adventurous sense of exploration,” Blair says. “There’s room in San Diego to keep expanding people’s palates.” Sarich agrees. “We’re trying to bring our fun wine palate to the world.” Bottoms up.
An’s Gelato continues its march towards worldwide domination this weekend when it opens its fifth storefront at the Top Gun House at Mission Pacific in Oceanside. An’s Gate D5 opens on Saturday, July 25 with an airport-inspired theme that follows in the footsteps of its previous stores (An’s Dry Cleaning in North Park, An’s Hatmakers in Del Mar, etc.) and will offer rotating flavors like “Checked Bag,” “Carry On,” and global flavors like “Ho Chi Minh” with banana and Saigon coffee, or “McAllen” with strawberry and grapefruit.
Tony Gwynn Day returns to AleSmith Brewing Company on August 15 in celebration of Mr. Padres’ 2,000th and 3,000th hit anniversary. Grab one of the special beer releases and a bite from one of the onsite food trucks and watch the Padres take on the Guardians at 4 p.m. Go Dads!
Celebrate 10 years of the San Diego Sake Festival on September 27 at the Julep Venue, where guests can dive into over 100 premium sakes from 50 booths, plus food pairings, workshops, and kagami-biraki (the ceremonial opening of a sake barrel). VIP tickets get you in an hour earlier, plus a $10 food voucher, and that’s not even mentioning getting first taste of some of the rarest and most limited sakes at the festival. This is the real deal, so get your kanpai on and toast a decade of deliciousness.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
Ask any local, human or shark—San Diego summer doesn’t really start until August. After June Gloom lifts and children file back into the halls of academia, our coastline comes to life with more space on the sand and a water temperature that finally rises above muscle-clenchingly frigid.
What better way to welcome Local’s Summer than by celebrating the bounty of the sea? At least, that’s what the gang at Puffer Malarkey Collective (PMC) figured when they launched Dockside Night Market four years ago.
Despite being born and raised in San Diego, Lillian Dang (the event’s co-producer and marketing director for PMC) says she didn’t know how abundant our local seafood scene was until she left and came back. “We are spoiled here,” she says, pointing not only to our plentiful produce from local farms, but also our sea-borne treasures.
When she and her co-producer Lucien Conner (PMC’s director of operations) brainstormed over what they felt the city’s food scene lacked, they realized: “What’s missing is an event that really celebrates the local seafood,” explains Dang.
Photo Credit: Enrique Espinoza
Dockside Night Market is meant to be a “San Diego summer party on the pier,” she says, bringing together local fishermen and local chefs to highlight the fruits of the local seas. Chefs from some of San Diego’s best restaurants clamor to be a part of the 15-chef-max roster, including Travis Swikard (Callie and Fleurette), David Sim (Kingfisher), Aidan Owens (Herb & Wood), Chianne Mallari (Herb & Sea), Tara Monsod (Animae), Jacob Ruck and Eric Bost (Jeune et Jolie), not to mention Mabel’s Gone Fishing, Bica, The Lion’s Share, Nine-Ten, Marisi… you get the idea.
Part of the intrigue is not knowing exactly what seafood will appear—in past years, there’s been uni, bluefin tuna, halibut, black cod, but it ultimately comes down to what’s fresh and what’s available. And with a chef lineup like that, it’s fun to imagine what sorts of surprises await. (If you’d like a small hint, there arecalendars of seasonal availability in the area.)
The one-night-only annual event takes place at Tuna Harbor Dockside Market on Tuna Harbor Pier (598 Harbor Lane), the same spot as the weekly fish market every Saturday from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. or sellout (it’s usually the latter). VIPs get in at 6 p.m. and general admission is 7 p.m., and 100 percent of all ticket profits go to support the San Diego Fishermen’s Working Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to support the best interests of the region’s commercial fishermen. There’s also four cash bars and a live DJ (but leave the kids and pets at home).
