So, Michelin chose San Diego to host its annual awards show this week. Big thing for our city, which people wrote off as the flaccid mozzarella stick or the “fish tacos bro” of California food culture.
Michelin Guide is a pretty fascinating story. It started as a marketing brochure for a tire company and evolved into the strongest global marketing platform for restaurant culture in history.
In 1900, there were less than 3,000 cars in all of France. André and Édouard Michelin were trying to sell tires. A niche market. If people drove more, they figured, tires would go bald faster. They’d sell more rubber.
So they published a guidebook with maps, gas stations, mechanics, hotels, restaurants, and travel advice. The “How to Go Bald” book with food as the bait. By the 1920s, people were buying the guide just for the restaurant recs.
In 1926, Michelin introduced stars. This changes everything.
Originally just one. Five years later, it expanded to three. One meant “very good restaurant.” Two meant “worth a detour.” Three stars meant “worth a special journey.” In other words, wear those tires down to a nub in search of Dover sole.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost
By WWII, Michelin was the gold standard guide to French food. And French food was the gold standard for western food. Which was half the world.
Michelin first came to the US in 2005. New York only. (Knicks in five).
In 2007, San Francisco. Then LA and Vegas in 2008.
Michelin stopped publishing in LA and Vegas after two years and stayed dark until 2019.
Major theories for this?
First, print is expensive. I can attest. ROI on a printed story is hard.
Second, people wanted local critics, and they were finding them online.
Third, Michelin landed like a stuffed shirt in LA, which had taco carts in its heart. LA swiped hard left.
Then Michelin discovered a new way to fund what it does. Instead of trying to sell enough books to justify the cost (inspectors, printing, restaurant bills, etc.), it had tourism marketing districts pay for inspectors to come analyze their cities or states.
Tourism marketing districts are massive organizations whose primary goal is to sing the priases of their cities and states—attract tourists, who pay for hotels and spend money in the city. Heads in beds.
The first to swipe its credit card was California, which paid $600,000 in 2019 for Michelin to come back to LA, Orange County, Monterey, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and… San Diego.
It’s an overwhelmingly positive thing, which is never without its doubters and critics.
Namely, not everyone is down with the pay for play model.
The biggest reason is that it means cities without big tourism budgets get left out. Chefs in those cities are chefs non grata in the eyes of Michelin. Which is a fair complaint, though also, sadly or not, kind of how capitalism works.
Michelin isn’t a government organization, or a nonprofit culinary organization. It’s a publicly traded company with real bills to pay and investors and shareholders to answer to.
Since it feels like a tad of a PR dilemma for Michelin, I have a proposal that may or may not work.
What if Michelin took a portion of the money it receives from larger cities and used it to fund its expansion into an underserved city or state that can’t afford it? Bake it into the price it charges California or any other state.
Again, Michelin’s not obligated to do this; there is no penalty beyond the paper cuts of public sentiment. But that sort of pay-it-forward model could help other cities without the resources to play the game, while simultaneously making Michelin’s reach bigger and more holistic.
Second, people claim this TMD-funded model somehow taints the winners.
I don’t buy that at all. All tourism boards are doing is paying a marketing business (Michelin) to come operate in their city. They’re not telling Michelin which restaurants to choose for awards. As I understand it, Michelin has retained independence, and its inspectors only award restaurants that they feel are absolutely worth it based on merit.
True pay for play would be if a restaurant group paid Michelin in exchange for a star. Or if tourism boards had a say in which restaurants received attention or awards.
I haven’t found any proof of that happening, and so I won’t ding the validity of the awards until (and if) I ever do.
All tourism boards cancontrol is which areas they’re willing to pay to have analyzed. For instance, San Diego could technically ask that only the city be analyzed and not the county. Which it did not, most likely because Visit San Diego (our TMD) is in charge of marketing the entire county (and thus why Michelin stars like Jeune et Jolie, Lilo, and Addison are outside of SD city limits).
So, if you’re dead set on criticizing Michelin, I’m not sold yet on the pay-for-play model being the right route.
There are other criticisms, of course.
