My CRV smells of ramen and it’s an improvement. I’m sitting in the back of my yawned-open hatchback along Convoy Street, slurping tonkotsu from a to-go container. This is COVID-19 dining for one. I’m thinking about how we have become restaurant sluts. I would never shame someone for their ravenously diversified romantic excursions. Life is short; sex as you please. I do, however, think it’s a bit of a bummer that we’re such restaurant floozies.
We have become a culture of hot, new, youngest things, trading one new trophy restaurant for the next, speaking highly of old favorites in the way we talk about high school sweethearts. (“Oh man, haven’t thought about them in years—what a sweet and confused restaurant, I hope it’s happy and doing well.”)
Ten years ago, Yakyudori was the hot new young ramen of choice for San Diego’s top chefs. It had a workmanlike, sweaty, vaguely smoky late-night vibe. It enthusiastically supported the wee-hour drinking arts. It was the Casbah of ramen joints. (For those of you not up on the indie rock scene, The Casbah is our city’s beloved, beer-stained, dark-arts box of righteous new music—tiny but mighty.)
Actually, ramen was secondary to the yakitori. There weren’t many spots in San Diego doing real yakitori—traditional Japanese grilling, using binchotan coals. Japanese chefs love this coal, which is more tightly packed, burning slow and clean and not overwhelming the meats. Yakyudori grills all sorts of meats people around here would consider weird because they’re people around here and not people around Tokyo: cow tongue, chicken hearts, the parts. They are simple-delicious, affordable, and can give unversed Americans that exploratory food thrill that Andrew Zimmern built a career off of. They often top them with the dried bonito flakes, which are so Bible-paper thin they wriggle in the air currents, looking quite alive. What a grotesquely beautiful trick.
Anyway, in my hunt for the city’s best ramen, there are far newer, hyped joints now. San Diego’s ramen scene has caught fire. But I refuse to disown my elders. So last night I tried three different ramen joints along our Asian foodway, the Convoy area. Two of them have far more Instagram tags. And I’m so glad to say that Yakyudori was my favorite.
Their version of tonkotsu doesn’t take bold, postmodern risks in the ramen arts. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles newer craft ramen places have (no kimchi, no gooey bricks of pork belly, no small-batch soy sauce stored in barrels made from Akira Kurosawa’s old furniture). In fact, the very simplicity is what makes Yakyudori’s ramen stick out—a warm, flavorful broth made of chicken, pork, fish, and vegetables—a creamy chicken-ish soup that gets a flavor boost from the fish (though you can’t taste the fish, which I’m glad for, you know that’s where it gets its umami oomph). Breakfast-yellow noodles, crinkly like tons of tiny straws some child bent and ruined, a single round of pork chashu roasted at high heat for a char, then braised.
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.
Every year for the Best of San Diego issue, we ask readers to nominate and vote for a San Diego classic restaurant they want food critic Troy Johnson to review. Whichever they vote for, he goes. Last year, they sent him to Rocky’s Crown Pub. This year… Mexican classic, El Indio.
The Perfect Order: Taquitos with Everything | Chicken Tamale | Mordiditas
When you’re credited with inventing the entire concept of the taquito, pretty much every other dish you create is going to pout in that cigar-shaped shadow. Unless you sous vide a couple narwhals, the taquito is gonna dominate your story.
San Diego’s El Indio is widely cited as the global birthplace of the taquito. (Note from our nonexistent legal team: Like any food origin story, it’s contentious—many will tell you a small, rolled taco had been a staple in Mexico for generations; others claim an LA taco stand beat SD to it. But by and large, El Indio has been granted paternity for the word “taquito” and cited as the first in the US to both sell and widely popularize the iconic thing—which happens to fit our narrative nicely, so we’re leaning in.)
So, El Indio’s mordiditas are that almost-famous entourage dish that deserves more applause. Sliced segments of taquito, about the size of pigs in a blanket, are assembled in a heap on a plate and absolutely waterboarded with nacho cheese and pickled jalapeños. They’re essentially loaded taquito nachos, an idea whose glory, in a just world, will outlive us all and echo in Valhalla. They solve a longstanding problem with every single batch of nachos that has been made in humankind—that each and every chip is denied an equitable amount of cheese or load.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
Most nachos are built as an altar to American capitalism: The top couple of chips accumulate a vast majority of the cheese and the rest of the chips just keep hearing rumors of a trickle-down until they protest. If our species ever gets cut from the roster of the universe, the fact that we put a man on the moon but could never equally dress our nachos should be examined by our successor species as a possible cause.
