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The Point Loma ristorante has a packed patio almost every night and is a crown jewel for fresh-made pasta
No dried pasta will be harmed in the course of this story. Dried pasta has suffered your grossly misplaced slander and libel long enough.
Despite the cries from chefs and food writers, many Americans still assume fresh pasta (pasta fresca) is superior to dried pasta (pasta secca). Fresh pasta gets our love, dried pasta begs for our patronage. That has more to do with our emotional reaction to the word “fresh” than it does real, qualitative experience. We value fresh batches over dried batches. Fresh bread over dry bread (unless we’re making French toast). Fresh air over dry air.
The origin of this feud goes back to the motherland. In northern Italy, pasta fresca is the golden child, made on the spot with eggs and flour. The south—which is home to a large supply of durum semolina flour, necessary for dried pasta—loves pasta secca, made with semolina and water and slowly air-dried to perfection. Regional pride often parlays into claims of supremacy.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
Clockwise from top left: Olive bread; short rib pappardelle; pesto alla Genovese; bruschettone with prosciutto and figs. Center: Lasagna.
The advantage of fresh pasta is that it’s silkier, more tender and delicate. In my experience, there is a freshness to the dough and just-formed gluten that dried pasta simply can’t match. But in other instances, quality pasta secca—dried at a low temperature over a long time so that it develops a nuttiness—is far superior. Dried pasta made correctly (bronze die cut) has a rough texture on the surface that captures sauces far better than pasta fresca.
Fresh pasta also usually has a creaminess from egg yolks (dried pasta uses no yolks), but Cesarina opts not to put egg in theirs and, honestly, it’s not missed. They claim it helps make the pasta al dente, although an Italian chef I know questions the validity of that science.
All this is to say, fresh pasta is not always better than dried pasta. But Cesarina’s is.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
Fresh pasta is made in the restaurant’s pastificio
Cesarina is a real person. She’s the co-owner and pastry chef, who often delivers the most magical moment of any Cesarina meal—a tableside cart of tiramisu. There is often no good reason other than showmanship and entertainment to make food at the table. Except with this tiramisu. Usually, the ladyfingers in tiramisu arrive sodden with espresso, with all the consistency of breadcrumbs bobbing in a duck pond. But by presenting it tableside, Cesarina’s version retains a slight fresh-pastry crispness. The espresso is poured hot atop, then it’s spread with an unseemly amount of fresh mascarpone and dusted with cocoa powder. It’s a good reason to live, let alone visit.
Married team Cesarina and Niccolo Angus moved to San Diego a little over three years ago and started testing this fresh-pasta concept at farmers’ markets. Now they and two other Italian partners have this brick and mortar in Loma Portal, between Ocean Beach and Point Loma. OB is where San Diego’s hippies live; Point Loma is where those hippies move when they make money. It’s a tough middle ground, lacking parking and supporting attractions in the area (though Royale, with great burgers and cocktails, is across the street).
Apparently, the laws of location don’t apply to them, because their patio, shaded and lined with plant life, is packed almost every single night. The indoor dining room, lined with a hundred or so jars of pickling fruits and vegetables in an artistic homage to homesteading, is also jammed. This is one of San Diego’s hottest tickets right now, deservedly so.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
An Italian spritz with prosecco, Crodino and soda water
It’s that tiramisu. And the jovial, extreme Italian-ness of the staff (their birthday song, sung in Italian by everyone, is one of the only restaurant birthday songs on the planet that doesn’t make every human within 10 miles cringe). And that fresh pasta. Maybe in an era of carb shaming, eating bowls of pasta in the enthusiastic company of others is a joyful form of social revolt. A sweet release from dietary naysaying. Next to the bar lies the pastificio, a dedicated station for a pasta-maker who works from scratch, their skills on exhibit all day long as they knead, develop gluten, and fold, roll, and shape each carby creation. The sauces and other prepared dishes (salads, antipasti, entrées) are made by chef Patrick Money (Cucina Enoteca, The Smoking Goat).
Italians often say that Americans get pasta wrong by committing two major treasons—overcooking it and oversaucing it. And Money’s pomodoro fresco is an example of how it should be done: just the right amount of the simple tomato sauce with Parmigiano, burrata, confit tomatoes, and a small dollop of pesto. Their Bolognese is also excellent in any form, whether on your choice of pasta (fettuccine, penne, spaghetti, pappardelle, bucatini, tonnarelli, rigatoni, fusilli, ravioli, tortelli, mezzelune, or gnocchi) or in their lasagna, which arrives in a bowl with grass-fed ground beef ragout, béchamel, Parmigiano, mozzarella, and basil. Another star is the pappardelle short ribs, slow-braised meat over spinach pappardelle, carrots and other root veggies, Parmigiano, and fresh parsley. The pesto alla Genovese bursts with fresh herbs, lightly salted and helped in that department with creamy burrata and Parmigiano.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
Bruschettone with burrata, prosciutto di Parma, figs, basil, and balsamic vinegar
Almost every pasta dish at Cesarina resides somewhere in the very good to phenomenal range (except maybe the cacio e pepe, which I get undercooked and far too heavy on the pepper). It’s pleasantly and surprisingly al dente, which is often the complaint about fresh pasta, which can go limp at the slightest overcooking. It rivals Bencotto as some of the best fresh-made pasta in the city. It’s when I try the other creations that my excitement for Cesarina comes back down to earth.