Michelin mainly rewards high-end restaurants—the “white tablecloth” shrines to microgreens—which ignores a central heart and soul of a city’s food culture (strip mall bánh mì heroes, taco shops, etc.). Michelin has started making an effort to fix that, awarding a star to a taco shop for the first time in 2024 (Taquería El Califa de León in Mexico City).
But at the end of the day, it’s totally Michelin’s prerogative to primarily focus on the highest-end, luxury restaurants. Specialization isn’t a crime, and it leaves room in the restaurant guide market for a different org who focuses on street food.
Another criticism is that Michelin doesn’t have enough inspectors to truly study and analyze a city’s food culture—a claim famously made by former Michelin inspector Pascal Rémy in 2004. Granted, that was 22 years ago, before the company solved the funding problem with tourism marketing dollars. And since Michelin is secretive about its process, there’s no real way to answer that in a provable way.
I overwhelmingly think Michelin’s presence in San Diego is a great thing. It lifts local chefs into the global food media spotlight.
I have my reservations as a sentient being who covers the restaurant culture, of course. I do have instinctual doubts that Michelin has enough inspectors who are active enough to truly analyze San Diego’s food culture in a meaningful, thorough way.
But my main hesitancy with Michelin is in its criteria that prioritizes food over all else and deprioritizes ambiance and service. While the intent of that may come from a pure place (it means that a humbly designed place like Soichi can get a Michelin star and doesn’t need to spend a million dollars on design to qualify), I think it misses the magic and soul of a restaurant.
I don’t go to restaurants purely for the food. Sure, the food must be good, but if it looks like an off-brand Olive Garden with a couple fake plants basking in their own microplastic, I’m probably not going to recommend that place to our audience or friends.
I go to restaurants to escape, feel inspired or charmed (and eat good food). And that charm doesn’t have to cost a lot; one of my favorite spaces in San Diego is Fathom Bistro, which is a glorified hot dog stand with knicknacks. The cost of their buildout is mostly sweat.
And service matters a lot. The idea of a restaurant is to feel the hospitable grace of a group of strangers. To be made to feel at home in a special place. If the service is rude (like nearly every craft cocktail place in the aughts), my ranking of that place goes down.
Also, food knowledge matters on the floor. If you’ve got a chef sourcing some of the most compelling ingredients on the planet and doing dozens of cool tricks to them—but a server who says, “I’m not sure what it is, white fish with a sauce”—the experience lacks substance and story. A story is being told in the back by someone who gives a damn, and being lost in translation between the stove and the guest.
Regardless, helping bring the deserving work of San Diego’s food and drink people into the national and international spotlight has always been a personal mission, and both the tourism boards and Michelin have done exactly that.
San Diego hosting the state’s awards show takes a food scene that was once written off as the souvenir cup of California—and gives it the shine it now deserves.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost
Storylines to Watch Tonight
Lilo
The big question tonight will be whether Lilo gets a second Michelin star. The tasting menu–only concept from chef Eric Bost and restaurateur John Resnick is operating at a two-plus star level, but it’s so brand new that Michelin may wait a year to award that. The restaurant will eventually land in the two- or three-star realm, but to prove its critical analysis (especially after awarding it a star after only being open a month or two last year), feels like it stays at one.
Jeune et Jolie
Does its sister restaurant, Jeune, retain its star? It should. But the fact that Michelin only has awarded stars to five local restaurants (Addison, Jeune et Jolie, Lilo, Valle, and Soichi) and 40 percent of them are one restaurant group with spots across the street from one another, I could see a world in which Jeune (wrongly) gets downgraded due to appearances.
Travis Swikard
Does Travis Swikard get a star? Swikard is undoubtedly one of the top three chefs in the city with Callie and now Fleurette. It seems a gross miss that he’s not already part of the Michelin constellation.
Tara Monsod
Tara gets nominated for a James Beard every year it seems. Her food at Animae, especially, is phenomenal. The room feels like a Michelin room. The curtains are heavy enough to carry the honor. Most of us in the scene would nod “of course” if they hung a star on her door. If analyzing the somewhat cynical strategy that goes on in any game—seeing as how James Beard is a sort of competitor on the national chef awards and has yet to give her the win, Michelin would beat them to the deserved award.
