You won’t see it from the street. Samarkand Uzbek Café has an El Cajon Boulevard address (4201 B, El Cajon Boulevard, City Heights), but when we pulled up for dinner, the building was dark. We …

Oktoberfest is canceled in 2020 — that is, the massive, more than two-week-long Munich beer drinking festival that’s taken place since 1810. The spirit of the event has survived the pandemic, however, and a number …

Was it Mariscos Nine Seas or Ocean 97? For many years, there has been a Mexican seafood truck drawing long lines of loyal fans to the Target (née Gala Foods) parking lot in South Park. …

Back in the days of Prohibition, party boats would sit off the coast of San Diego and other California cities, just outside U.S. jurisdiction, where revelers could booze, gamble, and otherwise indulge. “They had free …

On the patio of the Over the Border nightclub, an accordion player in a cowboy hat led his band through a set of norteño music, while a small crowd of fans danced and drank beer, …

I picked up a couple of take-out pizzas from coastal La Jolla a few years back, and though they were cooked at high heat with stellar ingredients, it felt like a race to get back …

“Times are moving fast right now and we are adapting,” read the email from Pure Project. The Miramar-based brewery had originally reached out to let me know it would begin serving beers at its new …

Over the past seven years, I’ve found the Tacos La Mezcla food truck at different locations: parked outside of breweries and bars, slinging tacos at Balboa Park events, and for a while there doing regular …

I missed out on the first iteration of Animae. I was traveling when the lavish, 5.5 million dollar restaurant hosted a media preview, and was still tucking away pennies to splurge on a high-end dinner …

Outside Nolita Hall, a smattering of mid-evening diners met over tables arranged across a hundred feet of sidewalk, trees and garden landscaping weaving between them. The August sunset offered a glowing, turquoise sky and a …

I hadn’t eaten inside a restaurant since June, more than two months. And to be honest, I wasn’t exactly itching to. But, the county decided dining rooms could re-open at 25 percent capacity, and I …

A synthetic voice answered the phone of Fortunate Son, the new Chinese food spot opened by Consortium Holdings, in the Adams Avenue property where the restaurant group used to operate Soda & Swine. Sounding like …

For most of its years in Sorrento Valley, New English brewing has epitomized the classic San Diego craft brewery experience. Its industrial park setting within the city’s tech hub made it a natural place for …

For most of the 27 years Pete Soto has operated his food cart, Brooklyn Dogs, he’s done so by the Civic Center. But since the pandemic has thinned out both foot traffic and the lunch …

Indoor dining has resumed in San Diego, though at a limited (25 percent) capacity, it won’t be enough to keep most restaurants afloat, so outdoor dining and take-out remain crucial to their success. That includes …

I’ll take good news wherever I can get it these days, and if that includes from Domino’s Pizza, so be it. The pizza delivery chain, along with the company it buys pizza boxes from, recently …

Coffee and bourbon fans take note: a new flavored whiskey brand hit the shelves in San Diego in August. First Light Coffee Whiskey debuted in local shops with two bottled flavors of coffee whiskey: original …

We showed up to Stella Jean’s with a couple of kids in tow, having promised ice cream cones. But this was a month ago, and University Heights’ resident small batch ice cream shop wasn’t serving …

When I first started going to North Park’s resident Georgian-Russian restaurant, Pomegranate, it took cash only. That eventually changed, but by time the place took credit cards again, I was established in the habit of …

When last we saw Brielle Clark, she had secured a cottage license allowing her to roast coffee in her North Park kitchen. She and her bandmate/husband Scott used it to launch Dane Coffee in 2014, …

Some Saturday mornings, you can tell what kind of Friday night was had in in the city by the lengthy drive-thru line at Colima's Mexican Food. In North Park, that can mean a line of …

Sweet news, everybody! San Diego may have missed out on a county fair this year, but thanks to a burgeoning farmers market business, we can still sample the wares of last year’s best-in-class candy maker. …

If there were an alternate timeline, in which a pandemic never showed up to close local restaurants, I’d have been happily feasting on biscuit breakfast sandwiches all through the spring and summer. Alas, it took …

I couldn’t be sure Detroit pizza was really a thing. I’d read about the Motown style, sure. That it was a thick crust pie, baked in rectangular pans, a descendent of Sicilian pizza. But it …

As indoor dining is still off limits, I didn’t expect to find myself at Tahona Bar. Old Town’s best modern Mexican eatery boasts a stunning rustic-meets-contemporary interior, punctuated by tastefully arranged bottles of its signature …

