It had been open six weeks when it got the Michelin star. At six weeks, a restaurant is a newborn. Newborns wail and struggle to breathe. They’re cracking open their first panic attack. Nine months in the flotation tank of the mom spa, then—blammo—the landlord shuts off the water and fairly traumatically evicts them into a drafty world that has no clue about mood lighting.
It’s old food critic wisdom that restaurants need six months to get running and ready for real analysis. Crew members will have lied on their resumes, narcissists will find themselves bored, the strangely emotional demands of diners will break newbies. It’s a fresh organism dedicated to executing nightly public theater, and it takes time for all the parts to learn how to operate as a fluid whole—develop mutually beneficial roles, nail the timing, speak the unspoken language.
Granted, the team at Lilo in Carlsbad aren’t newcomers, and they’ve had way more time than they ever wanted to plan this out. Plus, the partners—restaurateur John Resnick and chef Eric Bost—helped earn their restaurant across the street, Jeune et Jolie, a Michelin star (and they run its raved-about sister restaurant, Campfire, down the block).
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Analog music helps set the mood in here.
“We’re lucky,” Resnick says. “About 80 percent of the people on our team, we either worked with immediately or they came back because they were excited about this project.”
The project is a 22-seat, tasting menu–only restaurant featuring Bost, longtime chef de cuisine Dusan Todic, wine director Savannah Riedler (formerly of Post Ranch Inn and two-Michelin-starred Saison), and beverage director Andrew Cordero (Jeune et Jolie and Campfire). It’s four years in the making. When a 10,000-square-foot building became available on State Street in 2021—the last of its kind on one of Carlsbad’s most up-and-coming drags—they jumped at it. The plan was to build a massive all-day restaurant (Wildland, now open) and, behind it, tiny Lilo, where they could showcase what their vision of the ultimate San Diego dinner experience could be. It’s the kind of James Beard Award and Michelin bait that ambitious restaurateurs dream of and makes basic sense when they have a chef-partner like Bost.
“Campfire and Jeune—from the time leases were signed to opening doors—took about 12 months,” Resnick says. “So I kind of felt like, alright, 18 months should be doable.” He pauses. “It was not.”
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos Your meal begins in the serene courtyard.
At that time, the pandemic was still slowly releasing its chokehold. Supply chains had been shot with a billion tranquilizer darts. Building two restaurants at a time while exhibiting a noble American amount of ambition was no picnic. The week after the project finally broke ground, the construction lead on the project—“the only person more essential to the buildout than us as owners,” Resnick says—departed. A fun idiosyncrasy of construction in North County is that most contractors live 40 minutes away and prefer freelance gigs closer to home. So, finding help was hard. Plus, a new ordinance had been passed in Carlsbad since Resnick opened his first two restaurants.
“I was down in Baja having lunch when I got an email about needing a ‘minor site development plan,’” Resnick remembers. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s got the word minor in it; it’s probably not a big deal.’ That one thing added nine months to the project.”
Project costs ballooned. Hems were hawed. The buzz on this project had been loud, and now the scene wondered and whispered. I ask Bost and Resnick if there was a time they considered giving up or drastically reducing the vision.
“It came up, yeah,” Resnick says. “At the end of the day, it was a ‘the only way out is through’ type of thing.”
They thought they’d launch in July 2023. The doors opened in April 2025.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost A tartlette made with vin jaune, or “yellow wine,” a dry French white aged for years under a film of yeast.
For Bost, the unveiling of that restaurant was especially redeeming. In 2020, he’d lost what felt like everything. He’d spent 20 years working his way through some of the world’s best kitchens: Le Cirque, The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, Alain Ducasse, and both The Lodge at Torrey Pines and The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego. He hit the top when he was named executive chef for Guy Savoy, launching the famed French chef’s elaborate Vegas restaurant and then overseeing his places in Singapore. In 2017, ready to do his own thing, he returned to SoCal and spent two years developing the idea for his dream restaurant. He finally opened his unpretentious tasting-menu place, Auburn, in LA in 2019.
The world’s best chefs came to eat: René Redzepi of Noma, Grant Achatz of Alinea, Savoy. It was widely, widely loved. Then, on the day of Auburn’s one-year anniversary, all LA dining rooms were ordered to shutter due to Covid. They tried takeout and all the things, but money ran out and it didn’t work. That chapter, the one he’d written in sweat and blood and life savings, was closed. He’d reached the top, and now he needed a job.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost After a courtyard amuse-bouche, you take a seat at the chef’s counter for 16 or so more courses.
