In a bright, sunny café in Poway, a cartoon goose peers impishly at you over a mirror. The speech bubble above the goose says, “We are so alike.” It’s instantly delightful.
“We were looking for something with a subtle Ukrainian touch, but not something that would feel too themed or unfamiliar to local guests,” says Anton Ocheretin, who co-owns the café with his wife, Mariia, and friends Taras and Natalie Alipin, who are also married. Like many children in Ukraine, the Ocheretins and the Alipins spent their summers in the countryside with their grandparents. I remember similar Ukrainian summers—darting through fields; getting underfoot; and being lovingly scolded for smearing raspberries, blackberries, and cherry juice all over my clothes.
“And there were always geese around,” Anton reminisces. “It’s a nostalgic, cozy memory for us. Geese are always looking for food, and our name is Need to Eat.”
Courtesy of Need to Eat Cafe The menu includes shakshuka and syrniki, Ukranian cottage cheese pancakes.
The team behind Need to Eat wear a lot of hats: business partners, innovators, longtime friends. They first crossed paths as a foursome in 2008 as students at Ukraine’s National Science Center Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology (formerly the Ukrainian Physics and Technology Institute), where they discovered their shared love for food and cooking. “Not just cooking, but the culture behind it,” Anton adds. “We started going on trips together, visited cities, bakeries, restaurants. Talking to people—the best in everything. That’s how the dream slowly took shape.”
Taras describes the team with terminology reminiscent of a heist crew. Everyone has their specialty: Mariia is the “pastry guru” and Anton is the “paper man” and barista, juggling the business side of the café and its drink menu. Natalie is the “visionary” responsible for the café’s look.
Courtesy of Need to Eat Cafe From left to right, Taras and Natalie Alipin and Mariia and Anton Ocheretin.
Taras calls himself “brain chef,” laughing. “I create the menu, teach our line cooks, and prepare food myself,” he adds. He’s also a dedicated teacher who speaks passionately about the cooking classes that he and Natalie conducted in Ukraine for both adults and children. They carried on the tradition in the US by introducing a gingerbread class for kids during the winter holidays. One lesson he works to impart is that cooking is both an art and a science. Taras describes himself as a “food technologist”—cooking, he tells me, is all “chemistry inside the food.”
I do my best to get a glimpse of the process—where do the ideas for the recipes come from? Like a true artist, Taras shrugs. “From my head,” he says. “Just try things.”
Courtesy of Need to Eat Cafe Mariia is the team’s pastry savant.
Co-managing Need to Eat isn’t the quartet’s first time working together. In Ukraine, Anton and Mariia ran a pastry shop before connecting with Taras and Natalie to help a friend open a restaurant. “We made it, I think, six months working together before we started working separately,” Taras shares. The experience opened the door to a shared dream and partnership.
As conflict loomed in Ukraine, the team decided to make good on that vision by opening a café together in San Diego County. “When the war started, we decided [that] we had to leave Ukraine,” Anton says. “Unfortunately, we had to rebuild our lives somewhere new, and we wanted it to be a place where it’s possible to start a business—it’s our major goal.” Need to Eat Cafe became the child of both opportunity and necessity, merging the team’s culinary interests and Ukrainian roots.
When you visit, Anton suggests starting with a plate of syrniki—similar to an American pancake but made of cottage cheese. “I honestly think they have a potential to become a global breakfast favorite,” Anton promises.
I have to be honest with Anton and Taras—syrniki are my family’s signature breakfast dish, and it’s tough competition (even though I can’t remember the last time that my papa’s syrniki weren’t just a teensy bit burnt). It’s a true Ukrainian breakfast. The cottage cheese that comes to mind is not the packaged, pasteurized, and TikTok-ified protein hack. I remember my great-grandmother’s hands as she milked our cow each day and hung up the cheesecloth, turning it now and again, and then shaping the syrniki into the delicious patties that I would dip in honey or milk in the morning. “Everyone in Ukraine eats it for breakfast,” Taras says.
Courtesy of Need to Eat Cafe In addition to serving Ukranian classics like borscht, the couples draw culinary inspiration from other parts of the globe.
