You can’t unmeet Claudia Sandoval. The National City native has the personality of a meteor shower. With her now signature red hair, bright red lipstick, and a laugh that tumbles out of her easily and often, she’s that person who shifts the gravity of a room in her direction just by being herself. A few years ago, she was a social worker for the County of San Diego. She and her daughter were sharing a bed in a one-bedroom apartment. Last September, she was crowned the winner of MasterChef with Gordon Ramsay, and got a check for $250,000. With the money, she invested in her catering and private chef business, Claudia’s Cocina. She bought the childhood home she grew up in. Her daughter got her own room. Now, the Latina chef has released her first cookbook, Claudia’s Cocina: A Taste of Mexico, and is eyeing her own restaurant in San Diego. I talked to her today about the book, how the internet funded her and her daughter’s life through the process, how she nearly got evicted during the show, and how you can be penniless and starving after winning $250,000. In fact, it sounds like MasterChef nearly broke her, until it made her.
Are you kidding? Everything has changed. I don’t even know where to begin. From the place that I lived. The flexibility I have to be home during the day and am able to pick up my daughter and take her to school. It’s just profoundly different. I’ve been able to cook in Michelin-starred restaurants. I’m able to enact a lot of change. It’s a whirlwind and I feel like I’m riding a wave. Whenever I come down from this cloud that I’m on, I’ll let you know. It’s surreal. It’s almost like I have a hard time expressing how good it’s been after being so shitty. Before me leaving to be on the show, things were horrible. I had to leave my husband. I had nothing. I had to rebuild my life in six years. Now I’m standing in the middle of a three-bedroom house that I grew up in and just refurnished.
After you won the finale in March, you couldn’t tell ANYONE until it aired in September. How’d you pull that off?
My daughter was at the finale. My immediate family had gone to the finale, too. So they knew. But I couldn’t tell anyone who could potentially hire me. I couldn’t tell my actual employer. When I came back, my employer was going through their own little lull and they had to let me go. I felt like I was living in this twilight zone. My poker face is so good at lying now that it’s scary. If it’s hard for an adult not to tell anyone, imagine how hard it is for a kid. What I kept telling my daughter is, ‘We’ll lose everything. Not only that, but we’ll owe them money.’ I couldn’t afford to lose it.
Did you get the money immediately?
I didn’t get it until October.
So you had technically just won $250,000 and you were broke and jobless?
I couldn’t find work. I was pretty much starving. I was starting to look for a new place because I was a month behind on rent. I ended up finding a friend, she gave me assistant work. I was helping people do social media, and doing somebody else’s laundry. On top of that I had to write a book. I had a total of seven weeks to write this book, and I knew I wanted to do justice to it.
What’d you do with the money when you finally got it?
I bought the house I grew up in. I refurnished it. I paid off all my school debt. I’m a philosophy major from San Diego State. I paid off all my school loans. Paid off all my debts. I started Claudia’s Cocina. I bought a lot of kitchen equipment so that I could do private events and catering. Got my business up and running. My daughter and I went on a vacation to Okinawa.
Did you always want to compete on MasterChef?
I originally didn’t want to audition. I’ve always been a fan of the show. I watched it every week. I was one of those people who watched it from the comfort of my couch saying, ‘I could do that better.’ I remember way back when my ex-husband would say ‘You gotta go on that show.’ But I would never do it. And here I am.
What was your life like three years ago?
I worked for the county of San Diego. I was a social worker and very unhappy with my life. I started InstagrammersSan Diego, where we’d meet up with other people and create Instameets. It’s just a little club of people getting together and doing photography. That lead me to meeting [local advertising firm] i.d.e.a. We ended up setting the world record for the largest Instameet here in San Diego. There were over 500 people. Through that, i.d.e.a hired me on as an event manager.
You were working at i.d.e.a. when you auditioned for the show. You had to take three months off. But contestants don’t get paid. You needed to keep your job. How’d you pull it off?
So at i.d.e.a., I managed to win a couple cooking competitions in the office. So they were like, ‘Hell yes, absolutely yes, you should do the show.’ They were very supportive. But I was like, ‘I’m a horrible mom, how am I going to leave my child for three months?’ I couldn’t let i.d.e.a. know anything because of my confidentiality agreement. And I didn’t want them to replace me. So when I got the email saying, ‘You’re in. You’re one of the top 100. You can either be here for one week or three and a half months,” I talked to one of the partners at i.d.e.a. I told her I didn’t want to lose my job. She was great. She said ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ The plan was I was going to take a week of vacation because I had hours saved up. She said, ‘If you do not call us, or if you don’t come back on Monday, then we’ll know you’re in. We will put you on an administrative unpaid leave.’ But they were so gracious. They kept me on insurance so that my daughter was covered.