I honestly can’t recommend any of the entrées currently on menu. The salmon fillet is barely seasoned, relying on a citrus dressing that doesn’t have the acid or flavor to save it. The vegetables are too simply prepared, with almost no spice or flavor. The rolle di pollo, quartered and stuffed with three types of mushrooms (crimini, shiitake, and porcini) is better, but somehow among all that fungi even it needs seasoning, a bolt. And the filet mignon with porcini demi-glace that I order medium rare comes out still ready for the butcher case.
The salads, too, are begging for attention. These are salads made for diets, or by true believers in the standalone power of greens. I understand simplicity, but the Cesarina salad is barely dressed, and eats more like a bowl of arugula. If you’re going to name a bowl of forage after your restaurant, it needs to have all the bells and whistles. It needs to taste like a neon sign looks.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
Tiramisu is made tableside with espresso, fresh mascarpone, and cocoa powder
From the appetizers, try that wondrous bruschettone fichi e prosciutto, with housemade organic focaccia topped with a huge heap of burrata cheese, fresh and cool figs, prosciutto di Parma, basil leaves, honey, and balsamic vinegar. Salty, sweet, creamy, and crunchy all at the same time. The octopus with romesco sauce and salmoriglio (a timeless Italian dressing of lemon, olive oil, garlic, and oregano) is a star, the tentacle blackened and crispy and lit up beautifully by the citrus zing. And that eggplant Parmesan, arriving in a hot terra cotta bowl that sizzles the tomato sauce enveloping it.
On a summer Tuesday evening, the place is hopping, and almost every table has wine. This is partly why I love Italian food. Every day is a day for wine. Every bite has its corresponding sip. You’ll also see the orange-hued Italian spritz, a refreshing and nicely bitter aperitif with prosecco, Crodino (a bitter, like Campari), and soda water.
For now, Cesarina is a crown jewel for fresh-made pasta, excellent sauces, and that tableside tiramisu. To become more than that, they’ll have to do some soul-searching on the rest of the menu.
Cesarina Is a New Star of Pasta in Need of Some Supporting Dishes
PARTNER CONTENT
The patio at Cesarina
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.
Inside the plant-based steakhouse from the creatives behind Kindred and Mothership
The Perfect Order: Vulture Martini | Potato Pavé | Crab Cake
Kory Stetina is a long way from learning what vegan food was through a pamphlet at punk-rock shows in his teens. He stands in his dream restaurant, Vulture, wearing a non-sportsy sports coat. He’s married with a child. There’s a very non-punk potato pavé on the monogrammed plate, the servers are in tux-adjacent attire, and this whole building in University Heights has been turned into a plant-based funhouse with formidable, obsessive style.
Despite the earmarks of midcentury continental formalism, five out of 10 people in here wear arcane t-shirts. Word got out early on that Vulture was a fine-dining experience, and while there’s a tableside Caesar and velvet curtains and soft, artful furniture, that was never the intent. Stetina had to do some PR legwork to pop the “special occasion” balloon that floated over the project—another collaboration between himself and Arsalun Tafazoli of CH Projects—and it seems to be working.
One of the t-shirt people I recognize: Justin Pearson of The Locust and Three One G Records. A thoughtful and progressive punk force in SD, he’s seated at a corner table with individuals who look like they’ve at least dabbled in if not dedicated their lives to graphic design and can casually play a theremin near a rare fern. Vulture captures that same dinner-party-for-creative-people mood that the Middletown bar Starlite first brought to the city.
It’s a place for grown-up punks, for ideas and ideals.
(Obtrusive but important note about punk rock and plant eaters: The rather genuine punk music of the 1970s and ’80s that eventually birthed Green Day and Nirvana and even, I guess, My Chemical Romance emerged from a philosophical and creative instinct to challenge status quos, which often meant expressing unpopular and political opinions in an excessively loud and urgent manner—pretty much exactly what Simon & Garfunkel were doing but far more invigorating and annoying. There were plenty of bands who got big because they had great hair and a good producer; there were other bands who got cult-famous based on the holy-wow way they expressed uncomfortable ideas, making people question the way they lived. Eating only plants was a part of this live-different worldview, and, like any good movement, it got co-opted by the tad too righteous, moral, and shame-mongery. It should be said that Stetina made his name in San Diego by being a philosophical vegan who’s un-mongery.)
