It was a tough year for restaurants, yet the silver linings were plenty. After another year of eating through the city, these were the silveriest of linings—the new restaurants that you gotta check out.

31ThirtyOne

Drew Deckman is a chef who worked his way up through the Michelin-star ranks in Europe before dropping out of that scene to work on fishing boats in the Southern Hemisphere. He became a better, sustainability-obsessed restaurateur because of that experience, and he recently earned more Michelin stars. It’s a full circle, which finally brought him to San Diego with this North Park spot. He’s about as good as they come.

Yakitori Tsuta

If you were making a pantheon of San Diego’s yakitoris (Japanese grill joints), Yakitori Hino and Yakyudori would be on that list. So it was big news when a longtime chef who cooked at both, Tatsuro Tsuchiya, opened Yakitori Tsuta this year in the Nijiya Market on Convoy Street. He’s doing an 18- to 20-course yakitori omakase that focuses primarily on every part and every rendition of chicken, fired over those famed binchotan coals (high-grade Japanese charcoal that burns hotter and cleaner). The dinners finish with a bowl of ramen.

April 26, 2024

The Best Restaurants in San Diego 2024RELATED ARTICLE

Roma Norte

Arguably the top cocktail-bar opening of 2024. The brothers and cousins who run Puesto have imported some serious talent into San Diego’s food scene, and two of them get their own cocktail show with this Mexico City–inspired cocktail joint in The Headquarters near Seaport Village. Beau DuBois was the beverage director of three-Michelin-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood, and his partner in crime Derek Cram made drinks at PDT and Momofuku. From a fig leaf old fashioned to mezcal habañero margaritas and a rum and housemade Coke (with a killer chicken sandwich), this is an evolution in city drinks. 

Happy Medium

If you had a great cocktail in a cool place over the last couple of decades, good chance these two excessively likable dudes created it. Happy Medium is the partnership between Eric Johnson and Christian Siglin, two of the principal architects of San Diego’s craft cocktail scene. They met at Noble Experiment way back when, then went on to lead spots such as Craft & Commerce, Sycamore Den, Camino Rivera, and Fernside. A laid-back, kid- and dog-friendly joint with excellent drinks (including booze slushees and on-tap negronis), plus chef-built riffs on fish n’ chips, sloppy joes, corn dogs, beef dips, and the like.

Knead Bakery

Adrian Mendoza went from Spago to Herb & Wood to Wayfarer to Urban Kitchen Group, earning a name as one of the top pastry chefs in San Diego in the process. Deserving a place of his own, he gets it with Knead. On the bottom of the new Symphony Towers, it’s part of the University Club’s impressive culinary revival (Knead is open to the public). Everything hits, but the croissants are the big pastry bang at the center of his talent universe (try the one with egg). 

Leila

We’re running out of superlatives with CH Projects (the architects of always-packed spots like Born & Raised and the Lafayette Hotel). The restauranteurs took an ordinary storefront in North Park and created a Lucas Films–caliber otherworld that evokes a pan-Middle Eastern night bazaar. It’s a group project, but it’s also personal for CH founder Arsalun Tafazoli. With breads (khobz, naan, barbari) and kabobs (koobideh, shishlik, joojeh) and sauces and sprinkles and dips (toum, amba, dukkah, zhoug), it’s a long-overdue main-staging for Middle Eastern food in San Diego. With 7,000 reservations before Leila even opened, the hype is real. 

Ponyboy

Well, this is a clown car of talent. The dining space at San Diego’s cool, midcentury-modern motel in Point Loma has always been poolside-petite. And the Ponyboy roster is unfairly stacked, with chefs and drinksmen and sommeliers from Addison, Lion’s Share, Wormwood, and CH Projects. It’s food from the Russia-might-nuke-us era, from TV dinners to deviled eggs to ambrosia and one of the best chicken Kievs the city’s seen since Reagan’s immaculate hair was on every TV.

Wildland

Restaurateur John Resnick and chef Eric Bost are the Daft Punk of North County’s coastal restaurant scene. They pretty much own State Street in Carlsbad now. The only problem with their twin winners Campfire and the Michelin-starred Jeune et Jolie is that they’re dinner-only. So they partnered on this all-day bakery/cafe/bar/restaurant across the street, with wine director Savannah Riedler (Juniper & Ivy in SD, Saison in SF), baker James Belisle (Per Se), and chef de cuisine Kaitlyn Jean Smith (M.B. Post and Bost’s pandemic-crushed beloved restaurant, Auburn).