It sits within an inconspicuous stucco strip on Adams Avenue, smack in the middle of Normal Heights, with a generic sign bearing a generic name: Thai Joint. How many times have I driven past without …

Stone Brewing is one of the cornerstones of San Diego beer, and of the craft brewing industry as a whole. Behind marketing slogans such as “yellow fizzy beer is for wussies,” Stone has long postured …

Coronavirus isn’t the only thing going around. Nashville hot chicken is really catching on in San Diego. Years after conquering Los Angeles, the spicy take on fried chicken has been showing up all over town …

As breakfast burritos go, it was already going to hit every greasy morning mark: bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, and melted cheese, with a splash of avocado green. But rather than the usual flat, off-white wrapper, …

A lobster roll counter near the beach. That’s what I found when I ventured outside last weekend, looking for a little sunshine. Sometime in late spring, Wicked Maine Lobster took over what was originally a …

Another day, another conundrum. We know that quite a few local covid-19 outbreaks have been traced to restaurants, including no fewer than a dozen clusters in the past month. On the other hand: donuts. Since …

Amid the ever-changing rules about how breweries may do business, at least one positive development remains constant: the ability of breweries to deliver beer directly to consumers’ doorsteps. This regulatory relief has offered an opportunity …

A shudder passed through San Diego’s sandwich-loving community this week when news spread of a suspected arson attempt at San Diego’s old school Italian deli, Mona Lisa Italian Foods. In as perilous a year as …

We were craving a meat and cheese platter but didn’t want to dine in at a restaurant due to the latest coronavirus surge. So I took a look around for take-out options, and saw that …

For 37 years, Masa and Haru Takeda have made and served Japanese tea cakes in their tiny Chula Vista shop, Hogetsu Bakery. Primarily, they offer mochi, the chewy, glutinous rice cakes enjoyed with tea and …

After Black Lives Matter protests appeared demanding social justice and police reform, a number of local breweries voiced support for the effort. Three dozen of them decided to participate in the nationwide Black is Beautiful …

There are a handful of parties grabbing breakfast on the narrow patio of East Village’s location of local breakfast and booze chain, Breakfast Republic. But restaurant dining is kind of nerve-wracking right now, so I …

Ikea, Costco, Lowes. Even during a pandemic they draw throngs of shoppers to their corner of Mission Valley. My car eked along with the slow moving traffic of their massive, shared parking lot, a million …

Homes at end of Oceanside Blvd. claim emergency The city never got approval,” says Mackin. “They just started doing it. These homeowners had carte blanche to put as much rip rap as they wanted on …

“Due to its extremely hot nature, eating a Dave’s Hot Chicken reaper carries with it the potential for certain risks, some of which may be reasonably foreseeable.” So reads the “reaper release,” the liability waiver …

Bridget Connelly lives and surfs in Encinitas, and it was in local waters that she decided to start a hard kombucha company in summer 2018. “Surfing is a lot of the times I feel the …

Though the pandemic continues to disrupt the restaurant industry, it hasn’t stopped the community of 4S Ranch from receiving a significant upgrade at coffee shop. Reigning micro-roaster of the year Mostra Coffee delayed the debut …

Rollercoaster 2020 continues to hammer home the message we have little idea what’s coming next. At this writing, San Diego somehow escaped being one of the 19 California counties the governor ordered or recommended bars, …

Since dining rooms reopened with a ban on re-usable menus, a few of our city’s savvier restaurants have replaced them with tech. Rather than disposable paper menu, they encourage use of blocky, square QR codes, …

There’s something familiar about the creepy clown sitting at the middle table, like I’ve seen him before. I’m pretty sure last I saw him, he was giving off his too shiny, too smiley vibe to …

“Bringing New Orleans to North Park,” says the home page of Louisiana Purchase, and from a kitchen standpoint the University Avenue restaurant did so literally. It recruited chef/co-owner Quinnton Austin from New Orleans, bringing his …

This is usually the time of year to spotlight San Diego’s best outdoor brewery venues. However, in the summer of 2020, that could be just about anywhere. Thanks to some late May regulatory relief by …

Summer is officially here, and even if the experience is going to be a bit different this year, it won’t be for a lack of frozen desserts. I went with a young family to try …

Outdoor dining is set to become the norm this summer: that is, even more so than usual. In a bid to add capacity amid social distancing rules, restaurants are looking to make use of every …

“Veteran owned,” notes an easy-to-miss sign on the Third Avenue storefront of Chula Vista Brewery. In fact, brewery cofounder Tim Parker retired from the Navy at the end of 2019, following two decades of service, …