{"id":350819,"date":"2026-06-07T19:17:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/350819\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T19:17:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:17:19","slug":"the-best-new-restaurants-in-san-diego-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/350819\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best New Restaurants in San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dora Ristorante<\/p>\n

His ascent has been stealth and humble, which fits the man. When Liberty Station<\/a> was struggling to convince people it existed over a decade ago, Sicilian chef Accursio Lota\u2019s food at Solare Ristorante<\/a> was a tractor beam for food people who sniff out hidden talent like truffle dogs. In 2017, he won the World Pasta Championship (a legit competition from global pasta brand Barilla) and struck out on his own, opening his and his wife\u2019s from-scratch pasta trattoria in North Park (Cori Pastificio<\/a>). Gambero Rosso\u2014the Italian version of Michelin, the most respected source\u2014has clamored for the restaurant since it opened, naming it \u201cNew Opening of the Year\u201d and this year giving it their highest award, \u201cTre Forchette<\/a>\u201d (Three Forks), only knighted on a handful of US restaurants.<\/p>\n

So this year, Lota opened his grandest thing\u2014Dora Ristorante<\/a>\u2014and it pulls everything together. Steps from San Diego\u2019s world-class theater, La Jolla Playhouse<\/a>, it\u2019s laden with brass and large-format murals, tile work and mosaics\u2014like the one on the wood-burning oven that blisters, chars, and smokes a good portion of the menu. Their housemade focaccia is a new street drug (try it with the puttanesca, his grandmother Dora\u2019s recipe). The olive oil-cured sardines make \u201csustainable seafood\u201d and ethics not taste like a compromise. Dora might finally be the one to solve the \u201cwhere do I eat before the world premiere at LJP\u201d dilemma.<\/p>\n

\"\"Courtesy of Bacari<\/p>\n

Bacari<\/p>\n

The yuzu-colored building that helped build North Park\u2019s modern food culture<\/a> is alive again. Years ago, the ornate French Quarter\u2013inspired spot on 30th Street was home to chef Matt Gordon\u2019s Urban Solace<\/a> (duck macaroni and cheese). Then it laid conspicuous and fallow until a few months ago when Bacari took it on. It\u2019s an LA transplant, but they\u2019re proving forgivable of that trespass. Chef and co-founder Lior Hillel cooked at Jean-Georges before opening the first of this Venetian-style restaurant<\/a> in 2008 with brothers Danny and Robert Kronfi (Bobby started his food venture with a pop-up dinner series in his college apartment at USC).<\/p>\n

For dinner, it\u2019s house-baked bread, crudo and shrimp ceviches, Mediterranean street corn, lamb hummus, shawarma, and glazed pork belly. Weekend brunch is bellinis and French toast and burekas<\/a> (famed Jewish stuffed puff pastry), and chef Noa\u2019s cauliflower (caramelized with chipotle). It\u2019s Italian-ish with a heavy dose of pan-Mediterranean and Middle Eastern. Doesn\u2019t hurt that they left the iconic exterior as is, adding chandelier-farmhouse insides with charm that echoes two of the city\u2019s dearly departed (Jayne\u2019s Gastropub, Cafe Chloe).<\/p>\n

\"\"Courtesy of TRUST Restaurant Group<\/p>\n

\u00c0 L\u2019ouest<\/p>\n

Much tolerance for friends who hate mussels because they look too biological. But if they manage to dislike \u00c0 L\u2019ouest<\/a>\u2019s\u2014served over ice with vadouvan curry aioli and chili crisp\u2014then you\u2019ve successfully identified your brokemouth friend and should try bicycling or crafting with them to bond instead of eating in public places. It should be on everyone\u2019s short list for dish of the year.<\/p>\n

Chef Brad Wise <\/a>and his team have earned their rep over multiple concepts\u2014Trust, Fort Oak, Cardellino, Wise Ox<\/a>, Rare Society. But he\u2019s been eyeing this corner of North Park since before he opened his first (Trust, in 2016). North Park<\/a> has been rising for a while, and \u00c0 L\u2019ouest feels like the missing piece\u2014an indoor-outdoor brasserie stunner on the marquee spot of 30th and University, which long sat boarded up and vacant like a neighborhood missing a front tooth. <\/p>\n

As with his other concepts, woodpile is king; smoldering red oak boosts the flavor of just about everything. Get the sp\u00e4tzle with braised rabbit, maitake mushroom, secret de compostelle (the famed Basque sheep\u2019s milk cheese), and black truffle. Or the chicken liver parfait with persimmon, fennel aigre-doux (sweet-sour), and chives on toast. Or, like everyone else in there\u2014the steak frites.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Eric Wolfinger<\/p>\n