November 26, 2024

The Biggest San Diego Food & Drink Trends of 2024RELATED ARTICLE

Haven Farm + Table

They built a commune in Encinitas around a farm and put a pretty stunning restaurant in the middle of it. Fox Point Farms is a new housing idea (or is it old, ancient?) in Encinitas where the restaurant has its own sustainable and regenerative farmer—plus one of my favorite humans in the food scene, chef Alex Carballo, paired with young-gun chef Kelston Moore. 

Le Coq

Tara Monsod is a force of good in the city’s food culture and a massive talent. Fresh off becoming the first San Diego chef to be named a finalist in the James Beard Awards, she helms the last restaurant for Puffer Malarkey (Herb & Wood, Herb & Sea, Animae)—a French steakhouse with an absolutely killer tuna crudo and a creamed spinach with an onion soubise. If you’ve followed the city’s food scene for any amount of time, you gotta see the final show from one of its top duos.

Sushi Maru

If you lived near downtown say, 20 years ago, you had exactly one good option for sushi—Taka. Behind the sushi case was chef Tsuyoshi “Maru” Maruyama. After going home to Japan for a brief time to care for family, he returned this year to build a 20-seat, omakase-only concept on Cortez Hill. Twenty courses, two hours. A lovely little place from a beloved local.

Communion

People who are gray and ashen in their hearts have said the building is too pink. As if a pop of color is satanic. Personally, I love Mission Hills’ new Golden-Girls-on-Pepto blush pink residential tower, The Sasan. And on the rooftop is a view restaurant led by some of the bigger talents in the city—chefs Mike Moritz (Mister A’s) and Jon Hawkins (George’s at the Cove), pastry chef Aly Lyng (George’s at the Cove), and bar specialists Eliza Woodman (Camino Rivera) and Marina Ferreira (Botanica). Best for me is the family behind it: Jacquee Renna Downing and her husband created the SD classic Pacifica Del Mar.

Cellar Hand

There’s a lot to like about this project. Chef Logan Kendall is a real talent and one of the biggest local-ingredient nerds I’ve met in a long while, known to appear tableside to make you taste some rare herb he found growing behind a barn in Ramona. It’s owned by Pali Wine Co, a father-son, family operation that started making low-intervention wines on the central coast (in Lompoc). Get the Thompson Heritage Ranch chicken liver pâté with orange wine jello cubes.

Sea & Sky

This is still lowkey one of the best views in San Diego, just like when it was Elario’s and jazz musicians were playing in the corner. Now it got a makeover from Hirsch Bedner Associates, who handled the holy-expletive Sphere in Dubai.

Amalfi Llama

Where once, eons ago, there was only the mighty Orange Julius and soccer-practice pizza, UTC’s transformation into a food Disney World is nearly complete. Its business model seems to be recruiting the most raved-about concepts from across the country (the first Shake Shack in San Diego landed here, plus Din Tai Fung, Javier’s, and Marugame Udon) to go with some beloved locals (CH Projects’ Raised by Wolves, Menya Ultra Ramen). Amalfi Llama is a breakout hit from Miami chef Jeffrey Mondaca (it’s helmed locally by Jaime Sebastian Chavez Monte-Alegre, formerly of Coasterra). It’s live-fire cooking that straddles Mediterranean and Patagonian food, with everything from woodfired pizzas and pastas to steaks and branzino.

Bivouac Adventure Lodge

If there’s a group making progress in San Diego, Lara Worm is probably a board member. This year, the queen of local craft cider debuted the elaborate Adventure Lodge, which is like a warm, welcoming yurt for North Park culture that quadruples as a cider tasting room, café, event space, and zen third place for the remote-work generation.

Finca

Every neighborhood needs a wine bar with good food, and now this is North Park’s. It comes courtesy three vets of top San Diego restaurants: front-of-house pro Dan Valerino and chef Joe Bower from Juniper & Ivy, plus partner Ricardo Dondisch, who ran probably the best service in the city at The Hake (RIP). Obsessive, approachable wines from Spain and small California growers, plus a killer yellowtail crudo and patatas bravas.

