The Two-Bite Rule

In this month’s magazine, I helped ranchers, farmers and restaurateurs tell the story of fraud, deception and honest mistakes in the farm-to-table movement. You can read the story by clicking anywhere in this paragraph. What follows is the backstory…

“You really should do something on all this farm-to-table fraud.”

I was first told something like this two years ago by multiple restaurant insiders who knew how rampant it was. Some restaurants claim to buy fresh fruit and veggies from local farmers. When, in truth, they’re not using local farms. They’re using a semi-truck from a corporate food distributor full of produce that could have come from Chile, for all they know.

Call it truck-to-table. Warehouse-to-table. Catalog-to-table.

Not farm.

Initially, I didn’t want to write the piece. It risked casting the entire restaurant industry in a negative light because of a few ethically challenged morons. Was it really that big of a crime to lie about which farm grew your salad? How often did it actually happen? It sounded a little exaggerated.

I’m willing to report a monster, but I didn’t want to create one.

That’s why interviews for this story have sat in a folder on my computer labeled “Farm to Fable” for two years. I needed more proof.

Plus, would the average eater care?

It seems so. And they should. Because farm-to-table fraud is ripping off customers, farms, farm workers and ethical restaurant owners. And it happens far more often than I originally thought. Small farmers and farm workers are not driving Porsches. Stealing from them is like pick-pocketing a hospice worker.

Recently, a friend and restaurant lifer recently told me, “Know that story you’ve been talking about forever? If you don’t do it, I’m going to. It’s happening all the time. Everyone’s talking about it.”

Even then I hesitated.

Finally, a different friend sent me a menu from a local restaurant that was selling tickets to a “Suzie’s Farms Dinner.”

“Call Suzie’s and see if they’re involved in that dinner,” the friend said.

So I did. And Suzie’s was not involved. They weren’t even growing the fruits and vegetables listed on the menu.

It was time to tell the story.

“Farm to fable” is fraud. It preys on your good intentions as a diner. It steals from farms and their workers. It gives frauds an unfair competitive advantage over real, ethical farm-to-table restaurants (because doing it right costs a lot).

I didn’t name the specific restaurants guilty of farm-to-fable in my story. I know the names. But to call them out would’ve required multiple sources of foolproof evidence (some of which I have). It also would’ve required multiple lawyers.

That said, if I see it happening in the future, I will take the steps to report the restaurant(s) in San Diego Mag. If we let the frauds know that we’re watching this pretty closely, maybe they’ll find the motivation to be honest so that their name doesn’t appear in the follow-up story.

Honest mistakes happen. Sometimes menus simply haven’t been updated since the restaurant last purchased from the local farm. A chef told me the story of how one of his servers erroneously told a customer they were serving a Chino Farms Salad. Chino Farms wasn’t happy. “I had to go to the farm and apologize for his mistake,” said the chef. “I would never claim to be serving a farm’s food when I wasn’t.”

But after talking with dozens of restaurant insiders, I can say without question that intentional fraud is happening. Pretty regularly. And it’s not always on the restaurant side. Right now, there is a local company claiming to sell nothing but local, sustainable, organic [Product X]. No fewer than three people who know their operation have told me that they’ve seen the company buying and selling product that is anything but local, sustainable or organic.

The solution seems to be education. Get to know your chef and restaurateur. The names of honest farm to table restaurants that came up most commonly when talking to farmers included Terra American Bistro, The Red Door/Wellington, George’s at the Cove, Mille Fleurs, even the Marriott Hotel in Downtown. Suzie’s Farm has a portion of their website that lists the restaurants that regularly buy their produce.

Those aren’t the only honest restaurants buying from local farms, of course. And I feel safe in assuming most restaurateurs and chefs are honest people.

The thing I can’t get over is: Why lie? There’s no shame in not being a farm-to-table restaurant. Plenty of customers don’t care if their corn or asparagus or meat is local, organic or sustainable. There’s only shame in fraud.

At this point, “farm-to-table” is a pretty limp, useless term. That’s sad. Because it used to be a meaningful way to describe restaurants and chefs who were going the extra mile for their customers and the local food economy.

This excellent article by Corby Kummer in Vanity Fair is a good survey of farm-to-table’s ineptitude. It even points to an organic farmer in Atlanta, Cory Mosser, who’s registered the website farmtofable.net to document the fraud in his area.

