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The results of food critic Troy Johnson’s month-long quest for the Mexican specialty
It was inevitable. One of Mexican cuisine’s greatest hits has finally started to sweep the U.S. Ladle it on a crispy quesadilla. Nuzzle it into a taco. Or just serve it steaming in its own stark beauty in a cup. Birria has that stew magic—hours and hours worth of concentrated flavor packed into a tiny bit of succulent meat, swimming in a god broth. It is to Mexico what coq au vin is to France or panang curry to Thailand.
It was invented 500 years ago. So what took it so long to migrate to the U.S.?
Because birria is special. It wasn’t meant to be everyday food. It takes about eight hours and patience to make, simmering until the flavors meld and sing. So it was primarily reserved for quinceañeras or when good people got married.
But now the Instagram age has us on a global hunt for new foods. No kitchen is too small, no dish too obscure. If your grandmother once puffed a little mary jane and created a dehydrated ice cream donut pretzel for her square dancing club, an influencer will find the recipe and she’ll have her own show on Vice soon.
Here’s birria’s quick and fascinating story: When the Spaniards invaded Mexico in the 1500s, they brought two crucial ingredients: new spices like cloves and cinnamon, and food animals like goats, pigs, and cattle. Well, goats became a big problem. They’re master survivalists, able to thrive in the bleakest terrains and make dinner out of the most burly weeds. They’re also pretty good at sex, so they grew into a significant, unruly herd fairly quick.
Goats overran villages, eating the locals’ crops and seed beds. Fences hadn’t yet been invented yet, so what do you do when a wild animal is eating your family’s food supply? You put that animal in some boiling water, simmer it for hours in herbs and spices, and create birria.
That’s why traditional birria is goat (chivo). The U.S. market doesn’t eat much goat, so the current birria joints largely focus on birria de res (beef). And I spent the last month hunting down the best birria spots in San Diego County.
A Brief explainer of my process: I start by making my own list from what I’ve eaten in the past. Then I ask food friends, chefs, San Diego Magazine readers, and social media contacts for their recommendations. Then I cross-research. I narrow it down to 10-15 places renown for the dish, and zig-zag the city to try every single one. For birria, I hit 14 houses: Ed Fernandez, Tuetano Taqueria, Don Rafa, TJ Birrieria, Cocina de Barrio, Super Cocina, Carnitas Las Michoacanas, Tacos El Poblano, Tomatito, Birrieria y Menuderia Guadalajara, El Tio Pepe, Birriria Nego Durazo, Mariscos y Birria El Prieto, and Taqueria Revolución.
The best part of doing these “best of” lists is not naming winners. Food should be a celebration, not a competition. But people love lists, and if I’m being honest with myself, I always keep a ranking in my head. So this is me sharing that. The meaning in this work comes from meeting the cooks and families behind the restaurants.
This list is not ordained by any governing birria body, nor by god. I’m just a human who studies food for a living and set out on a month-long obsession. I don’t presume it to be the end-all, nor the be-all. And I genuinely look forward to hearing your favorites, which ones I missed, or how wrong my rankings are.
Two more notes. First, I based this list on the consomme (birria in its purest form, served in a bowl or cup), because anything tastes better when put atop a crispy quesadilla, and that obfuscates the quality of the birria itself. And lastly, the top three here—El Prieto, Tuetano, and Fernandez—are interchangable. For me, that’s the holy trinity of San Diego birria.
Down in Otay Mesa, sharing a parking lot with a giant muffler shop, rest two Mexican food trucks—one serving seafood (mariscos), one serving a litany of birria creations. A tarp is hung between their roofs, which shade their standing-only hightop tables. Near dinner hour, the crowd fills in early, probably because good birria is like good barbecue—made daily, and served until it’s gone. Their birria de res (beef) is both plentiful and intoxicating, loaded with meat so tender and juicy it’s nearly become part of the stew. The flavors scream—the most intense and delicious adobo seasoning (chiles, garlic, cumin, oregano, etc.) I find all month. Worth a trip to stand in a parking lot with car parts.
