A California-French tasting menu makes Eric Bost’s Jeune et Jolie a destination-worthy restaurant in Carlsbad.
(Amy Carson / For The Times)
23 of the best restaurants and bars for your San Diego weekend getaway
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Dining in San Diego is more compelling and wide-ranging than ever before.
I say that trusting I didn’t miss a culinary heyday in the city’s way-back history. But over the last decade, during my five years at The Times and before that as Eater’s national critic, I’ve been visiting San Diego regularly, forgoing beaches and Balboa Park for taquerias and omakase counters. Excellent cooking has always been at hand: mariscos trucks and alta cocina Mexicana restaurants in close dialogue with the cooking of Baja just across the border; ambitious chefs mapping their own definitions of “California cuisine”; Japanese, Chinese and Filipino communities bringing their vital influences.
Now, buoyed by a palpable confidence in the city’s civic identity as a food destination, the options are greater in number and quality.
Like any major city, particularly in California, the more you delve into a dining scene, the more you understand the cultural layers — and the more you see it will never be possible to know it all. Two recent trips gave me plenty of delicious insight, though. These nearly two dozen recommendations include sky’s-the-limit fine dining, heady Syrian and Iraqi flavors, Cal-Med expressions of the local harvests, cocktails, coffee and my two favorites for fish tacos.
The guide runs geographically, beginning at the top of San Diego County in Oceanside, so you can eat straight down the coast.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Valle
Modern Mexican $$$$
Roberto Alcocer, an accomplished chef who also runs a wonderful open-air restaurant called Malva in the Valle de Guadalupe two hours south of San Diego, chose beachside town Oceanside for his first stateside venture. In the summer, Valle’s sedate dining room in the Mission Pacific Beach Resort feels far from the heavily touristed streets just outside. Dinner revolves around a tasting menu of modernist Mexican dishes, priced at $185 per person. Over nine courses, the kitchen sends out gorgeous plates, immaculate and geometric in presentation. The best of them arrive in the heart of the meal: a tetela filled with pressed chicharrón in a bath of salsa verde; seared halibut over a freshly made tortilla with beurre blanc and asparagus, a Frenchified wink at the local penchant for fish tacos; and a delicate roulade of rabbit paired with inky and duly subtle huitlacoche sauce. A pairing of Mexican wines is equal parts education and delight.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
Steady State Roasting
Coffee $
I’m a coffee nerd who misses home-brewing while traveling. Ping-ponging every morning across the San Diego area in search of godly caffeination, I found my greatest happiness at Steady State’s handsome bar in Carlsbad. This is the rare coffeehouse where the baristas nail every genre. Purists can savor expressive, patiently tended pour-overs made using a Hario V60. Smooth espresso pulls need little embellishment, and fun concoctions like the maple-forward Pancake Syrup Latte still model balance. Bitters, along with honey and orange, give cold brew an a.m. cocktail edge. If talk of crafty drinks makes your eyes glaze over, you’re in luck: There’s also very good drip coffee to enjoy alongside a chocolate croissant or breakfast sandwich.
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(Amy Carson / For The Times)
Jeune et Jolie
French $$$
Any chance you remember Auburn? Eric Bost’s short-lived Melrose Avenue restaurant, housed in a storied location whose previous tenants included Hatfield’s and the late Michel Richard’s Citrus, toyed with the structures of fine dining in weird, delicious ways. It was an early casualty of the pandemic, closing soon after its first anniversary. Bost relocated to Carlsbad, where he has earned a loyal audience with several restaurant projects over the last few years. The most destination-worthy among them is Jeune et Jolie. An Art Deco vibe threads among the scribbly art and curved booths of its sunny dining room. It sets a light mood for dinner: a California-French tasting menu, priced at $120 per person, formatted with several choices for each of its four courses. The cooking, visually, aims for photo-shoot beauty with every plate, and then the combinations of flavors surprise with their complexity and warmth. I’m haunted by a summertime dish of pork loin served with apricots and also elderflower, which amplified the fruit’s floral qualities without tasting like a cloying splash of St-Germain. Stretch the meal by starting with oysters or other raw-bar options, which can also be ordered a la carte at the central bar. If the tone of the food sounds appealing but the idea of a tasting menu doesn’t, try Jeune et Jolie’s more casual, grill-focused sister restaurant Campfire down the block.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Atelier Manna