Ironically, the media is often to blame. Sometimes writers describe a restaurant as “farm to table” simply because the produce looks fresh.

If you see or suspect someone of fraud, please email me at [email protected]

I’d like to thank the farmers, restaurateurs and others who talked to me about the story. Doing so takes guts. You should know that none of them came across as pissy, sour whiners. They simply agreed to talk with me about real fraud that happens in their industry.

Cheers to good, ethical eating.

Behind the Story: Farm to Fable

Sam Wells

Behind the Best Restaurants List

Our annual “Best Restaurants” issue has hit the streets of San Diego with a thud. It’s a monster. It is one of our most popular issues. You people like food, and I respect that about you. This issue is our recollection of the best places we’ve eaten over the last year. Our restaurant bible. A step-by-step guide to mouth rapture. A lot of talented people—San Diego Magazine’s editors, art directors, writers, photographers, videographers—put a lot of their creativity, care and extramarital time into creating it.

People often ask me how I come up with the “Critic’s Picks.” Well, here’s a little bit of the behind the scenes on that, plus a few facts about why San Diego’s food scene is phenomenal right now.

FACT: Most Americans eat out about 4.8 times a week. I eat at between 5-12 a week. I am the human lipid. I don’t complain about my job. Although taking notes is difficult. I’m forced to pretend that I’m texting while my dinner companion sits there ignored. I’m quite certain diners have seen me dine with my wife and said, “What a tool.” To make my list in this issue, I went through every one of those notes and meals and compiled my dream list. It’s my answer to the email or text from friends who ask, “Where should I eat?” I hope it helps.

FACT: The average meal in a chain restaurant has 1,128 calories. I’m no mathematician, but I’m fairly certain that plus X is why Americans lead the world in sweatpants. And that’s why it’s so much more important to find good local restaurants you love—ones that don’t just toss the butter in the deep fryer—and patronize the hell out of them. Good chefs do not cook to kill. Those chefs are in this issue.

FACT: I have a two-bite rule. I take two bites of every dish, sometimes three maximum. That’s it. Otherwise I would be so big that I’d block the sun and my loved ones would not get adequate sunlight that they need to grow. Friends who dine with me often think I’m crazy. They have a 12 bite rule. And indigestion.

FACT: If god was a hipster, he’d set up his farm in San Diego. Actually, has anyone seen god and Tom Chino in the same place at the same time? Point is, San Diego has the best fruits, veggies and seafood of almost anywhere in the world. San Diego County has more small farms per capita than any other county in the US. Granted, some of those are decorative flower farms. But, still. Strawberries are in season NINE months out of the year in San Diego. A fun thing to do is tell that to a New Yorker because sometimes it’s fun to watch a New Yorker cry. San Diego is like the all you can eat Vegas buffet of the world’s best raw ingredients.

FACT: Portland is rainy and cold and it sucks and its beards per capita are far, far out of control. Actually, Portland is amazing and I can’t grow a single chest hair let alone a beard so maybe I’m just bitter. But I’ve been lucky enough to eat my way through Portland, San Francisco, L.A., New York, Chicago, Austin and most of the major American cities. And I will tell you that San Diego is not some backwater red-headed stepchild of national cuisine. It is equal to or superior to those cities in many ways.

FACT: Marine Room is now an Asian-Fusion restaurant. Making this list is like a math problem. I had Marine Room as “Best French,” but then realized one of my favorite chefs in San Diego—Patrick Ponsaty of Bellamy’s in Escondido—didn’t fit anywhere else. So I decided that Marine Room is now an Asian Fusion restaurant because chef Bernie and Ron Oliver are fond of Asian ingredients. Bellamy’s, then, got the French vote. I’m sure that was a surprise to Bernie—who is more French than a poodle in a beret bragging about its prowess in bed. But that’s how it works. Headed by a Master French Chef, Marine Room is now Asian fusion. Tell your friends.

FACT: In 1988 there was not a single brewery in San Diego. When they opened in 1989, Karl Strauss became the first brewer in San Diego since the Prohibition. Now we’ve got over 100 local breweries. A friend in the industry predicts there is room for about 250. We are the undisputed craft beer capital of the U.S., if not the world.

FACT: We eat with our eyes first. For a long time, it seemed like Jimmy Buffet was getting drunk and designing all of the San Diego restaurants. If I wanted decent food in an uninspiring environment, I’d eat fried chicken in my garage. But now we’re getting top architects and designers involved. We’re creating memorable, inspiring, artful spaces.