El Indio’s taquito rubble comes in a biblical flood of nacho cheese. It’s a snack-bar treat for people whose therapists have listened to their fantasy of placing their open, eagerly receptive mouths beneath the queso pump—albeit with far better taquitos made from scratch.
The dish isn’t gonna knock your socks off, but it’s satisfying in a calorie-gargling way, a celebration of the fact that merely entering a taco shop releases us from acknowledging the physical limits of human arteries. Would El Indio’s mordiditas be better if the cheese was scaled back and partnered with a crema, or if the cheese was lovingly dirtied with chipotle in adobo, or if they came topped with a lawn-sized pile of cilantro and onions and activated charcoal ash from the sacred cenotes of Chichén Itzá? Shut up and eat your naquitos.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
It feels simultaneously excessive and absolutely correct to say El Indio is a San Diego legend and global food icon. In 1940, Ralph Pesqueira Sr. was working in one of the many aerospace headquarters that surrounded Lindbergh Field (the SD International Airport’s original name), building planes and war machines. As a side dream, he started making and selling fresh corn tortillas by hand on the corner of Grape and India Streets.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos
As with most food success stories, there was a key moment of technological innovation (consider In-N-Out’s invention of the two-way speaker or Pizza Hut introducing online ordering to the pie masses). Around 1945, Pesqueira—who we might call the Thomas Edison of Mexican food—invented San Diego’s first tortilla-making machine. By hand, he could whip up 30 dozen a day; with the machine, he cranked out 30 dozen an hour. A full-fledged tortilla factory was born, the effect of which was massive for putting training wheels on the local Mexican food culture that would boom decades later.
When aero coworkers asked him if he could make a handheld, good-travelin’ food for lunch pails, he thought of flautas (a Mexican staple with global roots—a flour tortilla usually wrapped around meat and rolled into the shape of a flute, then fried).
He did a smaller version with fresh masa corn tortillas. The taquito entered the world. He sold each for 18 cents.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos A slice of El Indio’s storied past.
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.
Grocery store Woo Chee Chong opened along Convoy Street in 1979. From its aisles fanned a whole scene of mom-and-pop cooks and chefs, often first-generation Americans launching humble spots in the area’s innumerable strip malls— like Tina Tran, who cooked phở and Vietnamese signatures for her neighbors until the demand grew into Phuong Trang (opened 1992).
Courtesy of Yakitori Tsuta
Now, the next generation is sprucing up the area, bringing modern design and obsessive maker culture, a movement arguably kickstarted by Common Theory and its pan-Asian speakeasy Realm of the 52 Remedies. The Convoy charm is expanding beyond Kearny Mesa, too. The family behind popular seafood boil room Crab Hut got a James Beard nomination for Kingfisher in Golden Hill a few years ago, and Cross Street’s Korean fried chicken is now in Del Mar.
Three things especially marked the area this year: After being destroyed by a fire in 2020, beloved made-to-order Cantonese dim sum spot China Max reopened under next-gen ownership who leaned into dumplings, noodles, and xiao long bao but retained the footprint for weddings and cultural events. Longtime local Japanese grill master Tatsuro Tsuchiya (Yakyudori, Yakitori Hino, Sushi Tadokoro) opened Yakitori Tsuta, his 18-to- 20-course concept with 12 seats, giving the binchōtan coal-art of Japanese grilling its first omakase experience. And super grocer Zion Market started working with designer Michael Soriano (Vin de Syrah, Realm of the 52) and should be unveiling a wildly immersive, multiple-restaurant-and-bar world on the rooftop later this year.
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.
The Gaslamp is the kind of place where anything goes. A country bar with a mechanical bull (Double Deuce) and a hookah lounge serving Russian food (Pushkin) share a block with a hip-hop nightclub (F6ix) and an ’80s arcade bar with boozy Capri Suns (Coin-Op).