Desserts by Clement

The excellent Le Parfait Paris has served as a talent incubator for the bread arts in San Diego. Much like Sushi Ota spun off Hane and Himitsu and other top sushi spots for the betterment of the city, this year one of Le Parfait’s pastry chefs launched his own shop in PB. Clément Le Déoré, a lifelong baker, came direct from France, was a finalist on Food Network’s Spring Baking Championship, and launched his own commercial bakery that supplied The Hotel Del Coronado and The Westgate Hotel. He finally got a storefront with partner Romain Bonnet of Selling Sunset. They’re serving savory croissants (prosciutto, fig, brie, arugula), tarts, petit gateaux, and other delights. You gotta try the croissant rolls dipped in various pleasures (nutella, pistachio).

Merenda

What happens when a PhD in food anthropology and a guy who was raised in Oceanside hook up with one of the city’s top wine minds (Heidi Greenwood of Herb & Wood and Cucina Urbana), a consulting chef from Rustic Canyon (Travis Hayden), and the design team that built Jeune et Jolie and Broken Spanish (Bells + Whistles)? This place does. The food anthropology background means local farmers and ingredients are core identities for the wine shop and third place’s small menu (it has just a couple induction burners) that includes scallop ‘nduja, lamb tartare, pork and apples, grilled duck, and mushroom ravioli.

Tanner’s Prime Burgers

A three-Michelin-starred chef does a smash burger in San Diego and it’s every bit as good as you’d imagine. Tanner’s is the collaboration between SoCal’s ethical, good ranch operation, Brandt Beef, and Brandon Rogers, who was chef de cuisine at three-Michelin-starred Benu in San Francisco. Tanner’s also does beef tallow fries and tallow ice cream sandwiches. Oh, dear carnivore lords.

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I realize this is a pretty apocalyptic way to introduce our annual celebration of local food and drink culture—our bible of San Diego’s best restaurant, with its attendant bao bun psalms and birria haikus.

But that lurking doomery only underscores the heights San Diego’s restaurant culture has finally reached. It’s never been harder to operate a restaurant, and yet our food and drink people made national headlines and hype reels again. It has not always been this way. After eras of deep-fried pain, we’re in a far better place.

Why? Because our seafood’s right there. Because our produce is among the best on the planet—and any cook will tell ya that using the world’s best ingredients is like running a 100-yard dash and starting at the 40-yard line. That’s why the top chefs have come. Plus, moms and pops who started cooking furiously four years ago (due to The Terrible Thing) are opening kitchens. The proximity to Mexico’s fire and ash and stew culture never hurts. So many reasons.

This list is a citywide tradition we’re honored to keep. You guys picked your favorites (with 41,000-plus votes, a new record), and I picked mine.

I switched it up a bit. I left out a few that have become institutional and duh-of-course. Once Addison landed three Michelin stars, no one needed to be told to go there. Same with Jeune et Jolie, a pinnacle of Frenchishness. I politely placed them over on Mt. Olympus and made room for other places that deserve that spotlight.

I’ve been lucky enough to document, study, and tell stories about food and drink for almost two decades. I did the math recently and realized I’d been to thousands of restaurants, tried tens of thousands of dishes. It’s been an obscenely obsessive career without complaints.

I know food better than I know myself. That said, I’ll never pretend my list is somehow the only valid take. It’s just mine. It’s the list I keep in my pocket and constantly update as I eat my way through the city and send to friends when they come to town and ask, “What should I eat in San Diego?”

I urge you to make your own. –Troy Johnson

And Now the 2024 Best San Diego Best Restaurants Winners List…

You voted. Food critic Troy Johnson picked his favorites. We chose the must-try dishes at some of San Diego’s best restaurants and unpacked the people and trends changing our city’s dining scene for the better. Hope you’re hungry, because it’s time to dig in.

The post The Best Restaurants in San Diego 2024 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

View the 2024 Best Restaurants Winners List

The Smokeshow: Brad Wise

By Troy Johnson

When it comes to things on fire, in Wise we trust. This year, San Diego’s star steakhouse chef went national. Brad Wise had a great track record (Trust, Fort Oak, Cardellino, The Wise Ox), but his casual-ish take on the steakhouse experience—Rare Society—boomed at a different decibel. Why? Because he’s nailed the art of woodsmoke, which has 400-something more flavor compounds than oven- or pan-seared proteins. And Rare’s lazy-Susan “steak boards” offer commitment phobes a ménage à steak. He expanded the concept up and down the West Coast, from Santa Barbara to Washington (the sixth iteration will open in Vegas next year). But he’s not done here at home—his “French-ish” brasserie arrives in North Park next summer.

