“You’re going to Spring Valley?” she told me, “You know, the best kept secret in San Diego is a Spring Valley meat counter. It makes the best carne asada….” A couple nights later, a wide …

UPDATE: Effective Saturday, March 13, California has removed the meal service requirement for breweries, distilleries, and bars. Until 8pm each day, customers may order adult beverages without also ordering food, for on premise, outdoor consumption. …

Don’t let anyone tell you the pandemic has scared everyone away from the restaurant business. Against the odds, we’re still seeing new restaurant openings happen in 2021. One of them even persuaded me to drive …

This week, I cracked open a cold one. Pulled the tab of a 12-ounce can and heard that satisfying cshhht sound that usually presages enjoyment of an ale or lager. Except it wasn’t beer inside, …

Scoring a weekend table at a decent outdoor dining venue has become something of a post pandemic sport. Go to any restaurant with patio dining on a sunny Saturday afternoon and you can expect a …

Spring wouldn’t technically arrive for another few weeks, but the sun was out. After what has nearly been a full, cooped-up year of covid, that was all the encouragement we needed to have a picnic. …

When a friend of mine started working as an eighth grade teacher, he reported a wave of addiction sweeping through his classroom. The kids, as he told it, were hooked on Flamin Hot Cheetos. The …

Back in the fall of 2019, O’Brien’s Pub co-owner and general manager Tyson Blake was manning the bar, catching up with a regular customer. O’Brien’s is well known as one of the city’s oldest and …

The food trucks in South Park seem to be multiplying. Alongside the usual Mariscos/fish taco truck holding down the Target parking lot, there’s now a Sonora-style grilled taco truck. The Shawarma Guys truck is a …

I felt like a kid in a pizza store, looking through the front window of Gelati & Peccati. Rather than post a menu, the North Park eatery lays out its colorful spread of Roman-style pizza …

Third-generation San Diegan Kaylee McLaughlin married her high school sweetheart. When his Navy career sent him to a remote corner of Nevada, she and their two young children followed. For someone accustomed to having ready …

About ten years ago, young mom and aspiring personal chef Starr Edwards started bringing her food samples to farmers markets in Leucadia and San Marcos, hoping to drum up business. Among her samples was a …

I’ve tried not to write about it, because I haven’t wanted to encourage readers to seek them out. But since December, despite state and local covid regulations restricting on-premise dining, hundreds of San Diego restaurants …

I'm not sure which happened first. Did we drive into City Heights because we had a craving for egg rolls? Or did the urge arise because we realized how close we already were to Á …

This year marks the first I spend Valentine’s Day as a married man. Not to gloat too much, but I hit the jackpot. My gorgeous and successful bride happens to be an accomplished home chef. …

White dude with beards. That’s the impression most have about who works within the craft beer business, and it’s often accurate. Within San Diego and the industry at large. Statistics offered by the Brewers Association …

A couple weeks ago, I got a headline wrong. After mayor Todd Gloria limited the fees delivery apps can charge restaurants, I wrote: “Delivery fees are capped, but don’t expect to pay less.” Problem is, …

The sun came out, making the return of outdoor dining a hot ticket all over town. At least, as we drove across town, we saw packed patios and parklets all over, and lines forming at …

Though he once described a favorite Wisconsin farmhouse ale as “nutritious,” J.J. Watt probably did not become three-time NFL defensive player of the year by drinking craft beer. But he has apparently enjoyed a few …

I’m always on the lookout for a new kind of soup to try, and yet for some reason I’m always surprised when I find one. What’s not surprising is that most of the unfamiliar soup …

The clock was ticking towards the inauguration of the new president, and a look inside the fridge confirmed what I already knew: we were out of eggs. And any other breakfast protein. And bread. And …

Someone finally did something about the excess fees charged by third party delivery apps such as Doordash, UberEats, and GrubHub. And that someone was the new mayor. Recently inaugurated mayor Todd Gloria issued an executive …

Like most San Diego breweries, Deft Brewing resumed drink service last week, when the three-week stay-at-home order issued in early December finally lifted (after seven weeks). The Morena neighborhood beermaker offers a shaded patio and …

It figures given the year we’ve been having that fate, and/or the state of California, picked the coldest, windiest time of the year to re-institute outdoor dining in San Diego. I’m sure there are plenty …

Scores of San Diego restaurants have closed permanently during the pandemic, but there’s at least one subset of eateries that only seem to be growing stronger: those serving Nashville hot chicken. I’ve tried so much …

