Benji Weatherley walked into San Diego Magazine and immediately made everyone in the room feel like they’d known him their whole lives—which, if you grew up surfing in San Diego, you basically did.
The Momentum Generation kid; the guy whose mom essentially ran a free hotel for Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, and Shane Dorian while they were terrorizing Pipeline; the dude Tom DeLonge wrote “Mutt” about while they were roommates in a PB apartment—that guy is now a restaurateur in Encinitas.
Breakers Cafe, Bar & Grill is part Hawaiian comfort food joint, part surf museum, and part live music venue with three stages and a speakeasy called the Hideout that you get into by saying “snob” backwards. But the road to get here was genuinely brutal. Weatherley sold his house in Leucadia to save the original Breakers in Hawaii, but it ended up closing anyway.
When he eventually moved to Encinitas, he began work on his new restaurant, deciding to remodel the space by hand and opening it in July 2025. An eviction notice arrived two weeks after, right when daily sales hit $7,000 and was followed by a battle over his liquor license. After agreeing to teach hula dancing, his liquor license was approved and Breakers Cafe, Bar & Grill became a reality.
During the episode he also shares why cooking saved him more than surfing ever did. Tune in to hear the whole tale.
