Advertise on podcast: San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Some festivals happen because a city needs them. Others because one guy walked into a bar in Louisiana, saw someone playing accordion with their whole body, and never recovered. And thankfully, the latter is how Gator by the Bay became San Diego's largest Louisiana-themed festival. It returns to Spanish Landing park May 8 through 11. On this week's Happy Half Hour, co-founder Peter Oliver explains how a trip through Lafayette and New Orleans in the late '80s turned into a lifelong obsession with Louisiana music, dance, and culture. Its first version launched in 2001 with eight bands, a gospel tent, and about 2,000 people showing up more or less out of nowhere, Oliver shares. It also lost money. So they did it again. Then again. Somewhere along the way, the true believers stuck, they folded the blues community in, and the city got itself a waterfront party, Louisiana-style. Today, it features more than 100 performances across seven stages, dance lessons, parades, a musical petting zoo, and 10,000 pounds of crawfish trucked in from Louisiana because, "California crawfish just don't cut it." If you've ever been elbow-deep at a proper boil—corn, sausage, steam, spice, mudbugs, and somebody telling you to suck the head—you already know this is not a cuisine that rewards restraint. Also joining the episode is Derek Boykin of Beignet Belly, one of the festival's vendors and proof that fried dough can absolutely become a life path. Boykin—originally from Oakland, CA, but whose family's roots run through Baton Rouge—started tinkering with beignets after deciding he could make a better one himself. Now he and his wife Maria run the business as a pop-up, serving hot, powdered-sugar-covered pillows of joy at Oceanside Sunset Market and events around Southern California. Finally, Panda Fest hits Waterfront Park April 25 and 26, the San Diego Zoo's Food, Wine & Brew returns May 2, and Corbin's Q has officially reemerged as Barlando in Rolando.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine. 

"I've wanted to be a chef since I was 4 years old. I'm a humble dude with a skateboard in the back of my truck. I'll stand behind the ingredients and let them shine before I do." This is why Travis Swikard has brought a plate of lightly poached local veggies to the Happy Half Hour studio this week. It's both not what you expect from a chef who's trained under some of the biggest global names in French cooking, and exactly what you'd expect from a San Diego native. When he was working as the right hand of famed chef Daniel Boulud in NYC, Daniel would order the very best raw ingredients he could find, as chefs do. Swikard would unpack the boxes of in-season fruit and veggies. On the side of that box often said the same thing: "San Diego, California." So this plate of veggies—served with garlic aioli that's aerated with a PSI machine into a bowl of aioli fluff, then dusted with dehydrated herbs de Provence—is everything when it comes to explaining the lighter French food at Fleurette. Haurkei turnips from JR Organics. First asparagus of the season from Stehly Farms. And the Cheetos-orange badger flame beets, Nantes carrots, and Pink Beauty carrots? From some guy named Jared in Lakeside. "These carrots taste like they took the souls of other carrots and made a supernatural heirloom carrot," says HHH host, Troy Johnson. Fleurette is not the buttery butter stereotype of French food (a kind of valid but unfair casting of French heritage, since they also gave us lighter, more ingredient-focused movements like cuisine minceur and nouvelle cuisine). Fleurette is "cuisine du soleil," and butter is barely in the house. It's lighter, olive oilier, seafood- and veg-forward—world-class ingredients tweaked just enough but also left enough alone. "Some type of food should taste like it's been kissed by the sun," says Swikard. Of course, since this is HHH and not a graduate seminar in regional French cuisine, the conversation eventually took a hard and proper San Diego turn into Travis's and Troy's favorite fish tacos, burritos, sandwiches, and other handheld seafood favorites from across San Diego—shout outs to Oscar's, Fish Guts, Tunaville, TJ Oyster Bar, and other places where do it messy and perfect.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine. Follow Travis HERE.

