Grand Restaurant Group, the restaurant company that owns Bellamy’s in Escondido and Nick & G’s in Rancho Santa Fe, has expanded its management team this fall with newly appointed Chef Partner Alex Carballo.
The longtime San Diego chef and culinary consultant recently joined GRG and his first big project is re-branding and re-launching the company’s former Mexican restaurant Alejandra’s in Carlsbad, which closed in October.
The walled hacienda-style restaurant at Alga Road and El Camino Real in Carlsbad will reopen in January as Nómada, an approachable, family-friendly 250-seat restaurant/bar featuring popular dishes that Carballo has discovered and reimagined in his extended travels as a “nomad” in his native Mexico.
Carballo said the Nómada menu will include his signature duck tacos, served on housemade tortillas made with heirloom corn masa, as well as cochinita pibil barbecue from the Yucátan peninsula, ceviches from Mazatlan, mariscos from Sinaloa and other dishes influenced by the cuisines of Veracruz, Jalisco, Oaxaca and Baja California.
The restaurant’s front patio/bar has been refreshed with new furniture and landscaping, and the interior is being revamped to bring back the live music stage and DJ booth that existed there when the restaurant was known as Crazy Burro in the early 2000s. Carballo said live salsa and Latin-style music will be offered on Friday and Saturday nights. There will also be a tortilla-making station, open bar, oyster bar and wood-fired grill. Dinner will be served on weeknights, with brunch on the weekends.
Nómada will also have a new bar menu created by GRG’s new Beverage Director Sean Ward. Previously, Ward served as the mixologist for San Diego’s RMD Group, which owns and operates dozens of restaurants and bars across San Diego. His Nómada drinks menu will center on agave spirits with Mexican and South American flavors, with margaritas, palomas and more.
The former Alejandra’s restaurant in Carlsbad will reopen in January as Nómada, an approachable Mexican restaurant being reimagined by Grand Restaurant Group’s new Chef Partner Alex Carballo. (Pam Kragen / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Carballo is well known in San Diego as the restaurant industry’s “Mr. Fix-It,” a hands-on chef-consultant who has helped many first-time restaurateurs launch new concepts. He has also performed several “Kitchen Nightmare”-style rescues of struggling spots that needed concept, menu, budget, operational protocols, training and staffing overhauls.
Born and raised in Sinaloa, Carballo has spent more than 20 years in San Diego restaurant kitchens, including five years as general manager and executive chef at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido. He later helped launch the former URBN Brewing and guided culinary development for Leucadia Co.’s concepts, including Hamburger Hut, Valentina, and Moto Deli. He also launched the Haven restaurant at Fox Point Farms in Encinitas.
Carballo will partner in GRG with Chief Operating Officer Gianina Pickens. Her grandfather, Nicola DiCicco, emigrated more than 50 years ago from Pacentro, Italy, to Fresno, where he launch a company of Italian restaurants. Nicola’s mother, Sandra DiCicco-Bonar, later founded the Grand Restaurant Group. Pickens earned her degree from Le Cordon Bleu Las Vegas and went on to spend more than a decade working across the family’s restaurants.
Carballo said he is “super excited” to join GRG.
“I really like the family a lot,” he said. “They’re involved in so many charites and I’m involved in that myself. They see a good future with us and have a lot of faith in me.”
Carballo has earned respect for his restaurant consulting skills because he doesn’t just come in, take a look around and write an list of recommendations. He goes into the kitchens and works alongside the line cooks and talks every day to the servers and bussers to figure out what’s working and what’s not and to determine the story the restaurant needs to tell.
“As a consultant from the top view, that’s what you focus in on. Where are they located? What is the concept? What type of food are they serving? Does it fit the demographic of the community? Does the silverware and plateware match the food?”
While Carballo said he has often come across restaurants that had easily identifiable and fixable problems, many restaurant owners today are facing existential problems related to inflated food, service, rent and insurance costs. The key to succeeding in spite of growing expenses, Carballo said, is creating the magical equation of “perceived value,” meaning does the restaurant’s food quality and quantity, service and ambiance match the price that customers are comfortable paying.
“Your average person that’s not a foodie just wants good delivery on service, good delivery on food and good ambiance,” Carballo said.
Some of the changes diners will see when they visit Nómada are that the food will be more affordable and the experience more approachable. The menu will be simpler and more direct, so diners can order a taco or two a la carte rather than only as part of a combo plate. The menu’s story will also authentically reflect his own culinary journey rather than the former Alejandra’s, which was not a name that diners connected with the food.
Carballo said the surrounding neighborhood is also filled with families with small children and teens, so he wants Nómada to be a more welcoming place for large parties who want to come in to celebrate and relax.
“If you’re in an area with a bunch of kids and families, they don’t necessarily want to to dine in an elegant dining room. If parents have kids and they’re coming from a football game, they won’t say ‘let’s go there.’ They’ll say ‘let’s go to a sports bar.’ So we want to accommodate what that area needs. You have to know your audience.”
After launching Nómada, Carballo said he and Ward will be working to refresh the food and drink menus and other GRG restaurant locations.
For updates on Nómada, visit grandrestaurantgroup.com.