The Experience: Omakase-Only

By Troy Johnson

San Diego’s Japanese food scene owes a debt to Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Seven years after watching the 2011 documentary, John Hong opened Hidden Fish on Convoy Street. Like Jiro’s famed restaurant in Japan, Hong’s spot is omakase-only—no à la carte ordering. The chef simply serves you course after creative course, using the day’s best ingredients. Taking choice away from Americans? Scandalous, blasphemous, and gold. It was the first of its kind in San Diego. Hong received national press, as did his newest concept Hitokuchi. Now he’s not alone. In the last year, two more omakase-only spots opened: Kinme (in Bankers Hill, from the beloved Azuki Sushi crew) and Ichifuji (thanks to two chef vets from Michelin-starred spots). A third, Hasekura, is on its way in Barrio Logan. Choice is overrated.

The Trend: Dry-Aged Fish

By Jackie Bryant

Finally, it’s being said. The supremacy of fresh fish is a myth. Sushi only gets its trademark silkiness when aged. Most beef served in high-end steakhouses is aged over 20 days, so why wouldn’t the same benevolent science work wonders on seafood? It does. While the craft was already popular in Spain (where aged, cured tuna is called mojama), San Diego fishmongers and chefs—from Tommy Gomes of Tunaville and the crew at La Jolla’s Marisi to Davin Waite of Oceanside’s Wrench & Rodent Seabasstropub (one of the OGs of the trade)—started tinkering with the technique this year. “Dry-aging fish is a game-changer when it comes to hedging the peaks and valleys in local fish supply,” Waite says. “It’s just like putting a piece of fish in the fridge, only it gets better with time, instead of worse.” Even though the process has “literally been around forever,” he adds, it’s still new to many of us. Not for long.

The Place: North Park

By Beth Demmon

North Park’s been billed as the heir to the city’s central food nerve for a long, long time. After a decade of revitalization, it’s finally happening. From Tribute Pizza (pictured) and Finca to Mabel’s Gone Fishing, Happy Medium, and Saigon Coffee, something delicious awaits every few feet. Three new concepts are incoming from some of the biggest names in the food and drink scene: Drew Deckman’s 31ThirtyOne (arriving around May), CH Projects’ Persian-fusion concept Leila (summer-ish), and Brad Wise’s French brasserie (sometime next year). The simmer is now a boil.

The Treat: Asian Bakeries

By Beth Demmon

There’s a time and place for Boston creams and maple bars. And that time ended around when skinny jeans went out of style. This year, San Diego’s pastry adherents turned to melt-in-your-mouth Japanese milk bread, sugar-sprinkled Chinese doughnuts, and uber-fluffy red bean buns. SD’s Asian-owned and -inspired bakery scene exploded—probably because Asian desserts tend to be less excessively sweet than their Western counterparts, and the nation’s collective palate has shifted away from sugar bombs. Enter ube, black sesame, mango, and pandan treats. At places like ASA Cafe Bakery or Phoenix Dessert, you can switch up that iced vanilla latte in favor of royal milk tea, shaved ice with coconut milk and various fruits, or boba Thai iced tea.

The Arrival: José Cepeda

By Troy Johnson

The biggest news in the city’s dining scene this year was arguably the 6,000-or-so (okay, seven) concepts artfully shoved into North Park’s newly re-loved and relaunched LaFayette Hotel. The food had to make a statement as loud as the décor (not easy). CH Projects tapped elite chef Perfecte Rocher (El Bulli, Tarsan i Jane, Manresa) to quality control the whole operation, but the one to watch is Puebla, Mexico–raised José Cepeda, chef at the hotel’s signature Baja-goth restaurant, Quixote. “My grandmother used to tell me you get people from the stomach—that’s how people fall in love with you,” he says. Quixote’s menu is a mix of his family’s favorite dishes with twists learned during his time cooking alongside Joshua Gill at LA’s Mexican standout Mírame. Cepeda’s crab corn doughnut alone is a fairly romantic notion.