Who Else Should Make the List?
Others are interesting names that could pop up in stars or Bib Gourmands—Kingfisher in Golden Hill (the pan-Asian star with a Vietnamese core), Lucien in La Jolla (an incredibly talented chef with some brilliant bits on the menu, though we had an uneven experience), 24 Suns in Oceanside (a nod for them would prove that Michelin truly cares only about the food, since the strip mall location is what a couple talented young chefs could afford), Tanner’s Prime Burgers in Oceanside (a hell of an incredible burger, and with a chef from three-star Benu in San Francisco, it’s the kind of burger joint that would make sense in the Michelin gentry), Atelier Manna (founding Jeune et Jolie chef Andrew Bachelier and his crew are cooking some of the best daytime food—I’m sure the word “brunch” would kill his soul—in the city).
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
The bird has a plan. You stand between that bird and that plan. For the remainder of your ceviche, you’ll identify as collateral damage.
There are many other nearby birds with the same plan, absolutely sucking at trying to be nonchalant about it. The pigeons are by far the boldest on account of what we can all agree just by looking at them is sheer stupidity. They come right up and ask with their red murder clown eyes: “Can bite?”
Pelicans are the silverback gorillas of this bird gang, hulking and alpha. They periodically flaunt the acreage of their wingspan in the same way a schoolyard bully puffs out his chest. One could casually land on your plate and maintain constant eye contact as it slowly enjoyed your fish taco. You share this tacit awareness with it. But it doesn’t approach because there are always a couple off-duty fishermen eating at Mitch’s Seafood. Those salty dogs have been forced to beat the shit out of a pelican or two in their day, and they and the pelican also know that.
The snowy egrets pretend to not really want your food. They seductively lord on the tops of the sportfishing boats moored in front of the restaurant, fully aware of how hot they are—svelte fashion models, Ozempic with wings. They just turn their faces to the wind so that it blows their fabulous hair. They seem to expect tourists to be overcome by their avian Brad Pittness and just throw swordfish sandwiches to them in tribute. They refuse to demean themselves like the gulls do.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The gulls are shameless menaces. The linebackers of seabirds—a lot quicker than you expect given their big butts, full of schemes and microaggressions. They stand at a distance and mad-dog everyone, intimidate with their beaks the color of old bananas. Fear is not a seagull emotion. When they take a plate—and they will take a plate—there is so much flapping and fighting. They desperately bite and claw at fishermen’s stews like zombies who finally caught up to Rick Grimes. We see one that’s missing a foot.
At some point you will hear a baby cry. It’s not a baby. It’s a gull, who has learned to mimic the sound of human babies in distress so that parents feel the great evolutionary ache—and throw fries at the crying.
“Watch out for the crab cakes,” says a server to every person she drops them to. “Those are their favorite.”
The birds have opinions on the menu. And their presence at Mitch’s is better than any Yelp review. Think they’d risk life and limb for some recently unboxed frostbite tilapia down at the local skate rink? Yeah, probably so.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
But these birds know the backstory of three longtime local fishing families who own Mitch’s: Brian Kiyohara and his wife, Viola; Randy Toussaint and his wife, Tracy; and namesake Mitch Conniff. Conniff cut his teeth as a young sous chef at Jsix (a long-gone restaurant that was, 20 years ago, a slow-food star under chef Christian Graves). Then he was executive chef of American Angler, the long-range Baja fishing vessel co-owned by Kiyohara.
It was on the Angler that Mitch reportedly looked at the restaurant that was previously in this location—on stilts over the water at Point Loma Sportfishing Dock—and said to Kiyohara, “Wouldn’t it be cool if a restaurant in that space used local fish from local boats and local people like us?”
And that’s how Mitch’s was born. Its doors opened in 2008.