Now, that’s true not just in Ukraine—in Poway, syrniki arrive drenched in caramel and summer berries. Guests and geese with a savory tooth can enjoy Ukrainian-style dumplings stuffed with potatoes and mushrooms, meat, or (a real childhood delicacy for every kid being fed by their grandparents in Ukraine) sour cherries. The spread of pastries is tempting behind the shop’s glass case. Anton and Mariia are “passionate about desserts,” he tells me, and they are continually “experiment[ing] with unusual flavor pairings.” The menu changes seasonally, inviting patrons for a return visit.
The team is planning to bring the café to San Diego proper. Anton shares the vision for a new location in downtown: “A cute breakfast place with a friendly atmosphere [and a] great breakfast selection, which also contains some Ukrainian-style breakfast,” he says. The rest of the plans are a surprise—it might have a different concept, a fresh design, and even a brand-new menu.
This means that the goose may not be visiting San Diego along with the new outpost. “That’s still an open question,” Anton says.
A part of me is rooting for the goose—many of them are migratory birds, after all. They spread their wings and travel with the chill of autumn, like the magic swan-geese of Ukrainian fairy tales, carving the path to a new home. Need to Eat Cafe’s friendly goose followed the team to San Diego, built a nest here, and laid the table for guests.
Inna is a California native with a passion for local art, literature, and a really good salad. Her favorite pastime is visiting furniture exhibits at museums and wishing that she could sit in the chairs (even once!).
Ina Garten Inspired This SD Baker to Open His Own Pop-Up
After a childhood obsession with the Barefoot Contessa and years in Michelin-starred kitchens, Juan Lopez is bringing Poppy Bakeshop to Liberty Station
It wasn’t his mother who inspired Juan Lopez to start baking. Nor was it pandemic boredom. It was Ina Garten. Lopez remembers it clearly—he was in third grade, watching TV at home in San Diego when the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa appeared on the screen. She was in Paris, France, making profiteroles, which are essentially French cream puffs. He’d never seen them before. “That stuck with me forever,” Lopez says.
Forever, or at least present day. It was enough inspiration for him to launch his own pop-up bakery this June: Poppy Bakeshop, which now appears every weekend from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (or sellout) at Moniker Coffee in Liberty Station.
But let’s not fast-forward how he went from a third-grader to burgeoning bakery entrepreneur. After falling under Garten’s spell—I mean, who among us hasn’t at one point or another—Lopez decided to try his hand at making cookies, which proved equal parts satisfying (making something from scratch) and frustrating (not actually knowing what on Earth he was doing). But that itch never went away through high school, when he decided to pursue culinary school. But before enrolling, prospective students had to complete a six-month internship in a professional kitchen.
So Lopez went to the first French restaurant he ever visited—Cafe Chloe in East Village, where chef Katie Grebow took him under her wing. School didn’t pan out, but his education was just beginning.
In the early 2010s, San Diego’s culinary scene was still an afterthought on the national scale. Lopez recalls Grebow encouraging him to move to San Francisco to really hone his skills. “I was 18 and was like, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else to do,’” he laughs. He walked into the one Michelin-starred La Folie in the Russian Hill neighborhood, resume in hand, and asked chef Roland Passot for a job. He started the next day.
After a few years in San Francisco, he returned to San Diego with the intention of moving out of restaurants and focusing on perfecting the foundations of pastry. After stints at Con Pane Rustic Breads, Herb & Wood, and Hommage Bakehouse, he landed at Wayfarer Bread & Pastry in 2023.
The Bird Rock bakery was already well on its way to national acclaim—it was named one of the best 100 bakeries in America by Food & Wine Magazine in 2020, not to mention the Critic’s Pick for “Best Bakery” by San Diego Magazine in 2022, 2024, 2025, 2026, runner-up in 2023, critic’s pick and runner-up in 2021, and then I stopped counting (because I’m pretty sure we all get the picture).
He still works part-time at Wayfarer while growing Poppy, but Lopez says he hopes to increase his pop-up schedule and collaborate more with other local makers. “The ultimate goal is to get a storefront,” he says. Normal Heights would be ideal, but he’s flexible on location and timeframe.
One thing he’s not flexible on is boxing himself into one type of pastry or flavor profile. “I really want Poppy to be this overwhelming abundance of items with different colors and different textures… I don’t want to be known for one thing,” he says. French-inspired, Mexican-influenced, and yes, even taking cues from the fashion industry. Take his plum cornbread, for instance. It’s an homage to Belgian designer Dries Van Noten’s vibrant palette.