Brad Wise of Trust, Fort Oak, and Rare Society talks restaurant wins and terrors and names the best sandwiches in San Diego.   "We were scraping by, praying that we were going to have a busy weekend to make rent and—not only that, but payroll," recalls chef Brad Wise. Thank god his food was good and his wife had a job. It's been 10 years since his first existential terrors as a restaurateur. A decade of woodsmoke in nice places. When Wise and team first opened Trust around the corner from the main drag in Hillcrest, there wasn't anything like it. I'm sure there were outliers, but it sure felt like the only San Diego restaurants setting wood on fire were pizza joints and barbecue stands. Trust was San Diego's first to do Culinary Institute–style cookery over a blaze. Charred leeks. Smoked whole fish. Burning pineapples for cocktails. There is science behind the charms of this approach (woodsmoke gives off 400 or so more phenols and flavor compounds than food cooked on gas). And now it feels like every top restaurant has a pile of wood next to the kitchen. But back then, Trust was alone on that fire island. And it nearly didn't make it. Word eventually gets around. I named Trust my "Best New Restaurant" that year, because it was a perfect mix of cave people food and hoity-toity food. Eight years later, I named him my chef of the year because he'd dotted the map with some pretty great concepts—Fort Oak, Rare Society, Cardellino, Wise Ox, and the brand new smokepoint-French brasserie, À L'ouest. He's our guest in the studio for our Happy Half Hour podcast this week. In honor of him being a Jersey deli kid, we do a fantasy draft of our favorite sandwiches from across San Diego.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine. Check out Brad Wise HERE. 

A few years back, Accursio Lota—2017 World Pasta Champion and chef-owner of Cori Pastificio and the new Dora Ristorante which was named for his nonna—told us he raised snails under his family's staircase as a child in Sicily. Fattened them up on raw spaghetti and fresh herbs, eventually ending their journey on this planet with some butter and garlic. Turns out this was an entire neighborhood kid thing. Some kids ride bikes. Some puree their brains playing video games. Kids in Lota's neighborhood waited for the rain to come, then went around collecting a very Sicilian version of escargot. "There would be all of us kids out there with our grocery bags," he tells us on this week's episode of Happy Half Hour. "We'd all have bags full of snails." Lota was just awarded the Tre Forchette from Gambero Rosso (essentially the Michelin Guide of Italy). It's the very highest honor you can get as an Italian chef, equivalent to three Michelin stars. Lota's the only San Diego chef to receive the honor, and one of only 11 chefs outside of Italy. He brings some focaccia into SDM. We eat, we laugh, we talk about snails, art, the history of food, and why we should give a damn.

It is now time, when hot dogs become communion wafers once again. The weather is Joe Musgrove's elbow. The Fernando Tatis baseball dance-swagger reenters. He is the most exciting right fielder in the history of the game, almost appearing on every play as if he has no idea to execute the task in front of him—until he defies gravity and pulls a baseball out of the the beginning of space, then throws a 600 mile per hour strike to catch someone trying to steal. And for this episode of Happy Half Hour, we take the "Bebemos Golden Hour" tour into a Padres pregame classic—Bub's at the Ballpark. It started with Todd Brown moving to San Diego in a Winnebago, selling his wings at a gas station in Oceanside. Eventually he opened Bub's Dive Bar in Pacific Beach. Most of us leave PB when we're 28—when we look around at all the new ab muscles and feel like a senior citizen—but Todd and his wife stayed for 25 years and still own Waterbar in the 'hood. They opened this second offshoot in the historic Simon Levy building next to Petco Park in 2011.  And every game day, it is a scene. The Animal House of baseball joy. They've got tots and they've got kale. They have Steakums on the menu. Steakums, bless. It's like a bald eagle with a heart of a Ford F150. Every reasonably American ballpark has a place like this… a big, durable playground lacquered within an inch of its life to protect us from our excitable spillage. Its soul is Budweiser, but they've got everything on tap except pretension.  On March 25, Tony Gwynn Jr. will come to Bub's to hang with the Padres people, and kick off his new partnership with San Diego's upstart tequila people, Bebemos. Tony's sharing his family's recipe for a pineapple margarita that doesn't taste like a glass of insulin. Nearly an agua fresca. Co-hosts Troy Johnson and Jackie Bryant, Bebemos co-founder Preston, and Todd debate the greatest baseball food from restaurants across the city. That is to say, the best hot dogs—from Doggos Gus to Lefty's to Nason's Beer Hall to some random, open-all-night place Jackie found in downtown—plus some nachos and ice cream. Play ball.