FACT: There’s a shortage of good bourbon in San Diego. A liquor distributor just told me this. Why is that a good thing? Well, there’s a shortage because of the craft cocktail movement. Our bars are serving better stuff than they ever have—making it hard for the rest of us to find some decent Kentucky gold. That’s a form of happiness.

FACT: No San Diego chef has won a James Beard Award. I publicly predicted that would change this year with the third nomination for William Bradley of Addison. I was wrong. But it will happen, and soon.

Cheers to another good year of eating.

Troy

Some people don’t go to Tijuana because of the smell. Some don’t go because of its violent reputation. Some don’t go because of an unnamable, generalized fear.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The cover story of this month’s San Diego Magazine is my account of going back to Baja for the first time since all the blood. I had written off Tijuana. I knew the violent years were over. I’d seen the crime statistics (you have a greater chance of getting murdered in Chicago). I just had a fear echo.

As a kid growing up in San Diego, there was no shortage of slander about Mexico. The country was like that reclusive man in your neighborhood with the limp and the dead lawn who was known to bury children in his backyard. Adults told us bad men lurked on the other side of the border fence, waiting for white people with nice shoes. They pointed guns at you until you jumped in their sack. Then they called your family and asked for money. You might make it home. All of your fingers would not.

I started sneaking down there in 1987 when I was 14. At 4’11″ and still pre-pubescent, I had all the manliness of a Christmas elf. But I was able to get a fake ID at a small store in Downtown San Diego whose relationship with the Better Business Bureau was probably complicated. I drank buckets of Coronas at Peanuts & Beer, dancing to Salt N Pepa under black lights next to 18 year-old SDSU freshmen and menopausal hookers. I showed Tijuana far too little respect, partially because it didn’t seem interested in much.

I never got drugged or kidnapped. I did get shaken-down by two police officers. Paid one off with $6. The other got $50 after he took issue with the Swiss Army Knife in my pocket and told me I was going to jail forever and ever.

But I also saw another side of Baja. We’d drive 160 kilometers south of Ensenada and turn down nameless dirt roads until we hit water. We parked our trucks on the sand, camping and surfing for days. Just us, a wet horizon and sweet boredom. Gentle old fishermen traded us lobsters for t-shirts, knowing full well we were getting a deal in the exchange. The locals at the occasional side-road tienda welcomed us with warmth, looked after us.

That part of Baja seemed like a home. Like people had roots, a sense of place and pride. Whereas no one—not the cops or the curio shop owners or the bat shit crazy white people—seemed compelled to honor or preserve or make Tijuana better.

Then Nortec Collective happened. That band of Tijuana DJs, musicians and artists stole the spotlight back from the donkeys painted like zebras (zonkeys). My San Diego art friends moved to TJ. Partially because rent was $200. Partially because TJ was the only thing south of L.A. that was remotely edgy or artistic.

And then 2006 happened. The Mexican government stopped doing blow at parties with the cartels and started arresting them. That seemed like great news, but it wasn’t. When you remove the big dog from the yard, the smaller dogs fight over the bone. Up-and-coming cartels fought in the streets for control of the crime market. Tijuana became a bloodbath. Kidnapping became municipal sport.

Now, the dust has settled and—lo and behold—Baja is one of the most buzzed-about food and drink destinations on the planet. “Baja Med” is the name of its famous cuisine (even if some locals and chefs chuckle at it). News headlines about the food scene in the warm-climate region tend to use the word “hot” or “sizzling.”

Two years ago, star Tijuana chef Javier Plascencia told the New Yorker and the New York Times that he wanted to turn Baja into an international food destination. Just like San Francisco or Mexico City. Two months ago, photographer Jaime Fritsch and I set out on a series of day trips to see how far Plascencia and his colleagues had come.

I am a very different sort of tourist than I was in 2006. Which is good, because Baja is a very different sort of tourist destination. The pattern of consumption is moving away from the excessive intake of mediocre things, and more toward moderate intake of good things. Less tequila poppers, more snifter Mezcal.