To get to Vulture, you enter through Dreamboat, a well-lit, bright, Mr. Clean-ish, ’60s-era, plant-based, romantically American diner that’s all white and chrome and charm—poodle-skirt notions and connoisseur coffee and smoked potato latkes and Impossible burgers and baked goods and milkshakes and cocktails. Seating occupancy: one-and-a-half people on Ozempic (fine, it’s 10).
In the back corner of this tiny diner is an antique host stand. The host takes you through a velvet curtain, down the short hall, and through a door, until you enter into, what?
Some will call it a speakeasy, but it’s really just a fun surprise restaurant (“speakeasies” do still exist, but they’re not on OpenTable, and almost everyone with a project they call a “speakeasy” will, on their most honest days, admit it’s not a speakeasy).
You’ll step into cavernous, amber-glow, lava-lamp darkness. So, the first experience Vulture offers all of us is temporary blindness, followed by the opportunity to behold the shockingly slow ability of human eyes to adjust to radical shifts in light. The music is on point, a mix of obscure indie tracks and guilty-pleasure soft-rock bangers. Thanks to listening bars, restaurants have become the stereo-system showrooms of America. Remember that guy in high school who one day showed up with box speakers in his trunk and a $6,000 head unit, an amp, subwoofers, and EQs, and his car sounded like Dr. Dre’s and Rick Rubin’s place of business? That guy is restaurants.
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.
After two decades of work and four years of waiting, the Carlsbad restaurant's opening came with a big splash
It had been open six weeks when it got the Michelin star. At six weeks, a restaurant is a newborn. Newborns wail and struggle to breathe. They’re cracking open their first panic attack. Nine months in the flotation tank of the mom spa, then—blammo—the landlord shuts off the water and fairly traumatically evicts them into a drafty world that has no clue about mood lighting.
It’s old food critic wisdom that restaurants need six months to get running and ready for real analysis. Crew members will have lied on their resumes, narcissists will find themselves bored, the strangely emotional demands of diners will break newbies. It’s a fresh organism dedicated to executing nightly public theater, and it takes time for all the parts to learn how to operate as a fluid whole—develop mutually beneficial roles, nail the timing, speak the unspoken language.
Granted, the team at Lilo in Carlsbad aren’t newcomers, and they’ve had way more time than they ever wanted to plan this out. Plus, the partners—restaurateur John Resnick and chef Eric Bost—helped earn their restaurant across the street, Jeune et Jolie, a Michelin star (and they run its raved-about sister restaurant, Campfire, down the block).
“We’re lucky,” Resnick says. “About 80 percent of the people on our team, we either worked with immediately or they came back because they were excited about this project.”
The project is a 22-seat, tasting menu–only restaurant featuring Bost, longtime chef de cuisine Dusan Todic, wine director Savannah Riedler (formerly of Post Ranch Inn and two-Michelin-starred Saison), and beverage director Andrew Cordero (Jeune et Jolie and Campfire). It’s four years in the making. When a 10,000-square-foot building became available on State Street in 2021—the last of its kind on one of Carlsbad’s most up-and-coming drags—they jumped at it. The plan was to build a massive all-day restaurant (Wildland, now open) and, behind it, tiny Lilo, where they could showcase what their vision of the ultimate San Diego dinner experience could be. It’s the kind of James Beard Award and Michelin bait that ambitious restaurateurs dream of and makes basic sense when they have a chef-partner like Bost.
“Campfire and Jeune—from the time leases were signed to opening doors—took about 12 months,” Resnick says. “So I kind of felt like, alright, 18 months should be doable.” He pauses. “It was not.”
At that time, the pandemic was still slowly releasing its chokehold. Supply chains had been shot with a billion tranquilizer darts. Building two restaurants at a time while exhibiting a noble American amount of ambition was no picnic. The week after the project finally broke ground, the construction lead on the project—“the only person more essential to the buildout than us as owners,” Resnick says—departed. A fun idiosyncrasy of construction in North County is that most contractors live 40 minutes away and prefer freelance gigs closer to home. So, finding help was hard. Plus, a new ordinance had been passed in Carlsbad since Resnick opened his first two restaurants.
“I was down in Baja having lunch when I got an email about needing a ‘minor site development plan,’” Resnick remembers. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s got the word minor in it; it’s probably not a big deal.’ That one thing added nine months to the project.”
Project costs ballooned. Hems were hawed. The buzz on this project had been loud, and now the scene wondered and whispered. I ask Bost and Resnick if there was a time they considered giving up or drastically reducing the vision.
“It came up, yeah,” Resnick says. “At the end of the day, it was a ‘the only way out is through’ type of thing.”
They thought they’d launch in July 2023. The doors opened in April 2025.