“They had this one outfit that had this very, very bright kind of burgundy with this khaki-ish color. Then I went to the farmer’s market, and one of my favorite farmers, Heritage Family Farms, they had these gorgeous, gorgeous plums, and I was like, ‘Well, those are literally the color of that.’” The result? A sweet slice of rich reddish-purple plum cake.
He also draws inspiration from his own family. Every year, he makes coffee cake for Mother’s Day. Cinnamon rolls for Christmas. Basically, anything and everything that makes it onto his shelves is “based on what I’m craving,” Lopez laughs.
And he’s ready to share his cravings with you. “I’ve had so many bad days, and so many of them have been made better through pastry or through food,” he says. “I think as long as everyone just takes the time to just really enjoy what’s in front of them, that’s kind of all I hope for.”
Courtesy of Good Pressure Brewing
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Partnering with Bay City Brewing Company and the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), the ecologically-minded Good Pressure Brewing just brewed an American Wheat Beer using 100 percent California-grown barley to raise money for the plant preservation program. The 20bbl batch will be available at the Mission Gorge taproom the week of July 13, with a yet-to-be-announced release event featuring CPC reps on hand to talk about their efforts. That’s about as easy-drinking as a beer style can get, and with some plant power supporting the initiative, it’s a no-brainer to swing by.
For as many coffee shops San Diego has, there’s only a small number of tea houses that really focus on a genuine tea experience. (We see you, Paru.) But Chagee Modern Teahouse just soft opened its first location in the county at Westfield UTC, which will be followed by a second location at the new Zion Market later this year. Based on early reports, paying a visit to the whole leaf milk tea maker just might be worth dealing with the new parking costs at the mall.
Every summer break, around 240,000 K-12 students across San Diego County lose access to school-provided meals. That’s around half of the total number of students enrolled across the entire county, so yeah, it’s a problem. For the sixth year, Regents Pizzeria in La Jolla partnered with Feeding San Diego to launch the chunkily-named, but uber-generous “Dough-nate to Fuel for Summer” campaign. Following the “buy one, give one” model, the pizzeria will donate one meal to Feeding San Diego for every meal purchased through July, as well as matching any customer’s donations. I’m always happy to eat a slice of ‘za, but if I can make sure others can too, that tastes even better.
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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.
Baker Ashley del Rosario estimates she makes five people cry every day. It’s not because she’s some salty old grump. In fact, del Rosario is such a delight to talk to that we ended up chatting in the sunshine for 20 minutes after my two-hour parking meter ran out. (I got lucky—no ticket!) It’s because her baking philosophy, which centers around spotlighting her culture as a Filipina-American and using some of her mom’s recipes as inspiration, seems to uniquely touch a nerve in her community.
“People message me every day saying… ‘Oh my God, my mom loves your stuff. Oh my God, this made me so emotional. This reminds me of my childhood,’” she says. “I must be doing something right.”
We’re sitting outside at Michi Michi in Bankers Hill, where she finished up a two-month residency as the in-house guest baker on June 30. Her menu of Filipino-inspired pastries feature ingredients like mango, ube, pandan, calamansi, and taro leaves in items like French croissants and Italian maritozzos. But she’s also pushing flavor boundaries with pastries like a champorado tart, a Filipino chocolate rice pudding topped with a dollop of anchovy paste.
Love it or hate it, to del Rosario, the point is that she introduced champorado to a new audience. “If you don’t like Filipino food, or you’re not interested in it, or you don’t even get it… you [still] came into this bakery and you saw Filipino desserts,” she says. So the next time you come across champorado, your brain will already recognize it and hey, maybe you’ll give it a try.
In 2021, Phillip Esteban—San Diego Magazine’s “Chef of the Year” in 2020—opened the first location of his fast-casual Filipino concept White Rice, which now has locations in Normal Heights and Sorrento Valley. Kristin Cleavinger’s coffee and matcha pop-up One of One draws inspiration from her own Filipina-American heritage. Tara Monsod, executive chef at Animae and Le Coq, is a three-time semifinalist for Best Chef in California by the James Beard Awards and one of the leading champions of Filipino-American cuisine. She was also del Rosario’s boss at her first kitchen job, which was doing pastries at Animae. (Nothing like jumping straight into the fire!)