So you’re a single mom. Your job is supportive, but instable at best. You’re competing. You’re not getting paid. You could win, but odds are much greater that it could all go wrong.
I had zero money. Zero savings. Friends said that I should start a GoFundMe. But I couldn’t say anything about the show. So I just posted that I had an amazing opportunity that could change my life. I added it all up. I’d need $3,400 to pay for rent, car and insurance. Three days after posting it on Facebook I had $3,400. One of my Instagram friends who I’d never met gave me $750. One of my Twitter followers gave me $1,200. It was amazing.
Was there ever a time when you were like, ‘Oh man I’m getting eliminated’?
Oh yeah. There was a challenge chicken and waffles. I always make waffles. And I always make chicken. But I’ve never eaten them together because I’m just that Mexican. I decided to go bone-in because that’s the way I was raised. So I made a bone-in chicken thigh and it was raw. If there’s anything you don’t want to hear from Gordon Ramsay, it’s that your chicken is raw. The really odd thing was another single mom was in the bottom two with me that week. That was my holy hell moment.
Just being away from family. I don’t think people realize or understand. I was gone from my daughter for three and a half months. I was allowed to call her for five minutes once a week. The first couple nights were so rough. I wasn’t eating, I lost weight. The hardest part is that they can’t tell you WHEN that five minutes will be… it wasn’t like ‘Every Sunday at 10am.’ So when they’d tell me I could call home I had to just hope that my daughter was around. And then I’d just say ‘How was your day? Have they posted an eviction notice yet?’ We also had zero privacy. We were escorted everywhere. People sitting outside of the bathrooms when we went in there so that we didn’t ask to borrow cell phones.
How’d you get through it?
[Chef and MasterChef cohost] Graham Elliott really helped me. Even he doesn’t have his family in L.A. when they’re filming. I asked him, ‘How do people deal with being away from family?’ He said, ‘At the end of the day what you have to remember is that when you look back on this, it will look like a blip of time. Because when you’re in it, it feels like every hour is a month.’
I understand you had very specific ideas of what you wanted Claudia’s Cocina to be.
I specifically wanted it to be more modern Mexican without it being cliché. I know the food was going to come off super Mexican. The design doesn’t need to be cliché Tex-Mex. I wanted it to be super Claudia, which means a lot of red. I went to the publisher and said, ‘The number one thing I want is the best photographer you’ve ever had.’ I sent them 10 to 20 to 30 pictures with specific styles, point of focus. I had a photography heavy background. I knew what kind of paper I wanted. Uncoated stock. I didn’t want glossy pages. I wanted it to feel like it’s rustic. I didn’t want super glossy beautiful. I wanted it to be a little rough around the edges, like me.
Oldest recipe in this book?
I think a lot of them are super old. The oldest is probably either the aguachile, or the birria recipe. Whenever I thought about the book, I knew I wanted a specific chapter dedicated to where my family is from. I wanted to dedicate a whole chapter to Mazatlan. So much of what I eat is very seafood, ceviche, very fresh. You hear a lot about moles. You’re hearing more about Baja. I wanted to highlight a place in Mexico that’s sadly only known for its violence. There are lots of farmers and fishing boats and coming to port with all this amazing fish. I wanted to highlight a better side of Mazatlan.
You tell a lot of compelling stories about your family in the book. Which story really resonates with you?
I think one of my favorite stories is the one of making my mom’s chile verde pork. I specifically talk about how this is a dish I’ve been trying to make for many, many years now. Many of us when we think about food, we think about our mom’s favorite dish. This was one of them. I know I wanted to recreate that dish. I was intent on getting it perfect. And I think I was 29 or 30 and I finally took a day and turned on the music and cooked it. I took a pot full to the ranch where we had our horses, and my dad said, ‘Wow, this tastes just like your mom’s.’ I turned around and shed a tear. I felt like I was finally at that level. It was finally perfect.
The one you make the most?
Aguachile. I eat aguachile once a week.
What’s next?
I want Claudia’s Cocina to be a restaurant. It’s a concept I’ve had for many, many years—a truly fine dining Mexican restaurant, but using all of those traditional recipes. That was the original concept before Bracero opened [laughter]. I’m looking toward 2017 and looking for investors. I’ll be going in with another chef from San Diego.
Best thing about this all?
I want to affect change in people’s lives. And it’s really given me a platform. Dreams don’t come true for people like us.
Dinners are three-course prix-fixe menus priced at $20, $30, $40 or $50; lunches are two-course prix-fixe menus of $10, $15 or $20.
Can’t make it to all of them? Fret not. We’ve got a manageable approach. A half-dozen participating restaurants had the distinction of finding themselves in the winner’s circle of last year’s annual Best Restaurants poll. Below we’ve given you a taste of their Restaurant Week offerings, with links to the full menu. Choose one of these spots, and you’re guaranteed to pick a winner.