For Bost, the unveiling of that restaurant was especially redeeming. In 2020, he’d lost what felt like everything. He’d spent 20 years working his way through some of the world’s best kitchens: Le Cirque, The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, Alain Ducasse, and both The Lodge at Torrey Pines and The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego. He hit the top when he was named executive chef for Guy Savoy, launching the famed French chef’s elaborate Vegas restaurant and then overseeing his places in Singapore. In 2017, ready to do his own thing, he returned to SoCal and spent two years developing the idea for his dream restaurant. He finally opened his unpretentious tasting-menu place, Auburn, in LA in 2019.
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.
The Middletown restaurant reminds us that when you invent something as iconic as the taquito, you’re allowed to rest a bit on your laurels
Every year for the Best of San Diego issue, we ask readers to nominate and vote for a San Diego classic restaurant they want food critic Troy Johnson to review. Whichever they vote for, he goes. Last year, they sent him to Rocky’s Crown Pub. This year… Mexican classic, El Indio.
The Perfect Order: Taquitos with Everything | Chicken Tamale | Mordiditas
When you’re credited with inventing the entire concept of the taquito, pretty much every other dish you create is going to pout in that cigar-shaped shadow. Unless you sous vide a couple narwhals, the taquito is gonna dominate your story.
San Diego’s El Indio is widely cited as the global birthplace of the taquito. (Note from our nonexistent legal team: Like any food origin story, it’s contentious—many will tell you a small, rolled taco had been a staple in Mexico for generations; others claim an LA taco stand beat SD to it. But by and large, El Indio has been granted paternity for the word “taquito” and cited as the first in the US to both sell and widely popularize the iconic thing—which happens to fit our narrative nicely, so we’re leaning in.)
So, El Indio’s mordiditas are that almost-famous entourage dish that deserves more applause. Sliced segments of taquito, about the size of pigs in a blanket, are assembled in a heap on a plate and absolutely waterboarded with nacho cheese and pickled jalapeños. They’re essentially loaded taquito nachos, an idea whose glory, in a just world, will outlive us all and echo in Valhalla. They solve a longstanding problem with every single batch of nachos that has been made in humankind—that each and every chip is denied an equitable amount of cheese or load.
Most nachos are built as an altar to American capitalism: The top couple of chips accumulate a vast majority of the cheese and the rest of the chips just keep hearing rumors of a trickle-down until they protest. If our species ever gets cut from the roster of the universe, the fact that we put a man on the moon but could never equally dress our nachos should be examined by our successor species as a possible cause.
El Indio’s taquito rubble comes in a biblical flood of nacho cheese. It’s a snack-bar treat for people whose therapists have listened to their fantasy of placing their open, eagerly receptive mouths beneath the queso pump—albeit with far better taquitos made from scratch.
The dish isn’t gonna knock your socks off, but it’s satisfying in a calorie-gargling way, a celebration of the fact that merely entering a taco shop releases us from acknowledging the physical limits of human arteries. Would El Indio’s mordiditas be better if the cheese was scaled back and partnered with a crema, or if the cheese was lovingly dirtied with chipotle in adobo, or if they came topped with a lawn-sized pile of cilantro and onions and activated charcoal ash from the sacred cenotes of Chichén Itzá? Shut up and eat your naquitos.
It feels simultaneously excessive and absolutely correct to say El Indio is a San Diego legend and global food icon. In 1940, Ralph Pesqueira Sr. was working in one of the many aerospace headquarters that surrounded Lindbergh Field (the SD International Airport’s original name), building planes and war machines. As a side dream, he started making and selling fresh corn tortillas by hand on the corner of Grape and India Streets.
As with most food success stories, there was a key moment of technological innovation (consider In-N-Out’s invention of the two-way speaker or Pizza Hut introducing online ordering to the pie masses). Around 1945, Pesqueira—who we might call the Thomas Edison of Mexican food—invented San Diego’s first tortilla-making machine. By hand, he could whip up 30 dozen a day; with the machine, he cranked out 30 dozen an hour. A full-fledged tortilla factory was born, the effect of which was massive for putting training wheels on the local Mexican food culture that would boom decades later.
When aero coworkers asked him if he could make a handheld, good-travelin’ food for lunch pails, he thought of flautas (a Mexican staple with global roots—a flour tortilla usually wrapped around meat and rolled into the shape of a flute, then fried).
He did a smaller version with fresh masa corn tortillas. The taquito entered the world. He sold each for 18 cents.
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.
The annual event honors middle market companies creating jobs, scaling up, and investing in the region
San Diego is known for its startup culture and innovation economy, but what happens when the company moves beyond its early-stage years? The San Diego Business Impact Awards aim to answer that question, spotlighting the middle market businesses helping drive the region’s economy.