Tourists stroll by in flip flops and shorts during the winter while locals walk over in SoCal’s version of business attire for a quick drink after work. Late night, college students don sneakers and clubwear to stalk their favorite DJs. In downtown, restaurants and shops tend to disappear as quickly as they arrive. But STK has lasted 14 years as the show pony restaurant in the Andaz hotel.
Courtesy of STK Steakhouse
Back in 2018, you’d find me on the Rooftop by STK (long heels, short dress) to pregame while overlooking the city we were about to conquer. The original STK launched in New York City in 2006 with celebrity chef Stephen Hopcraft—a modern steakhouse idea that caught fire and expanded to Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta, and Nashville.
It earned its reputation as a sexy haven for those who liked eating quality ribeyes in a place that felt right for girl’s night rather than 60th anniversaries: white booths and chairs, dim lights, pink LEDs that cast a neon blush over white flowers in oversized vases that damn near touch the ceiling.
The night I’m here, a bachelorette party breaks out in the private room upstairs. Cheers ring out any time a bridesmaid walks up the stairs. In other words, it’s not the hushed and highbrow steakhouse model, by design.
I’m here to try a mix of STK hits from executive chef Bobby Borja Jr. (hailing from the former Prep Kitchen and Break Point), plus new material from its Bounty of the Seven Seas menu. Because to last as long as STK has, you can’t just play old songs. Future preserves the past.
Here are the dishes that won over our table, should you feel the mood for a sexier surf and turf night downtown:
Courtesy of STK Steakhouse
Dishes to Try from STK’s New Seafood Menu
Grilled Octopus
Cooked perfectly, slightly sweet (the charm of octopus) and tender, meaty but not chewy. Comes with fingerling potatoes, olives, paprika aioli, and sala verde.
Brioche Bread with Blue Cheese Butter
Between each course, I found myself reaching for the warm pull-apart bread offered with bleu cheese butter and chive off its everyday menu. That melty warm slightly blue cheese-funked butter, smothered on a brioche roll—heaven call me home, I’m ready.
Spicy Yellowtail Crispy Rice Cakes
Made with yellowtail, pickled fresno chiles and unagi sauce, this dish comes with five rice cakes. It was so good we ended up ordering another round almost as quickly as it was dropped off at the table.
Mushroom and Truffle Tagliatelle
If you’re a pasta lover, get this dish, which is also available on STK’s regular menu. Pecorino cheese, braised mushrooms, tagliatelle pasta and shaved black truffle, it’s just the right amount of rich mixed with a little bit of earthiness from the mushrooms.
10 oz. Filet
Of course, since you’re at a steakhouse, don’t skip the goods. All cuts come paired with a sauce of your choosing: STK, STK Bold, au poivre, béarnaise, horseradish, chimichurri, and red wine. The obvious answer is to order all of them and have your own sauce tasting menu.
Nicolle Monico is an award-winning writer and the director of creative projects, digital editor for San Diego Magazine with more than 16 years of experience in media including Outside Run, JustLuxe and The San Francisco Chronicle.
For Executive Chef Emily Brubaker, Omni La Costa Resort & Spa feels like home. She grew up just a mile-and-a-half away from the 400-acre property and fondly recalls walking the golf course perimeter as a kid. Though her ambitions led her away from San Diego for nearly two decades in which she honed her craft in some of the highest of high-profile Las Vegas restaurants—including triple Michelin-starred Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand—they ultimately brought her back to North County.
Courtesy of Omni La Costa
Today, the classically French-trained chef, who’s fresh off a victory on NBC’s Yes, Chef!, judged by Martha Stewart and José Andrés, oversees Omni La Costa Resort & Spa’s seven distinct dining concepts. Her goal is to elevate the resort’s culinary program with her creative, hyperlocal ingredient-driven approach while maintaining the Spanish- inspired flavors and fresh California coastal cuisine that are the bedrock of its culinary identity.
“The San Diego food scene is really growing, and in North County alone, it’s really exploded in the last five years,” Brubaker says. “There are Michelin stars, beautiful tasting menus, craft bakers, and all this food—when I was growing up in La Costa, it was fish tacos. Now there are really cool things popping up, and I’m so happy to be here to see where it’s going to go.”
