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Behind San Diego’s Food Scene: All or Nothing Restaurant Design

For our Best Restaurants issue, we nod to the trends that marked the year including maximalist and minimalist design overshadowing the in-betweeners
San Diego restaurant Paradisaea in La Jolla featuring a maximalist interior design
Courtesy of Paradisaea

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.

2025 Best Restaurants San Diego Magazine list featuring local restaurant Campfire in Carlsbad

Restaurants are brands, and the key to great branding is either maximalism or minimalism. In-betweenism kills. In a visual-feast age of InstaTok, Meow Wolf, Marvel-movie domination, the Sphere, and surreal AI pop art, the khaki-hued yawn of a standard-issue restaurant doesn’t stand a shot unless the cacio e pepe is loads better than Nonna’s.

Diners are paying up for design feasts. Or they’d rather chefs take over a condemned warehouse, cook kick-ass food on a Coleman camping stove, make their own wine in milk jugs, and pass the cost-savings onto the people.

By Troy Johnson

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.

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