Eclectic $$
The French toast, saturated with custard and crowned with strawberries, stands so tall it brings to mind a mesa jutting up from the New Mexico landscape. The variation on Turkish eggs is a study of soft textures: trembly poached eggs, herbed yogurt, feathery herbs, a drizzle of chile-garlic butter. Scallops sink into grits scattered with a very Californian take on succotash with heirloom beans and grilled corn. The plate beams sunshine. Atelier Manna is a brilliant brunch restaurant, and if that sounds oxymoronic, then you haven’t known Andrew Bachelier’s cooking. He left Jeune et Jolie during the pandemic and regrouped with this project: He keeps daytime hours in Leucadia (a community that’s part of Encinitas) serving improbably poetic dishes on a covered patio alongside a residential stretch of Highway 101. The restaurant is busy; in Los Angeles it would be downright mobbed. Bachelier also has impeccable taste in beverages, serving brews from Steady State Roasting up the road and the wonderful London-based Rare Tea Co. He also hired bar ace Nick Sinutko to create “vitality tonics.” With combinations that play on the prominent notes in bourbon, say, combining cherry, vanilla, citrus and ginger, the tonics essentially score among the best nonalcoholic cocktails in Southern California.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Addison
San Diego New American $$$$
Southern California has only a handful of restaurants in the model of the haute cuisine temple, and Addison is one of them. The sanctuary, in this case, is a fusty 1990s-era dining room in the Fairmont Grand Del Mar. What’s on the plate is far more exhilarating. William Bradley and his team create a tasting menu that weaves together flavors from our region’s key cultural influences — most prominently the cuisines of Mexico and Japan — with luxe ingredients shaped and molded and tweezered into edible finery. A recent summer meal included chawanmushi gilded with Hokkaido uni and, cleverly, broccoli buds, and later a fragrant, soulful lamb broth served with lengua and fava beans. In between arrived caviar over koshihikari rice with smoked sabayon (a Bradley signature, for good reason) and a play on fish and chips with burnt onion dip and incredible sourdough bread with two types of butter. A balletic front-of-house staff completes the extravagance. It costs $375 per person, with options for wine pairings that start at that same price. I found two things to be true — that this is one of the most accomplished fine-dining experiences in the state, and that the sticker shock is a real jolt.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
La Corriente
San Diego Seafood $$
The first United States outpost from a Mexico-based restaurant group, with locations that include Tijuana and Mexico City, opened in La Jolla this spring with the company’s established focus: Pacific seafood. The room aims for a vintage 1930s air with pressed tin ceilings, wood paneling and tropical-print wallpaper. La Corriente appeals to me most as a lunchtime hangout, with the restaurant’s doors open to a temperate day and a spread of soft-shell tacos, grilled branzino (or whatever the day’s catch brings) and shrimp pozole.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Wayfarer Bread & Pastry
San Diego Bakery $
Crystal White has created the San Diego area’s promised land for pastries. Look to both the sweet and savory possibilities: flaky blueberry scones, textbook croissants and summer specials like tomato-cheddar pastry dotted with thyme and buns filled with sweet corn custard, oyster mushrooms and Parmesan. Morning lines can be daunting, but a preorder option on the bakery’s website speeds things up tremendously. I was sitting at a restaurant bar, tapping in my choices to pick up the next morning, and the women next to me looked over at my phone and exclaimed, “Wayfarer! It’s the best!” And then I added a salted chocolate chip cookie to my mix at her suggestion. It was chewy-crisp excellence.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Realm of the 52 Remedies
San Diego Speakeasy Bar $$