Mister A’s
Winner: Best View (Urban) (Critic’s Pick and Reader’s Pick), Best Mac’n’Cheese (Critic’s Pick 2019)
There are two types of people: those whose cookbooks remain clean and crisp, and those whose cookbooks are dog-eared, stained with flecks of oil and butter, and graffitied with handwritten notes scrawled on each page.
Courtney Geilenfeldt falls in the second group. Sure, it’s easy to go to TikTok or Instagram to figure out what to cook on any given day. “But there’s something about a physical, analog book, where you can see the photos and get pasta sauce splattered on it,” she says. “I just have always loved that.”
In the spirit of sharing that love, earlier this year Geilenfeldt opened Patine, a cookbook micro-shop and grocery with an itty-bitty selection of curated goods. And when I say micro-shop, I mean it literally—she runs it out of her one-car garage in University Heights that’s too small to even fit her car.
What she lacks in square footage, she makes up for with unique offerings. “If I know that there’s this very specific ingredient in a cookbook that I’ve had to hunt down, then I will try to have that in the shop to just make it a little bit easier,” explains Geilenfeldt. Patine’s shelves are lined with items like specialty beans, a handful of wines, and fresh baked goods like loaves of sourdough, but the main attraction is her collection of new and used cookbooks on cuisines ranging from the Caribbean to Japan.
Her garage shop is only a placeholder. Later this year, Patine will open as a brick-and-mortar on Fifth Avenue and Nutmeg Street in Bankers Hill, across from Heavenly Bodega. That space will be “much, much bigger,” she promises, with an expanded selection of books and goods, plus space for cooking classes, author events, book club meetings, and other events.
The educational-plus-retail approach is something she missed from her years in Seattle, where bookshops like Book Larder have been combining the two since 2011. Although Geilenfeldt is a San Diego native, the Pacific Northwest is where she really began to cut her teeth in the world of professional baking. From there, she bakery-bopped to Germany, where she learned the art of European-style baking and embraced the more methodical, slowed-down culture.
“‘Patine’ is the French word for patina,” she explains. Items only acquire patina, or a polished look of something well-used and cared for, over years. It’s not something you can fake or make new, and it was the idea that inspires her in both baking and business.
That’s not to say Geilenfeldt doesn’t create new things. Actually, quite the opposite—she’s launched a micro-bakery cottage food business, hosted a supper club series, worked as a recipe writer, food stylist, private chef, pop-up host, book club host, and pretty much every other food-related entrepreneurial route you can think of. And if everything falls into place, Patine’s future storefront will open in August or early fall, bringing people together for the love of food and each other.
Patine’s micro-store currently operates at 4673 Alabama Street in University Heights. Check Instagram for current hours of operation.
Courtesy of Nobu del Coronado
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Neptune may be the tempestuous god of water, but even his famously volatile temper can be soothed with a plate of fresh sushi. (I’m just guessing, I’ve never spoken to him personally.) His namesake restaurant, Neptune Sushi, opens this summer (or maybe fall, you really never know) at 3015 Adams Avenue in the former Tajima space. One of Neptune’s partners, Michael Harrison, says guests can expect a modern interpretation of temaki-style hand rolls with locally caught fish, utilizing influences from Asia and Latin America alongside San Diego. The team isn’t ready to announce many details yet, but the 1,500-square-foot space fits around 60 guests and Harrison says there will be table seating, plus multiple sushi bars. “We do have plans to expand the Neptune concept in the future,” he says, so may the gods be with them.
At long last, New Wave Bagel is ready to serve its signature bagels alongside breakfast and lunch sandwiches, open-face toasts, pastries, and full espresso bar starting on Saturday, July 18. Baker and co-owner Cheryl Storms says they’ll finally be able to fulfill one long-requested update: toasting bagels. “We’ve gotten a lot of flack for not being able to toast bagels this whole time,” she says. (It’s a pop-up! There are limits!) “On the 18th, that changes—we will be able to toast all bagels all the time.” New Wave will be open Wednesday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. with Tuesdays coming soon.
If you can’t wait for Neptune, there’s always Nobu. Nobu del Coronado is one of the best-known upscale sushi chains in the world, and now, you can get a bento box full of goodies for $70. Grab a Summer Bento Box Lunch special between noon and 3 p.m. daily and get a Matsuhisa salad, three pieces of tuna, chef’s choice for three pieces each of uramaki and nigiri, rock shrimp tempura, and the iconic miso black cod, plus steamed rice and vegetables tossed in a spicy garlic sauce. Considering the black cod miso dinner portion costs $65 by itself, this is legitimately a pretty good deal (IMHO). Plus, those Coronado views!