North County’s Aztec Brewing Company will celebrate its tenth anniversary this year — no small milestone. But it will also spend the year celebrating something bigger: the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Aztec Brewing brand. According …

It’s kind of surprising that I haven’t written before about Bahn Thai. I’ve been eating at the University Heights restaurant since it opened, going on ten years ago, and I’ve returned often. The most likely …

I’d seen enough photos to know Cesarina offers one heck of a romantic dining destination. A lot of good that does anybody now, though. Or so I thought. Truth is, in the past couple years, …

Peering in from the sunny sidewalk, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light. Once they did, I found a room half filled with customers, belly up or seated at tables near …

They bill themselves as virtual restaurants, available to order through all the usual delivery apps. But there’s a little more back story to TJ Burrito Co. and Blue Luna Café & Deli. Including a walk-up …

From a diner’s perspective, one of the more amazing aspects of the past year has been that a handful of entrepreneurs have gone through with new restaurant openings. Most don’t have much choice in the …

Restaurant delivery apps were already thriving before the pandemic hit, and without doubt they have benefited from our current all take-out, all-the-time dining culture. But, if you’ve used any over the years, you may have …

We’ve already seen the evolution of hard seltzer yield a spinoff known as hard tea, and now a San Diego business has launched around a further expansion of the concept: hard yerba mate. Yerbuzz blends …

There’s a sort of fundamentalism that exists in certain corners of the foodie universe, wherein self-appointed protectors of the cuisine will tell you which ingredients are allowed or not allowed in a dish. On the …

When Clairemont restaurant Kroran Uyghur Cuisine opened in mid-2018, it brought new cultural fare to San Diego, one not often found within the United States. I was excited to try it and spent most of …

If you go to the website for East Village booze maker Old Harbor Distilling Co. these days, the Shop link will take you to a product page featuring the brand’s assorted craft spirits, including Barrelflag …

Delivery apps are great, but they also suck. Great because they deliver virtually every restaurant to your doorstep — an especially handy service during a shutdown. Terrible because they charge money coming and going: customers …

When I covered Mission Hills’ Mr. Trustee ice cream counter on its sweltering opening day this summer, I did not anticipate revisiting the spot on a cool winter afternoon. Nor did I expect to be …

The business of making and selling beer went all kinds of sideways in 2020. So, with vaccinations beginning across the country, when can we start to look forward to some semblance of normalcy? The first …

Christmas Jerk I managed to avoid being homeless on Christmas Eve 1979, but just barely. Unemployed since that summer, I found a cheap flophouse on 12th and Island where 70 bucks a month got me …

There have always been many great reasons to visit Bay Park fish market Catalina Offshore Products, most of them having to do with seafood you take to prepare at home. But if you’ve stopped by …

Despite being a repeat customer at plenty of all-you-can-eat Indian food buffets, I don’t yet feel as though I have eaten all I can. Though I have left most of them well satiated, from a …

If your pandemic bingo card has restaurants re-opening in response to a judge declaring strip clubs can not be shut down by the state’s stay at home order, well congratulations! — you might win 2020. …

It will surprise exactly no one that most of the biggest beer and beverage stories of 2020 revolve around the most impactful happening of this or any year: the covid-19 pandemic. Public response to the …

Tender shredded beef birria, swimming in reddish brown broth that leaves an orange ring ‘round the edges of the Styrofoam cup containing it. That’s the Tijuana-style specialty of National City’s 664 TJ Birrieria. But it’s …

Great Maple has just about done it all this pandemic. It socially distanced its dining room, it expanded its outdoor seating. It expanded its outdoor seating again, erecting tents in its parking lot and filling …

Nobody’s out to bad-mouth underperforming restaurants during a pandemic, shutdown or otherwise, so I’m not here to name names. But I will say that we took the family out to try out a new to …

With only a few weeks left in the year, San Diego restaurants are back to take-out and delivery only for effectively all of them. A new stay-at-home order went into effect on Monday, December 7, …

On Thursday night, a few minutes before sunset, I found a parking spot at 13th and G Streets in East Village, and called upstairs to let them know I had arrived. From the sidewalk I …

Sorrento Valley barrel-aged sour beer-maker California Wild Ales announced last week it will be opening a taproom in Ocean Beach. Actually, it’s taking over the same Newport Avenue taproom originally opened by Helm’s Brewing, and …