The real story of Mitch’s is the wheelbarrows. Every morning, the crew rolls them along Driscoll’s Wharf down to Tunaville—the market also owned by local fishing families (including Conniff). The shop has a parking spot for local boats, who bring their daily haul there every morning. Mitch’s crew fills the wheelbarrows with fresh fish and wheels them back to the kitchen. Within hours or a day or so, some of it will be lunch, dinner, and bird crack.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
There are no reservations at Mitch’s. More often than not, there’s a long line snaking out the door. It moves fast. Their tiny kitchen is remarkably efficient. Locals know to go for breakfast (get the crab avocado toast) or in the off-hours (11 a.m., 3 p.m.—just not noon and 6 p.m.). There’s a small-ish indoor dining room, tables that appear more lacquer than wood. It’s a shrine to local fishers, the wall’s a family photo album of tan locals beaming with pride over a record catch, pleasantly fatigued boat captains, sun-gnarled deckhands. Leave your partner in the line, and go peruse, get a sense for the humans out there in local waters, leaving their families for days and weeks and months at a time to provide. It’s a core San Diego way of life that built this city (tuna money poured the concrete at Point Loma High), once robust and now rare.
The prized seats are on the deck. Thirty or so metal bar stools are ponied up to a small counter attached to the wooden rail. Bendy metal rods cascade from the roof like eyelashes. “They were put in to deter the birds,” a server tells me. “It worked for about a week.”
The swordfish sandwich is just about perfect and a mission statement of the place—humble and simple, like fishing. A big-ole torta, a grilled filet not cooked to sawdust like American restaurants once did, with tomato, tartar sauce, and cilantro. It shouldn’t taste as good as it does, but clean local fish cooked well on bread is satisfying in an essential, basal way. Plus, that tartar sauce blows lesser tartars away. Conniff swaps out the pickle and onion for garlic, fresh parsley, and cilantro, so that it tastes closer to an herbed Baja crema. It should be criminalized and governed by people who make laws to atone for the lack of our own self-regulation.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The bowl of mussels and clams are the can’t-miss of Mitch’s—somewhere between French moules marinières, New England steamers, and Baja shellfish pots. The science: As shellfish steam, they release their own briny liquor, meaty ocean broth in a shell. The chef’s job is to complement that gift without clobbering it. Mitch’s uses white wine for acid and leeks (a milder, sweeter, more flavorful onion), Dijon, and butter. Their clams and mussels are bigger than normal, which brings stronger flavor, making that broth one of the best in the city, sopped with the baguette.
From the cold case, get the shrimp aguachile with housemade chips—a small bowl, green as radiator fluid, the chili water a light-pain blend of habaneros (the best tasting chili by a long shot), serranos, lime, and the soft, fat glove of avocado. They also serve a campechana—a Baja mariscos specialty with shrimp, Dungeness crab, octopus, and oysters in cocktail sauce and clamato. Important note here: Don’t eat either of these dishes right away. They come out fridge-cold (there are laws about storing raw seafood), which muzzles the flavor. Order them to sit. After 20 minutes, dig in.
The crab cakes get mixed reviews, but ours are delicious. They lean cake more than crab, which isn’t what you’d expect from a fisherman-chef’s stilt house, but that’s personal preference.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
You’re going to order the fresh fish plate, blackened, because you’re good at ordering. It’s the truest expression of fisherman and fish. And what you’ll receive is a shockingly spartan plate—a paprika-crusted filet, a ramekin of slaw, some herb pistou. It is excellent, even if the universal governing body of wooden-spooned grandmas would suggest it needs a rice, a tater, a proper side dish.
My argument is that the slaw is side dishing. Coleslaw is, by and large, the great American fail. Most restaurants treat it like the younger sibling their parents made them bring along on a date. At Mitch’s, they treat slaw with respect. Starts with traditional cabbage, but then gets both fresh orange and lime juice, jicama, grilled corn, and cilantro. It’s Baja meets San Diego picnic food.
If, as dictated by the most basic laws of food criticism, I needed to find quibbles with Mitch’s, fine. I’ll be that guy who walks into a runaway hit dream of three local fishing families and pretends everything isn’t entirely perfect. I’ll express them in wishes.
I wish the baguette with the clams and mussels was lightly charred. The broth is nearly sweet, and sweet loves a good burn.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
I wish there was an obscene amount of slaw with the fish plate. It’s that good, and the plate looks a bit bare.