3031 Main St., Chula Vista
Tuetano’s was my personal favorite right up to the last day when El Prieto knocked my socks off. Chef-owner Priscilla Curiel’s small menu at her lovely, small taco shop has garnered well-deserved acclaim in San Diego, and nationally in Food & Wine. Her bone marrow taco is a natural-born legend. Curiel has a chef’s approach (her family has owned restaurants in Tijuana for decades. She graduated from culinary school), and at Tuetano found her own high-quality “dried chile man.” Many shops use plain old commercial chiles from wholesalers, which can be months if not a year old. And you can taste the difference in her broth, which is almost translucent and delicious. She uses bone marrow to add succulent, succulent, soul-stoking fat to her consomme. In the age of bone broths, this outdoes them all.
143 W San Ysidro Blvd., San Ysidro
You say “Fernandez birria” in these streets and people smile and roll their heads back, overcome by last weekend’s meal. And this weekend’s to come. Because every weekend, freezing cold or not, locals in Nestor line up outside Ed Fernandez’ stucco building in the alley. Put your name down, and sit in what appear to be church pews out front. The three brothers who run it are usually there talking to customers like family members, and one of their daughters cooks and helps run things. Chef Carlos cooked in big hotels in Vegas and San Diego, and brings a chef’s edge. But it’s grandma’s birria recipe and it’s divine. Their queso birria taco—a tortilla sauteed in the birria jus, then covered with melted cheese, birria, cilantro, and onions and hot sauce—is one of the best tacos I’ve ever eaten.
2265 Flower Ave., Nestor
Goat (chivo) is how birria was traditionally done, and this Chula Vista icon is how it’s done right. The broth on the chivo is dark crimson red, just a hot lava of chiles, loaded with bones and meat. Bones are flavor, so just pick them out, pile them up, and thank them. I wish every birria joint served goat or lamb birria, because the game meats have more personality, can stand up to the bold flavors of birria spices. Their birria de res is also nice, but for me this was the best chivo in the county.
396 Broadway, Chula Vista
I’m not saying people who appreciate the taste of lamb are superior people of taste and refinement, but that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m trying to eat less meat these days, per the advice of research and science. But my love for lamb makes it hard. People often consider the word “gamey” as a negative term. But give me funk and flavor every day. And the birria at this little taco shop in a Rolando strip mall is an altar and offering to those who love lamb. Huge, meaty chunks of it suffuse their consomme. It is the lambiest lamb dish. The broth is thin, so I thought it would be a little watery, but it explodes. They served me a free carnitas taco with my order, which seemed criminally generous.
6513 University Ave., Rolando
I’m staring at a quesadilla, thick and cheesy and pan-fried brown and glistening, swimming in the middle of a birria consomme. It is a quesadilla ahogada (the name for Mexican dishes, usually sandwiches, plated in a small pool of jus), and it is the very best kind of gluttony. Eat this if pleasure is still a goal in your life. Birrieria Don Rafa has a luxurious, sprawling dining room by birrieria standards. They started small, won over huge fans, and moved to this larger location with neon in the windows and birria on every table. Order the Birria en su Jugo—a plate of birria that’s broiled and browned, the stew reducing and concentrating to flavor the meat.
560 Broadway, Chula Vista
Super Cocina earns its name, has for years. One of my favorite Mexican restaurants in San Diego. The City Heights shop is a miniature buffet of stews and specialties—cooked in front of you by seemingly all-female chefs in their open kitchen. Their birria is goat, of course Super Cocina eschews trend for tradition in almost all instances. Their consomme is the most luxurious of all on our hunt—thick, creamy, and buttery. Almost like a tomato soup. The only qualm is that its butteriness and beautiful fat content is the main draw, and the spices and flavorings aren’t as magical as other places in town.
3627 University Ave., City Heights
This new Oaxacan-food restaurant in Hillcrest is definitely worth a visit. A not-hidden-at-all gem of a patio, with cherry blossoms and shade. It’s higher-end Mexican food, for the times when standing in a parking lot with a cup full of soup may not impress your date. Their birria de res is very good, a generous tuft of meat served in the center of a large, shallow pool of consomme. It’s topped with edible flowers. Fresh leaves are pressed into their housemade tortillas (“to add a little flavor and to aid in digestion,” explains my server). If you want good birria, and a stylish night out, this is your place. The partner and chef cut his teeth and well-respected restaurants, Civico 1845 and Solare.
