San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Jennifer Carruthers is one hell of a sharp brain on wine. Not surprising. She had a successful career as an engineer before deciding she was far more interested in the structure and story of a good wine. So she spent a decade studying wine as a broker and distributor—eventually making it to the Advanced Sommelier level (an incredibly byzantine, difficult and rare knowledge of wine). Finally, she l...

In the spirit of spirit month, we're starting out with a well-deserved bang. Let's talk about the liquor that comes in hot, and leaves us even hotter – sizzling with a well-paletted spice on the tip of our tongue and a soothing warmth in our bellies. I'm talking about tequila, baby. The tip of the iceberg in the Mexican spirits world. Some of the best are distributed right from San Diego. In fact,...

Most of you know Troy as our fearless leader and a frequent flier—or as the guy you wish you could text for recommendations on where to take your finicky mother-in-law to dinner in San Diego. (I just asked him for you; he suggests Fort Oak in Mission Hills). His college classmates, on the other hand, knew him as the guy who couldn't cook. "I knew how to turn the knob on the microwave to the right,...

Over the last few decades we've really started to ask questions about what we're eating. Does the green label really mean organic—or was it grown on an organic "section" of a farm, gobbling up pesticides in the wind? If I'm buying this tomato in January, and it was grown in Florida sand, picked unripe, and gassed on the train on the way to California—what, exactly, am I getting out of this? Why do...

Listen, I know it can seem like some of us at San Diego Magazine basically eat tacos and taste beer for a living. But it's in pursuit of the story. Whatever it takes to get to the grist of it all. For you. You deserve this. And if that raises our BAC a tad, we're there for you. For Stone Brewing's Laura Ulrich, on the other hand, sampling IPAs is a major part of a hard day's work. Officially one o...

This cafe is one of the better places in San Diego to eat clean, sure. It's also parents' love for their daughter. This damn good salad—loaded with all kinds of greens and seeds and micronutrients in various natural forms—was all for her. Every parent knows the feeling. When your kid is sick or hurt, you will do the wildest things you never thought you'd do, uproot your life, quit jobs, take four...

Oh man. Dear god. Thanks, you all. This year, you downloaded episodes of our podcast 276,977 times. As a San Diego media company just trying to create things of value where you'll learn something, think about something in a different way—that's a huge number. I'm sure Joe Rogan sneezes that number, but for us it's pretty great. A lot of sneezes. When we launched "Happy Half Hour" in 2016, we had z...

The future of seafood might be in San Diego. Not in Point Loma or Oceanside, but in a bioengineering facility in Sorrento Valley. From a single cell, BlueNalu is growing toro—bluefin tuna belly, the prize delicacy of most high-end sushi—in a perfectly hygienic bioreactor that looks like the giant stainless steel structures in the city's top breweries. Their goal is creating world-class seafood wit...

They don't have a trash can in their kitchen. A fully operational, busy restaurant kitchen without a trash can. OK, that's hyperbole. They do have a small one that is rarely ever used. The Plot in Oceanside keeps 99% of what they do out of the landfill. That is not normal. December is our "Environment Issue" of San Diego Magazine. As I wrote in my note at the beginning of the issue, it's not about...

Mashed potatoes are the bedrock of Thanksgiving. If you do not have a creamy pile of spuds, you are exhibiting a flagrant disregard for the rules of the feast. Mashless people seem more like thanks takers. And Josh Mouzakes—the executive chef of Arlo at Town & Country, who trained for four months at French Laundry (lived in a garage nearby, eating peanut butter sandwiches for the honor), then at J...

As a kid growing up in La Jolla, Annemarie Brown-Lorenz had swordfish bills sticking up out of the ground in her backyard. Her dad was a fifth generation local fisherman who believed in using every part of the fish. If you take a life from the sea, have the respect to use every part of that life. And Annemarie's grandmother (a first-generation American from Slovenia) grew all her own food; believe...

There is a house in La Jolla that is almost entirely food. It overlooks Black's Beach. It is a very, very nice house. Walk its grounds, and you come across blueberries and strawberries and cabbage and habañeros and herbs and goats and bees and chickens and greenhouses. What was once a tennis court on the grounds has been filled in with more food growing. It is a house-farm, an Eden on the sea clif...

Mariana Cardenas went home that day, gathered her five kids, told them the news. Then she called all the government assistance programs and informed them the Cardenas family no longer needed their help. "My oldest son is autistic," she explains. "Two weeks earlier he'd told me he wanted to go to art school and I had to tell him we couldn't afford it. So I got to tell him he was going." The this th...