“I think this is an event that can only happen in San Diego,” says Dang. Our city’s culinary cache is on the rise, and our proximity to some of the best fishing waters in the world make it a pretty dynamic duo. “It’s curated, it’s intimate, it’s all the things,” she promises.
The future of one of San Diego’s quintessential restaurants is up in the air. For 50 years, Kearny Mesa’s 94th Aero Squadron has slung its signature champagne brunch buffet, lunch, and dinner from a WWI-inspired restaurant and events space that looks like it was dropped straight from the French countryside. Recently and without fanfare, the restaurant added a message to its website that reads “Our restaurant is closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Mysterious, alarming, and vague—one can only hope it takes flight once more.
Apparently July is “National Pickle Month,” and if I’d known sooner, I would have celebrated accordingly (by stealing all the leftover pickles from people’s plates at lunch). I’m already deeply devoted to TNT’s pickle pizza any month of the year, but Town and Country Resort in Mission Valley is joining the briny fun with two specials at the lobby bar Monkeybar through the end of June—the Monkeybar Spicy Pickletini (vodka, spicy pickle juice, dry vermouth, the the resort’s housemade Riki Tiki hot sauce) and the “What’s the Big Dill” pizza, a not-terribly-creatively-named pie with mozzarella, red sauce, dill pickles, bacon bites, and a dill garnish. I’ll admit I haven’t had a pickle pie with red sauce before, so I’m interested in checking it out for that novelty alone. (Have you tried either? I’m genuinely curious how they are, so drop me a line at [email protected] to let us know!)
Since 2009, restaurateur Tracy Borkum’s Urban Kitchen Group restaurant collective has operated places like Cucina Urbana, The Kitchen at MCASD, and more, racking up local likes and an IYKYK reputation for solid food at decent prices. Now, all three of her Cucina locations (San Diego, Newport Beach, and Irvine) are offering new price-conscious specials that help ease the financial stress for people who just want to eat some damn good food without going broke. One example: for $145, their Sunday Supper special feeds four people with a family-style Italian feast of focaccia, salad, a whole spatchcock chicken, veggies, polenta, a choice of Rigatoni Bolognese or Bucatini Amatriciana, and tiramisu to finish things up. For a casual pizza and wine night, their happy hour bar special from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. gets you a margherita or pepperoni pizza, plus a bottle of red or white wine for $45. Simple? Yes. Savings? Also yes. Scrumptious? Undoubtedly.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
When Rigo Munoz opened a weekends-only taco stand on Market Street in 2018, at first, he was just hoping to sell his tacos to however many customers he could. That low-key, word of mouth approach worked well for a couple years. Very well.
“Then, the line started,” he laughs. He began to double his sales week after week, until an influencer from Tijuana paid them an undercover visit in 2024. Munoz was hanging out in his backyard the next Monday when his phone started pinging and ringing off the hook. “So I go onto my social media and there, lo and beyond, the video already had 10,000, 12,000 views in like, less than an hour,” he says. The next day, there was a line of customers waiting for him before he opened at 5 p.m. The Chula Tacos revolution sparked there.
Now, he’s ready to open his third location on August 1 at 4994 Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach. It wasn’t an easy or straightforward path—the city shut down his original location citing too much noise and traffic. But Munoz was looking ahead, already in talks with a restaurateur to take over his space at 1719 Palm Avenue in the Nestor neighborhood of southeast San Diego. From the time he got shut down to getting the keys of his first brick-and-mortar was less than two days.
The second location in Chula Vista caught fire on Valentine’s Day and is slated to reopen later this fall (689 H Street). Munoz says he also plans to open a fourth location somewhere between the Ocean Beach and Morena Boulevard areas, but has aspirations for more.
“I’d like to become the In-N-Out of tacos,” he says. He’s actively looking for places that could support either a drive-thru or the typical fast-casual taqueria style, but no matter what, he’s going to keep his menu simple.