All due respect to their highly sustainable role in the ecosystem and feeding the world, but sardines served as a dish on their own can be a significant challenge to your ability to enjoy eating as a concept. They are the seafoodiest seafood—as if the ocean itself was poured into a pot, reduced into a deeply intense stock, and served in tiny-fish form. But at The Fishery in Pacific Beach, chef-partner Mike Reidy—who cooked under two-star Michelin chef Josiah Citrin at Melisse, then was chef de cuisine at Callie for a spell—is serving one of the best versions I've tasted in a long while. Two of them served whole, blistered, glistening with olive oil and salsa verde, served with sourdough from Wayfarer Bakery.  The restaurant is the offshoot of local seafood supplier, Pacific Shellfish, started by fifth-generation San Diego fisherman Judd Brown and his wife, Maryanne. Their idea was to connect local boats to local restaurants. They originally set up shop in Barrio Logan in 1978. The city imminent-domained his shop with the construction of the I-5. Full of 1960s protest spirit, he nearly chained himself to his space to save his dream. But the city let him set up in this prime location in north PB. Maryanne then got swept up in the soft moonlight of Alice Waters' local-food movement, and did Judd one better by opening a real farm-to-table restaurant next door. Now their daughter Annemarie runs the legacy and has put modern oomph into it (her husband Nick runs the seafood).  So, every morn, Pacific Shellfish gets the best catch from local boats (plus imports off planes at Lindbergh). All Reidy has to do is walk through the double doors, grab the best looking fish he sees, and treat it well. At the bar, Zach Sheldon (who spent years at the city's cocktail shangri-la, Youngblood) is turning zero-waste impulse into creative drinks like the Sea & Spice. He takes lobster shells cracked for dinner and creates an upcycled lobster oil (blending them, so that the friction heat of the blades cooks the shells and imparts flavor to the oil). The finished concoction has curry leaf cachaca (Brazil's cousin-of-rum spirit), coconut palm, green curry coconut milk, peppercorn mélange, lime leaf, acid, and crimson droplets of that lobster oil. On this episode of Happy Half Hour, I talk about those sardines and that drink. I also discuss Accursio Lota, the Sicilian chef-owner of Cori Pastificio and Dora, who just got Italy's highest honor—the equivalent of a couple Michelin stars. I give a minor hit list of the best dishes I've eaten around town (the tomino cheese at Cucina Urbana, the kouign amann at Little While), plus news about San Diego's first electric food truck serving Middle Eastern food, Copper Kings burger heroes expanding into Oceanside, and the new sushi spot headed to Liberty Station (Ponzu). For the interview, we run it back with one of my favorite people in San Diego's food scene, Jon Sloan—culinary director of Juniper & Ivy and co-creator of the restaurant that won the fried chicken sandwich wars, Crack Shack. A hilarious, highly intelligent food mind.

As the food writer for SDM since 2011, Troy has been compiling the "Best Restaurants" list in San Diego Magazine for the past 15 years. All year long, he eats throughout the city and keeps a running Notes document filled with the best restaurants and dishes and drinks he finds. It operates like his personal leaderboard. He shares that list in the issue every year alongside the readers' picks. He's putting this year's list together right now, out June 1. For this episode of Happy Half Hour, he pulls back the curtain on the process. How this massive issue comes to be. He also reveals his short list for a couple categories—Best Burger, Best Italian, and Best New Restaurant. Then asks the audience for their recommendations to go try as he finalizes his picks. "Everyone tells me I have to try North Park Beer Co's burger, so I'll start there," Troy says. "What else am I missing? Tell me my picks are dumb, show me the error in my burger ways." More from the episode: 02:25 The story of how Troy nearly killed "Best Restaurants" when he and Claire took over San Diego Magazine, and what made him change his mind 05:20 The criteria for making his picks. Michelin only takes into account food—not ambiance, plating, or service. Troy takes in the ambiance. "I go to a restaurant to be transported, otherwise I'd eat fried chicken in my backyard," he says. "But that doesn't mean it has to be a million-dollar buildout. One of my favorite ambiances is Fathom Bistro, which is a tiny hot dog stand on a fishing pier."    Troy also takes into account the values/ethics of a restaurant. "If I've got a tie and I know one chef treats people really well and buys as sustainably as possible, I'm going to go with that restaurant," he says. "We eat with our mouth but also our heart—values matter." 04:52 How he doesn't overvalue his own opinion. "I've been studying food for a long time and have been lucky to eat out a lot, try food from some of the best chefs in the country," Troy says. "But I don't eat with your mouth. I don't propose this is the ultimate list or any such hooey. It's just my list that I give to family and friends I care about whenever they ask, 'What's the best Thai restaurant in San Diego?'" 03:20 The annual question of whether or not lists like these are pay for play. "Not even close—you don't work for 20 years getting an audience to trust what you say and then throw that away," Troy says. "I have so much respect and gratitude for the restaurants who support what we do at SDM. But I don't think they want me doing that, either. I trust they want to support a real media co that doesn't b******t people. If they're just trying to buy the list, it's probably not a long term relationship anyway." SDM's annual Best Restaurants issue is out on June 1. You can vote now at https://bosdvote.sdmag.com/.