Fleurette<\/p>\n

Chef Travis Swikard<\/a>\u2019s first solo restaurant, Callie in East Village<\/a>, proved how details can make the most composed of us blubber a little in fine places\u2014from citrus left in ovens overnight to blacken and transform, to the Scripps Oceanographic Institute saltwater he keeps his spot prawns thriving in until ordered, to the days-long fermentation and stone-ground dukkah that turn carrot shavings into a statement piece. <\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s focusing on French food with a fitter, less buttery San Diego heart. Fleurette<\/a> is his doubling-down, a SoCal riff on the food he learned under mentors Daniel Boulud and Gavin Kaysen. The French gave us the mother sauces, and Fleurette showcases the lightest and brightest evolutions. Like the ancho\u00efade on his beef tartare, which uses famed Italian anchovy sauce colatura di alici, mixed with cured egg yolks over tiny, uniform-sized cubes of raw, USDA Prime Flannery beef. <\/p>\n

There is soubise (onion sauce), a sauce vierge (tomatoes and herbs), and a fennel marmalade on the duck liver and bone marrow p\u00e2t\u00e9. Although the structure is stunningly pure glass, Fleurette\u2019s in a location\u2014an office park on the edge of La Jolla, near UTC<\/a>\u2014that few chefs would be able to pull off. But Swikard\u2019s Michelin-bound house of saucework pulls hard.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Lauren di Matteo<\/p>\n

Mesa Agr\u00edcola<\/p>\n

The Escondido<\/a> taqueria from Rosarito-born-and-trained chef Juan Gonz\u00e1lez and farmer Megan Strom took the county by storm this year. The married couple started as a popup four years ago, hosting farmside dinners before taking up residency at Vino Carta <\/a>in Solana Beach. Strom was working a small, 5-acre heirloom bean farm in Valley Center owned by Mike Reeske (aka \u201cThe Bean Man\u201d)<\/a> when he retired and sold them the plot. <\/p>\n

The huge bonus was that the sale included Reeske\u2019s famed collection of beans, curated over 20 years. The couple planted other things and now grow much of what they serve in the form of tacos and burritos at a permanent spot in Escondido: Mesa Agr\u00edcola<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The menu\u2019s bone simple: housemade tortillas in your choice of taco or burrito norte\u00f1os (which are smaller, like burritos de hielera) that change constantly and often topped with guisados (Mexican braises or stews) like lamb and garbanzo, birria, chicharr\u00f3n, mushrooms al ajillo, rajas, you name it. And, of course, some of the best beans honoring the local legend of Reeske.<\/p>\n

\"\"Courtesy of Lucien<\/p>\n

Lucien<\/p>\n

San Diego is now the recipient of national food buzz. The dark ages\u2014during which we learned how to sear ahi and asada some carne and called it a day\u2014felt prolonged, and they were. The problem was never ingredients. San Diego County always had the best raw dinner materials<\/a> (more small farms per capita than any county in the US, seafood right there); it just didn\u2019t have a critical mass of highly trained chefs to do them justice. Easy to understand the chef dearth. <\/p>\n

PARTNER CONTENT<\/p>\n


\n \"Artistry,
\n Artistry, Aesthetics, and Inclusive Luxury
\n <\/a><\/p>\n


\n \"A
\n A Holistic Approach to Women\u2019s Wellness and Leadership
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

For a very long time, if you wanted to be a serious chef you had to go to the restaurant superplexes of New York, San Francisco, or Chicago (which imported their raw ingredients from places like San Diego). But now\u2014credit farmers or Alice Waters or Dan Barber or Michael Pollain or the reasonable conclusion that food picked right here tastes better than food picked way over there\u2014some of the most talented chefs are moving to the ingredients, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

In San Diego, we got Richard Blais, Swikard, and now Elijah Arizmendi, who cut his teeth in Vegas with Joel Robuchon (plus Boulud and Thomas Keller) and was chef de cuisine at NYC\u2019s L\u2019abeille when it got its first Michelin star. His debut restaurant in La Jolla<\/a>\u2014with partners Brian Hung and Melissa Yang\u2014is a dark, moody multicourse tasting-menu <\/a>hideaway with one of the best egg dishes in the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dora Ristorante His ascent has been stealth and humble, which fits the man. When Liberty Station was struggling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3056,1339,2707,15510,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-350819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-features","tag-food-drink","tag-food-news","tag-openings","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}