Behind SD’s Food Scene: The Cult Following of Thompson Heritage Ranch

I’ve got meat friends. They sell meat to nearly every restaurant in San Diego. And one of them called me last year to talk about Ty Thompson.

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July 18, 2024

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Thompson has become a bit of a problem. To paraphrase: “No way chefs can afford his product unless they’re going to charge $100 a pork chop!” Yet the city’s top chefs are buying Thompson Heritage Ranch. Chefs talk about Thompson like he’s some sort of cult protein mystic—idealistic, ambitious, purpose-driven to the point of disbelief. Either this man’s the Jim Jones of dinner, or he’s the ranch Jesus the industry needed. When you taste his pork (he also does chicken and rare Piedmontese cattle), you understand the buzz.

Thompson raises his herd free-range in Ramona and essentially feeds them a farmers market. When chef Logan Kendall visited the ranch, Thompson took a handful of the feed and ate it, saying, “Know any other ranchers that’ll do that?” If we’ve learned anything about food, it’s that it’s only as good as what you feed it—whether that’s plants grown in healthy soil teeming with microorganisms, or four-star tasting menus for hogs (Iberico ham is so famously good in large part due to the pigs’ acorn diet).

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Not just any restaurant can call in an order. When a chef inquires, Thompson shows up to their restaurant in his ranch jeans and orders a meal. It’s an audition. After all, he spends his pre-sunrise mornings and post-sunset nights out on a hill in Ramona creating his dream pork. He’s not about to hand it to a kitchen that hammers it into an edible-drywall state.