Brubaker gives chefs de cuisine at each individual restaurant autonomy, however, her influence is evident across the resort.
For example, lobby restaurant Bar Traza serves as Omni La Costa’s culinary centerpiece and features bold Spanish flavors in a lively, social atmosphere. Brubaker overhauled the menu to be more consistent and centered on casual bites with that signature vibe. Think smoky paprika, vibrant citrus, and Spanish meats and cheeses.
At VUE, the focus is on seasonal offerings, California coastal cuisine, and Baja-inspired dishes. She and Chef de Cuisine Cameron Dixon change the menu biannually, which heading into summer, will highlight farm-fresh produce and hyperlocal ingredients—the resort even has its own herb garden and honeybee hives.
Courtesy of Omni La Costa
Poolside dining options are leaning into the country’s 250th this summer with a selection of classic American dishes with an Omni La Costa twist. And Bob’s Steak & Chop House (Brubaker is a trained butcher) offers a classic steakhouse experience with elevated service.
The chef and company also plan menus for special events at the resort where her creativity can really shine. For an upcoming National Ski Association dinner, the banquet hall will be transformed into an Alpine-themed winter wonderland complete with a snow machine, savory sausages, and melty, decadent raclette. A recent dinner was built around the Carlsbad Flower Fields and each course was matched to a color of ranunculus (Did you know pink dragonfruit are grown in North County? You do now.).
“It’s my zen to be in the kitchen playing with food,” Brubaker says.
Omni La Costa’s culinary program is a key part of the resort experience. And with Brubaker’s leadership, it’s becoming a draw for visitors and locals alike.
“These aren’t just hotel restaurants, these are restaurants that you should go to. They’re destinations, and I’m really hoping for the future that’s where we’re going,” Brubaker says.
Courtesy of Omni La Costa
Brubaker is also channeling her experience on Yes, Chef! into the culture at Omni La Costa—more emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, empowering her staff to share constructive critiques, and embracing different perspectives. Alongside her leadership role, Brubaker has become an advocate for mental health in the hospitality industry, serving as chief ambassador for the Burnt Chef Project and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Apex Culinary Program, where she mentors and develops future talent.
There are many ways employee lounges can go awry. Volume chewers, nuked tuna, the person who zeroes in on a premium snack and becomes the oligarch of what were supposed to be communist Cheetos. Famously, Ballast Point employees lost their lounge when then-brewer Yuseff Cherney turned it into a hobbyist distillery. That booze would become Cutwater Spirits, so society writ large won.
Yet sometimes employee lounges don’t suck. San Diego’s life sciences giants have given their employees restaurants from top purveyors, like Gold Finch Deli (Urban Kitchen Group) and California English (Richard Blais). For its newish HQ, San Diego athleisure god Vuori offered its people a yoga temple and, in my dream for them, a vending machine full of chakras.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra Office furniture in the wild.
And, tucked into a business park in Serra Mesa, the San Diego–based staffing agency TCWGlobal has BoujieMana—a quite lovely restaurant headed by Dante Cecchini, a San Francisco transplant named one of Zagat’s “30 Under 30,” as well as Rising Star Chef by the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Hopefully, people wander down this little Aero Court cul-de-sac and find us,” Cecchini says.
They are now. Last year, Yelp named BoujieMana one of the top restaurants in the country. Whether you ascribe to the review giant’s recs or not, there’s no denying the gravity of its star system. At the very least, the thick-credentialed people at BoujieMana—Cecchini, plus a director of hospitality formerly of L’Auberge Del Mar, a GM with time under Michael Mina, and bartenders from Sbicca and L’Auberge—are creating a fairly special, welcoming, fascinating place between the airport, a Little League field, and a day job.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra Marinated clam crostini show off the chef’s San Francisco roots.
To get there, turn right where you think you shouldn’t and enter the parking lot that looks like you’re going to do some taxes. It’s on the left. Head in through the automatic glass doors or through the side louvers that rise to essentially remove the walls of the place, opening up to a patio. Note the massive wall of textured teak jutting out at various depths like a three-dimensional game of Tetris. Note the radiant chandeliers hung over the live-edge wood tables (cut from a single fallen tree), the ornate glass tiles colorized like a peacock in heat. The restrooms have bidets.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra Chef Dante Cecchini and owner Samer Khouli.