Each location has the same menu, except labio, which are ox lips, and beef intestines. They’re top-sellers at Palm Avenue, but might not translate as well to the OB crowd, he says. But guests can still get their fix of vampiro tacos, tacos de trompo, and from-scratch horchata and jamaica.
Chula Tacos is best known for its kekas (pronounced keh-kuhs), which are extra-large quesadillas stuffed with your choice of meat. “It’s a hefty thing,” Munoz promises. It’s such a trademark that he filed for a patent, which is still pending.
Building a taco empire has been a long time coming. Munoz first started making tacos at age 12, and has operated a number of cafes, delis, and other businesses on both sides of the border ever since. “We’re a family business,” he says. He’s been trying to hit that mother lode for years—and all it took was one video to light the fuse.
The newest location of Chula Tacos opens August 1 at 4994 Newport Avenue, Suite A in Ocean Beach. Hours of operation are 11 a.m. to midnight daily. (Opening date subject to change.)
Courtesy of Oceanside Sustainable Food Festival
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Everyone (clap) watches (clap, clap) women’s sports! (Thunderous applause!) San Diego’s first women’s sports bar, One of Us, opened this week in the former URBN Pizza space in North Park. I stopped by the preview and can confirm the Big Ass Fan is still there, but now there are tons of TVs lining the walls ready to broadcast women’s soccer, basketball, volleyball, and all the other sports events you could ever dream of. (And yes, they’ll be showing the men’s World Cup on Sunday, because I guess people watch men’s sports, too.)
Rolando’s ears must have been burning, because a month after interviewing chef Coral Strong of the now-closed Garden Kitchen, Campus Burgers announced plans to turn the formerly hyperlocal farm-to-table restaurant into a spot for affordable smashburgers. I’m sure the local college kids will appreciate the $1.99 smashburger special—although let’s face it, in today’s expensive times, everyone is ready for a wallet-friendly outing.
A few months ago, I gave Navore Market’s farm-to-front door delivery service a try and as a longtime former CSA subscriber, I have to admit it felt nice to leave the produce purchasing to the pros. But as of July 12, you can now head to Navore’s second community pickup hub at Mission Valley YMCA (5505 Friars Road) every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Having a centralized drop-off point makes it easy for farmers, and buyers don’t have to commit to a subscription—sounds like a farm-to-table win to me.
Keeping on with the farm-to-table news, the 4th annual Oceanside Sustainable Food Festival is scheduled for July 25 in downtown Oceanside, bringing 50-plus vendors together for a day of global food and drink, artisan products, home goods, live music, and more. The event usually draws in a couple thousand people, so might I suggest arriving close to the 11 a.m. kickoff for the best chance at maximizing your nom?
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
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.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
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.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
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.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
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.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
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.
There’s a place in heaven for a steakhouse that remakes chicken nuggets but uses Jidori instead of whatever glum bird is proffered in the children’s section. And then they top it with caviar. That, plus an editor with an obsession-level ranking of chai in Carlsbad, and a whole fish from one of San Diego’s OG top chefs who has mercifully returned to the kitchen. These are the very best things we’ve found from another month of eating professionally in San Diego. Go get some.
Stake Chophouse & Bar
Caviar Chicken Nugget
One of my favorite experiences at Stake in Coronado is that—if the patio is chilly enough to warrant heaters—they’ll surround you with towers of flame. Paired with the retaining wall of heat against the glass railing overlooking Orange Avenue, there is so much surrounding fire that it feels like dining in a much nicer version of the Elmo meme, in which the nasally puppet’s whole world has amusingly arsoned.
Three things you have to get here: first, the Wagyu popcorn (kernels popped in melted Wagyu beef fat, salted with paprika); second, the Snake River Farms Wagyu skirt steak (its Gold grade means incredibly high marble), one of the best steaks in the city; third, the Jidori chicken nuggets with herbed crème fraîche, pickle, and a perm of caviar. A childhood food, deliciously adulted. —Troy Johnson
Flying Pig Pub & Kitchen
Tri-Tip Sando
It’s been 15 years since married folk Aaron and Roddy Browning opened Flying Pig Pub & Kitchen in a hidden south Oceanside hovel—using vinyl records as placemats, the decor an assortment of welded metal weirdities. One thing has always remained: Pork is their native tongue.