3707 Fifth Ave., Hillcrest
TJ Birrieria has some of the best hot sauce in the city. I know this because when I first tasted their birria consomme, I kind of shrugged. It’s a little bland. But if you put that consomme into a tortilla with cilantro and onions—and then you add that hot sauce—you have quite a delicious meal. If I were TJ, I might skip the middleman and just add the hot sauce directly to the birria before serving, like one might add hoisin to pho.
1794 Newton Ave., Barrio Logan
Another strip mall location, sharing a parking lot with a WalMart and other mastodons of commerce. One thing I learned in this hunt is that Chula Vista has drastically better mall food than most parts of San Diego. And Tacos El Poblano’s birria de res is an example—mostly because of the broth, which is drinkably good. The meat is the drawback here. The magic of birria comes from the tenderness of that slow-cooked protein, and El Poblano’s is in little chunks that haven’t are almost tough.
885 E H St., Chula Vista
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.
Sinner Buns is building a following for its slow-made, seriously gooey weekend treats
When I was pregnant, my food craving was singular and intense. If I didn’t eat at least one thing doused in cinnamon every day (ideally, more than one), I was—to put it gently—a complete monster.
Since then, my obsession has tempered somewhat. But cinnamon buns still perch high on my top treats list, so I’m always on the lookout for the next great place to indulge. IMO, The Huddle in Mission Hills’ mondo cinnamon roll remains top-tier, but after eyeing the ooey, gooey goodies from Sinner Buns, we might have a contender.
Originally from Ukraine, Daria Nadar had already done everything one can do at a bakery—business operations, wholesale contracts, actually baking, you name it—so during the pandemic, she started dabbling with perfecting her cinnamon rolls. After she got a couple fans over social media, she threw her first pop-up to see how they’d be received. She sold out.
After a few false starts with a couple storefronts and business deals, Nadar officially launched Sinner Buns in October 2025 with her partner Filipe Pazi. After making it through an unexpectedly hectic season stuffed with holiday orders, the team closed temporarily to get everything in line and reopened this April. Business has remained in full swing ever since.
There are only so many ingredients in a cinnamon roll, but “the process is what makes it special,” she says, adding they use fresh yeast rather than powder and a 48-hour process for each batch of brioche dough made to order. (Thus the need for pre-orders.) Customers can preorder until Thursday each week for pickup Friday, Saturday, or Sunday from Sinner Buns’ ghost kitchen at 780 Hollister Street, just east of Imperial Beach.
You can also catch her at various pop-ups around San Diego, the next one taking place on Saturday, August 22 at Infusion Lab Coffee in Pacific Beach. Eventually, Nadar opens to offer nationwide shipping (once she figures out the logistics and quality control) and one day, her own storefront.
But it’ll be on her terms, not the whims of social media. “We already learned how to not only rely on virality of the product, because you go viral and then it fades,” she says. “It’s a slow burner, and I know eventually, it’s going to grow much more.”
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
From her Rancho Peñasquitos kitchen, Yanira Majano is sharing family recipes through San Diego’s growing home-restaurant movement
When San Diego launched Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operations (MEHKO), it changed everything. Riverside County first established the experimental program in 2019, with San Diego introducing its own countywide pilot program in 2022 and granting it permanent status in 2024. The new category allowed people to launch at-home retail food operations—basically, home restaurants—with special requirements and restrictions to ensure food safety and smooth operations. Over two dozen counties across California have since adopted their own versions with over 1,200 permits issued, around 100 of them in San Diego alone.
Some have a dizzyingly long waitlist (Warung RieRie), others are still getting their name out there (The Hidden Gazebo Eatery), and still others use MEHKO for pickups rather than fully opening their home as an onsite dining facility. Love Pupusas falls into that category.
Yanira Majano came with her family from El Salvador to the United States when she was 11 years old, bringing a love of cooking and desire to share the country’s cuisine along with her. “There’s a lot of similarity [between Salvadoran food and] Central, South America, even Baja Mexico,” she says. Salvadoran cooking tends to be less spicy than some Mexican cuisines, with an emphasis on ingredients like corn, staples like yucca root (cassava), meats like crispy pork (chicharrón), and sides like curtido, a tangy cabbage slaw that’s typically either naturally fermented or vinegar-based.