At the long table in the center, most likely, you’ll find Samer Khouli— founder of TCWGlobal—surrounded by six or seven friends.
“That’s my favorite spot, where I can see everyone enjoying themselves,” Khouli says. “My family is Arabic, so the whole idea of hospitality and inviting people over and having a big table with lots of different food is second nature. My mom was the cook. My dad would come home, and there was a full table. The communal-ness is the best part about a meal. We built this restaurant so our employees would have somewhere nice to eat, but also for the community.”
Community’s huge for Khouli. Three percent of gross revenue from BoujieMana goes to a rotating nonprofit.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra The dry-ager is a centerpiece of the dining room.
Behind Khouli is an illuminated fridge that the chef stocks with crimson duck, brined and then rested for 15 days on display. Next to that fridge are two lanky and immaculately groomed boxer dogs with kind, pet-me eyes—Khouli’s pets and BoujieMana’s most famous regulars.
Some people of tense lower musculature might balk at dogs in an upscale restaurant, let alone next to the dry-aging fridge. Rare is the Michelin inspector who raves about the cuddliness of pets on the premises. But the dogs—Cooper and Minnie—are a statement of purpose.
“I love the idea of feeling like it’s a beautiful and elegant place, but it doesn’t keep you away, it invites you in—families, kids, dogs, everyone,” Khouli says. “There’s going to be somebody that goes, ‘Ew, there’s a dog there.’ Hey, that’s cool. I’m sorry. If they love BoujieMana, they’re gonna love it the way it is.”
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra The showstopper whole duck, with skin that cracks like Hollywood glass.
Cecchini’s background is a big part of what defines the place. He started as a cook at Citizen Cake, the famed San Francisco café and sweets emporium of baker and chef Elizabeth Falkner. “I told my parents I wanted to go to culinary school and they said, ‘Nope, we’re not going to pay for you to learn how to cook—do it for a few years, and then we’ll talk,’” Cecchini recalls.
He remembers screwing up Falkner’s cheese, so she took him to the farmers market to help him fall in love with ingredients. “I was letting the cheese sweat too much, not handling the ingredient right,” he says. “It was my first time at the market—and the whole message was like, ‘Look at the amount of effort that goes into this produce and this cheese, and look at these people.’ That’s when it really started to sink in, what our craft actually is.”
He found his on-the-job culinary school at Marlowe—the iconic spot from restaurateur Anna Weinberg and chef Jennifer Puccio—working his way up to chef de cuisine. He became Weinberg and Puccio’s go-to guy to run and open restaurants like Park Tavern, The Cavalier, and Leo’s Luxury Oyster Bar. He cooked at the James Beard House alongside Jonathan Waxman. He left to open Fiorella, an Italian-American concept—which shares a kinship with BoujieMana, because it was in a restaurant dead-zone.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra Arguably the best deviled eggs in the city—smoked with pickled jalapeño and chili-oil chimichurri.
“There, I realized really awesome food didn’t have to be precious all the time,” he says. “BoujieMana reminds me of those places. I walked in and was like, ‘Wow, this place is gorgeous—and so strange, because of the location.”
The dishes he excels at include that duck, lightly smoked then roasted and served whole with plum sauce. The skin is deeply browned and lightly sweet from the brine and cracks like glass, the fat perfectly rendered to melting temp. And then there are the deviled eggs, arguably the best I’ve come across: The whites and yolks are house-smoked, then mixed with cayenne, pickled shallots, herbs, and aioli and topped with pickled jalapeño, crispy bacon, and a chili-oil chimichurri. But the dish that nails BoujieMana’s high-minded humble ethos is the clam crostini—a very San Francisco, simple, lovely thing with perfectly crusted sourdough, aioli, and clams marinated in lemon, garlic, and chili.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra Sugar-cinnamon-chipotle donuts with a touch of heat, cooled in a vanilla créme anglaise.
The menu also expresses the food Khouli—whose family came to the US from Syria when he was five—grew up with. Particularly the beef kibbeh, his mom’s traditional Lebanese recipe: an excellent beef tartare with cinnamon, mint, and house-baked pita.