This sandwich pries open long-dormant pleasure receptors in most alive human bodies. Brandt Beef tri-tip is rubbed with its “Pig Spice” (hint: good paprika and celery seed do wonders), sleeps for 24 hours, then is seared and rested for an hour—sliced and seared again, placed on a mini baguette wet with fresh chimichurri and smoked tomato aioli, then topped with melted aged provolone, grilled peppers, onions, and gremolata (parsley, garlic, lemon zest). Order two, or be prepared to fight. —Troy Johnson
Valentina
Pan Tomaquet
Pintxos are Basque-country bar snacks, finger foods for Real Sociedad games. The appropriate utensils are a couple of fingers and a toothpick. But Valentina’s in Leucadia are done with just enough culinary school ambition (not too much, fuss has no place in pintxos) from exec chef Enrique Ñol, who worked at the estimable Wrench & Rodent.
Its tomaquet (tomato bread) could be underestimated as a stacked pile of quality ingredients, but it’s undeniably great—toasted pan de cristal (light, airy, Catalan “glass bread”) dressed with tomato, garlic, salt, EVOO, and a layer of one of the world’s greatest meats: Cinco Jotas Iberian jamón. Eat it with a minor winefall of porrón, and ask for Todd—a certified sommelier and one of the most knowledgeable food minds in the local scene. —Troy Johnson
Ironside Fish & Oyster
Whole Fish
Get the whole fish. Doesn’t matter the catch, just trust that chef Jason McLeod’s got you. When CH Projects opened Ironside in Little Italy in 2014, the restaurant group took over the old Farkas furniture store and turned it into a replica of an ocean liner, tapping McLeod (a chef who’d earned two Michelin stars in Chicago) to oversee its menus.
It quickly became a San Diego staple for seafood. After leaving for a few years to help concept and launch some big-name restaurants in Vegas, McLeod is back again getting his hands dirty in the kitchen. And his fish? They come in fresh from local fishermen who he’s established relationships with over the years. So yeah, get the whole damn thing. —Nicolle Monico
Steady State Roasting
Indian Summer
I have a running spreadsheet of chai rankings in Carlsbad. The chai that stays on the highest shelf? Steady State’s gingery, nutmeggy Indian Summer with an almond milk base and fresh nutmeg shavings on top. Juiced ginger gives the drink deeper, warmer notes, but not so much spice that your throat closes on the first sip.
Too often, coffee shops advertise authentic chai, then uncork that carton of sugar-bomb concentrate from an artisanal wholesaler called Costco. This is the real deal; it’s mildly sweet, a little more spicy, and in my opinion, best served hot. If I could order a keg of it, I would. (Can I?) —Emma Veidt
After 10 years of rooftop dining and brewing award-winning beers, OB Brewery is for sale. A local fixture on Newport Avenue, OB Brewery owner Mike Tajran is ready to retire and hand over the reins. “It’s got so much potential,” he says, pointing to the accolades the brewpub has collected throughout the last decade (it’s more than a few).
At the 2017 Great American Beer Festival, OB’s Hidden Gem Dunkelweizen won silver in the German-Style Wheat Ale category, followed by a World Beer Cup silver medal as a South German-Style Dunkel Weizen in 2026. In 2018, GABF named OB Brewery Small Brewpub of the Year, brewer Jim Millea earned Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year, and the B. Right On pale ale nabbed a gold medal in the American-Style Pale Ale category. The Elevator Red IPA also took bronze that year at the San Diego International Beer Festival, and earlier this year, they won gold for Couple’s Therapy chili beer and silver for Rauch Me smoked beer at San Diego County Fair Craft Brew Competition.