After spending time there speaking with its innovators, I left with so many reasons why Baja’s food, wine and culture is terribly, terribly exciting. But the one idea locals expressed again and again goes something like this:

The violent years were awful. But this cultural surge might not have happened without them. When tourists stopped coming, Baja created a culture for its own people. They stopped catering to tourists’ wants and desires, and catered to their own. Ironically, that’s what’s made it especially attractive. After all, who wants to arrive in Paris only to realize it’s been designed to live up to American stereotypes of Paris (painters in berets talking snootily about sex)?

I want to experience Baja on its terms, not my own.

My story, “The Baja Moment,” ends with an anecdote some people feel I shouldn’t have told. Driving back from Valle de Guadalupe, we were pulled over by a police officer in Tecate. He said we didn’t come to a complete stop and we’d have to go down to the station. We were intimidated, missed our families, and didn’t know how to properly handle the situation. So we asked if we could take care of the ticket right there. We paid him off.

I was incredibly bummed. It’s my job to tell a true, firsthand experience as an American writer returning to Baja. And now he forced himself into my experience. When I relayed the story to the Baja tourism director, he was livid. He asked for his badge number (I didn’t think to get it), and told me about a hotline that Americans can call in situations like that. If it ever happens again, maybe I will.

But a crooked cop won’t keep me away from Baja. Neither will the fact that in some parts, Tijuana smells like shit. As more than a few locals told me: Baja isn’t for everyone, and that’s OK.

It’s definitely for me.

I hope you enjoy the story. I researched it exhaustively and relay a lot of statistics and ideas from the people who are creating Baja. It’s not meant to be a complete history or almanac. There are so many innovators and important people who helped shape the region’s food and drink scene that I wasn’t able to include simply due to space and time.

I start the story with Derrik Chinn, an American journalist living in Tijuana who has been bringing Americans down to experience the city in a real, non-tourist way for years. I felt apprehensive that the first voice you hear in a story about the region is a non-Mexican. But I wanted to organize the story as the typical American might experience it themselves—start through another American’s eyes—and then get to know the natives and influential people who have been building their native culture for a long, long time. Plus, Chinn is an eloquent, passionate participant in Baja culture.

The hardest part for me with this story is limitations. I could have written a book. I ended up with 5,000 words. But we also needed space in the magazine for Jaime’s beautiful photos. So I cut it down to 3,000 words. Fernando Gaxiola, owner of Baja Wine + Food and the largest importer of Baja wines, has a fascinating perspective on the wine regions that I need to tell. One of my favorite humans in Valle de Guadalupe—Natalia Badan, a sort of spiritual mother of the Valle—isn’t included here at all. Javier Plascencia’s phenomenal assistant Diana Jimenez was basically our tour guide and gave us invaluable insight. We had to cut it for space.

I had so many insightful conversations with people in Baja. We would talk for a half hour, maybe an hour. Then it was my job to bottle our entire conversation into one paragraph. Then take that one paragraph and bottle it into a sentence or two. There are so many great truths and ideas in the story; and yet so much is lost, too.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll present some of those ideas and interviews on SD Food News. Because they were so insightful and helpful to understanding the region, and I don’t like wasting people’s breath.

I’d like to thank everyone who took their time to help me on this story and yet who aren’t included: Diana Jimenez, Fernando Gaxiola, Jay Porter, Antonio from Life + Food and Club Tengo Hambre, Genaro Valladolid (Bustamante Realty Group), Flor Franco and Natalia Badan.

Thanks for reading. Now go to Baja.

Baja. Desert magic.

Jaime Fritsch

Some people don’t go to Tijuana because of the smell. Some don’t go because of its violent reputation. Some don’t go because of an unnamable, generalized fear.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The cover story of this month’s San Diego Magazine is my account of going back to Baja for the first time since all the blood. I had written off Tijuana. I knew the violent years were over. I’d seen the crime statistics (you have a greater chance of getting murdered in Chicago). I just had a fear echo.

As a kid growing up in San Diego, there was no shortage of slander about Mexico. The country was like that reclusive man in your neighborhood with the limp and the dead lawn who was known to bury children in his backyard. Adults told us bad men lurked on the other side of the border fence, waiting for white people with nice shoes. They pointed guns at you until you jumped in their sack. Then they called your family and asked for money. You might make it home. All of your fingers would not.

I started sneaking down there in 1987 when I was 14. At 4’11″ and still pre-pubescent, I had all the manliness of a Christmas elf. But I was able to get a fake ID at a small store in Downtown San Diego whose relationship with the Better Business Bureau was probably complicated. I drank buckets of Coronas at Peanuts & Beer, dancing to Salt N Pepa under black lights next to 18 year-old SDSU freshmen and menopausal hookers. I showed Tijuana far too little respect, partially because it didn’t seem interested in much.