“I had worked so hard for so long, and it felt like my whole world collapsed,” Bost says.
Down here in San Diego, Resnick had lost a rudder, too. His longtime partner—chef Andrew Bachelier, who opened and ran Campfire and Jeune et Jolie—left to be with his family during the pandemic. So Resnick reached out to Bost and brought him back to San Diego. A few months after his return, I took my family to Jeune et Jolie. I’d never tried Bost’s food, and it was a revelation. I wrote a nearly unhinged rave for SDM.
Jeune was awarded its Michelin star a few months later and has retained it for four years. Lilo is the duo’s second star, and it seems destined for at least one more.
“Five years after I lost Auburn, we’ve reached a success that, at the time, seemed impossible,” Bost says.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Lilo’s delicate île flottante (“floating island”), meringue suspended in a pool of crème anglaise.
The Arrival
A college textbook on architecture that perfectly explained my childhood also explains the physical experience of Lilo. As a pre-internet teen in suburban North County, if I wanted social interaction outside of school, I went to the indoor mall then known as North County Fair. The odyssey started in some remote hinterland of the parking lot (malls were jammed in the ’80s). You’d traverse the sweltering asphalt acreage in the irrational Escondido sun, broiled from underfoot. The exterior of North County Fair was no eye candy, just beige stucco with fancy retail logos. You’d finally arrive, hot and sweaty and uninspired, and open the doors to the mall… and a wave of air conditioning and lights and joy and music would save you. You never wanted to leave, and your estimation of this mall had some messianic-capitalistic undertones. Turns out this is an actual form of architectural strategy and psychology.
Lilo is the same. (Okay, not exactly.) It’s in Carlsbad, for chrissakes, where even concrete is somehow charming. But the emotional experience of entering feels shockingly transportive. It’s tucked in a parking lot behind its sister restaurant, Wildland. Your journey includes pilgrimaging across the 50 feet of asphalt under temperate, marine air toward a tall, soft, slatted wall of curved wood that looks like it’s got a skincare routine, embossed with small black letters that say “Lilo” in a retro sans-serif font (in the constantly fonted psyche of modern humanity, a nice font is the underrated eye Prozac). You turn the corner into the courtyard and… salvation. Pleasure vertigo. A billowy tree billows. A handful of tables speckle the courtyard, which feels like it should have an earthen sauna with steamy rocks and Wim Hof sipping shrubs in an ice bath. You could stay here forever.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Each of the restaurant’s 22 seats offers front-row views of the whole choreographed show.
This is where the meal starts, with a trio of amuse-bouches and a welcome cocktail or zero-proof creation. It’s the naturalist decompression chamber. Then you enter the single dining room through a massive wall of glass, Mos Def or Lou Reed or Nina Simone playing on the reel-to-reel. “Dining room” is the wrong phrase. It’s essentially just 22 barstools at a U-shaped counter that surrounds the chefs and drinks people. They’ve trapped themselves into this experience.
You’ll be fed approximately 16 courses over the next couple hours. And you start to see the theater evolve. The crew is trained and guided on 73 sequences of service, under which are about 350 subnotes and thoughts on how to enhance the guest experience and handle the unexpected free radicals of placing 22 humans in a glass box. There are notes on how to open the door, where to stand when it is open, how far apart the seats should be (19 inches), how to pull out the chair (not a small feat; it’s all heavy, one-of-a-kind barstools). Ironically, the goal of these obsessive guidelines is to undo the roboticism of the formal restaurant experience.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Gougères—savory pastries made by mixing choux dough and cheese—get waffled at Lilo.
“The whole point is for our team to not have to think about it,” Resnick says. “Things will fail during service, and if you have to think about how to handle it, you’re not going to be able to be in the moment and connect with our guests and just have fun. You don’t want a guest to notice that all the chairs are lined up and spaced out exactly 19 inches apart from each other. But they are. The whole point is, ‘How do we make this feel super effortless and lovely for the guest?’
“I’m the kind of person that, when I leave a restaurant, no matter how exceptional it was, a couple weeks or years later, I really don’t remember what I ate—but I remember how I felt. I was really excited about doing something that made you feel like you were having a special evening but you could be yourself. You wouldn’t have to be on your best behavior or feel like you had to be contrived to fit into what we were doing. We want it to feel communal, like we’re all doing this together—a chef’s counter can do that a little bit, I think.