And of course, the signature dish of El Salvador—pupusas.
In San Diego, Salvadoran food lacks the widespread availability of other Latin American cuisines like Mexican or Peruvian food, but Majano says she’s seen pupusas gain popularity over the past few years. But she likes to think her recipes, which have been passed down by her mother and kitchen partner Martha, contain a certain special something.
Some pupuserías use rice flour to create the handheld stuffed tortillas, but she prefers the more traditional gluten-free corn flour. Still, it’s what’s inside that really counts. “That’s where we put our own touch,” she explains. Most of Majano’s pupusas come with cheese and different fillings like carnitas, black beans, mushrooms, or zucchini, but she also offers vegan options. Every one comes with a side of curtido and salsa, each made fresh daily.
Showing people the magic of home-cooked food might not have been possible without the MEHKO program or The Cook Alliance, a MEHKO support and advocacy coalition. Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a huge amount of start-up capital—at least six figures, generally. Not exactly pocket change. “But when the MEHKO program started in 2022, I said, ‘Oh my God, this is for me,’” says Majano.
Now with four years under her belt, she says she’d love to bring Love Pupusas to more food festivals, host more pop-ups, and eventually open a food truck to keep serving the humble dish of her homeland, taking pride in every bite. “[I put] a lot of love in everything I do. You see it when you taste the food,” she promises.
Pre-order Love Pupusas for next day pickup in Rancho Peñasquitos between noon and 5 p.m.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
After two years of farmers markets and pop-ups, the San Diego baker is bringing its Korean-inspired pastries to University Heights
The folks at Kairoa Brewing Company must never be lonely. It seems like there’s always a local pop-up or event at the University Heights space, from Bincho Taco slinging Japanese coal-fired tacos on the rooftop patio every Tuesday to Yipao Coffee serving coffee from a window on the ground floor. Later this year, the New Zealand-inspired brewery will bring yet another resident into the fold—Mon Chourie is launching its first bakery counter service window along Park Blvd.
Mon Chourie owner and baker Kelly Kim first started selling her Korean-style cream puffs at farmers markets and places like Pizza Kaiju, Pho Ga Go, and Mixed Grounds, collaborating with a myriad of other makers (like Amor ice cream and Ming Oun’s) before nabbing a regular spot at Michi Michi Bakery every Wednesday. San Diego Magazine readers even voted Mon Chourie the Best Pop-Up for 2026.
In French, the word for an airy puff pastry is “choux,” which is pronounced generally the same way as “syu,” the Korean word for the same item. (Both sound like “shoe.”) Mon Chourie plays with both iterations with a dash of whimsy by referencing the song My Cherie Amour by Stevie Wonder, which translates to “my darling love.”
As long as all the permits and inspections move forward without issue, Mon Chourie should open in Kairoa before the busy holiday season. She’ll continue appearing every Wednesday at Michi Michi and other pop-ups in the meantime. Once open, expect best-selling flavors like the savory potato croquette (a collaboration with Karanchi chili crisp) and a sweet Dubai chocolate choux au craquelin, a version of puff pastry with a delicate cookie crust.
Classic cream puffs are fluffy, softs and often filled with custard cream in the United States. “What makes a difference for us is we use a very light version of diplomat cream, which is my mom’s recipe,” she explains. Diplomat cream is a lighter French pastry cream that uses whipped cream for a lighter, airier end result.
Choux au craquelin’s signature crunchy top comes from adding a thin disc of cookie-like dough on top of the pastry, which crackles as it bakes, leaving a thin layer of crispiness atop the final product. “It contrasts with the creamy, fluffy cream inside, so it gets that better, deeper texture experience,” she says.
Along with her popular cream puffs and her bite-sized “mini-choux” options, Kim is also planning on offering more of a newer-to-her item: salt bread, a rich butter pastry topped with sea salt that originated in Japan, but went completely viral in South Korea. There are a few places to get it in Los Angeles and New York, “but I know that a lot of people here are interested in trying out new stuff, or maybe they had it in Korea or Japan, and they came back, but they couldn’t find it anymore,” says Kim. At first, she didn’t really get why it was so popular. Then she tried it in South Korea earlier this year.