The setup admittedly sounds like gimmickry: a hidden speakeasy in the city’s Convoy District, secreted inside Common Theory Public House behind a stark white foyer with shelves full of jarred roots and herbs in the manner of a Chinese apothecary. Once inside, though, the beauty of the space and the seriousness of craft transcend any whiff of hokum. Hung tapestries and dangling beads of gourds and backlit marble fill the room among low tables, cushioned chairs and a central marble bar lit from within. Chris Lee leads the team of bartenders. They constantly explore new themes on their cocktail menus. Currently they’re focused on Filipino-inspired flavors, including a pandan-centered creation made with clarified coconut cream, pineapple, lime, gin and Bordiga Chiot amaro to reinforce the herbal notes. Dishes, such as longaniza over grits with coconut gravy, revolve in step with the beverage program. But it should be said: These pros are also happy to accommodate drink requests. The versatility on display puts Realm of the 52 Remedies on a short list of my favorite bars in Southern California.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Ichifuji Sushi
San Diego Japanese $$$$
San Diego, like Los Angeles, is replete with sushi restaurants in myriad styles and price levels. In the mid-tier omakase category, I suggest seeking out the 10-seat counter that local veterans Hiroshi Ichikawa and Masato Fujita opened last year in Linda Vista. A nigiri-focused meal costs $140 per person, and a second option at $160 per person weaves in small-plate courses, many of which focus on seasonal seafood. The sushi flows through a traditional gamut of fish, among them a couple of pristine examples of mackerel, locally caught spot prawns and of-the-moment catches flown in from Japan. Two factors distinguish Ichifuji: Ichikawa and Fujita are exceptionally personable, adept at carrying on and fostering conversation around their bar as their hands perform fleet work, and the by-the-glass sake selection is large enough to accommodate tastes and price ranges.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Mal Al Sham
San Diego County Mediterranean $
“Do you have mansaf?” I asked our server. I’d seen shots of the dish — a layered platter of bread, rice and lamb in spiced yogurt sauce — while researching Mal Al Sham online, but it wasn’t listed on the restaurant’s Syrian menu. “Yes,” she answered, and she soon returned carrying the dish. Mansaf is often called the national dish of Jordan, although it’s also beloved in nearby countries. This one ranks among the best versions I’ve had in restaurants across the United States. The sauce, made with a key ingredient of preserved and reconstituted yogurt called jameed, had the exact right sharpness.
Five-year-old Mal Al Sham resides on the main road through El Cajon, a city with one of the country’s largest Iraqi immigrant and refugee communities. The restaurant honors the population with a weekend special of quzi, another lamb and rice dish more peppered with sweet, bright spices (but no yogurt sauce). For a feast, surround these dishes with other regional staples: silky hummus, fattoush tangy with pomegranate molasses, beefy kibbeh in fried or grilled variations and extra-crunchy falafel. For seekers of outstanding Levantine cooking, El Cajon is a worthwhile 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego.
Five-year-old Mal Al Sham resides on the main road through El Cajon, a city with one of the country’s largest Iraqi immigrant and refugee communities. The restaurant honors the population with a weekend special of quzi, another lamb and rice dish more peppered with sweet, bright spices (but no yogurt sauce). For a feast, surround these dishes with other regional staples: silky hummus, fattoush tangy with pomegranate molasses, beefy kibbeh in fried or grilled variations and extra-crunchy falafel. For seekers of outstanding Levantine cooking, El Cajon is a worthwhile 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego.
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(Andrew Bolton)
Wolf in the Woods
San Diego Wine Bars $$
Dinner at Wolf in the Woods, longtime local restaurateur Johnny Rivera’s quiet triumph among elegant homes in the Mission Hills neighborhood, might kick off with a charcuterie board, or a snack of rosemary-speckled potato chips and chicken liver pâté with cherry chutney. The meal really begins, though, with a bowl of executive chef Carmine Lopez’s corn-piñon soup. I grew up around farmers, and the scents streaming up from the bowl smelled like their fields in summertime. The smoky bite of Hatch green chiles in the corn fritters dotting the surface point to the menu’s dominant inspiration: the flavors of New Mexico. Chase them in the carne adovada (pork braised in ground red chile) served with fry bread, and in the pot de crème for dessert enriched with cocoa from Kakawa Chocolate House, a great stop for drinking chocolate in Santa Fe.