Hosted by San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and JPMorganChase, the second annual awards celebration takes place on Thursday, July 23, from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. at Scripps Research Auditorium. More than 200 executives, entrepreneurs, and business leaders are expected to attend the networking and cocktail event honoring some of San Diego County’s fastest-growing companies.
Businesses headquartered in San Diego County that have operated for at least two years are encouraged to submit their nomination by Thursday, June 18 at 4 p.m. Companies across industries—from technology and life sciences to tourism and consumer products, as well as pre-revenue startups—are eligible for recognition.
For EDC President and CEO Mark Cafferty, the event is as much about building connections as celebrating success. “We’ve had a longtime partnership with JPMorganChase; their work aligns with our efforts to support underserved communities and drive talent development,” says Cafferty. “And the networking was invaluable last year. I’m still in touch with people I met at last year’s awards.”
EDC is an independently-funded nonprofit that works directly with San Diego companies to help them grow the local economy, make the region as a whole more competitive, and attract and retain top-tier talent with quality jobs. Through EDC, companies can get help starting or expanding their business with support for things like site selection, permit navigation, and regulatory guidance, plus connections to local resources and potential business collaborators.
The San Diego Business Impact Awards began as an idea with one of EDC’s longtime strategic partners, JPMorganChase. The two organizations share a commitment to San Diego and are dedicated to bolstering middle market businesses.
“We’re blessed with a robust innovation economy and startup community,” says Aaron Ryan, San Diego Region Manager for JPMorgan’s Commercial and Investment Bank and vice chair of the firm’s’ San Diego Market Leadership Team. “But one of the segments of the business community we felt was overlooked was emerging middle market companies—the businesses that are no longer small but not yet large.”
Ryan says supporting those companies is critical as they scale and decide where to invest, hire, and grow.
San Diego’s high cost of living remains one of the region’s biggest business challenges, making talent recruitment and retention increasingly competitive. But local leaders point to the region’s quality of life, climate, and collaborative business community as advantages that continue to attract employers and workers.
“In order to support thriving households, there has to be enough high-quality jobs for people to be able to afford to live here,” Cafferty says. “Once a company grows and excels past that middle market point in their growth cycle, they become much more likely to pay higher wages and compete globally.”
Both Cafferty and Ryan proudly tout the unique collaboration that exists among San Diego County businesses. Bringing together top universities producing high-quality talent, cutting-edge research institutions, a robust military and defense presence, leading ocean science and environmental organizations, and a binational, cross-border identity creates a distinct business ecosystem that defines and strengthens the San Diego region.
Last year’s San Diego Business Impact Awards celebrated nearly 60 honorees from 49 industries, representing a total of 8,232 jobs across eight sectors, including: software and technology, healthcare and life sciences, consumer goods, professional services, finance, construction and manufacturing, defense, and hospitality and tourism. On average, honoree companies doubled their revenues over the previous year, employed more than 145 San Diegans each, and offered an average annual compensation of $192,415.
Top honorees included defense contractor Innoflight, environmental consulting firm Bancroft Construction Services, life sciences startup Element Biosciences, defense technology contractor GALT Aerospace, organic grocery store chain Jimbo’s, and biopharmaceutical company LENZ Therapeutics. During the event, Innoflight Founder and CEO Jeff Janicik held a fireside chat offering his insights on investing in the community and embracing San Diego culture.
This year, organizers hope to continue highlighting the middle market players driving economic impact across the region. Nominations are now open through June 18 at 4 p.m. Get your tickets to the San Diego Business Impact Awards celebration to enjoy drinks by Snake Oil Cocktail Co., light bites, live music, and networking.
Food critic Troy Johnson heads to Juan Jasper Kitchen & Wine, an eminently lovable and literal hole in the wall in his latest review
The Perfect Order: Wedge Salad | French Fries | Steak of Choice
Don’t come here.
If you do, locals will TP my place of residence. If you’re going to go, go at 4 p.m. If someone waddles over in their bathrobe with that feral need-a-steak look in their eyes, consider offering your seat as a tribute to their OG-ness. Or maybe they’ll sit on your lap. This feels like the kind of place where strangers become fast, lap-sitting friends.
Juan Jasper Kitchen & Wine isn’t a restaurant as much as it is a porch with a stove, a pop-up that stayed popped. It’s a granny dining flat in Golden Hill, a clubhouse with ribeyes and wine. It started with the old-school butcher shop next door, Sepulveda Meats & Provisions. Opened in 2016, Sepulveda is run by John Sepulveda and his nephew Nick Swing.
The shop serves the regional gold-standard Brandt beef (drug-free, source-ID’ed, ethically raised) in all its forms and in various marinades (prime cuts and off cuts, pâtes, bones, tri-tip, carne asada, sausages, ground beef, the whole meat rainbow), plus chicken and quail and turkey and pork and all the things, including housemade pastas and sauces. The sausages are local folklore, made fresh every Thursday (try the jalapeño-cheddar). Like The Wise Ox in North Park, the family-run joint is basically a house of high-quality protein consultants offering recipes and tips and tricks to people who know them by name. Indie butcher shops are a classic, more human American art form (with deep German immigrant roots) lost to the efficiencies of bulk grocering.