The industry built this one. Had it been half-ass, it never would've worked. Lion's Share opened up 14 years ago, a sliver of a dark den of a craft cocktail bar and semi-restaurant near Seaport Village. But on the wrong side of the street. Not a destination. Foot traffic, zilch.   And yet, the bartenders were some of the best in the city, experimenting with the fringes of what was possible. Back then, craft cocktails were actually a new thing. We were coming hot and heavy off of the bottled-juice-and-vodka generation. The concept was quirky enough—cooking alternative proteins (boar, frogs legs, venison, elk, etc). The owners lived upstairs.    Lion's Share became where your favorite bartender ate, an icon among those in the know. It got new owner blood last year with two chef brothers, Dante and Danny Romero. One had cooked briefly at the three-Michelin-star Addison. The other rose through other kitchens, eventually overseeing a massive casino food program.    Together, they were the opening chefs at Wormwood in North Park. They formed a pop-up dinner series called Two Ducks, then debuted Service Animals with cocktail guy Ian Ward, and now handle the food program at Ponyboy in Point Loma. The brothers come into SDM to talk about life in Calexico, in the kitchen, and the evolution of a city's food culture. Oh, a furry lion visits the studio, too. Check out Lion's Share HERE.      Discover more at San Diego Magazine. 

San Diego's next-gen Filipino American chefs are bringing their adobo roots to the top kitchens     Multiple-time James Beard nominee Tara Monsod comes in to talk about kitchen life and the rise of Filipino food—the fare she grew up with—in San Diego. She and host Troy Johnson run through their list of the best date spots in the city, including oysters on the only rooftop hideout in North Park (Deckman's North), a tuckaway in Mission Hills that Troy named "Restaurant of the Year" (Wolf in the Woods), a Point Loma classic laden with enough candles to conjure even the sleepiest libido (The Venetian), and other spots where food doesn't disappoint the ambiance.   As for Filipino food, it was just a matter of time. Sisig and lechon kawali would not be denied their rightful glories. San Diego has one of the strongest Filipino American communities in the US. For decades, the cuisine was represented by a few staples in National City (shout out, Tita's Kitchenette). The best adobo was in the parks, cooked by local families. The kids of those families who chose to cook for a living learned in French and Italian kitchens.   Eventually, they'd turn those skills to the dishes they grew up with. In San Diego, chefs like the late Anthony Sinsay, Craig Jimenez, Phil Esteban (White Rice) and Tara are leading the way. Follow Tara HERE.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine.

Terra chef Jeff Rossman spills secrets of the catering world and we name our favorite farm-to-table restaurants One of the absolute best deals in San Diego recently? A $12 ribeye from one of the better chefs in the city. A $10 pasta dish he made for a wedding. Jeff Rossman was one of the first local chefs to cook modern farm to table with his restaurant, Terra. Opened it in 1998 with his dad, who had run a restaurant in Mission Valley called Pam Pam.   Last year, he started getting so much catering business that he converted his restaurant in College Area to a catering hub. The secret about catering? When you order steak or a pasta or some elaborate farm to table dish for your big life event, the caterer cooks an "overrun"—15-20 percent more food than they think will be needed based on the amount of guests.  Nothing worse than running out of food at a wedding. Usually, the unused overrun goes to staff or is donated—both of which Rossman does. But now he's started something called "Zero Waste Gourmet," where he sells those dishes at his restaurant space the day after for some ridiculously low price. A ribeye in a bordelaise sauce with some smashed potatoes and glazed local farm carrots for less than $15 (I'm making this up now, because it always changes based on the event). Rossman makes his food costs back as a business owner, and those in the know get a screaming deal on big-day meals. Rossman comes into the HHH studios to talk about the ins and outs of the catering world. We also hail the magic of Sushi on a Roll, and name some of our top farm to table restaurants in the city—the ones really doing it right and working with farmers, ranchers, growers, makers. And doing it well. From Nine-Ten to Callie to Market and others.  Follow Terra American Bistro HERE. Follow Jeff HERE.     Discover more at San Diego Magazine.  