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
Ina Garten Inspired This SD Baker to Open His Own Pop-Up
After a childhood obsession with the Barefoot Contessa and years in Michelin-starred kitchens, Juan Lopez is bringing Poppy Bakeshop to Liberty Station
It wasn’t his mother who inspired Juan Lopez to start baking. Nor was it pandemic boredom. It was Ina Garten. Lopez remembers it clearly—he was in third grade, watching TV at home in San Diego when the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa appeared on the screen. She was in Paris, France, making profiteroles, which are essentially French cream puffs. He’d never seen them before. “That stuck with me forever,” Lopez says.
Forever, or at least present day. It was enough inspiration for him to launch his own pop-up bakery this June: Poppy Bakeshop, which now appears every weekend from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (or sellout) at Moniker Coffee in Liberty Station.
But let’s not fast-forward how he went from a third-grader to burgeoning bakery entrepreneur. After falling under Garten’s spell—I mean, who among us hasn’t at one point or another—Lopez decided to try his hand at making cookies, which proved equal parts satisfying (making something from scratch) and frustrating (not actually knowing what on Earth he was doing). But that itch never went away through high school, when he decided to pursue culinary school. But before enrolling, prospective students had to complete a six-month internship in a professional kitchen.
So Lopez went to the first French restaurant he ever visited—Cafe Chloe in East Village, where chef Katie Grebow took him under her wing. School didn’t pan out, but his education was just beginning.
In the early 2010s, San Diego’s culinary scene was still an afterthought on the national scale. Lopez recalls Grebow encouraging him to move to San Francisco to really hone his skills. “I was 18 and was like, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else to do,’” he laughs. He walked into the one Michelin-starred La Folie in the Russian Hill neighborhood, resume in hand, and asked chef Roland Passot for a job. He started the next day.
After a few years in San Francisco, he returned to San Diego with the intention of moving out of restaurants and focusing on perfecting the foundations of pastry. After stints at Con Pane Rustic Breads, Herb & Wood, and Hommage Bakehouse, he landed at Wayfarer Bread & Pastry in 2023.
The Bird Rock bakery was already well on its way to national acclaim—it was named one of the best 100 bakeries in America by Food & Wine Magazine in 2020, not to mention the Critic’s Pick for “Best Bakery” by San Diego Magazine in 2022, 2024, 2025, 2026, runner-up in 2023, critic’s pick and runner-up in 2021, and then I stopped counting (because I’m pretty sure we all get the picture).
He still works part-time at Wayfarer while growing Poppy, but Lopez says he hopes to increase his pop-up schedule and collaborate more with other local makers. “The ultimate goal is to get a storefront,” he says. Normal Heights would be ideal, but he’s flexible on location and timeframe.
One thing he’s not flexible on is boxing himself into one type of pastry or flavor profile. “I really want Poppy to be this overwhelming abundance of items with different colors and different textures… I don’t want to be known for one thing,” he says. French-inspired, Mexican-influenced, and yes, even taking cues from the fashion industry. Take his plum cornbread, for instance. It’s an homage to Belgian designer Dries Van Noten’s vibrant palette.
“They had this one outfit that had this very, very bright kind of burgundy with this khaki-ish color. Then I went to the farmer’s market, and one of my favorite farmers, Heritage Family Farms, they had these gorgeous, gorgeous plums, and I was like, ‘Well, those are literally the color of that.’” The result? A sweet slice of rich reddish-purple plum cake.
He also draws inspiration from his own family. Every year, he makes coffee cake for Mother’s Day. Cinnamon rolls for Christmas. Basically, anything and everything that makes it onto his shelves is “based on what I’m craving,” Lopez laughs.
And he’s ready to share his cravings with you. “I’ve had so many bad days, and so many of them have been made better through pastry or through food,” he says. “I think as long as everyone just takes the time to just really enjoy what’s in front of them, that’s kind of all I hope for.”
Courtesy of Good Pressure Brewing
San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events
Beth’s Bites
Partnering with Bay City Brewing Company and the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), the ecologically-minded Good Pressure Brewing just brewed an American Wheat Beer using 100 percent California-grown barley to raise money for the plant preservation program. The 20bbl batch will be available at the Mission Gorge taproom the week of July 13, with a yet-to-be-announced release event featuring CPC reps on hand to talk about their efforts. That’s about as easy-drinking as a beer style can get, and with some plant power supporting the initiative, it’s a no-brainer to swing by.
For as many coffee shops San Diego has, there’s only a small number of tea houses that really focus on a genuine tea experience. (We see you, Paru.) But Chagee Modern Teahouse just soft opened its first location in the county at Westfield UTC, which will be followed by a second location at the new Zion Market later this year. Based on early reports, paying a visit to the whole leaf milk tea maker just might be worth dealing with the new parking costs at the mall.
