Hopefully, I’m not alone in confusing San Diego’s collection of ranch communities. We have Bressi Ranch, Scripps Ranch, and Carmel Mountain Ranch, plus lesser knowns Black Mountain Ranch and Fairbanks Ranch. Most are suburban enclaves …
There’s nothing easier to find in North Park than a good IPA. But a good lichtenhainer? Only one place that I know about. So, what’s a lichtenhainer? I wondered too. The unsurprising answer would be …
When word broke last year that the hip Italian restaurant in my neighborhood was opening a bodega on the same block, it primed me for a 2018 anticipating all the authentic, imported delights it would …
Turns out, I’ve been ordering cashew chicken all wrong. I’ve been doing so since my picky teens, when I was the opposite of an adventurous eater at Chinese and Thai restaurants. Probably for that reason, …
I hit Rock Bottom on a Wednesday night — the one that’s been succeeding at the brewpub thing on La Jolla Village Drive for 20 years this year. The official name is Rock Bottom Restaurant …
In the food item as bowl domain, few have impressed me so much as the caramel apple dessert offered by the new North Park coffee shop, Deja Brew Lounge. Situated in a converted craftsman bungalow …
It reads like the sort of thing you have to try at least once. A new Kearny Mesa spot called Brick Bowl dishes up a new way of eating meat, cheese, and bread. Rather than …
Credit Urban Solace as a building block to the lifestyle destination North Park has become. The neighborhood didn’t yet have that national press cachet when Solace rode a rising comfort food trend into what’s now …
The San Diego craft beer community was rocked this week by the news two of its best small breweries are in serious trouble. First, on Tuesday, Rachael and Matt Akin, the husband and wife team …
You don’t have to do anything this holiday season. Despite what the song says, you don’t have to deck the halls, join the chorus, or don any sort of gay apparel. You don’t have to …
A sign near the door of this bakery promises all goods are free of gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, tree nuts, and peanuts. What’s left? I’m forced to wonder. Starry Lane Bakery originally opened out in …
If you watched a lot of Taco Bell commercials in the late 90s, you might have been left with the impression that gorditas are large tacos made with pitas instead of tortillas. However, like a …
They call this North Park tasting room the “world’s first hard kombucha bar.” Not hard to believe given high alcohol kombucha didn’t really exist prior to spring 2016. That’s when Chula Vista-based Boochcraft took kombucha, …
Here’s an awkward faux pas: I showed up at Lane Field Park Market last Sunday expecting to buy produce. It’s not a farmers market. For one thing, there are no farmers: this weekly market is …
I should have been ordering the local catch all along. When North Park’s Beerfish first opened a couple years ago, I went for the fish and chips. They were all right. After it retooled a …
Since the day it opened in 2015, Helix Brewing Co. has offered one of the county’s most appealing places to hang out and drink beer. Though right in the thick of La Mesa’s industrial zone, …
They’ve been labeled a “viral food,” and “cult dessert,” and been likened to silicone breast implants. The Japanese call them mizu shingen mochi, but the internet really fell in love with them in 2016, when …
It’s a large plate, draped with a plantain leaf, atop which sits a stunning variety of foods. There are rice and stewed pinto beans, and potatoes. The rice is topped with a fried egg, encircled …
It’s a rare occasion we get to look at trends emerging in cities like New York and London, and say, That started in San Diego. So credit Josh Hembree and Keldon Premuda of Miramar’s Setting …
What’s the opposite of a sweet tooth? Because for a number of years in my early adulthood I was that. Making student loan payments instead of ordering dessert. Quitting soda and taking up coffee. Learning …
It’s tough to think of a peeted single malt whiskey as moonshine, especially from a recipe as old as any laws in this country. But for decades, that’s technically what Mike Curphy had been making. …
Probably one of the most urban things about downtown San Diego is its motley accumulation of restaurants. Most of the press goes to well-financed, high-volume eateries with glossy interiors, PR representation, and “up and coming” …
Usually San Ysidro means a trip through the world’s busiest border crossing and, ipso facto, tacos for lunch. But this time I’m taking the second to LAST USA EXIT in search of bone marrow. And …
Back in September, in what has become an autumn tradition, the Great American Beer Festival heaped loads of recognition upon the general greatness of San Diego beer. Area breweries claimed five golds en route to …
“There are two sides to every story.” This phrase has been following me around for several weeks. Maybe it’s the alternative facts-age replacement for that cliché of acceptance, “It is what it is.” Whatever the …
