SDUT Pacific Online Logo
Advertisement
Advertisement

Fox Restaurant Concepts to add 4 new places in San Diego, 2 at Fashion Valley

By Michele Parente
San Diego Union-Tribune
Share

Fox Restaurant Concepts, owner of Flower Child in Del Mar and founder of True Food Kitchen, is expanding in San Diego in a big way — opening four new eateries in the coming months, including two at Fashion Valley — and scouting more locations for the future.

The Phoenix-based company’s growth spurt — this year it plans to add a total of 18 restaurants nationwide to its already sizable family of 50 restaurants — will have an emphasis on the San Diego market in part because founder and CEO Sam Fox has a house in Coronado. Plus, the region’s craft beer-loving, healthy fare-eating customer base dovetails well with the restaurant group’s various concepts, Fox said.

“We love the market, we love the people and we love the area,” Fox said in an interview Friday. “It’s a catalyst. I spend a lot of my time in San Diego, and I would actually like to spend more time here.”

He said Mission Valley provides a dynamic setting for restaurants.

“For a long time, True Food Kitchen at Fashion Valley was our No. 1 True Food. It was very, very busy,” Fox said.

“In the Mission Valley area, you’ve got the mall, the movie theater, offices, residents, visitors. We really love the scope of businesses and how it gets used.”

Fox Restaurant Concepts sold its 20 True Food restaurants — a moderately upscale chain developed with author and health guru Dr. Andrew Weil — to an investment firm in August.

Looking forward, Fox declined to disclose which parts of San Diego County might be the next locations for an outpost of Flower Child, the popular, fast casual, healthy food chain at Del Mar’s Flower Hill Promenade. But he did provide details on the four full-service restaurants coming to San Diego.

(Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by Fox Restaurant Concepts, the original version of this story had the wrong locations at Fashion Valley for Blanco Tacos + Tequila and North Italia. The correct locations are below.)

  • Two of them will occupy existing spaces (one in Fashion Valley, one in Coronado), while two will be newly developed (at Fashion Valley and in the under-construction One Paseo project in Carmel Valley).
  • The first to open, in the fall, will be Blanco Tacos + Tequila, a modern Mexican restaurant, on the second floor, taking over the space long occupied by California Pizza Kitchen, which moved downstairs.
  • The San Diego Blanco Tacos + Tequila will be the first to debut an update to the 10-year-old brand, with a healthier menu and aesthetic and an expanded cocktail program.
  • In the winter, the hand-crafted pizza and pasta concept North Italia will open in a newly created, stand-alone building at the Fashion Valley mall. Fox said it will be near Bloomingdale’s north entrance and will prompt a reorganization of that corner of Fashion Valley, including a relocation of the mall’s valet.
  • A second North Italia restaurant is slated to open at One Paseo in the first quarter of 2019.
  • In that same period, a yet-to-be-named concept will open on Coronado’s Orange Avenue, currently home to Costa Azul, which is closing. Fox called the new restaurant “an American grill with a coastal vibe.” It will go from serving coffee and pastries in the morning to lunch, dinner and cocktails. A new back patio is being built, the kitchen will be glassed in and there will be an indoor/outdoor bar.

The Coronado restaurant “is an every day neighborhood restaurant, where you could go for everything from brunch to date night to a business meeting,” Fox said.

“It will be a great every day restaurant that the people of Coronado will enjoy. But our real goal is that San Diegans will want to cross the bridge to come over to eat there.”

Fox said the restaurant will have a test kitchen where he can work with his chefs on dish development.

“I’ll tell you, I haven’t had any problem attracting members of the staff who work in Arizona to come to Coronado,” he said. “Especially in the summer.”

michele.parente@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @sdeditgirl

Michele Parente

Michele Parente is the Dining, Wine + Lifestyle reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Her areas of expertise include the Valle de Guadalupe wine region, fashion, television, women’s issues and coverage of aging, such as the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia and family caregiving. Michele is the former Sunday and features editor, where she oversaw profiles, special projects, such as the Legacy of WWII and in-depth reports on a variety of topics. She joined the U-T in 2003, supervising coverage areas that have included features, fashion, TV, Food, Consumer Health and Arts & Entertainment. Previously, Michele was the assistant features editor at The Oregonian, in Portland, as well as the Portland City Hall reporter. She spent 10 years at New York Newsday as a reporter on the crime, education, state legislature and New York City Hall beats. She was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting. A native New Yorker, Michele received her B.A. in political science and Italian Literature at UC Berkeley. In 1980, she studied at L’Università di Urbino, in Italy. One of her life’s goals is to make her way through each of the world’s great wine regions.

Advertisement