Del Rosario says Monsod became a cultural and culinary mentor, pushing her to explore new and bigger opportunities. When she got the chance to study at the illustrious Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy, Monsod encouraged her to go. It changed del Rosario’s life—so much so, she’s moving to Italy later this year to continue honing her pastry skills.
In the future, she says she hopes to split her time between Italy and San Diego, continuing collaborations and pop-ups while developing what she sees as an entirely new lane within pastry: Italian pastry technique with distinctly Filipino flavors.
Italian pastry technique is different from classic French. Take croissants, for example. The Italian version, called cornetto, is often filled with creams, jams, or savory fillings, and tends to feel softer than its buttery, flakier French counterpart. They’re also more regionally driven, with different areas utilizing local specialties like citrus for the filling—an ideal vehicle for launching a Filipino-fusion creation.
There are plenty of globally-inspired bakeries in San Diego with their own specialties—Azúcar in Ocean Beach is Cuban, Su Pan offers traditional Mexican pastries, and Asa Bakery is modeled after Japanese kissaten cafés. There are even a number of local Filipino bakeries like Valerio’s 1979 (formerly Valerio’s City Bakery), Kababayan Bakery, and Starbread Bakery. But a Filipino-Italian bakery? Not yet. And even if there were, del Rosario says the more, the merrier.
“There is no competition,” she says. “It’s just showing our culture.”
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.
I’m sitting in a slab of concrete under a freeway, eating a ceviche black as eyeliner.
There might be seven seats in this restaurant. Or maybe it’s 12 minus five. That area under the stairs might also be a couple seats, or it might just be a very inviting storage area with a flower vase. The restaurant is so small your core instinct is to count seats and tabulate if Alchemy – Choose Thy Poison is a real place with a sane business plan or if it’s a social art project designed to question the reality of restaurants and business plans.
There’s a large, floor-to-human-height window near our table. Through it, I notice someone didn’t make their bed this morning. It’s a decision I deeply empathize with. It’s moments like this that make you acutely aware that Alchemy is also technically the courtyard of a six-room micro-hotel called Narcissus. Not the kind of massagey boutique hotel you’re thinking of with soft woods, obscene amounts of linen, and opinions on bonsai therapy. It’s a near-Brutalist cube of base industrial materials—concrete and acrylics bent and molded into a series of alcoves, with pods to sleep in. Sculptures lie behind glass like Tilda Swinton circa 2013.
The window to the unmade bed forcibly crams light voyeurism into the dining experience. The hotel and Alchemy feel like the parts of Mexico I love the most. Although Mexico has its multimillion-dollar restaurants, a vast majority of the best street-level places feel like you’re temporarily recreating in a very lovely construction project.
Alchemy’s location is what most people comment on (“I can’t believe a place like this exists on a block like this.”)—jammed at the bottom of the freeway embankment on the northeast side of Barrio Logan. But that makes it distinctly Barrio, the historic cradle of San Diego’s Hispanic and Chicano culture. The I-5 freeway was built through Barrio in 1963—a fairly traumatic gashing of the neighborhood—and residents responded by painting epic murals on the ugly concrete belly of eminent domain. Where some would’ve just accepted the industrial blight, locals saw shade for a park. There is a deep history here of turning concrete into art, and Alchemy carries that on.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The vision for the property came from owner Benjamin Longwell, whose company—The Society of Master Craftsmen—sounds like it wears a monocle. Longwell is part of the new guard of developers who focus on urban infill. Instead of adding to the city sprawl, they find unused or underutilized parcels of land in established neighborhoods, then build creative mixed-use spaces that, in perfect scenarios, add something of value for locals.
I’m not making a case for architectural sainthood, but there isn’t a huge list of developers who would look at the line of cars exiting the freeway in front of Alchemy and think, “We must build here.” So in that sense, Narcissus and Alchemy feel additive to the community, not extractive.