About a week ago, I sat down for splashes of mezcal with Amar Harrag, who's now successfully launched a few different drinks-and-dinner concepts on both sides of the border. His first, Tahona, created an unparalleled mezcal tasting bar to Old Town. He then opened Wormwood, the French-Baja cuisine and absinthe bar in North Park, which preserves the soul spot that was Jayne's Gastropub. Finally, Tah...

On this new podcast, we get a lesson on natural wines from Chelsea Coleman—co-founder of the Rose Wine Bar in South Park who just opened Mabel's Gone Fishing, a gintoneria and oyster bar that also has natural wines. Seems like just a few years ago, natural wines were what your kooky friend with the urban chickens and the Wendell Berry tattoo drank. The nat-wine ethos was always noble: wines made f...

The story of Skrewball deserves its own biopic, if not a 30-part Netflix series. On the surface, you see a good-time peanut butter whiskey from San Diego—one that defied all naysayers and became one of the top-selling spirits in the country. And then you talk to co-owner Steve Yeng and every twist of his life story makes your eyes bulge and your heart alternately sink and soar. His family fled the...

Restaurant openings, restaurant closings, and Manny Machado becomes a nail tech. Just kidding, but only about the restaurant closings. Gotcha again. There will be no Manny-pedis in the near future. On this episode of Happy Half Hour, David and Troy talk to vice president of ticket sales and membership services for the Padres, Curt Waugh. Waugh joined the franchise in June 2014 after being with Spu...

So much history in this place. It's where brewers came up with one of the beers that put San Diego on the national map. It's where a person signed a deal for a billion dollars and sold to a multinational corporation. And it's where an indie brewer bought it back, and took it into the new age. The place is the palace of beer that is Ballast Point in Miramar. The beer is Sculpin IPA. For this podcas...

Lake San Marcos is such a mystery to me. Like if you took the water feature from a miniature golf course and expanded that over a couple miles—that's what it would be. A human-made oasis. Fake? You bet. Kinda magical? Also that. And that's the kind of hokey water hocus pocus I live for. I'm the kind of guy who thinks sequins is the height of American culture. This podcast we recorded live from the...

When I went to Padres games as a kid, a man stood 30 feet away from you and hurled a hot dog at your face. Maybe you got some popcorn whose best attribute was that it looked yellow and had enough salt to turn your insides into prosciutto. Oh, and you got some flat Coke. If you only drank sodas at baseball games in the 80s, you wouldn't know the product came with bubbles. To be honest, I kinda miss...

Not sure how many San Diego restaurants have a real, bonafide Shepard Fairey art piece—sanctioned by the artist, famous for his propaganda art like the Obey (Andre the Giant) and Hope (Obama) series—but Shank & Bone in North Park is one of them. So technically the Vietnamese restaurant is a pretty notable art gallery. Their pho sure is some art. So are their fish sauce chicken wings, salty and swe...

This meat looks geological. Like lovely, delicious geodes. In the refrigerated case, huge racks of Brandt Beef just lay there at Ranch45—have been laying for a while (40 days, says one tag). When meat is dry-aged like this, it begins to look prehistoric and unlocks a whole new universe of flavors. Excess moisture is drawn out of the meat over time, breaking down the protein, tenderizing it and con...

The birria flatbread at Stone World Bistro & Gardens is one of those dishes that's gone in minutes. On this podcast, we huddle around it. Poke at it. Demolish it with chef Israel Ortiz. It's the kickoff of our new video series with Stone, which will highlight a few local restaurants and our favorite dishes that their cooks and chefs and food people have created. It's a celebration of Stone's Delic...

We've been here for two weeks and I'd like to stay another thirty. I've brought my overnight bag and a note from my wife. Gonna make my case. We're at Park Hyatt Aviara, a 200-acre resort, one of the classic San Diego properties built far above a wetland preserve in Carlsbad. The ocean is right over there. We're sitting at a long dining table in Ponto Lago, their Baja-inspired restaurant and a sta...

This is a fun one. I've known Richard Blais for a long while, and we tend to bring the best stories out of each other. Like golf foraging. When most of us lose our golf balls in the bushes, we venture into the brush and come out with scrapes and a handful of profanities. When chef Richard Blais sucks at golf, he goes into the brush and comes out with wild fennel and some carrots for dinner. When h...