It’s a solid foundation for the right buyer, he says—someone with brewing and business chops ready for a turnkey operation in a favorable location a block from the beach on Ocean Beach’s busiest street. (And while he’s letting go of the brewpub business, he’s also open to selling the building as part of the deal.)
Originally from Iraq, Tajran’s family ran restaurants in Baghdad, but “they were decimated by Saddam Hussein,” he explains. Once in the United States, he launched Giant New York Pizza at 5050 Newport Avenue in 1984, which eventually became Newport Pizza & Ale House. Newport Pizza felt long ahead of its time, proudly proclaiming they served “no crap on tap” years before the craft beer craze caught fire in San Diego.
Courtesy of OB Brewery
When the building’s owners passed away and their son cut his lease short in 2020, Tajran says he was disappointed, but he had a nagging feeling that would happen eventually—which is why he already purchased 5041 Newport Avenue back in 2009 and opened Ocean Beach Brewery in 2016.
“For 42 years, I have been in this location in this area, the same block,” he says with pride. Ocean Beach has gone through some changes since 1984 (the OB farmers market launched in 1992, Starbucks came in 2001 and left in 2022, ADUs crept in, and the iconic OB Pier closed in 2023), but Tajran says the heart of the beachside town has remained the same.
So has most of his staff. Millea has been brewing since day one, and longtime manager Megan Schuster has worked for Tajran for 19 years, first at Newport, then at OB Brewery. Most of the employees are locals, and Tajran says he doesn’t plan on closing the business until he finds the right buyer to carry on the baton.
The property itself comes with some unique features for the area—three stories with a rooftop deck and ocean views from every level. And if you’re wondering if those uninterrupted views will remain that way, Tajran assures me they will. Part of his original building purchase included language that prohibits the three buildings between him and the ocean from building up. He also leases space next door, which would allow a new owner to expand brewing capacity with more tanks and fermenters.
“I just wanted to make sure this goes in good hands,” he says. He and his wife both hope to retire soon in order to spend time with their children. But he’ll make sure his other baby is taken care of first.
“I love Ocean Beach,” he says. “I can say nothing but thank you, OB.”
OB Breweryis still open at 5041 Newport Avenue. Hours are Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Interested parties should contact Next Wave Commercial.
Along the same vein of iconic businesses, Tribute Pizza is celebrating 10 years in North Park this week with different events every night. Good luck getting a reservation if you haven’t already, but you can still take part in the silent auction on behalf of Feeding San Diego. Owner Matt Lyons’ goal is to raise $100,000 for the nonprofit and is offering some pretty sweet stuff to do so—think a full weekend buyout of Tribute, a private event with Lyons and chef Travis Swikard of Callie and Fleurette, a year of access to a VIP hotline for reservations, and even more. Time is ticking away on your chance to bid, so be sure to make your best offer before time runs out.
La Corriente continues its expansion across San Diego with lucky number three coming to Oceanside. Located next to Tanner’s Prime Burgers and PopUp Bagels, a restaurant rep says that at the rate the restaurant is opening new spaces, it wouldn’t be wild to see a few more pop up along the coast in the future.
Kitchens for Good has big plans on the horizon, including their sprawling new Culinary Impact Center coming to Bankers Hill next year. Now, it should be a bit easier to accomplish their (many) goals with the help of a $50,000 grant from the Jacques Pépin Foundation. Kitchens for Good is one of four awardees this year and will receive the funds over the next two years, allowing them to launch their Market Cafe initiative in the new center and continue their mission of hospitality training programs and ending food insecurity across the city. It’s a pretty awesome award, given by a pretty awesome group to another pretty awesome group, so it’s just mega-awesome all the way around.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
San Diego is home to world-class aestheticians, plastic surgeons, and dermatologists who can help turn back the hands of time and revitalize tired, damaged skin. Enhancing your look is a spectrum. Treatments range from noninvasive procedures like lasers or injectables to the big guns, like a deep-plane facelift—many with better results and less downtime than ever thanks to advanced techniques and technology. Whether you’re a Botox beginner or an aesthetic medical care veteran, San Diego aestheticians and aesthetic medicine providers can help you look and feel like the best version of yourself.