The Fermentalist: Tiago Carneiro

By Troy Johnson

Hard kombucha hasn’t yet made a huge splash nationwide, but it’s catching fire ($179 million in 2023, with a projected $17 billion market over next decade). San Diego is ground zero for the movement thanks to our athleisure souls and twin fangirling for both probiotics and happy hour. Brands like Boochcraft and JuneShine broke the seal, and now the emerging force is Tiago Carneiro and Nova Easy Kombucha. Raised in Brazil by a father obsessed with fermentation, Carneiro and his brother built and sold Brazil’s largest craft brewery, Wäls. He moved his family to San Diego and opened South Bay’s first brewery, Novo Brazil, in 2015. The pandemic had him on the edge of losing it all. “I said to myself, ‘This was the biggest failure of my life,’” he recalls. So he gave spiked booch a try, and Nova took off. His bright pink, just-sweet-enough La Ola Dragon Fruit—a collab with Wave FC— was the drink of last summer and this summer, too. Now he’s partnered with the Padres.

The Cocktail Whisperer: Beau du Bois

By Troy Johnson

His first move was to ditch bottled lime juice. To do this for an operation as large as Marisi (one location) and Puesto (nine), Beau du Bois hired a juice guy—a full-time role to keep fresh juice flowing, storing it in kegs to preserve shelf-life and eliminate waste. By opting for seemingly minor, time-consuming tweaks (like using a centrifuge to clarify peach juice for Marisi’s epic white peach bellini), du Bois and co-conspirator Derek Cram are producing some of the most craft-driven drinks in the city. No surprise, since the former was beverage director of a three-star Michelin (The Restaurant at Meadowood) before coming to San Diego. Up next is a 100-seat, Mexico City–inspired cocktail bar in downtown called Roma Norte, set to open this summer. The bar man says we can expect the best rum and Coke he’s ever had, using clear cola made from scratch.

The Curator: Tracy Borkum

By Troy Johnson

For decades, museum food in the US was a forgery. Art on walls, shrugs on plates. Other cities realized Renoirs didn’t pair great with fridge-flavored pita wraps, so New York got Untitled from Danny Meier, Seattle got Taste from Craig Hetherington, and (finally) San Diego culture-seekers have Tracy Borkum and chef Tim Kolanko. Most know Borkum for her string of Italian cucinas (Urbana, Enoteca) and her Jewish deli, Goldfinch. But over the last few years, she has radically improved the mealtime fates of aesthetes in the city with Artifact at the Mingei and The Kitchen at MCASD La Jolla. Borkum got her art history degree from UC Berkeley, so maybe we owe a bit of gratitude to selfish pursuits.

The Vin-Garde: Chelsea Coleman + Coco Randolph

By Jackie Bryant

San Diego’s not historically a wine town. But that’s changing, thanks in part to juice nerds like Chelsea Coleman and Coco Randolph. Coleman is co-owner of three low-intervention wine temples—Mabel’s Gone Fishing, The Rose, and Bodega Rosette (along with sourdough bakery Secret Sister)—and she co-founded the natural wine festival Nat Diego, which lured national wine icon Alice Feiring to town. Randolph is wine director at North Park bistro Black Radish, as well as co-owner of the two-Michelin-star Californios in San Francisco. She won tons of accolades for her work at the latter, including Michelin’s 2021 Sommelier of the Year.

The Coffee: Saigon Coffee

By Maren Hawkins

Vinh and Tu Duong’s father set the bar high for how a husband should treat his wife. Growing up, the siblings—and Saigon Coffee founders—saw their dad travel to faraway villages in the central highlands of Vietnam to bring back the finest coffee beans for their mother. Their mom taught them to slow-brew java with time-tested Vietnamese phin filters (pour-over, but make it fancy). From humble beginnings in 2012 at the Hillcrest Farmers Market to two bustling brick-and-mortars in North Park and University Heights, Saigon Coffee creates every cup with this ancient technique. The rich egg foam that tops one of their strong, satisfying iced beverages is worth being late for work… which you will be, unless you rise with the baristas themselves to beat the omnipresent line.

The Bread: Wayfarer Bread

By Amelia Rodriguez

If Crystal White’s sourdough starter were a human child, it’d be in second grade right now. But instead of learning to subtract, the bubbly colony of lactic acid and wild yeast is doing what it does best: making bread delicious, with help from White’s lovingly obsessive attention to details like humidity and the seasons. Trained by bakers at The French Laundry, Tartine, and Proof, White launched Wayfarer Bread in Bird Rock in May 2018 following a series of successful pop-ups. The humble outpost has since made like its starter and sent San Diego’s bread culture rising ever-higher. While White’s crackly baguettes and fluffy cream buns generate Disneylandish morning queues, weekend evenings draw fans for pizza nights, when Wayfarer lays down veg- and meat-loaded pies with—you guessed it—killer crusts.