I stare back at Alchemy’s ceviche negro, a glossy mound of halibut that looks inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits or melted vinyl records. Chef-owner and Mexico City–native Eddy Cortes saves all the trimmings of his dishes (garlic and onion skins, vegetable shavings), then chars them into an ash to create a recado negro—a Yucatán specialty that usually involves toasted chiles, achiote paste, vinegar, and a ton of warm spices. He tosses local halibut with squid ink, tamari, charred pineapple, and citrus. The usual charm of ceviche is that it’s light, bright, full of color. Not here.
It is fantastic—acidic but with a whole world of toasted, warm flavors, like ceviche that’s seen some things.
The menu from Cortes—a home cook his whole life, only having taken it professional a few years ago with his popular pop-up, Barracruda—is really a tour of specialties from various states in Mexico.
A crema de poblano has the blended ghost of rajas at its core: an emulsion of roasted poblanos with butter-sautéed onions and garlic, plus a touch of milk that’s topped with queso fresco, chile ancho, and morita oil. Morita—a smoky Mexican condiment made from dried and smoked red jalapeños for a less intense, fruitier cousin of chipotle—is the key here. It specializes in spiking fats (guacamole, fried eggs, burritos). Sop up the crema with house-baked garlic-rosemary sourdough, blackened from the ash of a corn husk.
Smoked tuna is a Baja gift that’s become an anchor for most San Diego taco shops, and Alchemy combines mesquite-smoked yellowtail with caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and Chihuahua cheese (the OG quesadilla filling), then stuffs it in a perfectly baked masa empanada. The result is somewhere between a TJ Oyster Bar taco, a calzone, and a tamale—but with extra flavor and more black hue from cuttlefish ink.
Alchemy’s huaraches de res is Cortes’ ode to where he’s from. Huaraches are the New Haven–style pizza of Mexican food—thick, oblong masa flatbread layered with refried beans and a payload inspired by the Mexico City markets the chef grew up roaming with his dad: braised beef (braseado), avocado salsa, pickled vegetables, salsa macha, and jocoque (Mexico’s fermented dairy product, like a cross between crema and labneh).
Alchemy’s seared tuna crudo gets a tad abused by the riot of big flavors: charred hibiscus salsa, avocado salsa, pickled grapes, pomegranate salsa macha, and chipotle aioli. It’s a fate that also tempers the joy of the zarandeado, with the adobo marinade on the shrimp fighting a bit with recado negro and chipotle crema. Sticking with curmudgeonly food critic notes, flies are a part of the Alchemy experience, at least during our visit. They’re fairly hard to evict from the outside world, but more measures could be taken to discourage their participation.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The oxtail tetelas—like a Mexican pupusa—are a diary note from Cortes’ travels to Tlaquepaque, where they famously superboost their salsa with a touch of instant coffee. First, Cortes braises the oxtail with beer and Mexican spices. Then he blends that braising liquid into a salsa with beef tallow, guajillo, charred onions, tomatoes, and black garlic. Keeping with the goth food theme, the oxtail goes into masa negra infused with squid ink.
Desserts are where you realize just how deeply Alchemy is committed to the art bit. Rarely do you see a neighborhood bistro trying to pull off trompe l’œil—the French specialty of making pastries and other desserts look like fruit or other everyday objects. (The phrase means “to deceive the eye” and is the historical precedent for the Is It Cake? phenomenon.) Pastry chef Catherinne Avila does, though. A “Naranja” comes out in the form of a mandarin, but inside is orange blossom mousse, apricot jelly, and sablée (a delicate, crumbly shortcrust). A “Philosopher’s Stone” comes in the form of a brick of gold with a serpent on top; inside are mango mousse, mango-Tajín jelly, and a coconut dacquoise.
As Barrio Logan enters an apprehensive phase—its creative culture and restaurant scene growing rapidly, bringing economic promise face-to-face with the need to protect the Chicano way of life—this concrete tuckaway from a Mexico City kid feels like a good step. The Barrio has a long history of making art in unexpected places, and Alchemy carries that a little further.
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.
Implementing a farm-to-table model hardly deserves acknowledgement these days. It’s not a stretch. It’s not innovative. “It’s the bare f**king minimum,” says Herb & Sea‘s executive chef Aidan Owens.
When I arrive at the Encinitas restaurant, I’m ready to talk sustainability, farm-to-table stuff, with Owens. “Did you see the chin on that?” he says of the extra big jiggly chin on the sheephead that just arrived with the day’s fresh catch. I did. It was Jay Leno adjacent.