When the hairdresser beside Sepulveda closed, the team cut a hole in the wall, ripped out the salon chairs, and essentially built a test kitchen for the butchery’s array of goods. Named Juan Jasper in honor of the owners’ fathers, it quickly became the mighty, DIY meat-and-wine bistro that local food people tried to keep secret.
It doesn’t have a phone number. No reservations. It doesn’t take credit cards—only Venmo or whatever “cash” is. At some places, you can rack up credit card points. Dine at Juan Jasper, and I’m pretty sure Amex deducts some.
It’s got one-and-a-half seats that masquerade as 20 or so, and it seems everyone—owners, cooks, servers, guests, dogs—lives in the apartment complex across the street, sharing sourdough starters, reverse-sear tips, and a love for Gavi wine and a screamin’ deal on good food. Some hyper-local spots like this can give off a get-off-my-lawn wariness to outsiders (hi there, Rocky’s Crown Pub), but Juan Jasper is friendly as hell. As if you were invited to crash the dinner party of a family who truly gets along and isn’t trying to salve deep generational trauma with taco night.
We show up at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, and we have to hurry for a seat. By 5 p.m., servers are bringing folding chairs onto the sidewalk for the crowd that’s patiently waiting. A man carries out an extra table, slaps a not-serious tablecloth on it, and makes room for a couple more.
Whoever’s doing the wine list knows a thing or two and doesn’t care for the usual suspects, which is what you want out of a wine bar (the thrill of discovery). There are Gavis and roussannes, Blaufränkisch (a great chilled red from Austria), a red from Palestine (baladi grapes). And the staff raves about them in detail and without pretense.
I’m not sure I’ve come across a more down-to-earth, likable, knowledgeable staff. There’s a certain “sit; chill; life’s pretty decent” that radiates from people when they genuinely dig working at a place. Solare in Liberty Station’s like that. Not since our dear, departed Cafe Chloe in East Village has a restaurant exuded so much plucky, open-arms charm. Chloe was San Francisco chic, had that art-major touch.
Juan Jasper’s charm is more “emotionally available dad in Home Depot.” You see it in the antique plates with floral patterns, in the wine bottles that have been turned into candle lamps for the outside tables (there are no inside tables, just a counter in front of the cooks). You see it in the photo of a dad teaching his son to pee on a side road (the manager’s dad and brother). Walking to the restroom, you often have to do the hands-up, “not trying to get fresh here” scoot.
Juan Jasper changes the menu just about all the time but keeps some local favorites on there pretty consistently, like the deviled eggs with chorizo made in-house at Sepulveda. The ones that hit our table are nice, but they’re served a tad too cold and missing something. That something is definitely acid.
The “devil” in deviled eggs has always been the mustard—the note that stings in the right ways; puts some welcome sado in the mouth masochism; offsets the big, fatty bass notes of eggs. This is why eggs are almost always better with hot sauce (or ketchup if you’ve got middle-America glory in your heart and you’re kinda nasty), because they need that foil. It looks like the arugula below is decorative, but it helps to eat the eggs with a few leaves.
There are always daily specials up on the board. The day we were there, a cook (formerly of Nolita Hall) had whipped up a skin-on mackerel filet with blistered tomatoes and chili oil on charred toast. Mackerel’s an oily little sucker, which can make it taste a bit too proud of its own musk. But this is perfectly done.
The wedge salad? One of the best I’ve had, and it is absolutely because of the decadent, slutty lardons on top (and the dressing). I’m not a wedge guy, mostly because iceberg lettuce has been bringing near-zero flavor or nutrients to the table for far too long. It’s the LaCroix of lettuce, and we’re implicit in its slacker brassica success because “it’s crunchy” and makes a cool sound when we eat it. Iceberg slow-quit us years ago and did some light embezzling and we’re still inviting it to the company Christmas party.
But I’ll order Juan Jasper’s every time. It’s more of a “loaded” wedge, with thin-sliced red onions, tomatoes, croutons, huge chunks of blue cheese, and a rough-chopped spice blend (a sort of Juan Jasper furikake or everything bagel seasoning that’s on a lot of dishes). Does the kitchen put too much blue cheese dressing on it? You bet. Know what a decent solution for that is? Scraping some off. But those lardons—thick, tender nubs of perfectly smoked pork—are party drugs.
The house-cut Kennebec fries are dreamy: sturdy and showing some skin, but fluffy on the inside. The fry scene is pretty evenly split between steak and shoestring, and these are the truce in the middle. They’re salted as fries should be—to aortically concerning levels.