I wish there was one housemade sauce in the condiment basket. You’ve got Heinz, Tabasco, Tapatío—all of which are fine and should stay. While I realize the kitchen is limited and the line of customers is eternal, Mitch’s would go up an even higher notch if there were squeeze bottles of one killer original dressing—housemade crema, a mojo, macha, or just an unending supply of that garlicky tartar. It feels a tad crimey to go through all this effort to source local fish and cook them well, and then top it with a sauce that has no San Diego or Baja or Mitch in it.
I honestly didn’t expect Mitch’s to be as good as it still is. Everything we ate (except maybe an octopus taco with tentacle bits fried into nubs) was good to excellent. The constant onslaught of locals and tourists and the excruciating intricacies of operating a business in California should have exhausted the will to live by now, let alone cook.
There’s a reason the birds are still outside, with crimes in their eyes and menu preferences.
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.
Most San Diego spots serve phở bò—the dark-brothed, beef-boned Southern Vietnamese specialty, loaded with the loud spices (star anise, cloves, cardamom, etc.). But Kim Pham, one of the sisters behind Crab Hut and perennial best-restaurants list-maker Kingfisher, is doing her mom’s phở gà.
The Northern Vietnamese original has a lighter, cleaner broth, using runner chickens (free-range diet and action means more flavor), the garlic from Gilroy’s famed Christopher Ranch (intense garlic-garlic), organic ginger, and housemade noodles. For condiments, Phở Gà Go uses Red Boat (the gold standard, barrel-aged 12 months). It’s essentially the same broth made at Kingfisher, served casual in Mira Mesa.
Best Fish Party for a Purpose
Dockside Night Market
This issue isn’t about shame, but let’s add a touch for emotional tension. We live on the water, but only about 10 percent of seafood eaten in San Diego is caught locally. Meanwhile, the local fishing industry that once employed 40,000 people is down to about 130 commercial fishers. Local fishing families are a crucial (my words, and they feel right) but endangered species. And three groups have joined forces for one pretty killer event that does a lot about it.
Puffer Malarkey Group (operator Chris Puffer and celeb chef Brian Malarkey) joined with Tuna Harbor Dockside Market—the spot where local boats drop their catch every weekend, a waterline treasure. Each year, Dockside Night Market gathers live musicians and the city’s top chefs who cook with local boat fish on the water. Even better: 100 percent of the profits go to the San Diego Working Fishermen’s Group (the third group—the actual fishers). Make it a quarterly/monthly thing, for chrissakes.
Best Home Away From Home
Make Cafe
Hard to find a more special place to eat lunch than Make Cafe. Finally with a permanent address, Make is where refugee women new to life in the US cook recipes from their various home countries: like mandazis (East African fry bread, like a beignet), koftas, congees (Asian ginger-rice bowls), lemongrass soda waters, and clean-eating creations. Exec chef Ashley McBrady (who helped turn Cellar Hand into a farm-obsessive hit) oversees the operation and teaches the women everything she’s learned.
Make Projects (which includes a farm and a training center) is a nonprofit that director Anchi Mei spun off from the International Rescue Committee—and now includes the cafe, a farm, and a training center. The idea is to help women refugees—often those who’ve worked fields and didn’t get great access to education—develop job, language, and cultural skills to adjust to this radically new and disorienting life. Even if you’re immune to an emotional backstory: Normal Heights has a charming new 5,000-square-foot bistro with a talented chef.
Courtesy of This Musubi Love
Best Way to SPAM Your Friends
This Musubi Love
The slander of SPAM is part of its allure. Those who have either been raised in the musubi arts or converted to the minor food religion tend to exude a higher-than-expected life happiness. This Musubi Love, a Leucadia musubi speakeasy (you heard that right), focuses exclusively on the Hawaiian/Asian tradition of SPAM “sushi.” It’s a MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation) from founder Roger Post, serving classics and riffs like the Cordon Bleu-Subi made with panko-fried SPAM, shredded rotisserie chicken, Swiss cheese, and Bachan’s Japanese BBQ sauce. Or try the Dawn Patrol with SPAM, egg, bacon, cheddar cheese, and spicy mayo.