Every summer break, around 240,000 K-12 students across San Diego County lose access to school-provided meals. That’s around half of the total number of students enrolled across the entire county, so yeah, it’s a problem. For the sixth year, Regents Pizzeria in La Jolla partnered with Feeding San Diego to launch the chunkily-named, but uber-generous “Dough-nate to Fuel for Summer” campaign. Following the “buy one, give one” model, the pizzeria will donate one meal to Feeding San Diego for every meal purchased through July, as well as matching any customer’s donations. I’m always happy to eat a slice of ‘za, but if I can make sure others can too, that tastes even better.
Listen Now: The Latest in San Diego’s Food and Drink Scene
Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
Finding a gift that feels truly personal can be surprisingly difficult. In a sea of generic options — flowers, gift cards, candles, and the like — Xplosion Box offers something more lasting: a customized keepsake built around the photos, messages, and memories that matter most.
Founded by Southern California entrepreneur Jay Vijay, Xplosion Box LLC creates fully customized explosion gift boxes that arrive professionally designed, printed, assembled, and ready to gift. Each box opens layer by layer to reveal personal photos, heartfelt messages, pull-out albums, origami-style photo pockets, and hidden notes, turning a simple gift into an emotional reveal.
The brand was built for people who want to give something meaningful without spending hours printing photos, cutting paper, folding cardstock, or assembling a DIY project. Customers simply choose a box, upload their favorite photos, add personal messages, and the Xplosion Box team transforms those details into a polished keepsake that feels thoughtful, personal, and beautifully made.
Xplosion Box offers personalized gift boxes for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, proposals, bridesmaid gifts, long-distance relationships, and thoughtful “just because” moments.
Customers can choose from flexible customization options starting at $27. The Mini Surprise Box includes 10 photos, three message cards, and one hidden secret note, while the Mega Surprise Box offers a fuller keepsake experience with 40 photos, three message cards, and one hidden secret note.
What sets Xplosion Box apart is its high level of customization combined with convenience. Filled with personal photos, custom text, decorative details, and layered surprises, each box gives customers the freedom to create a gift that feels one-of-a-kind — without having to make it themselves.
At its core, Xplosion Box helps people turn favorite photos, stories, and words into something tangible: a keepsake that can be opened, revisited, and remembered long after the occasion has passed. asion has passed.
Baker Ashley del Rosario estimates she makes five people cry every day. It’s not because she’s some salty old grump. In fact, del Rosario is such a delight to talk to that we ended up chatting in the sunshine for 20 minutes after my two-hour parking meter ran out. (I got lucky—no ticket!) It’s because her baking philosophy, which centers around spotlighting her culture as a Filipina-American and using some of her mom’s recipes as inspiration, seems to uniquely touch a nerve in her community.
“People message me every day saying… ‘Oh my God, my mom loves your stuff. Oh my God, this made me so emotional. This reminds me of my childhood,’” she says. “I must be doing something right.”
We’re sitting outside at Michi Michi in Bankers Hill, where she finished up a two-month residency as the in-house guest baker on June 30. Her menu of Filipino-inspired pastries feature ingredients like mango, ube, pandan, calamansi, and taro leaves in items like French croissants and Italian maritozzos. But she’s also pushing flavor boundaries with pastries like a champorado tart, a Filipino chocolate rice pudding topped with a dollop of anchovy paste.
Love it or hate it, to del Rosario, the point is that she introduced champorado to a new audience. “If you don’t like Filipino food, or you’re not interested in it, or you don’t even get it… you [still] came into this bakery and you saw Filipino desserts,” she says. So the next time you come across champorado, your brain will already recognize it and hey, maybe you’ll give it a try.
In 2021, Phillip Esteban—San Diego Magazine’s “Chef of the Year” in 2020—opened the first location of his fast-casual Filipino concept White Rice, which now has locations in Normal Heights and Sorrento Valley. Kristin Cleavinger’s coffee and matcha pop-up One of One draws inspiration from her own Filipina-American heritage. Tara Monsod, executive chef at Animae and Le Coq, is a three-time semifinalist for Best Chef in California by the James Beard Awards and one of the leading champions of Filipino-American cuisine. She was also del Rosario’s boss at her first kitchen job, which was doing pastries at Animae. (Nothing like jumping straight into the fire!)
Del Rosario says Monsod became a cultural and culinary mentor, pushing her to explore new and bigger opportunities. When she got the chance to study at the illustrious Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy, Monsod encouraged her to go. It changed del Rosario’s life—so much so, she’s moving to Italy later this year to continue honing her pastry skills.
In the future, she says she hopes to split her time between Italy and San Diego, continuing collaborations and pop-ups while developing what she sees as an entirely new lane within pastry: Italian pastry technique with distinctly Filipino flavors.