I learn quickly that he somehow oozes both charm and stone-cold honesty. Maybe he could construct a new dish with chin goo, like he did when he had a bunch of tuna scraps and voila’d it into a smooth and crowd-pleasing ‘nduja. “I want to know what’s in there,” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The instinct to look closer, to dig into what others might discard, says a lot about the chef’s approach. I guide him back to our topic, but he has something else on his mind. “We’re overcomplicating food—what happened to just cooking good food and having fun with it?”
Owens grew up on a farm in Byron Bay, Australia, where sustainability wasn’t a concept you chat about so much as a way of life. Think dirt roads, backyard chickens, pulling vegetables straight from the ground, and a mother who believed that if you couldn’t pronounce the ingredients on a package, you shouldn’t eat what was inside.
Food wasn’t precious or performative. Making it was what you did because you were hungry and that’s still what inspires Owens today. “I like to cook good food because I like to eat good food,” he says.
His approach to sustainability at Herb & Sea began so naturally that it felt just like instinct. “I was just like, ‘Let’s order food from the people who live and work here,’” he says.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
And why wouldn’t he when lives in San Diego? Cities all over the world vie for our goods. Our tuna is sent overseas. Our spiny lobsters hit dinner plates in China and Japan. Not to mention California’s producing a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.
“Why would we outsource when it’s all here?” Owens asks.
Sustainability, in this context, is about cooking what exists in abundance, nearby, right now. “I love the local fish here. It’s f**king delicious and San Diego citrus, I mean, it is so f**ing good,” he says.
Instead of importing ingredients, Owens also looks for nearby alternatives. “You can find really cool things in the local waters,” he says, pointing out that stingray cheeks taste similar to scallops.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
Whatever he finds in that sheephead chin might just be the next substitute for marrow. But to make this work, it means getting diners amped up about the slightly unfamiliar.
Tasting menus, where diners are completely in his hands, become an opportunity to gently push boundaries. “I’ll serve mackerel, because people think they hate it,” Owens says, noting that the abundant local fish can have some fishiness. “But when it’s fresh, it’s arguably one of the best fish in the ocean.”
He also tweaks the language on the menu so people might feel more compelled to give dishes a try without preconceived notions. He might use “lengua” instead of “tongue.” “Whelk” instead of “snail.” When he puts “stingray throat” on the menu, he disarmingly calls it “skate.”
To reduce waste, scraps aren’t always discarded but rather turned into something new. Sometimes they’re smoked, cured or fermented. Apples going bad turn into apple ponzu. Lemons turn to marmalade, which stretches their usefulness far beyond peak season. “And it’s super tasty on our pizza,” he says.
What makes the food even richer, is the relationships he’s built with farmers. Though it didn’t always feel natural, Owens sought personal connection first. He recalls approaching a fisherman at the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market. “I was awkward,” he says. “I went up to him and said, ‘I like your fish.’”
Owen’s is now so close to his suppliers—like fishermen Ryan Sebo and Joe Daly—that he gets texted pictures of fresh catches right as they flop on the boat. The messages always ask if he wants first dibs. “I say yes to a lot of fish,” Owens says, noting that Herb & Sea can go through 2,000 pounds of seafood a week.
Courtesy of Herb & Sea
The next evolution of sustainability, in his view, will be chefs working directly with producers such as his alliance with Sebo, cutting out middlemen and purveyors where possible. “It will put more money in the pockets of the people doing the work,” he says.
It will mean that chefs can’t just know their local farmers and producers, but they’ll choose to work with the ones who have the best practices. Dining and sustainability will become much less about the final plate. “It will be more about the impact that plate has on the Earth,” he says.
Ultimately, he believes sustainability doesn’t need to be loud. It doesn’t need hashtags. It just needs to be honest.
“We aren’t saving lives. We’re feeding people good food,” he says.
And yet, in feeding people well—simply, thoughtfully, responsibly—something meaningful happens. Guests leave satisfied. Ingredients are respected. Local ecosystems are supported and food returns to what it has always been at its core: nourishment, pleasure, and a quiet reflection of the place it comes from.
There’s a saying in business that if you’re not evolving, you’re dying. I personally have a saying that if you’re not eating ice cream, you’re also probably dying, but of sadness.