“I was in love,” she laughs. “This is what the hype is about.”
Ideally, Mon Chourie will eventually open its own storefront and introduce more events in North County to satisfy demand. “I would also love to have our own drink program that reflects what’s popular in Korea,” she says. And to mark two years of puffy pastry prosperity, Mon Chourie is throwing a two-year anniversary party at Easy Does It (5375 Kearny Villa Rd., Suite 112) on Wednesday, August 25 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. with drink specials like a misugaru latte (a Korean roasted multi-grain powder with espresso), a DJ, photo booths, special ceramic merch created by local ceramicist Whale Tran, and a few other vendors. Get there early.
Mon Chourie will open inside Kairoa Brewing Company by the end of 2026 and posts the next week’s schedule of upcoming events and pop-ups on Instagram every Monday.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
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.
Behind every beautiful space is a thoughtful process, and ASID San Diego is helping homeowners understand the value of professional design.
A perfectly designed home rarely happens by accident. Those kitchens that feel effortless and rooms that seem to tell a story the second you walk in? They’re usually the work of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
It’s knowing which ideas will actually work, which materials will hold up over time, and how to turn a collection of choices into a space that feels intentional. That’s where a professional interior designer comes in.
For the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) California San Diego Chapter, the goal is to help people see interior design as more than just the finished look. Behind every well-designed space is a process built on technical expertise. Designers are educated in everything from professional software and construction details to building codes, space planning, materials, and functionality.
“People don’t always realize how much goes on behind the scenes,” Kirsten Recce , current president of the ASID California San Diego Chapter, says. “Our designers are not just doing furniture placement and color selection and picking out new fluffy pillows. That’s not what they’re trained for.”
ASID members bring formal education, continued learning, and industry knowledge to their projects, helping create spaces that are not only beautiful, but designed to work. A paint color that changes completely depending on the lighting. A material that looks beautiful in a showroom but doesn’t make sense for everyday life. A layout that photographs well but doesn’t function for the people living there. These are the details where professional guidance can make all the difference.
Still, one of the biggest misconceptions about hiring an interior designer is that it’s reserved for massive renovations, luxury homes, or people who already know exactly what they want. The process can feel intimidating. Where do you begin? Is a designer worth the investment? What if you only need help with one room?
ASID’s answer: start with one hour.
ASID’s Spruce Up events break down one of the biggest barriers between homeowners and professional design: knowing where to begin. Held twice a year, the community program gives homeowners the chance to work directly with an ASID designer through a one-hour, $125 consultation in their own home. Whether you’re looking for advice on furniture placement, window treatments, kitchen and bath updates, remodeling ideas, vacation rentals, color selections or something else entirely, the upcoming September 2026 event offers an approachable way to get expert guidance before committing to a full project. Signups are open through Sept. 7, with consultations taking place Sept. 21 through Oct. 31. Proceeds benefit ASID San Diego’s educational and community programs. Register here!
“It’s a great opportunity for people who are in that exploratory phase,” Recce says. “Maybe they’re not sure they want to hire an interior designer yet, or they think it sounds daunting or expensive. This gives them a chance to discover what working with a designer is actually like.”
Design is personal. A good designer isn’t just creating a beautiful room; they’re helping create a space that fits the way someone lives.
“We’re a resource to all of San Diego County,” Recce says. “It doesn’t cost anything to pick up the phone and call and ask. We’ll answer.”
Follow ASID San Diego on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook for updates on upcoming events, or connect with the chapter directly at [email protected] or 619-548-8847.
Bring home a taste of the city with local coffee, conchas, chili crisp, hot sauce, and other suitcase-worthy finds
Snacks are the best vacation souvenirs. You get all the novelty of having something to unwrap without any of the burden of keeping random crap around. I’m always game to try some chips from a place I can’t find on a map with ingredients I can’t identify by taste. Gimme that spice mix from that Southern barbecue pit whose wine list consists of light beers from lesser-known appellations. Don’t think I won’t lick the inside wrapper of some chocolate bar homemade by a grandma at a farmers market you stumbled upon in a small Midwestern town best known for giant yarn balls.