The Pizza: Amalfi Cucina Italiana

By Troy Johnson

When four Italian friends who’d helped build the Buona Forchetta empire struck out on their own, some raised brows at the spot they chose—Lake San Marcos, a man-made, cult-loved boat community in suburban North County. Not exactly food-scene central. And maybe that was their stroke of genius. Putting a six-time World Pizza Champion (chef Marcello Avitabile) in a part of the county that’s been unfairly ignored by the culinary arts? Like putting a tiki bar in a PTA meeting. Huge hit. Now, the quartet has expanded to another un-hyped food neighborhood with Amalfi Cucina Italiana in Carmel Valley. The menu and specials are different, but both locations offer the same hefty Valtellina pizza, crafted with speck, provola di agerola, brie, caramelized onion, and sausage and wood-fired in a majestic Napoletano-style oven.

The Breakout: Shawarma Guys

By Amelia Rodriguez

Shawarma Guys founder Bryan Zeto grew up in an Iraqi Chaldean family in Detroit and was hailed as a top-notch home cook. But he still had a lot to learn about Middle Eastern cuisine before launching his food truck in South Park in 2019. A month of daily munching on slow-roasted meat, falafel, and other dishes helped the former phone salesman hone his recipes, including his now-iconic Wagyu shawarma and an addictive “garlic paste.” The truck nabbed a feature on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and, in 2020, Yelp named it the number-one restaurant in the country. The long lines that followed helped Zeto open a brick-and-mortar in La Mesa, with a Mira Mesa location on its way. His shawarma-stuffed egg rolls will melt you.

The Next Big Thing: Tanner’s Prime Burgers

By Troy Johnson

Get ready to hear this name. A lot. Years ago, Brandon Rodgers moved to San Diego to learn from iconic chef Tony DiSalvo of the now-defunct Jack’s before joining Gavin Kaysen at El Bizcocho (Rodgers cooked on Kaysen’s Iron Chef team, winning the battle against Michael Symon). After a stint at French Laundry, he helped his friend Corey Lee open Benu. Rodgers was chef de cuisine when Benu was awarded its third Michelin star. And now he’s back in San Diego for a burger with a hell of a resume. He teamed up with Eric Brandt of family-owned Brandt Beef to open the first Tanner’s in Oceanside. Their calling card is one-third-pound USDA prime patties, smashed then topped with beef bacon, caramelized onions, New School American Cheese, sauce, sweet onions, pickles, and tomatoes on a brioche bun. Oh, and they also serve a beef tallow ice-cream sandwich. Watch out, Shake Shack.

The Marquee Maker: Jojo Ruiz

By Troy Johnson

Some of the most promising chefs never get the support they deserve. Others get too much “support,” their talent and dreams sucked up by the bottom line of an unfeeling corporate structure. San Diego born-and-raised JoJo Ruiz seems to have found just the right fit with Andy Masi and Clique Hospitality. Together, they crafted marquee restaurants for two of the city’s top properties (Serẽa at Hotel Del and Lionfish at The Pendry), plus a sustainable sushi hand roll bar in Encinitas (Temaki). This year, their big unveilings were Lilian’s and Bing’s—the signature restaurant and bar, respectively, of the $100 million reimagining of the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe. Their secret? “JoJo’s passion is contagious, and it’s the soul of what we do together,” Masi says. A James Beard nod for Ruiz’s work in sustainable seafood doesn’t hurt, either. And they’re not done yet.

The Cornerstones: Mario + Morgan Jean Guerra

By Troy Johnson

Leucadia’s got loads of charms: unincorporated shagginess, farmy beach town chutzpah, cliffside homes with stairways once used to smuggle drugs. But, for decades, a thriving food scene was not one of them. Mario Guerra did something about that. Born in Mexico City, he moved to San Diego when he was young (he was GM at downtown’s sorely missed Candelas). He got “real jobs” in finance and manufacturing and moved his family to Leucadia, but he kept dreaming about that restaurant life. He traveled the world based on food scenes and became a hell of a home chef. And, finally, he couldn’t resist: He opened Moto Deli in 2015 as a little food truck, and now he and his wife Morgan (head of design) have seven concepts, including Hamburger Hut (good burgers meet tiki drinks), Corner Pizza, pheromonal date spot Valentina, and Vale Bodega. Leucadia’s food scene owes a debt to his inability to stay away.

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