Scoopy Scoopy doesn’t have either of those problems. The premium ice cream pop-up launched last year with the idea of setting up in coffee shops after hours, helping those businesses maximize their profitability while also avoiding the costs of a brick and mortar. But it turns out, a lot of people in Leucadiareally like ice cream—so much so that Scoopy Scoopy decided to open their own scoop shop in the same building as Moto Deli and Cadence Cyclery (in the former Queenstage Coffee House space) on July 8.
Evolving doesn’t mean leaving the old ways behind. Zach Zien, who runs Scoopy with his partner Steven Segal and wife Sophia, says they will continue to pursue the shared space model on weekends at Coffee Coffee in Leucadia through the summer and are still open to popping up at other venues. “That’s still a core part of our business,” he says. But with steady demand in the Encinitas area, it gave them the confidence to put down roots of their own.
“People have really welcomed us and we’ve been well-received,” he explains. “We think this is the market to succeed in.”
The super-premium ice cream is still sourced from Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream in Wisconsin, but instead of the eight flavors they’re limited to for popups, the permanent storefront will be able to offer 12. “There will be three or four that regularly rotate, with probably eight staples that are our best sellers,” says Zien, pointing to flavors like peanut butter, oatmeal cookie, and the alternating vegan options. They’ll also be able to fill pints to order, something they haven’t been able to do in the past.
Currently, Moto Deli closes at 4 p.m. daily, but once Scoopy Scoopy is up and running, it will offer beer and wine until 8 p.m. for a shared drinks-and-dessert Happy Hour. “We’re hoping to get a food truck vendor on regular rotation to have food options available after hours as well,” says Zien.
The spontaneity of pop-ups can be as exciting as it is efficient. But when it comes to ice cream, I like knowing exactly when and where I can get a scoop—before the sadness kicks in.
Scoopy Scoopy soft opens on July 8 at 190 N. Coast Hwy 101 in Encinitas. Initial operating hours are Wednesday and Thursday, noon to 8 p.m.; and Friday through Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. (subject to change).
Courtesy of Cold Smoke BBQ
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Cold Smoke BBQ Is San Diego’s Newest Meat-Centric MEHKO
Speaking of pop-ups, San Diego’s culinary entrepreneurs keep ramping things up with more concepts launching every week. But after a parade of pastry prodigies and brilliant breadmakers, it might be nice to sink your teeth into something with a bit of protein. (Shoutout to all my carboholic brethren out there.)
Jim Adamski is joining the ever-swelling ranks of MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen) businesses alongside the likes of The Hidden Gazebo Eatery in Lemon Grove and Warung RieRie in Serra Mesa with his new venture, Cold Smoke BBQ. He’s not following a specific regional barbecue style like Central Texas, Kansas City, or St. Louis—he’s driven by whatever inspires him at the time (or, whatever he’s craving). He’s also not following a specific schedule. “My loose plans are weekends… then eventually maybe during the week,” he says. His menu and pick-up schedule get updated regularly, with pre-orders available to pick up from his house in 4S Ranch. So far, he says the dry-rubbed ribs and rib tips have been the best-sellers. But if you absolutely can’t resist adding a bread-adjacent item, you’re still in luck—he’s got cornbread.
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.
“This is insane!” the guy filming it seems to proclaim. “It’s the best fireworks show ever!” a companion confirms, inspiring a debate lasting over a decade.
All told, 7,000 fireworks exploded in the span of 25 seconds over San Diego Bay on July 4, 2012. A Michael Bay amount of unison. $125,000 worth of shells, cakes, Roman candles, and skyrockets had been placed on a barge—enough for 17 minutes of decorative sky flares—and…
Boom.
The sky looked like someone had set a giant Rorschach test on fire. Or as if whatever we all see in our Rorschachs—butterflies, clowns, tongue kissing, dads—was being electrocuted and lifted heavenward, amen. It was shocking how bright it was, how much it sizzled the local cosmos. Could’ve been one of those sci-fi films where a hole is ripped open between warring universes. But angstier, more metal—the work of some methy creator in a sleeveless concert tee.
The sound?
