San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

During the day, Michael Vera cooks at standout Pacific Beach restaurant, The Fishery. In his off time, he grows delicious bacteria. The words mold or fungus may not make your mouth water, but they should. They're the gateways to fermentation, which gives us bread, coffee, miso, chocolate, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, soy sauce, other forms of dear-god delicious. And right now, no fungus is hotter t...

I must stop talking about the cabbage. I won't shut up about it. So I figured if I brought chef William Eick to talk me through it, it will resolve my lingering emotional fixation on what is one of the best dishes I've eaten in a very long time. Eick opened Matsu about six months ago. It's a minimalist ode to modern Japanese cuisine. He's been a talent in San Diego for a long time, and this is the...

It is, finally, open. Almost. When Grand Ole BBQ y Asado shut down its North Park location for renovation, it was supposed to be for a couple of months. That was three years ago. In the interim, we had a pandemic. But now it's been fully redone. It's ready to open, soon as the last health inspections pass. This is big news because, well, Grand Ole is great. Owner Andy Harris has kept himself busy...

In 2004, Jon Bautista made his mom cry. She spontaneously wept when he told the family he'd enrolled in culinary school. To be fair, in the same breath he also broke the news that he'd dropped out of the undergrad program at SDSU to do so. Parents have news thresholds, and hers was breached. "This was before Top Chef," he says. "She just said, 'You're never going to make any money.'" Now, 17 years...

I'm not sure how many stages of coping there are, but when Greg Hess told his wife and family they were moving to San Diego to start one of the first "nano breweries" in the country—I'd bet they ran through most, if not all of them. Probably added one or two. Harris' brother, Mike, had the idea in 2010 to go even smaller than a microbrewery. Launched a brewery in an 800 square-foot cubby hole. It...

I'm suspended fourteen stories above San Diego Bay. I am being dangled over the edge of a cliff made of metal. I smell vaguely of quality craft beer. I am an offering to the gods of amusement. Questioning life choices, my emotional state in that jittery nook between joy and terror. Just hanging there, looking directly down, wondering how good latch technology is these days. Intellectually, you kno...

Kelli Crosson bid her time, put in the work, earned this. The California native cooked alongside Jeff Jackson for 11 years at AR Valentien as his chef de cuisine (the iconic restaurant's second in charge). Starting at The Lodge at Torrey Pines over 20 years ago, Jackson was the one of the earliest and brightest stars of San Diego's food scene—doing farm-to-table before it was a marketing buzzword,...

As a young girl growing up on a farm in San Diego County, Lan Thai's dad would hand her shrimp shells from that night's dinner and tell her, "Go feed the trees." Lan was too young to understand why, but she did. The trees grew gaudy with fruit. Years later, as she was becoming a chef and diving deeper into the nutritive and health properties of food, she learned you can't grow healthy food without...

Why does brunch feel so good in all the right parts of your soul? It is redemptively irresponsible. It's breakfast, if breakfast were better. If your weekend was a pinball game, brunch is that bonus ball. You're not really sure what you did to deserve it, but it's extending your play time, so—hey there, little bonus ball. Anyway, point is, our annual sold-out Brunch Bash is back. April 22 at Carme...

The iconic Mister A's is being sold (don't worry, it's not going anywhere, and this is a good story). Last week, we talked with Bertrand Hug—the restaurateur of restaurateurs, the don of dining and longtime steward of the rooftop restaurant—about why he chose to sell to his right-hand man. Today on the podcast, we have the man himself, Ryan Thorson. Ryan earned this (and paid for it). The SDSU gra...

Atiim "Tee" Smith is now one of the promising young cooks at one of the city's better restaurants, Cucina Enoteca. He started his kitchen career a few years ago at Water Grill, also worked at Jake's Del Mar. It's quite a positive development because, in 2014, he was facing 64 years to life in prison. Smith turned his own life around, a success of his own design. But he had some help from one of th...

Absinthe sure got pigeonholed. We are all aware that within 15 minutes of drinking it, you speak in tongues, dictating the next great American novel onto the bar napkin. Another 30 minutes, and you descend into madness. Such a mythologized spirit, the drink of long-dead poets and thinkers and ascenders and descenders. And now it has its own restaurant in San Diego, sort of. Wormwood just went into...

