Let’s not be melodramatic. Restaurants and bars and cafés will save us all from being hijacked by the algorithm, half-consciously binging likes and shares into overstimmed agita. A charm of the tech age is that a billion unique hobbies and interests and sacred concerns have their own Reddits and forums for reasonably safe expression. A downfall is that we don’t need to physically hunt and gather our sense of community anymore. There’s a less urgent need to glean meaning hand-to-hand or human-to-human. And, in that, we lose that magical bulk sense of connection, the joyful fixation of a throng of us in the same physical space.
A city’s food and drink places are where we still have it. And while it’s the “what” that brings us there (“best birria!” “jook made by real aunties!”), the soul is in the who. It’s about the people who choose this not-easy role of creating something special and impermanent with their creativity and hands, sending it out, and watching others happily or grumpily manhandle it. Food and drink culture is about nourishment in all its forms: physical and spiritual and loaded fries.
A massive bulk of our core food and drink culture broke bread, raised a glass, communed, connected or reconnected, and planted seeds of collaborations, then spilled into the streets of North Park to deepen those new or old bonds. For a few hours, a culture convened. In the following 14 stories, you’ll see snapshots of that culture—San Diego’s food and drink class of 2025. Please sample our nods to the trends that marked the year and the list of critic’s and readers’ picks for the city’s best. Then, later in this issue, simply dig into some rare shots of service animals in the wild.
Enjoy.
Courtesy of 24 Suns
Pop-Up Restaurants Everywhere
Elaborate vegan Mexican dinners in coffee shops (Pixán), cheffy smash pitas in bars (Pirate Pita), Mexican-Vietnamese tasting menus in wine shops (Gemelos), bagels out of a guy’s apartment window (Desperado)—pop-ups appeared like little food rainbows across the city throughout the last year.
Craft cocktails are now the baseline. If you’re not squeezing fresh juice, attempting a fat wash, or dissembling local farm treats into liquid form, then, hell yeah, take pride in your slam-and-grimace retro.
A couple of decades ago, San Diego’s food scene had too much ho in its hum. A handful of standalone restaurants and chefs were doing good work (like Bertrand Hug at Mister A’s, Michael Stebner with Region, Trey Foshee of Georges at the Cove, and Jeffrey Strauss of Pamplemousse Grille), but most world-class food was being made at hotels and resorts—especially at The Lodge at Torrey Pines’ A.R. Valentien.
This is by far the most emotional reinvention of a San Diego icon in a long while. Starlite was the brainchild of three San Diego music scene vets: The Casbah owner Tim Mays, musician Steve Poltz, and multi-hyphenate musician and artist Matt Hoyt. When Matt passed in 2021, his widow Allison Bell Hoyt had to sell. There were offers, but only Arsalun Tafazoli of CH Projects was dedicated to keeping Starlite and Matt’s legacy alive.
The ornate, sensory-lust-farm restaurant—an ostrich-patterned dinner table floating on a neon lily pad in the middle of a hard kombucha lake that flushes into a subterranean speakeasy—is thriving. The bare-bones, “here’s some awesome food in a bag” restaurant is also thriving (The Friendly, Bica, The Kebab Shop). It’s the middle that’s complaining about mysterious pains and looking a tad peaked—which makes immanent sense.
The first time I tasted Eric Bost’s food was shortly after he arrived at Jeune et Jolie in 2021. It was one of those meals where all the senses you’ve deadened through suspect life decisions come roaring back. Soon after, J&J won a Michelin star. The redemption backstory makes it even sweeter.
This 60-year anniversary wasn’t supposed to happen. Three years ago, Ryan Thorsen found out the iconic Mister A’s was scheduled to close. The lease was up, and there were plans to turn the god’s-eye restaurant into penthouse offices. Legendary run, good night. Hug told Thorsen if he could get the lease extended, he’d sell to him. So the young GM approached Manchester Financial.
Thompson Heritage Ranch has become a bit of a problem. To paraphrase: “No way chefs can afford his product unless they’re going to charge $100 a pork chop!” Yet the city’s top chefs are buying Thompson. Chefs talk about Thompson like he’s some sort of cult protein mystic—idealistic, ambitious, purpose-driven to the point of disbelief.
In the beginning, serious bread in San Diego County was mostly held up by two studs: Dudley’s (an icon in the rural outskirts baking date nut raisin bread and a drug-like jalapeño-cheddar since 1963) and Panchita’s (one of the OG modern Mexican bakeries, with lovely pan dulces, tres leches, and empanadas).
With all the splashy free-agent acquisitions, the La Jolla spot that seemed to slip under the radar was Comedor Nishi from Pancho Ibáñez and his wife Daniela. For about a decade, Ibañez was the right-hand man of chef Enrique Olvera at Pujol in Mexico City-which has been hailed by nearly every food media outlet as one of the best restaurants on the planet.
The magic of convoy right now is the convergence of two (sometimes three) generations. Grocery store Woo Chee Chong opened along Convoy Street in 1979. From its aisles fanned a whole scene of mom-and-pop cooks and chefs, often first-generation Americans launching humble spots in the area’s innumerable strip malls— like Tina Tran, who cooked phở and Vietnamese signatures for her neighbors until the demand grew into Phuong Trang (opened 1992).
Before it opened, Leila in North Park had 7,000 reservations. Seven thousand. I’d bet a sane amount of money this sets some historical record for the city. A good portion of that is because of the unchecked enthusiasm for each new CH Projects fever dream.
We’re social creatures. If we don’t gather, we get weird. As church attendance lags, restaurants and bars are the stadium-rock arenas for this need. But as inflation rose in 2025, the indie stage of ice cream shops became a whole hell of a lot more attractive.
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.