I don’t suppose many readers have occasion to go out in Escondido’s eastern sprawl for carne asada. I doubt most of us need to travel a mile to find a choice of spots serving it. …
Drums, giants, and Mother GooseStargazing in Anza-Borrego652 Palm Canyon DriveBorrego SpringsWinter FunIllustration by Ted SkirvanThis year, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park was officially designated an International Dark Sky Community, thanks to years of concerted effort to …
When I heard about a new mariscos food truck parking in Golden Hill, I started fluttering around it like a moth on a porchlight. Mariscos El Chingon has started parking daily in front of Anakin’s …
Pouring nearly 50 distinct brewery collaboration beers this year, the Karl Strauss Brewing beer week party dubbed Collabapalooza (November 10) showcases a San Diego brewing community that remains for the most part interconnected and mutually …
Most breakfast menus tend to be long reads, just not very interesting ones. You’ll find an entire section dedicated to all the predictable variations of eggs, meat, potatoes and toast. Another to pancakes and waffles. …
Let’s just call this what it is: a golden era for ice cream in San Diego. Made from scratch ice cream parlors have been opening up left and right this year, and the latest neighborhood …
I’ve gotten used to paying 15 dollars for lunch. I remember days that would seem outlandish, but these days I’m unfazed by $15, when that charge includes tax and tip. That’s usually for a sandwich …
I’ll go ahead and say it. I never much cared for South Park Abbey. It had a solid beer list, and I would catch the occasional NFL game there, but between food and booze, and …
It’s that time of year again: San Diego Beer Week. From November 2-11 the local beer business goes all out to celebrate, with special events, special beer releases, and plenty of toasts. The San Diego …
I kept calling it the happy hour menu, and my server kept correcting me: “Sunset menu.” Sounded like semantics to me. It’s available from 4:30 until 6 pm nightly, conventional happy hour timing. Then the …
Earlier this month, the San Diego Brewers Guild announced a new study showing that San Diego craft beer made a more than one billion-dollar economic impact in 2017. The news arrives just as Karl Strauss …
I found a flyer for it in a brewery tasting room, misspelling the word "Scooter." But that’s nothing new with internet domains. This site was called Scoootr.com, with three Os, and it offered food delivery …
The man had a problem that I could help solve. And all I had to do was eat good, well-made sushi at a bargain price. I’d shown up to Yoshino Japanese Deli, late, like I …
The pair of Brewery Igniter turnkey brewhouses along the Carlsbad stretch of El Camino Real got off to a rocky start. The dudes behind Rouleur Brewing and Wiseguy Brewing were relative newcomers to San Diego, …
There’s this undeveloped lot at the corner of Carlsbad Village Drive and State Street, the main crossroads of Carlsbad Village. Well, mostly undeveloped. For some time there’s been a little juice bar doing business out …
Golden Hill has an ice cream shop, and it’s making me realize the sort of family neighborhood it’s become. Mutual Friend Ice Cream opened next door to Dark Horse Coffee Roasters, and I’d call it …
Call it the food writer’s dilemma. Sometimes you eat something that tastes wonderful, even though it doesn’t always look that great. Because food-loving readers tend to share food stories mostly based on pretty photos of …
After several years of a new San Diego brewery opening every two or three weeks, 2018 has progressed at a slower pace. Until the past two months, which has seen a flurry of new businesses …
The name Tartine lends about as much excitement as you’ll ever see attached to the word Bakery. San Francisco’s premier artisanal bread and pastry shop, Tartine Bakery has captured the food world’s imagination with a …
I’ve heard brewers compare what they do to making soup, chili, or other kinds of cooking, but it’s not often you’ll hear a chef concur. “Brewers, they’re like cooks,” Javier Plascencia tells me, “they have …
A marker board out front points out that Zagat has proclaimed Supernatural Sandwiches one of “15 must try sandwiches in America.” And I agree. For those of a younger generation, Zagat is like Yelp, but …
If you’d told me two months ago I’d be sitting in a church banquet hall eating soul food, I’d have bet I was taking a trip to the South. Instead it was a short drive …
India Street is typically thronged on a Saturday night, its city best restaurant scene luring every manner of date night, birthday celebration, and — is that a bachelorette party? I’m forced to wonder, what is …
Flavors of East Africa was already known to sambusa-loving farmers market regulars when it opened a permanent restaurant on El Cajon Boulevard about eight years back. Since that time, it’s moved a couple doors down …
They say the sun doesn’t set on the British empire, but what I think they really mean is there’s never a time of day that a British-styled pub isn’t open somewhere on the planet, serving …