Changes Plastic Surgery & Spa
Changes Plastic Surgery & Spa is San Diego’s premier destination for aesthetic surgery, led by world-renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Rossi. Celebrated for his artistry, precision, and natural-looking results, Dr. Rossi is known for creating customized Mommy Makeovers that help women restore confidence and reclaim their bodies after pregnancy. His expertise also extends to comprehensive post-weight loss body contouring, addressing excess skin and skin laxity with sophisticated surgical techniques tailored to each patient’s unique anatomy and goals. From breast and body rejuvenation to deep plane facelifts and eyelid surgery, every treatment plan reflects Dr. Rossi’s commitment to surgical excellence, personalized care, and transformative results that look as beautiful as they feel.
Cosmetic Laser Dermatology
At Cosmetic Laser Dermatology, the board-certified, internationally acclaimed team has the power to erase 10+ years of aging in a single treatment. The center’s 60+ laser, light, and energy devices do it all—refining texture and tone, calming acne, minimizing pores, and erasing that ill-advised spring break tattoo of yesteryear. Their dermatologists take it further by stacking multiple devices in one session for synergistic results—the philosophy behind their signature Take5 and Take10 treatments, the latter capable of removing a decade-plus of aging in just one visit. Add a full suite of injectables, body sculpting, and vein treatments for every skin type and tone, and it’s no wonder the practice’s medical director was named the #1 cosmetic dermatologist in America by Newsweek two years running.
Cultivé Medical Aesthetic
If it’s subtle, lasting results you’re after, Cultivé Medical Aesthetics has you covered. Cultivé purposely combines aesthetics and wellness. The Bankers Hill practice offers a full menu of services designed to improve skin health and support the three pillars of aesthetic aging: skin tone and texture, volume loss, and laxity. Cultivé offers a wide range of aesthetic treatments, including collagen boosting powerhouse Morpheus8, biostimulators like Sculptra and Radiesse, PRP therapy, laser hair removal, VI peels, and regenerative skincare treatments. They also provide wellness-focused services such as hormone replacement therapy, IV therapy, and medical weight management programs.
Starlite Aesthetics and Wellness
Starlite Aesthetics and Wellness focuses on enhancing natural beauty through science-backed treatments tailored to each client’s goals. Michelle Langston, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, founded Starlite on the principle that aesthetic medicine should be precise, personal, and rooted in wellness. The boutique aesthetic practice in La Jolla combines modern medical aesthetics with holistic wellness principles for refined results personalized to each patient. Langston has spent more than a decade honing her skills in advanced injectables, regenerative therapies, and anti-aging care. Starlite offers regenerative therapies rooted in science, promoting skin rejuvenation using a multiple modality approach. Service offerings include RF microneedling, wrinkle relaxers, facial balancing and more.
The “It” List
In the rapidly advancing field of aesthetic medicine, it can be hard to tell what’s worth the hype. Here are some of the latest, most advanced, and most popular options out there.
Morpheus8: This combination of microneedling and radiofrequency (RF) energy activates your skin’s own collagen and elastin without the downtime associated with some laser treatments. It can be used to reduce wrinkles, tighten skin, improve skin tone, contour the jawline, and minimize acne scars.
Exosome Therapy: This cutting-edge treatment uses protein-packed nanoparticles to trigger repair and rejuvenation at the cellular level. Often used post-microneedling or lasers, exosomes penetrate deep into the skin to stimulate collagen production.
Post-GLP-1 Skin Removal: Rapid fat loss prompted by GLP-1 medications, including semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide, can leave users with sagging skin. Skilled surgeons can remove excess skin and reshape the figure.
Treatment Stacking: Sometimes it’s the more the merrier when it comes to aesthetic procedures. Combining multiple non-surgical treatments in a single session allows users to address several issues efficiently, with less downtime.