“Just have fun. There’s good music playing. You can come in and laugh and have this rad night, and it’s also one of the best meals of your life. That’s the hope, at least.”
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Spot prawns, a California delicacy, come to the restaurant straight from the boat.
The Feel
So, how does it feel?
You get the sense that, if your chi was dirty here, the staff would figure out how to wash it in botanical water hauled from a natural spring noted for its good omens, then clarify that omen water in a centrifuge and mix it with a cocktail shrub that’s been calibrated to the type of chi you possess.
There’s a dish that Bost and Todic created at Jeune et Jolie as part of the dreaming and R&D’ing for Lilo. It is one of the best things you’ll ever eat—ultra-local Californian and lightly Asian (both central tenets of how they cook); unexpected; bordering on weird; both a challenge to what we expect of food and an embrace of its base, comforting flavors.
Photo Credit: Elodie Best Orgeat ice cream, crowned in caviar.
It’s the orgeat ice cream with ossetra caviar. Orgeat is a cocktail ingredient that tastes like candied almonds and orange blossoms. The key to the dish is a celery root bushi, made from curing celery root in a mixture of brown sugar, tamari, and salt for two days. Then the root is smoked over almond wood for another two days. The chefs spend another couple days completely drying the root. They finally shave it over the top of the dish with a drizzle of freshly pressed almond oil (they make it daily in-house). It takes the standard idea of fine dining— caviar and crème fraîche—and puts a little Michelin-starred Ben & Jerry’s into it.
“That dish was from way back in the process, when we thought we were going to open earlier,” Bost says. “We had orgeat ice cream on the menu at Jeune for a time. I was just ruminating about what the food at Lilo would be. I knew we were going to have a caviar course at Lilo, and for some reason, I just made the connection with the ice cream. I grabbed one of these big Japanese ice cubes we had at the bar, dropped the quenelle of ice cream on that, put caviar on top, and took a bite. It was jammy, sweet, salty, fun. And I’m like, ‘Dusan, this is what I think the food should be, you know? It’s thoughtful and incredibly delicious, a little playful. Now how do we do things like this through 17 courses?’”
Photo Credit: Elodie Best Roasted California squab (a young pigeon).
Bost’s and Dusan’s menu—hyper-local, hyper-seasonal, leaning Californian and Japanese (plenty of koji and fermenting)—evolves constantly based on farmers’ and fishers’ hauls, and whim. For instance, the most recent includes big-eye tuna and Wagyu tartare with yuzu, black radish, ginger, and spruce; gougères filled with comté Mornay, barrel-aged maple syrup, and Iberico lardo; abalone brushed with fermented pepper and guanciale in a broth of chicken and bone marrow; blackened banana with Koshihikari rice, medjool date, shiro miso caramel, and a roasted rice donut.
Each person on staff has an eleven-and-a-half hour shift—first, a meeting to go over every guest and special occasion or need, then a shift meal where work is not discussed, then the show and the post-show wrap. Every dish is assembled at guests’ eye-level, a few feet away, not unlike sushi omakases, except with way more moving parts to the dishes. A different cook or chef or beverage person delivers each dish as it is ready, which means everyone is responsible for the story.
Photo Credit: Elodie Bost Delicate white fish becomes a Daniel Buren painting.
“That actually takes a special kind of chef and kitchen staff, because not every chef got into this to be guest-facing,” Bost says.
I went opening night, part of a crowd of friends and family asked to give as much useful criticism as possible and help Bost and Resnick and their team see it from outside eyes. Day one—the first rough draft—wasn’t perfect, but damn if it wasn’t close to it. One of the best meals you’ll find in San Diego.
It works because of Bost and Resnick and their staff’s decades of thankless experience. It works because Bost is one of the most talented chefs in the city. But it feels somehow casual because of all the detail-gargling and obsession ahead of time—and then, doors open, cue the Jurassic 5, and just be.
“In the beginning, we thought about maybe bringing in a dancer to help with training,” says Resnick. “We didn’t, but there are so many things when you’re in this intimate of a space—when you need to bend down to open a drawer as guests are sitting right there staring at you. It’s all those little things, and sometimes we talked for hours about them.”
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.
You have to be crazy or a genius to name a restaurant Fish Guts. You have to be even crazier to open a restaurant that holds maybe two dozen people at a time—if you don’t mind elbowing one other while scarfing down some of the best fish tacos in San Diego.