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(Shannon Partrick)
Quixote
San Diego Mexican $$
Last year San Diego restaurant group Consortium Holdings reintroduced the LaFayette Hotel and Club in North Park, a sprawling Colonial-style property built in 1946; its pool and bars had been raucous local hangouts for decades. A reported $31-million makeover transformed the place into a palace of maximalism, filled with so many patterns and textures and details you think your brain will automatically shut down for a reboot — but then somehow the effect is almost soothing? It’s a very fun place to stay. Quixote, the LaFayette’s lead restaurant, matches the chaotic grandeur with its own visual drama: A decommissioned Catholic church is the source of the dining room’s stained-glass windows, iron sconces, ceramic tiles and wood repurposed from pews. Chef José Cepeda’s modern Mexican menu namechecks Oaxaca as inspiration, but the cooking really traverses his own imagination. Seafood is a strength. Zero in on the masa doughnut crowned with blue crab salad and a terrific butterflied and grilled fish (the variety changes) served with greens and smooth, earthy salsa de guaje. To drink: Servers will capably talk you through dozens of mezcal options.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Cellar Hand
San Diego Farm-to-table $$
The newest restaurant in this guide, opened in June, does justice to a familiar formula: California-Mediterranean, small plates, close relationships with local farmers, smartly edited wine list leaning on Central Coast producers. Nick and Carmen Perr, who are married, and executive chef Logan Kendall land the aesthetics. On a calm, semicovered patio, share baba ghanoush and labneh swirled onto ceramic plates with puffed, rustic pita, followed by a salad of dead-ripe tomatoes and stone fruit splashed with red wine; summer squash amped with feta, harissa and a witty merger of za’atar and salsa macha; and artichoke ravioli that burst under a fork’s tines like poached eggs.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Mabel's Gone Fishing
San Diego Seafood $$
On always-bustling 30th Street in North Park, Chelsea Coleman and Rae Gurne run the kind of neighborhood restaurant that pulls you into its gravitational orbit. An energetic crowd flows from streetside tables into the thronged, genially cramped dining room; the lighting flatters everyone with its drawn-butter glow. Solo diners will be happy at the bar. Salted marconas and stuffed dates for snacks, mussels escabeche and chile-flecked gambas al ajillo, an especially good entree of striped bass floating over chorizo, greens, olives and golden raisins in tight harmony. One sees quickly that an Iberian motif runs through the menu, successfully so. A gin-centered cocktail list doubles down on the theme. Expect finely tuned martinis and gin and tonics thoroughly imbued with citrus and herbs.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
James Coffee Co.
San Diego Coffee $
This is for the travelers who will go slightly out of their way for a cup of coffee far superior to the acrid fuel served in most hotel lobbies. Of the four locations of James Coffee Co. spread across San Diego County, I’m fond of the Little Italy bar housed in an industrial barn of a multiuse building known as “the Space.” It serves excellent espresso drinks, and even better cold brew. A latte sweetened with condensed milk and nutmeg is about as crazy as the concoctions get, which I respect. There is limited seating that is often crowded; I’m happy to stand by the counter, down my macchiato and keep the day moving. I swung by the North Park location and asked for a pour-over. The barista told me nobody had asked for one in two weeks. It still showed more finesse than most of the watery efforts I taste in coffeehouses.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Mitch's Seafood
San Diego Seafood $$
A destination for casual seafood on the waterfront where locals and visitors converge? That’s Mitch’s, a counter-service operation located at a picturesque angle of Point Loma Marina from which the downtown skyline is visible beyond the crowded rows of boat slips. It’s easy to disappear into poutine covered in Monterey Jack gravy, balls of fried queso fresco and drifts of Dungeness crab meat, but focus mostly on basics: grilled fish sandwiches made from the day’s catch; seafood cocktails, including a generous campechana; limey ceviches and beer-battered fish tacos. Speaking of beer: Note the oft-changing selection of drafts on tap from some of San Diego’s best craft breweries. There is usually a fast-moving line out the door to order, followed by a race to secure outdoor seating facing the view.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Animae
San Diego Asian Steakhouse $$$
Chef-restaurateur Brian Malarkey and business partner Christopher Puffer opened their broadly defined “pan-Asian steakhouse” a month before the pandemic bore down. Its enormous Little Italy dining room, grandly carpeted and curtained, was from the start a comfortable place for conversation at reasonable volumes. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2021, when the owners promoted Tara Monsod to executive chef, that the direction of the menu cemented and excelled. Scan for the dishes that Monsod shapes and defines with Filipino flavors. Start with superbly rendered pig’s ear, thin and shattering, taut and a little sweet with tamarind glaze. Short rib kare kare nearly melts among green beans and eggplant. The restaurant’s version of lechon could use a little more crackle to its skin; lean to the tomahawk pork chop with mango dipping sauce. As an antidote to summer heat, pastry chef Laura Warren fashions a stunning, cooling version of buko pandan — a snowy drift of young coconut mousse surrounded by pandan Anglaise and bouncy cubes of pandan gelée.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Kingfisher