“I remember watching my grandma pounding the meat down with the mortar and pestle,” Khouli says. “We just make it in a blender as opposed to on a rock.”
BoujieMana is still evolving and finding its focus; there are some dumbfoundingly delicious dishes and a few imperfections. Cecchini’s okay with that, because, to him, it matters that a good portion of his staff is from the culinary school in Tijuana, learning on the job like he did.
Photo Credit: Arlene Ibarra There are seemingly acres between each table at BoujieMana.
“I love working with them because I’ve always wanted to open up a school,” he says. “With everything going so casual in restaurants, we’re at risk of losing those real cooking skills. Not just opening a bag of sauce and deep-frying some frozen fish, but taking real pride in cooking.”
On the way out, you see the residential towers in various states of construction—hundreds of them, a neighborhood about to swell with new hungers. And this staffing agency, this overachieving employee lounge, has set the table for them.
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.
Lamb Lollipops | Coconut Milk Poached Seabass | The Ritual
If pink’s belief in its own emotional power had waned, it has been fully restored by The Sasan. Mission Hills residents were pitchforkian-vocal about the paint job on the seven-story residential tower. Pepto-Bismol was trotted out yet again and co-slandered. Sure enough, The Sasan does look exactly like a stack of gigantic, bubble gum–colored Pez candies, the spaces between each dangling with deeply green plant life. It’s a flamingo among the architectural pigeons.
In other words, it’s lovely. As someone who grew up in suburbia, where every home seems to be the color of budget-hotel oatmeal, I envied the electric blue and banana-hued houses of Miami or Mexico or Cinque Terre or Buenos Aires. Not sure where we’re at with tariffs, but maybe lower them on paint.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos About an hour before sunset, the best seats at the bar—the ones facing the big show—fill up fast.
The Sasan is home to the city’s newest rooftop dining spectacular, Communion. The entrance alone is worth the price of whatever you order. You walk into a large, ground-floor courtyard (home to the all-day sister concept, a bakery, coffee shop, and pintxo bar called Paradis), which glows pink. A singular host stands at a podium, ready to escort you into the elevators. Ride up and step out into Communion’s floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the city. It’s a stunning bout of vertigo.
When it comes to views, give me the receded one. Vistas perched on top of the water are nice and all, but they lack perspective. From Communion’s large dining patio, you can see downtown, the point, and the bay where, in the mid-1800s, Captain Henry James Johnston first looked up from the docks at this hilltop and decided to buy 65 acres (the land used to be called Johnston Heights).
San Diego’s iconic plant lady Kate Sessions (she essentially single-handedly landscaped Balboa Park) lived and worked in Mission Hills and planted those palm trees and poinsettias, the bougainvillea and star jasmine. She started its oldest business, Mission Hills Nursery, in 1910.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos The view plays second fiddle to the food, but the view is still… this.
Trolleys were everything back then, and getting a stop near your business meant your kids were well-fed, so Sessions sealed Mission Hills’ future when she convinced John D. Spreckels to bring the trolley to her nursery. I can’t help but think of her seeing those plants cascading out the sides of The Sasan’s balconies.
Communion is the project of another name well-known to San Diego. Jacquee Renna-Downing and her late husband Kipp Downing owned North County’s seafood icon Pacifica Del Mar (they sold it years back). The family launched two successful restaurants in the Coachella Valley (Pacifica Seafood and La Quinta Cliffhouse), and this is their return to San Diego (Jacquee’s daughter, Hailey Renna, is running it).
The lineup of talent in the kitchen and bar is A-list: executive chef Mike Moritz, formerly of Mister A’s and Mille Fleurs; Aly Lyng, longtime pastry chef of Georges at the Cove; and lead bartender Eliza Woodman (Camino Riviera).
I think it’s time to stop expecting less from view restaurants. For decades, they could serve us gussied-up slop and well drinks with expensive names, and we’d gladly be their sucker just to sit in their sky box. But, with food literacy at an all-time high, being front and center to the grandeur of the gods isn’t enough. Communion’s “coastal from across the globe” menu isn’t perfect, but it’s off to a hell of a strong start.