Ted Lasso is the hero we need and America's de facto life coach, but he needs to fix himself when it comes to tea. It is finally taking off in U.S. culture, at least partially because consumers are looking for healthier drinks and are increasingly sober-curious. Sure it took a while. Ever since they threw the king's stash into the Boston Harbor, coffee seized power and has served a few thousand co...

Wait, what? Longtime writer and person on TV Troy Johnson and his wife Claire have become the new majority owners of San Diego Magazine. When did this happen? How did this happen? Are writers allowed to own things? In this special edition of "Happy Half Hour," David demands some answers. He interviews Troy and Claire and asks them all the major questions, about their hopes and dreams and whether o...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week's special guest is Mike Minor, the new executive chef at The Marine Room in La Jolla. The Marine Room has been one of the city's most iconic restaurants since its opening in 1941, and Mike will be filling the shoes of Bernard Guillas, who put his French twist on the restaurant's seafood fare for the past 27 years. Mike talks about his plan to make the...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week, we're chatting with Rachel Shemirani, senior vice president at Barons Market. Barons is a gourmet grocery store that was founded by a local family in Point Loma and has nine locations in San Diego and Riverside. Rachel's father, Joe, started the business in the early '90s because he couldn't find an organic grocery store that sold food he enjoyed. Ra...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! We're excited to have chef William Bradley of Addison back on the show. In case you missed it, Addison was recently elevated from one Michelin star to two a few weeks ago, for the 2021 Michelin Guide California. We had William on the show in January, and he's back to talk about what this latest award means for the restaurant and for San Diego's dining scene. Wi...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week we're excited to welcome Saman Javid, who is now leading the kitchen at La Jolla's iconic George's at the Cove. Saman is from the Bay Area, and he started his culinary career working at Fork in Marin County and B Restaurant in Oakland. He then moved to New York City, where he was sous chef at the acclaimed Gramercy Tavern for several years. He joined...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week our special guest is David Contreras Curiel of Karina's Mexican Seafood, a San Diego institution that is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week. David and his siblings are leading the family business that his parents started back in Spring Valley in 1981, and he shares with us the story of Karina's humble beginnings. David's father, Don Arnulfo Co...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week our special guest was requested by listeners, and we're excited to have him on the show: Kory Stetina, owner of Kindred in South Park. Kindred is a vegan restaurant and bar with a heavy metal vibe that opened in 2015, and it's regularly been named both a critic's and readers' pick for Best Vegan Restaurant in our annual Best Restaurants issue. Kory sa...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! We're back after a short Labor Day break, and we're with Justin Gaspar, the head baker at Hommage Bakehouse in Pacific Beach. Hommage, which launched last fall, is based inside La Clochette du Coin, a French bakery and café. Justin, who is from the Bay Area and worked at the acclaimed Manresa Bread (that's the bakery that spun off from Manresa restaurant, which...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! We're sorry that the audio quality this week isn't fully up to par; David was still in the desert during recording. In case you missed it, our 2021 edition of Best Restaurants just went online, and the print edition is available in stores. On the cover this year is Rare Society, a neighborhood steakhouse from Brad Wise, chef and owner of Trust Restaurant Group....

Welcome back to Happy Half Hour! We are sorry, the audio quality this week isn't fully up to par. You can blame David for being in Las Vegas for a heavy metal concert. This week our special guest is Ian Tenzer, the executive research and development chef at Puesto Mexican Artisan Kitchen & Bar. Ian joined the company last fall, which started in La Jolla and now serves its popular tacos and michela...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! We're recording this episode from a premier club suite at Petco Park, thanks to this week's sponsor, the San Diego Padres. Our special guest this week is Jaclyn Lash, the Padres' vice president of special events. She joined the team in 2011 and oversees all events for the Padres and Petco Park, including concerts, game-day festivals, private and special events,...

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! We're returning from a short break and taped this episode from a premier club suite at Petco Park, thanks to this week's sponsor, the San Diego Padres. We're here with Eddie Quinn, vice president of partnership services for the Padres and the park's resident beer expert, as they face off against the Miami Marlins. Eddie started his career with the Padres as a b...