San Diego Asian $$
Kim Phan, Ky Phan and Quan Le — owners of the local Viet-Cajun Crab Hut restaurants — opened one of San Diego’s most stylish restaurants in 2022. A dramatic black-and-gold bar anchors the dining room, its walls covered with a sweeping lotus print in shades of green and pink. A soursop and coconut milk cocktail called Jungle Fang sets the mood for the cooking, overseen by executive chef David Sim, which melds Southeast Asian flavors with Californian creativity. He surrounds poached shrimp with green papaya, banana blossoms, ribbons of kohlrabi and citrus. Striped seabass caught in Baja waters absorbs the sweet funk of caramelized fish sauce, offset with Meyer lemon, fried shallot rings and the simple rightness of buttered rice. Come with a group to devour the smoked dry-aged duck platter, and then save room for flan doused in coffee syrup with salty-sweet miso cream.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Callie
East Village Mediterranean $$$
From his swank East Village dining room, Travis Swikard embarks on a broad survey of culinary touchstones on or not far from the Mediterranean Sea. Pastas such as pappardelle tangled in duck and pork sausage ragù are a highlight. Otherwise, go heavy on inspirations from the sun-drenched southwest Asian/North African region: dips like hummus with the added depth of roasted garlic and smoky baba ghanouj dusted with za’atar, followed by a soulful reimagining of dolmas (grape leaves) stuffed with grilled lamb merguez. Swikard embraces the Southern California ethos of ingredient worship; look for seasonal salads, dessert specials centering spectacular fruit and the freshest local uni on tomato toast with Ibérico ham. Bolstered by personable wine service from sommelier Tracy Latimer and a gracious service staff, Callie continues to best itself. Count it among the most welcoming, consistent and finely tuned high-end restaurants in Southern California.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Las Cuatro Milpas
San Diego Mexican $
Why the constant line zigzagging out the door of this 91-year-old daytime restaurant in Barrio Logan? Corn tortillas, rolled with pork or chicken and then fried to order in pork lard. Chorizo con huevo, the contents of its bowl covered in soupy beans and tomato-tinged Spanish rice so dense with flavor your taste buds hardly know how to parse the molecules. The short menu has a few other items, but that pair of dishes has been enough to sustain the institution that Petra and Natividad Estudillo began in 1933. Three of their grandchildren, all sisters, continue to run the business. May it never change. They expect you to know your order, taken in front of the open kitchen, to keep the queue moving. Bring cash.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Hayes Burger
San Diego Burgers $
What would a list of restaurants anywhere in Southern California be without at least one recommendation for a smashburger? Your choices at Hayes Burger are refreshingly sparse: a burger, a cheeseburger, a double cheeseburger, fresh-cut fries and “Jimi fries” made in the spirit of In-N-Out’s “animal style” with a melted slice of American cheese, ketchup-tinged mayo sauce and griddled chopped onions. Simplicity wins out. A double cheeseburger hits all the fundamental pleasures, with craggy, homey edges to the patties and the seasonings of salt and pepper pronounced. There’s a location of Hayes Burger in the restaurant-rich Normal Heights neighborhood, but I prefer the one in Barrio Logan. Take your order to go and stroll one block to enjoy your meal among the incredible murals in Chicano Park under the San Diego-Coronado Bridge.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Fish Guts
San Diego Seafood $$
I won’t presume to tell you I’ve eaten enough fish tacos in San Diego to proclaim the finest among them with any authority. But I will say that Pablo Becker’s two-year-old Barrio Logan taqueria, smirky name and all, is a first-rate perch from which to start the conversation. Masa for the handmade tortillas comes from a local source, and nearly all of the menu’s seafood comes from Pacific waters. A splotch of mustard in the beer batter gives his Baja-style fish taco some subtle zing. “Fish and chips,” his most brilliant creation, involves potato salad dressed in tartar sauce and translucent wisps of fried spuds for garnish. I noticed I wasn’t the only one shaking my head with a goofy smile while I wolfed it down. It’s little surprise this place is a hit. It’s also tiny. On weekends, plan to come midday to avoid long waits.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
TJ Oyster Bar
San Diego County Seafood $$
A trip to San Diego for me usually includes a lunchtime outing about 12 miles from central San Diego, to a tiny mariscos restaurant in a small strip mall with precarious parking. The fish tacos at TJ Oyster Bar are the basic strips of battered fish, covered in shredded cabbage and pico de gallo with a squiggle of crema, awaiting various hot and creamy sauces set on the table to customize the flavors. Read more deeply into the wall-mounted menu to find a few of my longtime favorites: smoked tuna, excellent over tostadas; mulchy shredded stingray, good with hot sauce and an extra squeeze of lime; and chipotle shrimp paired with an extravagant (but not ruinous) amount of molten cheese. It’s important to follow the address to the original TJ Oyster Bar, no matter what GPS tells you. A bigger location not far away, and in a much larger outdoor mall, might have quicker service but otherwise none of the pluck or camaraderie as the locals’ hangout down the street.
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