I never got drugged or kidnapped. I did get shaken-down by two police officers. Paid one off with $6. The other got $50 after he took issue with the Swiss Army Knife in my pocket and told me I was going to jail forever and ever.

But I also saw another side of Baja. We’d drive 160 kilometers south of Ensenada and turn down nameless dirt roads until we hit water. We parked our trucks on the sand, camping and surfing for days. Just us, a wet horizon and sweet boredom. Gentle old fishermen traded us lobsters for t-shirts, knowing full well we were getting a deal in the exchange. The locals at the occasional side-road tienda welcomed us with warmth, looked after us.

That part of Baja seemed like a home. Like people had roots, a sense of place and pride. Whereas no one—not the cops or the curio shop owners or the bat shit crazy white people—seemed compelled to honor or preserve or make Tijuana better.

Then Nortec Collective happened. That band of Tijuana DJs, musicians and artists stole the spotlight back from the donkeys painted like zebras (zonkeys). My San Diego art friends moved to TJ. Partially because rent was $200. Partially because TJ was the only thing south of L.A. that was remotely edgy or artistic.

And then 2006 happened. The Mexican government stopped doing blow at parties with the cartels and started arresting them. That seemed like great news, but it wasn’t. When you remove the big dog from the yard, the smaller dogs fight over the bone. Up-and-coming cartels fought in the streets for control of the crime market. Tijuana became a bloodbath. Kidnapping became municipal sport.

Now, the dust has settled and—lo and behold—Baja is one of the most buzzed-about food and drink destinations on the planet. “Baja Med” is the name of its famous cuisine (even if some locals and chefs chuckle at it). News headlines about the food scene in the warm-climate region tend to use the word “hot” or “sizzling.”

Two years ago, star Tijuana chef Javier Plascencia told the New Yorker and the New York Times that he wanted to turn Baja into an international food destination. Just like San Francisco or Mexico City. Two months ago, photographer Jaime Fritsch and I set out on a series of day trips to see how far Plascencia and his colleagues had come.

I am a very different sort of tourist than I was in 2006. Which is good, because Baja is a very different sort of tourist destination. The pattern of consumption is moving away from the excessive intake of mediocre things, and more toward moderate intake of good things. Less tequila poppers, more snifter Mezcal.

After spending time there speaking with its innovators, I left with so many reasons why Baja’s food, wine and culture is terribly, terribly exciting. But the one idea locals expressed again and again goes something like this:

The violent years were awful. But this cultural surge might not have happened without them. When tourists stopped coming, Baja created a culture for its own people. They stopped catering to tourists’ wants and desires, and catered to their own. Ironically, that’s what’s made it especially attractive. After all, who wants to arrive in Paris only to realize it’s been designed to live up to American stereotypes of Paris (painters in berets talking snootily about sex)?

I want to experience Baja on its terms, not my own.

My story, “The Baja Moment,” ends with an anecdote some people feel I shouldn’t have told. Driving back from Valle de Guadalupe, we were pulled over by a police officer in Tecate. He said we didn’t come to a complete stop and we’d have to go down to the station. We were intimidated, missed our families, and didn’t know how to properly handle the situation. So we asked if we could take care of the ticket right there. We paid him off.

I was incredibly bummed. It’s my job to tell a true, firsthand experience as an American writer returning to Baja. And now he forced himself into my experience. When I relayed the story to the Baja tourism director, he was livid. He asked for his badge number (I didn’t think to get it), and told me about a hotline that Americans can call in situations like that. If it ever happens again, maybe I will.

But a crooked cop won’t keep me away from Baja. Neither will the fact that in some parts, Tijuana smells like shit. As more than a few locals told me: Baja isn’t for everyone, and that’s OK.

It’s definitely for me.

I hope you enjoy the story. I researched it exhaustively and relay a lot of statistics and ideas from the people who are creating Baja. It’s not meant to be a complete history or almanac. There are so many innovators and important people who helped shape the region’s food and drink scene that I wasn’t able to include simply due to space and time.