The corn and shrimp fritters are more corn and shrimp than fritters, and the moisture content of both of those things makes the interior a tad soupy rather than fluffy. But the poblano sauce underneath is a floral beaut.
Juan Jasper’s burger patty is phenomenally good, made from the ribeye and NY strip trimmings next door at the butcher shop. Order it however you enjoy your quality steak— pink, leaning bloody. If you prefer quality steaks well-done, consider corrective surgery. The burger is a Spartan thing, just a potato roll bun and melted gouda, served floating in an infinity pool of Bordelaise. It’s excellent… save for the bread. Juan Jasper is house-making the potato roll. Noble spirit and effort, but it’s a little airy—and a patty that special deserves an equally special co-host.
Is Juan Jasper the apex culinary menu in San Diego? No. Is the food pretty effing good and the vibe immaculate, and do the people and neighborly pricing make it taste like 13 Michelin stars? You bet. Juan Jasper is not a secret. But it sure as hell feels like a shared one. I’d eat here a thousand times out of 100.
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.
Some of San Diego’s top food and drink minds riff on Cold War classics at Point Loma’s newest hotspot
The Perfect Order:
Deviled Eggs | Grilled Oysters A La Rockefeller | Jidori Chicken Kiev
I want a deviled egg shop. I would only visit that shop once a year, because deviled eggs are a deeply enjoyable food that bring a flood of best memories and briefly resuscitate your long-gone grandma, then, after one full serving—like a candy corn—you need to not see again for another 364-and-a-half days. But life would be better knowing this bistro existed (even if it was forced to become a money-laundering drug front to survive), because a solid deviled egg is a big bang of American happiness.
In absence of that, I’ll take Ponyboy. It’s less a restaurant than a poolside dinner party and R&D space at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma. And it’s the debut of what could be the city’s next great restaurant group: Service Animals, from longtime San Diego drinks man Ian Ward (hailing from three-Michelin-starred Addison) and chef Danny Romero (also ex-Addison, plus opening chef at Wormwood and a guy with a great pop-up dinner concept, Two Ducks, with his brother Dante). They launched Ponyboy with chef Josh Reynolds (Wormwood), former Addison sommelier Kyle South, and hospitality expert Patrick Virata.
The heart of the concept is neo riffs on 1950s-era, moon-landing Cold War food and drink: TV dinners and stroganoffs and ambrosia and an absolutely remarkable chicken Kiev. It’s the cuisine of greasers, socs, Julia Child, MFK Fisher, duck-and-cover drills, low-grade nuclear paranoia, and Jell-O proliferation.
Cured in beets and hibiscus, Ponyboy’s deviled eggs (served on a bird’s nest of dried noodles) are the color of Crown Royal bags. Inside is a light, dreamy payload of traditional deviled-egg mousse whipped with pistachio praline, then topped with candied pistachios and a sprig of watercress. The flavors are incredible, and it’s a visual treat that looks like Easter around Salvador Dalí’s pool. The eggs do lose something with the psychedelic prettifying, though; either due to the curing liquid (salt dehydrates and hardens proteins) or because they’re a tad overboiled, the egg whites are vaguely rubbery. That said, if the ass-end of pencils tasted this good, I’d eat them with enthusiasm.
The drinks menu belongs at a backyard pool party to celebrate dad’s promotion to General Motors middle manager. It’s filled with dreamy tropicalism, which dominated cocktails in the ’60s because that’s when commercial air travel in the US took off.
People came back from trips to Hawai‘i and tried to replicate that mystical wonder through happy hours. Boozy tiki culture escapism was a guiding social light. So Ponyboy has banana daiquiris, Mexican Firing Squads, Singapore Slings, Bahama Mamas, and Pink Squirrels. Ian Ward is one of the most thoughtful, accomplished drinksmen in the country, so this ranks as one of the best poolside bars in the city now.
The team pilfers the Great Receptacle of Unduly Ignored Wedding Gifts and brings fondue for two tableside—a large ceramic pot painted with grandmotherly love and burbling with gruyère, aged white cheddar, Parmesan, wine, and a touch of sodium citrate (science’s great contribution to cheese society, it helps fromage stay smooth), served with roast vegetable crudo and bread from the fantastic upstart Companion Bakery. It’s exactly as you think it might be. “Pot of cheese” is the culinary precursor to Xanax; it eases all moods (even if staring at the nutritional realities of that much burbling dairy does sting the Pilates part of you).
Ponyboy serves an ambrosia salad. The lack of fruit salads in modern America continues to be a gross injustice. Remember when we discovered fruit in the 1980s? Every self-respecting potluck and party had a fruit salad. Not having one was like not having a carving station at your brunch buffet or low-key disappointment at your gender reveal party.