At Coco Maya, try chef Phil Humphrey's skirt steak with chimichurri, his big-knuckle lobster tacos, and a damn phenomenal coconut shrimp (the '80s classic will be slandered no more). What's your favorite soup in San Diego? The one that rearranges your DNA into a dumb, smiley emoji?  On this episode of Happy Half Hour we do a fantasy soup draft of our 12 favorites in the city—from the corn piñon soup at Wolf in the Woods to the pozole at Super Cocina and pho at Pho Hoa. We set up shop in the Yucatan rooftop wonderland that is Coco Maya and get the story from co-owner Rob McShea, who tells us how he went from working as a door guy at Thrusters in PB to opening up his first restaurant (Miss B's Coconut Club, which is still kicking so he did OK) despite having absolutely no clue how to run one, searching out the best damn chef in New Orleans and convincing him to move to San Diego to open Louisiana Purchase, and then finally taking the big gamble in the restaurant big leagues of Little Italy. And, we drink copious amounts of Bebemos. It's "Bebemos Golden Hour" with co-owner and lifelong San Diegan Preston Caffrey—our citywide search for the best dishes to pair with the tequila of San Diego. Follow Coco Maya HERE. Please listen responsibly.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine.    

#419 You've barely touched your fries. Why do you look hungry and not hungry at the same time? The big discussion on this week's episode: Ozempic is the wobbly, wet-gremlin Yelp commenter who wants to rain on America's happy restaurant parade. We re-air the interview you probably skipped the first time we had it a year ago because it sounded like tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory stuff. But now, the Ozempic effect is real. Almost every restaurateur who talks to food editor and Happy Half Hour host Troy Johnson is expressing the same thing. Makes sense. If 10, 8, or 1,000 percent of Americans are on a diet drug that makes them eat or drink less, it stands to reason it's going to affect businesses who sell eating and drinking. In food and drink news: San Diego's most iconic restaurant buildings in North Park sat vacant for seven years. Now a chef who trained at Jean-Georges is opening the first San Diego location of Bacari in the former Urban Solace space.  In La Jolla, you're getting Jaybird Superette, a bodega and pastries and snacks and wine and cheese shop from a baker from Thomas Keller's three-star Michelin, Per Se. San Diego legend George's at the Cove has completed its rooftop dining remodel and reopens this week for a new era from chef Trey Foshee. And two of the city's top young chefs—multiple Beard Award nominee Tara Monsod (Animae/Le Coq) and David Sim (Kingfisher) are trading places (kind of) for a special two-week collab. Is the Ozempic effect real? Listen to what great San Diego reporter Claire Trageser found in her research. Follow Claire HERE.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine. 

Broadcasting from The Shanty in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Happy Half Hour looks at the week's biggest restaurant news, including the upcoming closures of Dreamboat and Vulture and the shuttering of Cucina Enoteca—plus an examination of why unpretentious neighborhood bars continue to anchor San Diego communities.  Host Troy Johnson also checks in on what's opening, welcomes back Bebemos tequila founder Preston Caffrey for a Golden Hour conversation about building a drinks brand in a tough market, and wraps with Shanty co-owner Mike Tornado on the staying power of a truly local bar.  

One of Little Italy's top chefs is back. Hard to overestimate how much Ironside Fish & Oyster changed the game when it opened in Little Italy in 2014. It was the dream concept for Jason McLeod, a chef who'd earned two Michelin stars in Chicago (for Ria). Little Italy was the unloading dock of San Diego's legendary fishing fleets, had that rich seafood history but no epic seafood joint. McLeod and CH Projects took over the old Farkas furniture store and turned it into a sort of ghost ship ocean liner (the suitcases along the wall are an ode to those roots) and oyster bar. The lobster roll was the headlining dish that floored a city. But the real story was the relationships that McLeod formed with local fishermen who were pulling their boats into the nearby Tuna Harbor. There was no back door to Ironside, so the fishermen would lug their catch through the main dining room. Fast forward… McLeod split with CH Projects, went on to help concept and launch a bunch of big-name things in Vegas (like Proper Eats, the food court in the Aria hotel). And now he's back. Not as a figurehead, but in the kitchen. It's his restaurant. His new dream. His new rebuild (a wood fired kitchen is coming). He comes into Happy Half Hour to talk with Troy about the dream and what Little Italy was like in those early days. Follow Jason HERE.

Patricia Sebold, Kalani Millsaps, and Kerry Pierce join Happy Half Hour to discuss their new concept: a women's-focused sports bar opening in North Park. We find out how the project came together and why San Diego is ready for it now.  From Title IX to the Wave's record-setting crowds, they talk about the rise of women's sports, the frustration of watching games on phones in bars that won't put them on TVs, and how packed pop-ups proved there was real demand for a permanent space.  One of Us is slated to open this March, just in time for March Madness and the NWSL season. Follow One of Us HERE.   Discover more at San Diego Magazine.