And yes, “best” is a relative term. But in Fish Guts’ case, it’s for real—and that’s saying something in a town literally world-famous for fish tacos.
Ever since Pablo Becker opened up his diminutive eatery in 2023 at the corner of Logan Avenue and Sampson Street in Barrio Logan, Fish Guts has been named one of the city’s best new restaurants in 2023, Critic’s Pick for the best fish tacos in San Diego in 2024, 2025 and 2026, as well as readers’ top pick in 2024. It’s like if Rubio’s married into the royal family.
Most of his ingredients come straight from the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean, which happens to be down the street. His de espada (blackened swordfish) taco is the stuff of legend. He’s kept Fish Guts operating at an elite level, which tends to happen when you work for five years in Chicago under chef Richard Sandoval (who, by chance, is also his cousin) and open an ahead-of-its-time high-end modern Mexican restaurant in East Village (El Vitral Restaurant & Tequileria, 2009-2013).
Now Becker is branching out again, opening two new concepts in Barrio Logan this fall.
The first will be upstairs from Fish Guts, which at one point was destined to become an intimate omakase counter. Santo Poco will be a lunch-only sandwich shop, offering takeout and delivery (no dine-in), and the sandwiches will be a little Mexican, a little French, a little Italian, a little from Chicago, a little from New York. Basically, a bunch of different styles all on really, really good bread.
“There’s probably going to be a Cuban-style sandwich in there with a touch of Mexican, some cold cut Italians, too, putting my touch on them,” he says. “That’s what I feel like is my style of cooking.”
Things will be traditional, but inventive. Like his fish & chips taco at Fish Guts: two classic dishes, one killer mash-up. There will also be a hat tip to the late, great Anthony Bourdain, a sandwich called the Antonio Bourdain.
The second will be across the street from Fish Guts in the former Lia’s Lumpia space. Concrete Cowboy will be a taco-driven joint on the same wavelength as Fish Guts (keep it simple, keep it special), but featuring land animals rather than sea brethren. Think tacos made with duck confit, ribeye, pork belly, skirt steak.
The inspiration behind Concrete Cowboy comes from Becker’s father, a lifelong Western obsessive, despite growing up in Mexico City’s urban metropolis. “He always liked that cowboy life, that vibe,” he says. “I always say ‘Dad, you just grew up in the wrong city.”
He’s aiming to open Santo Poco in October and Concrete Cowboy in November. Neither require massive renovations, and while the former Lia’s Lumpia space will keep the cabin-esque aesthetic, he’s creating more of an adobe-style exterior and an interior lined with Western-themed wallpaper and taxidermied animals. He’ll also tweak the bar layout to move from a fast-casual feel to full service.
Local designer Dane Danner is designing both spaces and visual direction for menu layouts, logos, and packaging, going for low-key, but high on vibes. Once Concrete Cowboy opens, Fish Guts will temporarily close to remodel the space to switch its white palette for a warmer feel, plus introducing a refreshed menu featuring some new tacos and other items.
Could another Fish Guts be on the way somewhere else in San Diego? Not likely, says Becker. “Fish Guts is cool, “ he says. “I feel once you start branching out, it’s more forced, not as organic.” So for now, count on Becker staying in the neighborhood.
Santo Poco opens for lunch daily October 2026, 2222 Logan Avenue (above Fish Guts). Concrete Cowboy opens Tuesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner November 2026, 2219 Logan Avenue.
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.
Ten years ago, restaurant design centered around sleek minimalism. Fonts lacked serifs, clean lines dominated, and any manufacturer that made globe-shaped chandeliers must have made an absolute killing.
Things have changed since then, and Jeff Fink says it’s time for Madison on Park to glow up. On September 7, Madison will temporarily close its doors for a top-to-bottom renovation of the space and concept. Fink hopes to reopen this fall ahead of the busy holiday season, with a new look he calls moody mid-century maximalism.
“We have to take into consideration what’s going on culturally,” he says. When Madison first opened, TikTok wasn’t a thing in the U.S. and craft cocktails felt relatively cutting-edge. Today, he sees a resurgence in the vintage look, handmade goods, and low-to-no ABV drinks dominating menus everywhere.
Courtesy of Madison on Park | Photo Credit: Andy McRory
Fink and his partner Matt Sieve have already dabbled with that sort of motif at Sonny’s Pizza, their Brooklyn-inspired joint around the corner. Fully half of the cocktail menu is made up of spritzes, mocktails, and Negronis. Madison 2.0 will take it further.
The new concept doesn’t have a name yet—Fink says they have to feel out the vibes as they make progress with the design. “The name comes when you see it appear,” he says. But he has a few design elements in mind: things like more artwork and more uplighting. “Not cluttered and overstuffed… I want to keep it intimate, sexy, and immersive.”
Madison rightly earned its rep as one of the best-dressed eateries in San Diego, nabbing an Orchid Award for interior design its first year. The returning designers Anna and David Sindelar originally transformed the space from weird padded walls and fake greenery at Lei Lounge into a mid-century modern wonderland, complete with a signature arched ceiling and geometric patterns aplenty. Michelin-recognized chef Mario Cassineri (Ciccia Osteria, Bice Ristorante) built a menu heavy on Mediterranean flavors mixed with California classics.
The new menu shouldn’t feel completely jarring, but will take cues from Fink’s recent travels in Spain with his family. Expect shareable plates with lighter ingredients. “Americans eat way too much, and our portions are way too big,” he says. “I like the idea of smaller plates, healthier plates, and being creative… I’d rather see 15 items on the menu that are all less than $20 so that I can try different ones.” Bar manager Danny Kuehner will continue developing craft cocktails and mocktails for the new venture, as well as curating a selection of wine from Europe and locally.
Courtesy of Madison on Park | Photo Credit: Haley Hill
This isn’t the only project on their plate. Besides running Sonny’s in University Heights and Madi in Normal Heights, later this fall, Fink and Sieve will also open Josie’s, a modern all-day, Midwestern-style diner inspired by Sieve’s Minnesota roots. Like all their restaurants, it’ll hold a special part of their families’ legacies—something Fink hopes people feel as soon as they enter.
“You walk into Sonny’s, you’re like ‘Oh, Jeff’s at home,’” Fink laughs. “[Josies’] will be ‘Matt’s at home.’” The next version of Madison? We’ll have to wait and see.
Madison on Park will temporarily close on September 7 until October (barring any unexpected delays). Keep up with the newest updates on Madison’s Instagram.
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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 I was pregnant, my food craving was singular and intense. If I didn’t eat at least one thing doused in cinnamon every day (ideally, more than one), I was—to put it gently—a complete monster.
Since then, my obsession has tempered somewhat. But cinnamon buns still perch high on my top treats list, so I’m always on the lookout for the next great place to indulge. IMO, The Huddle in Mission Hills’ mondo cinnamon roll remains top-tier, but after eyeing the ooey, gooey goodies from Sinner Buns, we might have a contender.
Originally from Ukraine, Daria Nadar had already done everything one can do at a bakery—business operations, wholesale contracts, actually baking, you name it—so during the pandemic, she started dabbling with perfecting her cinnamon rolls. After she got a couple fans over social media, she threw her first pop-up to see how they’d be received. She sold out.
After a few false starts with a couple storefronts and business deals, Nadar officially launched Sinner Buns in October 2025 with her partner Filipe Pazi. After making it through an unexpectedly hectic season stuffed with holiday orders, the team closed temporarily to get everything in line and reopened this April. Business has remained in full swing ever since.
There are only so many ingredients in a cinnamon roll, but “the process is what makes it special,” she says, adding they use fresh yeast rather than powder and a 48-hour process for each batch of brioche dough made to order. (Thus the need for pre-orders.) Customers can preorder until Thursday each week for pickup Friday, Saturday, or Sunday from Sinner Buns’ ghost kitchen at 780 Hollister Street, just east of Imperial Beach.
You can also catch her at various pop-ups around San Diego. Eventually, Nadar opens to offer nationwide shipping (once she figures out the logistics and quality control) and one day, her own storefront.
But it’ll be on her terms, not the whims of social media. “We already learned how to not only rely on virality of the product, because you go viral and then it fades,” she says. “It’s a slow burner, and I know eventually, it’s going to grow much more.”
Courtesy of San Diego Spirits Festival
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Get spirited away at the 17th annual San Diego Spirits Festival. If you understood that reference, I regret to inform you that it is not a Studio Ghibli watchathon, but it’s still a win with a bonanza of craft makers pouring libations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla for two full days. On September 26-27, try sips, glugs, and guzzles from brands like Condesa Gin and Uncle Nearest (with some bites to wash it all down, of course). Could you ask for a more picturesque venue? Spoiler alert: no.
You love to see a longtime employee take the reins of a beloved local institution. That’s exactly what happened at Konito’s Cafe in Pacific Beach, which is currently transitioning to Pablo’s Cafe, which is now under new ownership. (Yes, his name is Pablo.) Will their breakfast sandwich still slap? Guess we’ll have to go find out.
I’ve yet to visit Tigawok, the small California-based chain serving mini bowls like Kung Pao chicken and Mapo tofu. But the latest storefront (and the first in San Diego) is now soft open in La Jolla, and it’s only a matter of time before their Sichuan shredded chicken gets in my belly.
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.
When San Diego launched Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operations (MEHKO), it changed everything. Riverside County first established the experimental program in 2019, with San Diego introducing its own countywide pilot program in 2022 and granting it permanent status in 2024. The new category allowed people to launch at-home retail food operations—basically, home restaurants—with special requirements and restrictions to ensure food safety and smooth operations. Over two dozen counties across California have since adopted their own versions with over 1,200 permits issued, around 100 of them in San Diego alone.
Some have a dizzyingly long waitlist (Warung RieRie), others are still getting their name out there (The Hidden Gazebo Eatery), and still others use MEHKO for pickups rather than fully opening their home as an onsite dining facility. Love Pupusas falls into that category.
Yanira Majano came with her family from El Salvador to the United States when she was 11 years old, bringing a love of cooking and desire to share the country’s cuisine along with her. “There’s a lot of similarity [between Salvadoran food and] Central, South America, even Baja Mexico,” she says. Salvadoran cooking tends to be less spicy than some Mexican cuisines, with an emphasis on ingredients like corn, staples like yucca root (cassava), meats like crispy pork (chicharrón), and sides like curtido, a tangy cabbage slaw that’s typically either naturally fermented or vinegar-based.
And of course, the signature dish of El Salvador—pupusas.
In San Diego, Salvadoran food lacks the widespread availability of other Latin American cuisines like Mexican or Peruvian food, but Majano says she’s seen pupusas gain popularity over the past few years. But she likes to think her recipes, which have been passed down by her mother and kitchen partner Martha, contain a certain special something.
Some pupuserías use rice flour to create the handheld stuffed tortillas, but she prefers the more traditional gluten-free corn flour. Still, it’s what’s inside that really counts. “That’s where we put our own touch,” she explains. Most of Majano’s pupusas come with cheese and different fillings like carnitas, black beans, mushrooms, or zucchini, but she also offers vegan options. Every one comes with a side of curtido and salsa, each made fresh daily.
Showing people the magic of home-cooked food might not have been possible without the MEHKO program or The Cook Alliance, a MEHKO support and advocacy coalition. Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a huge amount of start-up capital—at least six figures, generally. Not exactly pocket change. “But when the MEHKO program started in 2022, I said, ‘Oh my God, this is for me,’” says Majano.
Now with four years under her belt, she says she’d love to bring Love Pupusas to more food festivals, host more pop-ups, and eventually open a food truck to keep serving the humble dish of her homeland, taking pride in every bite. “[I put] a lot of love in everything I do. You see it when you taste the food,” she promises.
Pre-order Love Pupusas for next day pickup in Rancho Peñasquitos between noon and 5 p.m.
It’s not the end of the road for Catalina Offshore Products—just the end of an address. The local family-owned fish market announced that come September, they are moving from their longtime location in the Morena District to The Old San Diego Seafood Building at 1842 McKinley Avenue in National City. Normal business operations will resume in October with the same retail market fully stocked with premium seafood and local catches, so it’s not goodbye, it’s just “see you later.” (And yes, 5202 Lovelock Street is still open until moving day.)
Don’t come at me with complaints about autumnal seasonal creep—I got an email this week about holiday shopping. In August. In comparison, the 2026 release of Karl Strauss Oktoberfest seems right on time. For the 38th year in a row, ahead of the Munich-inspired festivities, the 5 percent ABV malty amber lager is now available in bottles, with draft coming to the brewpubs in September. Despite the lack of chill in the air, there’s no reason why your fridge can’t be stocked with this frosty German delight.
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.
The folks at Kairoa Brewing Company must never be lonely. It seems like there’s always a local pop-up or event at the University Heights space, from Bincho Taco slinging Japanese coal-fired tacos on the rooftop patio every Tuesday to Yipao Coffee serving coffee from a window on the ground floor. Later this year, the New Zealand-inspired brewery will bring yet another resident into the fold—Mon Chourie is launching its first bakery counter service window along Park Blvd.