Even though San Diego is best known for our thigh-sized burritos, fish tacos, and craft beers, those travel about as well as room-temp mayo. So we gathered some of the city’s best food souvenirs: snacks, spices, and sauces worth sliding into your carry-on or gifting to a lucky out-of-towner.
Inside Bread & Salt—Barrio Logan’s old Weber Bread Factory turned into one of the city’s most vibrant art, culture, and community spaces—there’s a cafe in front of a giant, now-defunct bread mixer. Mexican-owned specialty brew shop and roastery Provecho! Coffee started as a pop-up in 2020, but its success quickly bricked-and-mortared. Although Provecho! specializes in sourcing and roasting Mexican coffees, its consistency is variety: The lineup changes regularly as Provecho! finds new sources around the world. Get a to-go taste via the coffee bags that range between 250 g and 2 kg.
Superlova!’s Chinese-inspired, seed oil–free sauces are grocery list mainstays for San Diegans. The sesame sauces (Dan Dan is spicy, May May is tame) pair with noodles, dumplings, or any meal that could use a little more oomph. They don’t have tahini, which is de-hulled; they have Chinese sesame paste, which is dark-roasted for a nuttier flavor and packed with fiber and calcium.
San Diego is known for beer, sure. But real locals pour from a different tap. JuneShine’s low-sugar, yet still refreshingly sweet, hard kombucha is an SD favorite. The brand has joined the canned cocktail tidal wave and now sells vodka mules, tequila palomas, and vodka sodas—all with about two shots per can, real juice, and sparkling water. But for a classic food gift, get a variety pack of the booch. Fit it into your checked bag. It’s worth it.
Double entendre is key to hot sauce brand Down To Ferment, aka DTF. (Popular sauces have flavor names like CornHub, Smokin’ Hot Date, and Ghosted.) But it’s no gimmick. The homemade, kombucha-based sauce is seriously good: DTF’s That’s What Shishito Said made it onto Season 30’s lineup on Internet-famous interview show Hot Ones.
As discussed, carne asada burritos travel about as well as a toddler with emotional-regulation issues. But the soul of a truly great, San Diego burrito? It’s not the fillings. It’s the tortilla. You can’t go wrong from any locally owned spots, but our favorites are Tortilleria Los Reyes in Vista, Windmill Farms Market in Del Cerro (which uses Pancho Villa’s old tortilla press), Esperanza’s Tortilleria in Escondido, and Tortilleria Lily in City Heights.
Handcrafted in small batches, Karanchi’s Sichuan peppercorn–packed chili oil comes in two varieties: original and spicy. The original warms your palate and adds depth to your meal, and the spicy is a form of mealtime masochism. Founder Nguyen Le’s favorite way to eat his garlic-studded chili crisp is on avocado toast—which makes an already San Diego meal even more San Diegan—but it’d make old shoes taste pretty good.
Fresh fish ranks low on society’s acceptable realms of carry-on items. But canned fresh fish straight from local fishermen? You’re the best part of a bruschetta. Every Saturday at the docks behind Seaport Village, fishermen step off their boats and sell what they caught as recently as that morning. While getting yourself some fresh sea urchin and squid, grab a couple cans of locally caught albacore tuna for the tinned-fish lover in your life.
Started as a pandemic baking hobby for BFFs Natalie Rodriguez and Lesly Mendoza, Tus Chefs is now a South County favorite spot for conchas with a twist. The menu is expansive enough to get over a baker’s dozen without any repeats—why not get one of each, anyway?—but if you only have enough space in your carry-on for a few, start with popular “chocolate abuelita,” churro, mazapan, horchata, and brownie conchas.
Emma Veidt is an editor at San Diego Magazine. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism. She loves running, hiking, and rock climbing, but really, she mostly loves encounters with the street cats around North Park.
