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5 Food Questions for Jerry Sanders

Candice Woo: After six years as mayor, you’ve surely sampled much of the San Diego restaurant scene - what are some of your favorite spots near your downtown office? And what do you like close to home in Kensington?

Mayor Sanders: Aot of the time, my appointments are too close together to go out and enjoy lunch in a restaurant, so I’ll have a sandwich from Grab-n-Go or eat something from home. But when I go out to lunch, I really like Maria’s, a little Mexican restaurant around the corner from City Hall, and Nicky Rottens, which has some of the best burgers in the city.

My wife and I eat pretty regularly at three places near our house: the Kensington Grill, Bleu Boheme, and Farmhouse Cafe. We also like to go over to North Park for the restaurants there. Urban Solace is one of our favorites.

Are there restaurants that you think are emblematic of San Diego? Where do you take visiting dignitaries to give them a taste of San Diego, or the best that the city has to offer?

Believe it or not, I don’t dine out with visiting dignitaries. Our meetings are usually in my office. But there are a few restaurants that incorporate a piece of San Diego and also have great cuisine that I would recommend to visitors. The Grant Grill has a lot of history behind it, and it’s in an elegant, historic building. Bertrand at Mr. A’s has one of the best views of any restaurant in the city. Both restaurants have good food amd the impeccable service you expect of fine dining, but they’re still inviting – and I think that’s a mark of San Diego.

But you haven’t really had a taste of San Diego until you’ve gone to one of our more humble taco shops and enjoyed a carnitas burrito or three rolled tacos with guac.

You’ve become a familiar face at local craft beer events and openings, declared June to be “Craft Beer Month” and expressed that it’s our “civic duty” to support San Diego breweries. How do you see our booming “brew-tech” industry impacting the city’s economy and its national reputation?

Local support of our craft beers has a number of positive economic impacts, some tangible, some less so. San Diego is looking to shed an outdated reputation as a culinary backwater, and I think calling attention to what local brewers and chefs are doing helps. You’re seeing a lot of restaurants embracing local produce and beer, building their menus around what we’re doing best in San Diego.

This adds another layer of interest for tourists – particularly arts and culture travelers. Just like people travel to Napa Valley primarily to sample the wine, we’re in a good position to be the place people want to go to sample unique and high-quality beer. So that’s one angle.

The more direct impact is on jobs and our tax base. The city’s Economic Growth Team has worked with several brewers to help them with permitting and other matters to help them expand – and with their expansions, they’re adding dozens of jobs.

But “Craft Beer Month” was mainly about making San Diegans aware of what they have right here in town – and hopefully, spurring demand for local products. Lots of people love very high-quality beer and aren’t even aware that a huge selection of beers are brewed right here in San Diego. And given the knowledge and the option, many people will choose a local beer over one made in Colorado or Oregon.

Do you have a certain style of beer that you gravitate to? What are some of your favorite local breweries or beers?

I really enjoy porters and IPAs. Stone IPA, Green Flash West Coast IPA, Stone Smoked Porter and Ballast Point Black Marlin Porter are a few of my favorites. I also really enjoy Karl Strauss Tower 10. I used to be a Bud Light guy, and local beers opened my eyes to craft brewing and really savoring a beer like you would a wine.

You recently attended a meeting to discuss the recommendations that resulted from a San Diego Urban-Rural Roundtable discussion on how to move this area towards a sustainable regional food system. What were some proposals that you’d like to support and how do you see the mayor’s office participating in this movement?

City staff was part of developing the recommendations of the Urban-Rural Roundtable. One of the ideas we’re pushing is creating a sustainable food cluster – with producers, warehouses, processors and manufacturers keeping locally grown food here in San Diego, which means fresher food and fewer impacts. Our Economic Growth Team is working with the South County Economic Development Corp. on developing that concept in Otay Mesa with companies like Circle Foods and others.

We also want to ensure people have access to fresh foods, so we’ve relaxed zoning to make it easier for communities to have gardens on commercial properties. We’re also looking at restrictions on other urban agriculture like chickens, bees and goats, as well as composting. The notion that we shouldn’t place unnecessary barriers between people and sources of fresh food has a lot of support in my office and in the City Council, and we’re examining our rules and seeing where they need to be revised. By the end of the year, you’ll see recommendations at City Council for code amendments that help our communities.

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