Italian pastry technique is different from classic French. Take croissants, for example. The Italian version, called cornetto, is often filled with creams, jams, or savory fillings, and tends to feel softer than its buttery, flakier French counterpart. They’re also more regionally driven, with different areas utilizing local specialties like citrus for the filling—an ideal vehicle for launching a Filipino-fusion creation.
There are plenty of globally-inspired bakeries in San Diego with their own specialties—Azúcar in Ocean Beach is Cuban, Su Pan offers traditional Mexican pastries, and Asa Bakery is modeled after Japanese kissaten cafés. There are even a number of local Filipino bakeries like Valerio’s 1979 (formerly Valerio’s City Bakery), Kababayan Bakery, and Starbread Bakery. But a Filipino-Italian bakery? Not yet. And even if there were, del Rosario says the more, the merrier.
“There is no competition,” she says. “It’s just showing our culture.”
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
I’m sitting in a slab of concrete under a freeway, eating a ceviche black as eyeliner.
There might be seven seats in this restaurant. Or maybe it’s 12 minus five. That area under the stairs might also be a couple seats, or it might just be a very inviting storage area with a flower vase. The restaurant is so small your core instinct is to count seats and tabulate if Alchemy – Choose Thy Poison is a real place with a sane business plan or if it’s a social art project designed to question the reality of restaurants and business plans.
There’s a large, floor-to-human-height window near our table. Through it, I notice someone didn’t make their bed this morning. It’s a decision I deeply empathize with. It’s moments like this that make you acutely aware that Alchemy is also technically the courtyard of a six-room micro-hotel called Narcissus. Not the kind of massagey boutique hotel you’re thinking of with soft woods, obscene amounts of linen, and opinions on bonsai therapy. It’s a near-Brutalist cube of base industrial materials—concrete and acrylics bent and molded into a series of alcoves, with pods to sleep in. Sculptures lie behind glass like Tilda Swinton circa 2013.
The window to the unmade bed forcibly crams light voyeurism into the dining experience. The hotel and Alchemy feel like the parts of Mexico I love the most. Although Mexico has its multimillion-dollar restaurants, a vast majority of the best street-level places feel like you’re temporarily recreating in a very lovely construction project.
Alchemy’s location is what most people comment on (“I can’t believe a place like this exists on a block like this.”)—jammed at the bottom of the freeway embankment on the northeast side of Barrio Logan. But that makes it distinctly Barrio, the historic cradle of San Diego’s Hispanic and Chicano culture. The I-5 freeway was built through Barrio in 1963—a fairly traumatic gashing of the neighborhood—and residents responded by painting epic murals on the ugly concrete belly of eminent domain. Where some would’ve just accepted the industrial blight, locals saw shade for a park. There is a deep history here of turning concrete into art, and Alchemy carries that on.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The vision for the property came from owner Benjamin Longwell, whose company—The Society of Master Craftsmen—sounds like it wears a monocle. Longwell is part of the new guard of developers who focus on urban infill. Instead of adding to the city sprawl, they find unused or underutilized parcels of land in established neighborhoods, then build creative mixed-use spaces that, in perfect scenarios, add something of value for locals.
I’m not making a case for architectural sainthood, but there isn’t a huge list of developers who would look at the line of cars exiting the freeway in front of Alchemy and think, “We must build here.” So in that sense, Narcissus and Alchemy feel additive to the community, not extractive.
I stare back at Alchemy’s ceviche negro, a glossy mound of halibut that looks inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits or melted vinyl records. Chef-owner and Mexico City–native Eddy Cortes saves all the trimmings of his dishes (garlic and onion skins, vegetable shavings), then chars them into an ash to create a recado negro—a Yucatán specialty that usually involves toasted chiles, achiote paste, vinegar, and a ton of warm spices. He tosses local halibut with squid ink, tamari, charred pineapple, and citrus. The usual charm of ceviche is that it’s light, bright, full of color. Not here.
It is fantastic—acidic but with a whole world of toasted, warm flavors, like ceviche that’s seen some things.
The menu from Cortes—a home cook his whole life, only having taken it professional a few years ago with his popular pop-up, Barracruda—is really a tour of specialties from various states in Mexico.
A crema de poblano has the blended ghost of rajas at its core: an emulsion of roasted poblanos with butter-sautéed onions and garlic, plus a touch of milk that’s topped with queso fresco, chile ancho, and morita oil. Morita—a smoky Mexican condiment made from dried and smoked red jalapeños for a less intense, fruitier cousin of chipotle—is the key here. It specializes in spiking fats (guacamole, fried eggs, burritos). Sop up the crema with house-baked garlic-rosemary sourdough, blackened from the ash of a corn husk.