I start the story with Derrik Chinn, an American journalist living in Tijuana who has been bringing Americans down to experience the city in a real, non-tourist way for years. I felt apprehensive that the first voice you hear in a story about the region is a non-Mexican. But I wanted to organize the story as the typical American might experience it themselves—start through another American’s eyes—and then get to know the natives and influential people who have been building their native culture for a long, long time. Plus, Chinn is an eloquent, passionate participant in Baja culture.

The hardest part for me with this story is limitations. I could have written a book. I ended up with 5,000 words. But we also needed space in the magazine for Jaime’s beautiful photos. So I cut it down to 3,000 words. Fernando Gaxiola, owner of Baja Wine + Food and the largest importer of Baja wines, has a fascinating perspective on the wine regions that I need to tell. One of my favorite humans in Valle de Guadalupe—Natalia Badan, a sort of spiritual mother of the Valle—isn’t included here at all. Javier Plascencia’s phenomenal assistant Diana Jimenez was basically our tour guide and gave us invaluable insight. We had to cut it for space.

I had so many insightful conversations with people in Baja. We would talk for a half hour, maybe an hour. Then it was my job to bottle our entire conversation into one paragraph. Then take that one paragraph and bottle it into a sentence or two. There are so many great truths and ideas in the story; and yet so much is lost, too.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll present some of those ideas and interviews on SD Food News. Because they were so insightful and helpful to understanding the region, and I don’t like wasting people’s breath.

I’d like to thank everyone who took their time to help me on this story and yet who aren’t included: Diana Jimenez, Fernando Gaxiola, Jay Porter, Antonio from Life + Food and Club Tengo Hambre, Genaro Valladolid (Bustamante Realty Group), Flor Franco and Natalia Badan.

Thanks for reading. Now go to Baja.

Baja. Desert magic.

Jaime Fritsch

Remember fern bars? They were big in the 1970s. On Three’s Company, Jack Tripper’s friend Larry did most of his sleazing in fern bars. They were dead sexy. The idea was to flip your expectations. You’re inside a 1970s bar. You expect lacquered wood and wet moustaches. Instead, you find a rainforest.

Well, fern bars are back. Only this time they’re called plant wall restaurants. Plant walls are a grand statement piece of interior decor. Almost an entire wall—traditionally hung with a black-and-white photo or some old, rusty thing from Restoration Hardware—is transformed into a living, breathing green space. They’ve started showing up in San Diego restaurants over the last few years at The Pearl, Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant, and Vin de Syrah. (Technically, Vin de Syrah’s is a fake plant door. But that’s just an ironic, low-maintenance plant wall.)

Most plant walls are made with succulents—humble desert greenery that doesn’t need much water and doesn’t grow too fast (trimming a vertical garden isn’t simple work, nor is tending to its soil).

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

The two plant walls at The Patio on Goldfinch in Mission Hills are not like that whatsoever. They are how a drag queen might design a plant wall—showy, a touch gaudy, and so, so awesome. Tropical ferns jut out here, red tropical flowers burst over there. The plant walls are thick and wild, like craft beer beards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an entire family of pumas emerge from them or learn that a coffee farmer is stuck in there somewhere. They are two of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a restaurant.

During one meal, a dead leaf falls on one of our plates. The price you must pay for extreme plant walling.

It’s not just the walls. The Patio is one of the most inspiring restaurant spaces in San Diego. Designed by Lahaina Architects, it’s a lovely indoor-outdoor cave with reclaimed slat wood, brass, massive windows with roll-over metal “shutters.” The waiting bench outside is made of driftwood, just like your single dad’s 1978 coffee table. The most compelling part is that “patio.” Really, that’s a misnomer. It’s more a room without a roof—a truly special environment with its own fireplace that takes full advantage of San Diego’s perfect weather. People will fall in love or lust here.

Goldfinch is the second restaurant for the group, under owner Gina Champion Cain and chef John Medall. Their first, in Pacific Beach at the old Lamont Street Grill (renamed The Patio on Lamont), is a huge success. Serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, Goldfinch is a pretty enormous undertaking.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Luis :Garcia Luis Garcia

We start with Sunday brunch. The day’s special—a filet mignon hash with a chipotle sauce and a poached egg—is very good, a steak-and-eggs worthy of a bistro in a border town. Also suggested is the bourbon Dutch pancake, stuffed with caramelized bananas and apples, drizzled with berry compôte, agave-maple syrup, and Chantilly cream. The chilaquiles, however, fall a bit flat for a reason I’ll encounter repeatedly over three meals. It’s not that the flavors are off; in fact, they’re reasonably good. It’s just that they all rest in the same warm comfort zone with smoked chicken, cheese, eggs, avocado, tomatillo sauce, and sour cream. It lacks an acidic pop (the tomatillo is very mild)—a bright bite of vegetables (peppers would be great), a pepper-based sauce, or even a smattering of herbs.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