SDM's staff shouts out our favorite food finds this month including bites from Glass Box, Pete's Seafood, Kimochi, and Immersion Coffee
It’s August. Corn season—that hallowed dental flossian time—is upon us. Peak summer means the fruits from local farms are downright NC-17. It’s also hot-adjacent, so we search out top-notch sashimi and interesting fruit punches. And because we’re contrarians, we also find ourselves tucking into a warm lobster roll in North Park, vying for a father’s love. Anyway, these are the stories behind the best things we found this month—things we’d recommend to friends who didn’t owe us money. Salamat.
Chef Ethan Yang grew up folding dumplings in his dad’s San Diego restaurants—such as the former Fortune Cookie in Rancho Bernardo, which drew on the family’s Taiwanese and Chinese roots. So the Taiwanese beef noodle soup on the menu at Glass Box (a lovely glass-enclosed sushi and pan-Asian spot at Sky Deck in Del Mar) is a family pride—the result of Ethan, dad, and his brother tinkering endlessly with various bones (they finally found the perfect bone, only sold by one butcher in LA).
But the dish that shows off his raw fish skills is the albacore—lightly cured in soy, mirin, and toasted sesame oil, flame-torched to caramelize, and finished with smoked shoyu, chive oil, shiso oil, house-pickled sweet peppers, and crispy rice pearls. —Troy Johnson
“Wait, where is it?” I hear this a lot when suggesting Luce for drinks or a bite. The Bay Park restaurant is smack dab in a part of the city that isn’t conventionally attractive: on the side of the 5 freeway, next to a bevy of service-looking storefronts. To be in this area, you either live here (homes here are fairly excellent with that bay view) or are getting a muffler fixed. A better reason to be in Bay Park: An evening at Luce, a locals’ haunt. Get the Duroc pork chop (the chefs’ chop, with darker meat, higher fat content, better marbling) with collard greens, toasted grits (toasting anything results in a better version of that anything), and a mustard glaze that makes you feel like you’re in the South enjoying sweet tea with friends. —Nicolle Monico
Ever walk into your kitchen during the afternoon feeling recklessly free and decide the time is exactly right for a glass of Champagne? Maybe you crushed a work project or navigated a 4-year-old’s meltdown with the elegance of a global diplomat. You ever then pour that glass and are immediately pulled away by other demanding life errata—and by the time you eventually return to celebrating being alive, you find the remaining victory-juice sits in the popped bottle, losing its steam, and serving you a metaphor for your day?
Hilary Cocalis solved this for me with Carlsbad-based Sipwell. Tiny Victories is a Champagne-style sparkling white in a 250ml can (a glass and a half—the correct amount), the first can-conditioned sparkling wine on the market, fermented with true Champagne yeast. Crisp apple, a little citrus, that biscuity thing good bubbles do, zero sugar. It’s also the first canned wine to crack Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100, so now there’s no excuse not to celebrate all of life’s tiny victories. —Claire Johnson
If my dad were to rank his favorite things, I think I’d make the podium, but there’s no way I’m outperforming this lobster roll. And why would I? We went to Pete’s on Father’s Day, and Peter DeCoste brought out 5 ounces of Maine lobster smothered in warm butter, tucked haphazardly into a grilled New England–style roll, served with a simple coleslaw and basic fries (no need to overshadow the star). Pete’s has a cold version with mayo, too, but there’s something about warm lobster that really wins over dads and their lobster-jealous daughters. –Lili Kim
Valerio’s 1979 is a quintessential San Diego family story. In the 1950s, the grandparents opened their first bakery in the historic Philippines city, Cavite. Their son, Jimmy, would bake and sell bread before school. After enlisting in the Navy and being stationed in San Diego, Jimmy and his wife, Gloria, opened his own version of the family bakery in National City in 1979—a huge hit and home-away-from-home spot for the city’s massive Filipino community.
Four-plus decades later, with four locations across SoCal, it’s on the third-gen of Valerios. The new blood is reviving the name and place with all kinds of Filipino comfort food, and the turon is a star. The classic Filipino treat is a ripe, sweet saba banana and jackfruit, rolled in lumpia wrapper, deep-fried, and covered in sticky, caramelized brown sugar. “Dessert lumpia” is a phrase to live a life by. —Troy Johnson
Innovative treatment could offer cancer patients new options with fewer side effects
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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