Smoked tuna is a Baja gift that’s become an anchor for most San Diego taco shops, and Alchemy combines mesquite-smoked yellowtail with caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and Chihuahua cheese (the OG quesadilla filling), then stuffs it in a perfectly baked masa empanada. The result is somewhere between a TJ Oyster Bar taco, a calzone, and a tamale—but with extra flavor and more black hue from cuttlefish ink.
Alchemy’s huaraches de res is Cortes’ ode to where he’s from. Huaraches are the New Haven–style pizza of Mexican food—thick, oblong masa flatbread layered with refried beans and a payload inspired by the Mexico City markets the chef grew up roaming with his dad: braised beef (braseado), avocado salsa, pickled vegetables, salsa macha, and jocoque (Mexico’s fermented dairy product, like a cross between crema and labneh).
Alchemy’s seared tuna crudo gets a tad abused by the riot of big flavors: charred hibiscus salsa, avocado salsa, pickled grapes, pomegranate salsa macha, and chipotle aioli. It’s a fate that also tempers the joy of the zarandeado, with the adobo marinade on the shrimp fighting a bit with recado negro and chipotle crema. Sticking with curmudgeonly food critic notes, flies are a part of the Alchemy experience, at least during our visit. They’re fairly hard to evict from the outside world, but more measures could be taken to discourage their participation.
Photo Credit: Dee Sandoval
The oxtail tetelas—like a Mexican pupusa—are a diary note from Cortes’ travels to Tlaquepaque, where they famously superboost their salsa with a touch of instant coffee. First, Cortes braises the oxtail with beer and Mexican spices. Then he blends that braising liquid into a salsa with beef tallow, guajillo, charred onions, tomatoes, and black garlic. Keeping with the goth food theme, the oxtail goes into masa negra infused with squid ink.
Desserts are where you realize just how deeply Alchemy is committed to the art bit. Rarely do you see a neighborhood bistro trying to pull off trompe l’œil—the French specialty of making pastries and other desserts look like fruit or other everyday objects. (The phrase means “to deceive the eye” and is the historical precedent for the Is It Cake? phenomenon.) Pastry chef Catherinne Avila does, though. A “Naranja” comes out in the form of a mandarin, but inside is orange blossom mousse, apricot jelly, and sablée (a delicate, crumbly shortcrust). A “Philosopher’s Stone” comes in the form of a brick of gold with a serpent on top; inside are mango mousse, mango-Tajín jelly, and a coconut dacquoise.
As Barrio Logan enters an apprehensive phase—its creative culture and restaurant scene growing rapidly, bringing economic promise face-to-face with the need to protect the Chicano way of life—this concrete tuckaway from a Mexico City kid feels like a good step. The Barrio has a long history of making art in unexpected places, and Alchemy carries that a little further.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
If you’re anything like us, it can be easy to get so caught up in taking care of everyone else, that your own needs get lost in the ether. But while this may be a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true: You can’t give your best self to other people unless you’re taking care of yourself.
Sometimes, that looks like stopping in for your regular acupuncture or chiropractic appointment. Other days, it means giving your body the fresh, organic fuel it needs to truly feel and function at its best. And some other times still, it involves leaving your responsibilities behind for a weekend to pamper yourself at an incredible resort and spa.
Only you can decide what your truly need. We’re just here to help you find the best ways to get it.
Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa
Island living meets desert luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. When you step onto the 11-acre property, you’ll be surrounded by sweeping view of the Santa Rosa Mountains with olive trees and fragrant citrus groves decorating the grounds. In other words, everything about this relaxed but refined resort is primed to help you let go of the stress from home and enjoy easy sun-soaked days and gorgeous starry nights.
The rooms blend calming, woven textures with Tommy Bahama’s signature tropical prints and feature private lanais, making it easy unwind the moment you walk in the door. If you book one of the four Villa Suites, you’ll be treated to exclusive Tommy Bahama furniture and unique personal touches to further that feeling of instant ease.
At the award-winning Spa Rosa, the expert team will help reset and recharge your body and mind using methods and rituals inspired by the desert. The 12,000-square-foot retreat includes outdoor soaking pools, eucalyptus steam rooms, and outdoor cabanas, as well as massages, facials, and body masks—all aimed at creating a day dedicated to you. We’re particularly partial to the Day Long Escape, an indulgent all-day affair of CDBs soaks, renewing scrubs, life changing massages, and transformative facials.
Following your treatment, continue the experience with a meal on the patio at Grapefruit Basil. We love the Hamachi Crudo, a light, citrus-forward dish featuring premium yellowtail, house-made ponzu, creamy avocado, and fresh seasonal garnishes.
Whether you’re strolling the gardens, relaxing beside its saltwater pools, or indulging in a restorative treatment, you’ll be able to escape in style and relax in luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa.
