When the doors of Ironside Fish & Oyster quietly reopen Wednesday after a five-week closure, customers at the Little Italy restaurant-bar will notice two big changes: a renovated dining room and an all-new kitchen with live-fire cooking capabilities.
But the biggest addition to the 12-year-old India Street seafood spot is the man runnning the show.
Founding executive chef Jason McLeod launched Ironside in April 2014 and ran the business under owner CH Projects for eight years. Then he moved to Las Vegas where over the next four years he opened five restaurant projects, mostly for Clique Hospitality. On Jan. 15 of this year, he moved back to San Diego to become a full partner and executive chef at Ironside.
McLeod said that after he became a first-time dad last year at the age of 54, he thought hard about how he wanted to spend the rest of his life, and he knew it wasn’t going to be working behind a desk in Las Vegas.
“I said to myself I want to get back to cooking. I really miss it. It’s been a long time since I’ve just been responsible for one location where I can just cook and have fun,” McLeod said. “Ironside was always my baby. From the day we opened, it became my San Diego identity. When people would meet me on the streets they’d say ‘you’re the Ironside chef.’ I was really proud of what we did and the relationships that we built with the fishermen here. It was great telling their stories.”
Chef/partner Jason McLeod inside Ironside Fish & Oyster in Little Italy, which reopens on Wednesday after a five-week renovation and kitchen upgrade. (James Tran)
McLeod was raised on the west coast of Canada, just south of the oyster-rich Fanny Bay, where he spent his childhood fishing for halibut and spot prawns and digging for clams on the beach.
After cooking his way around the world at Fairmont, Four Seasons and other resorts, he landed in 2009 at the Elysian Hotel in Chicago, where he opened the Ria restaurant that earned two Michelin stars in 2011.
Fom there, he signed on as chef/partner with Arsalun Tafazoli’s CH Projects, and over the next 11 years he helped Tafazoli expand the company’s San Diego culinary offerings.
McLeod’s pride and joy was Ironside, located near the corner of India and Date streets. It was modeled after a traditional East Coast seafood house. Every morning, local fishermen could bring in their daily catch for sale. Its retro ocean liner décor featured portholes, ship figureheads, old iron diving helmets, stacks of antique luggage and giant octopus sculptures.
Ironside became an instant hit and a key part of Little Italy’s then-nascent culinary reinvigoration.
“Arsalun’s philosophy was he wanted to lift up San Diego’s hospitality scene with his restaurants and bars, and I feel we did a really good job with it,” McLeod said. “We brought a lot of eyes to Little Italy, and a lot of people noticed. The longtime restaurants there also stepped up and renovated. And Ironside was right in the center of things. Everything kind of worked.”
After the pandemic in 2022, McLeod moved to Las Vegas to help open the Proper Eats Food Hall at the Aria Resort & Casino. Then he stayed on with Clique Hospitality to open retaurants at the Durango Station and Cosmopolitan casinos and at San Diego’s Inn at Rancho Santa Fe.
A few years ago, McLeod said he called Tafazoli and said he wanted to come back to San Diego for Ironside’s 10th anniversary, if the kitchen could be remodeled with a charcoal grill for live-fire cooking. That didn’t happen at the time, but Tafazoli called him back later with a similar proposal.
“I’d just had a baby, and he said ‘you don’t want your kids growing up in Las Vegas,’” McLeod recalled. “He said ‘what if we bring up the conversation about Ironside again. I just signed a new lease and we can do it for another 10-15 years. Let’s do it right with a new kitchen and remodel.’”
McLeod said he agreed to the deal with the proviso that he not be hired to oversee multiple projects. All he wanted to do was partner with Tafazoli on Ironside.
“As a young cook, I got used to seeing a lot of older chefs get to where I’m at now, 30 years later, and they have kind of lost their passion or drive, and they’re burned out. They quit cooking and became salesmen. I always said that will never happen to me,” McLeod said.
In mid-January, McLeod resettled his family in San Diego’s Mission Hills and got to work right away prepping Ironside for its renovation, which began Feb. 16. During the shutdown, McLeod worked on the menu, which he said will be a mix of items old and new.
Three dishes on the new menu at Ironside Fish & Oyster in Little Italy, local catch swordfish, left,, Clams Casino, top right, and oeufs mayonnaise with caviar, bottom right. The restaurant reopens on Wednesday after a five-week renovation and kitchen upgrade. (James Tran)
Ironside’s classic dishes, like the oyster bar, lobster roll, octopus la plancha and fresh-baked bread will return. He’s also bringing back some of the restaurant’s opening dishes that had disappeared over the years, like oysters Rockefeller and clams casino.
He also plans to introduce several new dishes, like head-on shrimp with white miso, chili butter and za’atar; Slab Louie, made with local stone crab, soft-boiled egg and vegetables; and the Josper Shellfish Platter, named after the restaurant’s new Spanish-made Josper charcoal grill and oven.
“My goal is simple cooking. There’s not a lot of smoke and mirrors,” he said. “We’re using the freshest seafood we can get and letting that be the star.”
McLeod said he’s never been more excited about an opening than he is with the reopening of Ironside today.
“This,” he said, “is my dream role. I’m here to stay.”