Best Lead Restaurant Singer
Todd Henderson, General Manager at Valentina
How many of your favorite bands don’t have a talented lead singer? Due respect to Charles Mingus, but kinda hard to get emotional without someone expressing a story in a compelling way. The same is true for restaurants: a likable storyteller who deeply knows their stuff and can translate the stories of the food, drink, people, and place is both key and exceedingly, exceedingly rare. Well—found one.
Valentina General Manager Todd Henderson is a likable certified sommelier who can wax on about the history of the breed of pigs used to create the famed jamón (Cinco Jotas), trace each Spanish pintxo back to its origin tale, or orate the Ken Burns doc of 20 different types of Champagne. Valentina had the design charm and the roots (Leucadia locals wanted better restaurants, so they built them). But with Henderson and chef Enrique Ñol (who trained under Davin Waite at Wrench & Rodent), Leucadia’s date-night bistro feels like it pulled up a rung.
Some local legends engrave so deep that it’d feel wrong if even their original locations they outgrew became, like, some chain lamp store. Kiku Room feels like a rightful heir to the Casbah’s first throne. Kurt Cobain played in this tiny box on Kettner, dammit. Kiku’s a minimalist steel-concrete-and-punky-wheatpaste box, loaded with enough red lights to summon some beanie diehards and chill demons. One “bar” is a DJ deck (dark disco, Balearic house, everything), and the other is proper craft cocktails. They even brought back Midori Sours. The room is small and the line is not, so plan ahead or amiably accept fate.
Some locals would prefer if Coronado’s historic charms were flash-frozen and preserved. Others feel that Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story (the 19th-century developers who modernized the “island” and birthed the Hotel del) were radical change agents, and that spirit should be renewed. Undoubtedly, Baby Grand is a renewal. The newest hotel from CH Projects (Lafayette Hotel) turned an old, meh motor lodge (La Avenida Inn) into a freshly feral cocktail lagoon with Greek food and statues and plus-sized plant life, a tuckaway bar (Fallen Empire), and rooms with clamshell beds and obscenely giant bathrooms. All due respect to our hearts’ desire to embalm old magic—this feels like a grand Coronado win.
Best Places to Visit Captain Keno’s Ghost
Anigma and Breakers
Two local dreamers truly understood the emotional voltage of Captain Keno’s, Leucadia’s affordable family restaurant/dive bar (a real hospitality mullet). When owner Gerry Sova closed it after 54 years, they basically battled it out to buy Keno’s beloved bones—knickknacks, plucky furniture, signage—and memorialized that old meatloaf-and-vodka-cranberry voodoo in their own places. The first is Encinitas’ tuckaway bar, the highly designed, Tarot-fied Anigma (from the DIY industry vets who own The Roxy). Second is Breakers, the Hawaiian-inspired hang from pro surfer Benji Weatherley, who grew up between Encinitas and Oahu. Long live Cap.
Photo Credit: James Tran
Best Homecoming for Food City
Ironside Fish & Oyster
When it opened in 2014, Ironside Fish & Oyster hit all the right notes. A giant fish house and craft cocktail spot dedicated to local fishing lore—created by locals. They put in the area’s first oyster bar at the time. It didn’t make the rapid evolution of Little Italy feel like a cheap land grab, and filled holes rather than piling more glitter on already-filled holes. A key part of that magic was opening chef Jason McLeod, who was in charge of Ria in Chicago when it earned two Michelin stars. Twelve years later, after bouncing between big projects, he came back this year and set down permanent roots in a landmark kitchen.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
It’s estimated that 44% of women in the U.S. have high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, but many don’t know it. The disease often has no symptoms, and when symptoms do present, they can appear similar to many other conditions. High blood pressure increases the risk for heart disease and stroke, so it’s critical that it’s detected and treated early. And for women at risk of developing high blood pressure, prevention is key. Click here for the basics of high blood pressure and how Scripps physicians at Scripps use screenings not just as a diagnostic tool, but as part of routine preventive care.
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