Weirdest thing. Travis Swikard didn’t open a French restaurant.
When he returned home to San Diego after 10 years as the right-hand to world-famous, very French chef Daniel Boulud, we all just assumed Swikard’s first restaurant would have some fermented riff on coq au vin. Instead, he went Mediterranean, North African, and Middle Eastern with gangbusters-good Callie. He needed to step out of the shadow before digging into his roots—which is what he’ll do when he opens the modern French spot Fleurette this fall at La Jolla Commons.
La Jolla is officially the Los Angeles Dodgers of San Diego’s food scene. After a long dip and some yawns, the village has started gobbling up an unreasonable amount of top-tier talent, Michelins and James Beards and Top 50s. It harkens back to the ’90s, when LJ and Hillcrest were the peak of the food scene.
Lucien opens this month, a third-floor, 30-seat tasting menu from chef Elijah Arizmendi, who worked in some of the best kitchens (Per Se, Daniel) before heading to l’abeille, where he earned a Michelin star as the chef de cuisine. Obviously hoarding restaurants as it preps for its secession, La Jolla also gets Roseacre, owned and built by two of San Diego’s most well-known architects and designers, Paul Basile and Jules Wilson. The chef? Erik Anderson, who went through Noma and The French Laundry before helming the three-Michelin-starred Coi.
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And, finally, up in Leucadia, San Diego will get a local-heroes collaboration on the more casual side of life: Chick & Hawk, the fried chicken sando concept from chef Andrew Bachelier (Atelier Manna, ex-Jeune et Jolie) and Tony Hawk, will finally open. Praise the merciful and hungry gods.