MELT IN YOUR MOUTH: Wild mushroom risotto topped with Boschetto cheese

The Patio has built a glass cheese cave, aging its own with help from top local cheese store Venissimo. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with fancy cheese sound like such a good idea, right? Only, I’m rarely sold that the added level of complexity is worth the extra cash ($13 in this case). When I’ve seen it done well, the bread is treated very lightly—just a silent messenger to deliver the gourmet cheese’s good word. The Patio’s bread is really nicely buttered and caramelized into a state of significant umami. May as well be bulk Cheddar underneath at that point.

At lunch, poke tacos are made with sushi-grade ahi in a soy-sambal marinade, tucked into a fried wanton shell. It’s a creative Mexinese idea. But sambal is Indonesian hot sauce. I’m expecting a compelling punch—and get a polite handshake. The marinade is very light. What you’re left with is quality sushi (and you have a side of very flavorful wasabi), so the consolation prize is no depressing bit of food. Again, it feels timidly played.

There are zero problems with the spaghetti squash with lemon ricotta, sun-dried tomato tapenade, and a chiffonade of basil, tarragon, and parsley. Baked, it gets a nice crispy texture and tastes like a fall farmers market version of angel hair pasta. A watermelon salad (compressed with lime juice and simple syrup) has great flavor development with sweet melon, peppery arugula, smoked feta, and pickled onion and lemon vinaigrette. But whoa, that pine nut brittle. It literally chews like a Now & Later, simultaneously able to crack your teeth and yank them out. The Beef & Bleu flatbread is a parade of deep umami notes (New York steak, gorgonzola, bread, roasted garlic sauce, mushrooms, white truffle oil). It’s nice and rich. But a singular high note (onions, sambal, horseradish) would have set it off perfectly.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

At the bar, it’s craft beers (why in San Diego would it be anything else?). The main focus is more than 60 types of tequilas and 14 mescals, plus two kinds of raicilla (Mexican moonshine). Their riff on the mule is house-infused pineapple and vanilla bean blanco tequila with ginger beer that’s carbonated to order. It’s a fantastic drink, not too sweet or too heavy on the ginger. The Mr. Chow is also very good, with gin, Ty Ku soju, cucumber, lime, and a splash of sriracha hot sauce. We try the housemade sangrita, but the spice makes it a challenge, not a pleasure to drink.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Pele Fizz: Bombay Sapphire gin, pomegranate juice, orgeat, and citrus

Medall’s octopus is phenomenal—a huge tentacle perfectly tenderized and well-charred, served over a gigante bean ragout with house-smoked pork belly and pine nut butter. Unless you’re currently avoiding pleasure, try the house-made monkey bread made with vanilla ice cream (yes, ice cream baked in there) and served with mascarpone-honey butter. It’s like eating Prozac-dusted endorphins. This menu is no prescription for weight loss.

A trio of Panko-crusted abalone, however, is just a miss. Shy on seasoning, the main flavor note is Panko. It does come with very good sun-dried tomato mashed potatoes, so we treat the abalone discs like canapés. The loup du mer—a European sea bass stuffed with hêrbes de Provence and served whole over Mediterranean couscous—is beautifully cooked and moist. But, again, it’s faint on flavor. It really could benefit from an aioli or sauce. The short rib with a demi-glace, however, is excellent over whipped parsnips served rustic with nice chunks of parsnips. The wild mushroom risotto has black truffle butter, cheese in the rice, and a thick layer of Boschetto cheese atop. It’s fairly delicious, though closer to fondue than risotto. At this point I start to see a pattern in Medall’s menu. Cheese everywhere. Nut butter in the ragout. Ice cream in the bread. Truffle oils. He’s not shy with life’s most pleasurable flavor enhancers. That’s bound to please a lot of people.

The Patio is a truly special place. Even when I’m grumping on about the lack of acid and greens and herbs in its life, I’d happily do so sitting under that plant wall drinking a mule, eating octopus, and listening for the screams of missing coffee farmers.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch