There are few brains like Drew Deckman’s. If he sold footwear he would tell you about the different micro-fibers in the shoe strings and their slight historical significance in the evolution of the human foot. He’s standing at the counter of his newish restaurant in North Park, 31ThirtyOne, holding a vegetable from a local farm. A couple next to me is clearly excited to have a one–on-one veg tutorial from a man who recently took home two of the six total Michelin green stars that were handed out in Mexico. He’s 33 percent of Baja Michelin, and now he’s here in San Diego’s creative urban joyland, and dispensing spoken-word on root vegetables.
He proceeds to improv a biography of this vegetable, down to its growing seasons and particular likes and dislikes, and then, realizing he’s nerding out a tad hard, lowers the gear to say something like, “it’s basically a really cool bitter weed that goes great with fish.” His brain somehow contains the entire deep agricultural and culinary research done on this particular produce, but also knows when to read a room and get to the damn Cliffs Notes.
Deckman came to be this version of a walking food Wikipedia (with way more fact checking) honestly. He’d worked his way through Michelin-star restaurants in Germany, got sent to a high-end hotel group’s signature restaurant, and realized that restaurant wasn’t serving any of the ample local food. As a food person who’d met a few farmers and fishermen, that was absurd. So he ditched, hopped on a fishing boat.
He returned to the chef life in Valle de Guadalupe a new, local-as-possible, ingredient-obsessed man. Started cooking under trees in a plume of coal smoke. Won those Michelins for Deckman’s en El Mogor and then Conchas de Piedra.
Point is, he launched three things that are worthy pursuits if joy is still a priority in life. This chef’s counter tasting menu at 31ThirtyOne, in which you stand a couple feet from him as he serves you food and shoots the culinary shit (when I went, he made this killer striped seabass tartar iodized with diced raw oysters that was fantastic, but that dish will likely be gone because he shifts menus with what the world gives him).
Also, Sunday Supper, where food people can bring their kids to an otherwise adult-centric restaurant, with things like red kuri squash soups and braised lamb shank in house-milled dent corn polenta.
And finally, the news that got you here with that headline. Deckman is doing a seafood joint at Petco Park for the upcoming Padres season (Joe Musgrove is a partner in 31ThirtyOne). For Deckman, who originally wanted to be a major league umpire before getting hooked on food, it’s full circle. It’ll be in the existing Ballast Point space, and called something like Ballast Point Baja Draft by Deckman’s (a working name).
Here’s the menu as of now:
Oysters
6 oysters on the half shell with cilantro cocktail sauce, lemon, peppercorn vinaigrette
6 roasted oysters with guajillo chile butter, toasted sourdough
Ceviches
Zero By-Catch Shrimp “Tradicional” with tomato, red onion, cilantro, serrano, lime
Market Fish Green Ceviche with tomatillo, cucumber, habanero, mint
Vegetarian Ceviche with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, onions, queso fresco, lime
All ceviches served with choice of corn tostadas or “Dulsitos” Tapioca-Seaweed Crackers (from Monterey Bay Seaweed Company) and choice of sauces (chile de arbol, habañero, salsa verde, smoked serrano molcajete)
Plates
Baja-Style Market Fish Tacos with marinated cabbage, corn tortilla, choice of salsas
Fried Oyster or Market Fish Torta with chile de arbol mayo, pickles, fries
“Dirty” Baja Fries with shrimp ceviche, queso fundido, pico de gallo
Baja Carnitas Pork “Wings” with fries and habanero coleslaw