Ambrosia’s a classic Southern dish that showed up in the late 1800s when stores realized people would buy fruit despite the fact that it grows on trees. The original recipes were pretty much just three layers: orange slices, coconut, and sugar. In Greek mythology, ambrosia was the food that gave the gods their immortality. Without it, they became weak, and mortals would allegedly die if they ate the gods’ ambrosia. Old gods are brutal. Over the years, ambrosia got a bad rap because people made it like the lovably malevolent “fruit” “salad” that my mom brought to every party in the ’80s—just a bunch of fruit-in-corn-syrup cans dumped into a bowl with tiny, multicolored marshmallows… one part nature, six parts prediabetes.
Not in the business of slow-murdering my whole youth soccer team and their parents, Ponyboy’s recipe is different. The restaurant gives mandarins, fig, pomegranate, and coconut a light tossing in lime zest, melted marshmallows, Tajin, and mint. The fruit is in-season, with hints of chiles and herbs. What a treat.
If you’re going to do astronaut-glory-day food, Jell-O is required. It shows up as the centerpiece of the fisherman’s-catch ceviche (Ponyboy is one street over from the sportfishing docks, and star fishmonger Tommy Gomes brings over fresh arrivals from the dock behind his fish shop, Tunaville).
Admittedly, “seafood Jell-O” sounds like something they’ll serve on the last boat remaining after sea levels swallow life as we know it and the last chef standing is just trying to bring a little joy to the sopping-wet final bow of humanity (and managed to evade the aquapocalypse with some agar agar in tow). But it is excellent. The local catch of the day (rockfish, sometimes, or vermillion) is brined and cured in lime juice and tossed with pickled onions, avocado-chive oil, and borage flowers (a cucumber-esque edible). In the middle, molded in a canelé, is Clamato Jell-O (seasoned with charred shallots and cilantro). It doesn’t eat like a gimmick; it adds a fresh acidity and that famous texture. If you’re experiencing fear, think of it like the shrimp in your loaded bloody mary or remember the tons of other seafood dishes throughout history that have included a gelée.
The oysters “Rockefeller” should be called “Rajafeller.” They’re grilled, then loaded with Mexican rajas—roasted and stripped poblano peppers and crema with spinach, lemon, and crispy leeks. With all due respect to the iconic dish, this is far better and perfectly Californian.
Not all is flawless. Getting to the root of why the local tuna “casserole” unsettles me may require light therapy. Sashimi-size medallions of raw local tuna are seared and crusted with potato flour and plated with hot Parmesan tagliatelle and a tomato-tuna sauce (which is traditionally served in vitello tonnato). Maybe it’s because I was expecting a true casserole (which is dumb, given the playfulness of the group), and my disappointment about not getting a misshapen square of molten Betty Crocker doesn’t allow me to appreciate its deconstructed charms. Or perhaps the problem simply lies with this dish’s base phrase: “hot noodles, cold fish.”
The Baja riffing also takes the stroganoff into a wildly different planet than the classic dish.
The word “stroganoff” sparks a simian craving for meat, mushrooms, booze, broth, cream, and carbs—all hearty, bass-note flavors. At Ponyboy, a barbacoa rub brings sweet baking spices such as allspice and cinnamon to the party. It’s like expecting an everything bagel and only realizing it’s cinnamon raisin after you bite it: not bad, just jarringly misaligned with the dish you remember accidentally dripping onto Grandma’s crocheted tablecloth.
The undisputed star of Ponyboy’s show is the chicken Kiev, a dish once so popular that it was manhandled and reputationally destroyed by every cut-rate, dull-knifed diner cook. Ponyboy brines Jidori chicken breasts, pounds them out, then makes a truffle butter with real Perigord truffles. The chicken is wrapped around that compound butter to form a roulade, then it’s dredged in egg, flour, Dijon, and panko; deep-fried to a perfect golden brown; and topped with chives and a pipette of reduced chicken jus. It’s served over Robuchon potatoes with roasted veggies. It’s gotta be up for dish of the year.
If you’re going to lean into retro kitsch, lean hard. Get the tattoo. Ponyboy does, and the result is a hell of a good time, backed by some of the top food and drink minds in the game.
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.
Scripps study shows that some patients may be able to taper their dose and maintain results
While glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agents have been used to treat Type 2 diabetes for more than 20 years, their recent emergence as weight-loss wonder drugs marked a new frontier in medicine. But their effectiveness has left some patients wondering what to do once they’ve reached their goal. Stopping the medication could mean regaining some, if not all, of the weight. A Scripps Clinic internal medicine physician recently conducted a small study of whether GLP-1 patients who had reached their goal weight could maintain that weight by taking their regularly prescribed injection every other week instead of weekly. Spoiler alert: 30 of 34 patients did. Read more about the study here and what that may mean as pharmaceutical companies roll out oral GLP-1s.
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