For drinks, the star is Yama’s Reign. You didn’t know you needed droplets of sesame oil floating in your cocktail with that unmistakable flavor bomb of furikake (Japanese spice blend) until you try this thing. With a tiny clothespin, the bar team straps a sheet of wakame (dried seaweed) to the glass. I’d get rid of the weed—its scent is so strong that it smells a bit like low tide—but the drink is phenomenal.
For apps, start with the Wagyu beef carpaccio. Moritz’s take is a bit soupy, embracing the trend of treating the classic like loaded nachos. Some people would say that you don’t thin-slice Wagyu beef and then air-drop a Vegas buffet on it—that’s like paying for Tyler the Creator to headline your concert and then having the opening acts stand in front of him all night singing their own songs.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos Hamachi crudo
But Moritz’s buffet is delicious and changes frequently (at the time I’m writing this, it’s a lime-heavy Vietnamese riff, bò tái chanh). The hamachi crudo has a beautifully elegant lemon oil and thin sticks of Granny Smith apples. Ignore the grapefruit (it waterboards the delicate fish with bitter citrus).
Three dishes will justify any meal you have here. First, the lamb lollipops. If my organs ever revolt and doctors demand I go plant-based, I’d settle for “vegetarian plus lollipops.” My personal kryptonite, the handheld carnivore snack is judged by the sear and season of the crust and the sauce.
Moritz’s has a thick crust punch-drunk with za’atar (the almighty Middle Eastern spice blend of dried herbs, toasted sesame seeds, salt, and sumac). The sauce is yogurt infused with vadouvan (India’s spice blend of cumin, fenugreek, mustard seed, garlic, and many other things), a great leave of absence from the usual chimichurri.
Second, the risotto. It is a $49 risotto. That’s a hefty price to pay for sticky rice. But Communion’s is undeniably fantastic and so rich the table can share it. It’s hand-stirred with shaved black truffles, wild and tame mushrooms, and 24-month-aged Grana Padano.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos The seabass has thrown in its lot for dish of the year.
Third, and the star of the show, is the seabass. Everything is right here—a thick, almost prehistoric chunk of bass (Communion is not cheating anyone with portion sizes) is poached in coconut milk for a pretty incredible, thoroughly moist, luscious cook on the fish. Then, it’s laid in one of Thailand’s greatest gifts: tom yum broth. It comes with a spoon and bowls so you can ladle out some of that life-restoring tincture.
If Communion has an Achilles’ heel, it’s drowning a good idea in another otherwise good idea. The chaat masala potatoes come swimming in chutney and Greek yogurt. That’s a special flavor combo, but, while eating it, you can’t help but think of all the times you’ve dropped a chip into an onion dip and it gets really lodged there, so much so that, despite your best efforts, it merely goes deeper, until you’re just desperately trying to extract the thing before it gums up the whole dipping experience. And the duck—dry-aged seven days in-house—got too much of the sweet, sweet sauce. Duck likes sweet, but this is nearly dessert.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Motos Basque cheesecake with salted caramel and whipped crème fraîche is a perfect end.
Speaking of, pastry chef Aly Lyng is a talent. Try her vanilla bean Basque cheesecake (crustless and baked at a high temp for a charred top and a lighter and custardy middle) with salted caramel and whipped crème fraîche. Or “The Ritual,” a warm flourless chocolate tart crowned with condensed milk ice, hazelnut praline, and ice cream infused with espresso from Ritual Coffee (one of the only San Diego places to serve the cult-loved San Francisco roaster).
Perfection is a fool’s errand. Small missteps aside, I’m hard-pressed to name a better dining experience than ordering some lollipops and that tom yum bass as you stare at the sunset over those storied old San Diego hills and gaze down at the bay, trying not to think of the nuclear submarines below the surface.
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.
While glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agents have been used to treat Type 2 diabetes for more than 20 years, their recent emergence as weight-loss wonder drugs marked a new frontier in medicine. But their effectiveness has left some patients wondering what to do once they’ve reached their goal. Stopping the medication could mean regaining some, if not all, of the weight. A Scripps Clinic internal medicine physician recently conducted a small study of whether GLP-1 patients who had reached their goal weight could maintain that weight by taking their regularly prescribed injection every other week instead of weekly. Spoiler alert: 30 of 34 patients did. Read more about the study here and what that may mean as pharmaceutical companies roll out oral GLP-1s.
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