Healcove Chiropractic
There’s no shortage of ways to stay active in San Diego—but if you really want to enjoy everything the city has to offer, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving your body its tune-ups. Enter: Healcove Chiropractic. The board-certified chiropractors and wellness professionals at Healcove are experts at addressing that stage where you’re not injured, exactly, but you’re not at 100%, either. Maybe you’re feeling a bit tense or stressed out. Or it could be that you’re not quite moving the way you want to. Sometimes, it’s just that the accumulation of days, weeks, or even years of daily strain is starting to take a toll. No matter what stage you find yourself at, the Healcove Chiropractic team can provide integrated, preventative care centered on long-term, science-backed approaches that ensure you can always stay active and live the life you want to live pain-free.
This starts by providing truly individualized care. Every patient can expect a thorough 60-minute consultation session that includes a posture and movement screening. This allows the team to develop a completely personalized plan. That plan might include chiropractic care, acupuncture, or massage therapy, as well as functional fitness training, vibration and sound therapy, and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, a clinical rehabilitation method that retrains the body’s stabilization systems. Whatever the team recommends, you can be sure that it’s tailored to meeting your body’s needs today and the future.
There’s a reason that San Diego Magazine named Healcove the “Best Chiropractor in San Diego”—don’t wait until you’re struggling with an injury to find out why. Book an appointment today for holistic, integrated care that helps ground and heal your body before it reaches a crisis point.
Juice Holler
West Coast wellness culture meets the community feel of Southern Appalachia at Juice Holler. Juice Holler’s menu consists of made-to-order smoothies and smoothie bowls, as well as grab-and-go cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, salads, and more. It operates from the blissfully simple premise that fueling up with food and drink that’s guilt-free and good your body should be simple, accessible, and, above all else, delicious. And if you haven’t yet made it out to the Encinitas café, which opened just this year, let us be the first to tell you: Juice Holler delivers on each and every of these fronts.
We love the Supercharger smoothie, a mood-lifting and body-fueling option made with banana, almond butter, blue spirulina, maca, grass-fed whey protein, raw cacao nibs, medjool dates, and coconut milk. We’re also partial to the Thrive Alive smoothie bowl, where avocado, mango, sea moss, spirulina, mint, coconut milk, and agave are mixed and topped with coconut, chia seeds, strawberry, mango, and chocolate drizzle. The wellness shots include the Detoxifier, a cleansing blend of kale, cucumber, lemon and spirulina, plus a shot specially designed to fight inflammation (named, fittingly, Anti-Inflammation). Probiotic overnight oats, lemon turmeric bars, and strawberry shortcake chia pudding are other standouts on the grab-and-go menu.
Much of the vibe feels beachy North County chic—think green tile with orange and pink accents, grounded with greenery and natural wood—but Juice Holler founder Kelly Sergott, a longtime Encinitas local, has also enfused the space with her Kentucky roots. In Appalachia, a holler is small valley between hills and mountains, where nature reigns, community is king, and nourishment comes right from the land. At Juice Holler, Sergott has created a holler for the busy modern times, using local ingredients to create a spot for people to come together and enjoy fresh, fast, feel-good fuel for their day.
Everwell Acupuncture
We’ve all had that experience with a medical professional where we’ve felt rushed, ignored, or misunderstood—and ultimately, like we didn’t get the answers that we needed. But at Everwell, the holistic acupuncture practice located in Solana Beach, the care team wants to transform your understanding of what healthcare can look like.
Patients at Everwell experience care rooted in intentional listening and radical empathy—and trust us, those aren’t just corporate buzzwords. This place actually puts those ideas into practice. You will always be given the time you need to tell your story— initial in-take appointments are two hours long—and you can rest assured that your story will be believed. Every single question and concern will be addressed by a dedicated practitioner who wants to find the specific solutions that work best for you, and you’ll receive care that’s aimed at healing the body, mind, and spirit.
Everwell’s highly trained, doctorate-level practitioners blend evidence-based acupuncture with the practice of classical Chinese medicine. (If you’ve never tried acupuncture before or aren’t sure if the team will be a fit, we’d highly recommended Everwell’s complimentary 20-minute consultations.) Research shows that by stimulating specific points on the body, acupuncture activates a natural healing response in the body, helping to restore balance, regulate the nervous system, and improve overall wellbeing. This allows the practice to address an incredibly wide range of conditions from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to digestive issues, from stress and burnout to headaches migraines, fertility and postpartum struggles, hormonal imbalances, sleep concerns and more.
At Everwell, you can expect to feel heard, trusted, respected, and cared for. This is a space that doesn’t want to be just another healthcare provider you visit; it wants to provide patients with dedicated partner who will be there for their entire health journey.
