San Diego’s Best Restaurants 2022

It's here. SDM's annual list of the city's top restaurants—critic's and readers' picks. Your pocket guide to San Diego's food scene.

By Troy Johnson

San Diego's Best Restaurants 2022 - Wolfie's

Wolfie’s Carousel Bar

Photo Credit: James Tran

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Browse this year’s list by category:

Overall | Specific Cuisines | Specific Dishes | Ambience | Drinks

The Next Level

Ever walk into a restaurant or bar and get that feeling that it’s exactly the place you need at that exact moment in time? That’s how I feel when I look at the cover of this year’s “Best Restaurants” issue. We’ve tempered our joy for a while now. But nothing is tepid or restrained about Wolfie’s Carousel Bar. Nothing is cautious about a slowly turning carousel that includes a fully stocked bar and ice cubes engraved with pole ponies. It makes me want to stay awhile in the awe of a room that’s actively trying to enchant me; to curate a light buzz, cavort with strangers, loosen the propers.

The comeback has not been swift. Starts and stops. It sometimes feels as if we’re rebuilding Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. And now we’re at the third level: love and belonging. Core to that is connecting, being part of a group, forming relationships. Humanity doesn’t peak without its gatherings.

And—all deference to places of worship and sports teams—restaurants and bars are the gravitational force that pulls us together on the day-to-day. I’ve been naming San Diego Magazine’s critic’s picks for 13 years now, and this year they lean to the spaces that facilitate the gatherings. For “Best Restaurant: Fancy,” Callie chef Travis Swikard has built a beachhead for San Diego farmers and ranchers, fishers, foragers, and foodmakers. I believe the San Diego native and former right-hand of legendary French chef Daniel Boulud will have the city’s next Michelin star. For “Best of the Best: Casual,” it’s hard to explain how much Monarch transformed Del Mar.

Ube pandesal at White Rice

James Tran

They took one of San Diego’s most prized and frustrating spaces (the location is dreamy, the original design a nightmare) and blew it wide open. I’m not sure they possess a single wall or window. And now it’s a teeming epicenter, a whole community reforming on its rooftop.

In North Park, a vital gathering spot has regained footing at Awash—where the strong Ethiopian community near El Cajon Boulevard can get berbere and injera and other hard-to-find ingredients for cooking the country’s famed dishes. My “Best New Restaurant,” Matsu, is what happens when a chef puts his life savings into honoring his lifelong fascination with Japanese cuisine and culture.

There are a couple hundred ways San Diego shines in this list. A city without Cross Street’s fried chicken sandwich is no place to raise a child. A city without Menya Ultra’s ramen slurps with less vigor and joy in its heart. A city without White Rice’s ube pandesal is less delicious and less purple.

As I always say, this list isn’t about dominating or apexing. For my part, I’m merely pointing at places that really captured me this year. We cover food and drink culture extensively every day at digital SDM. Every day, we poke our heads into new kitchens. But this issue, especially, lets us spend a couple months making restaurants and bars the absolute center of our universe. I urge you to make your own list. Go gather.