Mon Chourie owner and baker Kelly Kim first started selling her Korean-style cream puffs at farmers markets and places like Pizza Kaiju, Pho Ga Go, and Mixed Grounds, collaborating with a myriad of other makers (like Amor ice cream and Ming Oun’s) before nabbing a regular spot at Michi Michi Bakery every Wednesday. San Diego Magazine readers even voted Mon Chourie the Best Pop-Up for 2026.
In French, the word for an airy puff pastry is “choux,” which is pronounced generally the same way as “syu,” the Korean word for the same item. (Both sound like “shoe.”) Mon Chourie plays with both iterations with a dash of whimsy by referencing the song My Cherie Amour by Stevie Wonder, which translates to “my darling love.”
As long as all the permits and inspections move forward without issue, Mon Chourie should open in Kairoa before the busy holiday season. She’ll continue appearing every Wednesday at Michi Michi and other pop-ups in the meantime. Once open, expect best-selling flavors like the savory potato croquette (a collaboration with Karanchi chili crisp) and a sweet Dubai chocolate choux au craquelin, a version of puff pastry with a delicate cookie crust.
Classic cream puffs are fluffy, softs and often filled with custard cream in the United States. “What makes a difference for us is we use a very light version of diplomat cream, which is my mom’s recipe,” she explains. Diplomat cream is a lighter French pastry cream that uses whipped cream for a lighter, airier end result.
Choux au craquelin’s signature crunchy top comes from adding a thin disc of cookie-like dough on top of the pastry, which crackles as it bakes, leaving a thin layer of crispiness atop the final product. “It contrasts with the creamy, fluffy cream inside, so it gets that better, deeper texture experience,” she says.
Courtesy of Kelly Kim
Along with her popular cream puffs and her bite-sized “mini-choux” options, Kim is also planning on offering more of a newer-to-her item: salt bread, a rich butter pastry topped with sea salt that originated in Japan, but went completely viral in South Korea. There are a few places to get it in Los Angeles and New York, “but I know that a lot of people here are interested in trying out new stuff, or maybe they had it in Korea or Japan, and they came back, but they couldn’t find it anymore,” says Kim. At first, she didn’t really get why it was so popular. Then she tried it in South Korea earlier this year.
“I was in love,” she laughs. “This is what the hype is about.”
Ideally, Mon Chourie will eventually open its own storefront and introduce more events in North County to satisfy demand. “I would also love to have our own drink program that reflects what’s popular in Korea,” she says. And to mark two years of puffy pastry prosperity, Mon Chourie is throwing a two-year anniversary party at Easy Does It (5375 Kearny Villa Rd., Suite 112) on Tuesday, August 25 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. with drink specials like a misugaru latte (a Korean roasted multi-grain powder with espresso), a DJ, photo booths, special ceramic merch created by local ceramicist Whale Tran, and a few other vendors. Get there early.
Mabel’s Gone Fishing has always supported the arts—see their Fishbowl Artist Series—and they’re keeping things going this month with The Studio Table, an immersive dining event on Saturday, August 29 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Barrio Logan-based ceramic studio Tao of Clay. For $160, guests can slurp down oysters and other Spanish-inspired pintxos, Basque ciders, cocktails, and take home a handmade oyster bowl made with reclaimed oyster shells. Gratuity is included for this 21+ event, so be prepared to slow down and enjoy the tangible fruits of nature.
City Tacos keeps moving and shaking, and the restaurant group’s next landing place is Liberty Station. El Punto by City Tacos is slated to open in October in the former El Jardin space (2885 Perry Road, Suite 102). Once destined to become another Lola55 outpost, the space will now become a full-service, family-friendly, and dog-friendly restaurant with seafood, tacos, cocktails, and more.
For as many closings as we’ve seen over the past year, restaurant openings seem to be back on track. The long-awaited Honor Bar finally opened its doors in Del Mar this summer, and Soul Sip in North Park is soft open from 4 p.m. to midnight daily. Still on the way are The Shackhouse by Julian Beer Company (slated to open by Labor Day) and Sprouts Farmers Market plans to open in the former Pancho Villa’s building in North Park this October. (La Mesa is still waiting patiently for Stella Jean’s and Pop Pie to make their debuts.)
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.
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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