Lou Reed once released an entire album that contained 64 minutes of mindflaying guitar screeches and machine noises. No regular songs, just a fascinating amount of ear distress. His record label reps no doubt heard the melodic outro of their careers, but everyone else was in pain and stumped. That album still sounded better than the bay did that night. The bay sounded like a god who struggled with emotional regulation had blown his speakers and was working through the anger stage of AV grief.
In the left frame of the video, a middle-aged woman is attempting to drag her husband off by the hand. In no way does he want to go, possibly because he had missed the time Roseanne Barr sung the national anthem at a Padres game, simultaneously disemboweling and amusing America through the power of song. He would not willingly abandon an equally worthy San Diego trainwreck.
Another woman in the video appears to have just filled her beer, rushing to sit down for the show. She pauses mid-sit and returns to the full and upright position to properly bear witness. What was supposed to be prolonged entertainment has been so radically shortened that she will have to find another reason to drink. Lucky for her, drinking will be the only way to adequately process.
Locals remember the conspiracy theories. People wondered if the fuses had been tripped by a saboteur who was sympathetic to dogs, fish, or the growing suspicion that late-stage capitalism is a gorgeously branded but impossible dream sustained by remarkably efficient top-tier wealth retention and the soft compliance of fireworks-watchers who can no longer afford a house, a beer, or the personal impacts of human reproduction.
Speaking of being terrified of babies, babies were terrified. The children who witnessed it probably still can’t go near a candle store. But those kids will be tougher, perfectly scarred kids. They’ll write better songs.
That night helped us absolutely dominate the national news cycle. For a hot minute, we became America’s water-skiing squirrel. Now, years later, when you Google “fireworks gone wrong,” San Diego is always a top contender, along with that poor Nebraska family who nearly wiped out a couple generations in their front yard, their minivan somehow turning into a howitzer of recreational TNT.
There is still debate as to whether Big Bay Boom 2012 is the worst or greatest fireworks show of all time. But the advanced parts of civilization arrived at the truth as quickly as the women in the video did. It was undeniably amazing.
First of all, the point of Fourth of July fireworks isn’t “the intricate choreography of sky fire over a guaranteed amount of show time.” It’s about creating a vivid memory shared with some people you like, love, or would like to love.
BBB2012 used large-scale chemical fire to create the ultimate memory.
Sure, some people who iron their jeans subjected their family to a sermon about how San Diego managed to botch America’s birthday like a Disney princess-for-hire who smelled of quite a few Sauvignons.
The rest of us saw how perfectly it nailed the actual feeling of being an American. Because only a miniscule percentage of us bake postcard apple pies where every inch of crust is perfectly laminated like the wood in an Irish bar. Very few of us can paint on par with Picasso. The rest of us—despite truly believing in our America-activated abilities to achieve greatness in almost any field of our choosing—burn pies. We try to paint only to realize it looks like our fine motor skills have entered active death.
That’s why BBB2012 was the most perfectly American fireworks show ever: A wildly ambitious idea galvanized thousands upon thousands of people to both work on it and come to hold a beer and gawk at it, only to have it fail in the most glorious TMZ-level spectacle.
America isn’t about immaculate, storyless wins. It’s about how the framework of a country is solid enough that we can accidentally detonate our entire lives—a few times—and still probably be OK.
No one has America’d quite like San Diego did on that day. It was performance art. Lou Reed’s heart slow-clapped. Any brief municipal embarrassment quickly became a pride of our people. I can only hope the same for the Nebraskan yard family whose Dodge Aerostar became a hyperactive Death Star.
P.S. Local writer Maya Kroth compiled a quite great oral history of that night for Thrillist. The bottom lines for me were—it took nine months to prepare, no one was hurt, and even though the pyrotechnics company tried to zero out the bill, Big Bay Boom founder H. P. “Sandy” Purdon refused and paid them in full. This year will mark the 25th Anniversary of the yearly Big Bay Boom.
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.
Chemotherapy and radiation have long been considered gold standards of cancer treatment, but they can cause severe side effects. A promising new approach called theranostics—a combination of “therapeutics” and “diagnostics”—could offer patients with certain types of metastatic cancers new hope. It’s a two-step process that uses a drug that binds to specific receptors on cancer cells. Advanced imaging detects this radioisotope, allowing doctors to then use a second radioisotope that binds to the cancer cells and destroys them. Click here to learn more about how specialists at Scripps Cancer Center are using theranostics.
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