The Best of San Diego 2026: Food & Drink

Best Addition to the Pho-niverse

Pho Gà Go

Most San Diego spots serve phở bò—the dark-brothed, beef-boned Southern Vietnamese specialty, loaded with the loud spices (star anise, cloves, cardamom, etc.). But Kim Pham, one of the sisters behind Crab Hut and perennial best-restaurants list-maker Kingfisher, is doing her mom’s phở gà.

The Northern Vietnamese original has a lighter, cleaner broth, using runner chickens (free-range diet and action means more flavor), the garlic from Gilroy’s famed Christopher Ranch (intense garlic-garlic), organic ginger, and housemade noodles. For condiments, Phở Gà Go uses Red Boat (the gold standard, barrel-aged 12 months). It’s essentially the same broth made at Kingfisher, served casual in Mira Mesa.

Best Fish Party for a Purpose

Dockside Night Market

This issue isn’t about shame, but let’s add a touch for emotional tension. We live on the water, but only about 10 percent of seafood eaten in San Diego is caught locally. Meanwhile, the local fishing industry that once employed 40,000 people is down to about 130 commercial fishers. Local fishing families are a crucial (my words, and they feel right) but endangered species. And three groups have joined forces for one pretty killer event that does a lot about it.

Puffer Malarkey Group (operator Chris Puffer and celeb chef Brian Malarkey) joined with Tuna Harbor Dockside Market—the spot where local boats drop their catch every weekend, a waterline treasure. Each year, Dockside Night Market gathers live musicians and the city’s top chefs who cook with local boat fish on the water. Even better: 100 percent of the profits go to the San Diego Working Fishermen’s Group (the third group—the actual fishers). Make it a quarterly/monthly thing, for chrissakes.

Best Home Away From Home

Make Cafe

Hard to find a more special place to eat lunch than Make Cafe. Finally with a permanent address, Make is where refugee women new to life in the US cook recipes from their various home countries: like mandazis (East African fry bread, like a beignet), koftas, congees (Asian ginger-rice bowls), lemongrass soda waters, and clean-eating creations. Exec chef Ashley McBrady (who helped turn Cellar Hand into a farm-obsessive hit) oversees the operation and teaches the women everything she’s learned.

Make Projects (which includes a farm and a training center) is a nonprofit that director Anchi Mei spun off from the International Rescue Committee—and now includes the cafe, a farm, and a training center. The idea is to help women refugees—often those who’ve worked fields and didn’t get great access to education—develop job, language, and cultural skills to adjust to this radically new and disorienting life. Even if you’re immune to an emotional backstory: Normal Heights has a charming new 5,000-square-foot bistro with a talented chef.

Best Way to SPAM Your Friends

This Musubi Love

The slander of SPAM is part of its allure. Those who have either been raised in the musubi arts or converted to the minor food religion tend to exude a higher-than-expected life happiness. This Musubi Love, a Leucadia musubi speakeasy (you heard that right), focuses exclusively on the Hawaiian/Asian tradition of SPAM “sushi.” It’s a MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation) from founder Roger Post, serving classics and riffs like the Cordon Bleu-Subi made with panko-fried SPAM, shredded rotisserie chicken, Swiss cheese, and Bachan’s Japanese BBQ sauce. Or try the Dawn Patrol with SPAM, egg, bacon, cheddar cheese, and spicy mayo.

Best Lead Restaurant Singer

Todd Henderson, General Manager at Valentina

How many of your favorite bands don’t have a talented lead singer? Due respect to Charles Mingus, but kinda hard to get emotional without someone expressing a story in a compelling way. The same is true for restaurants: a likable storyteller who deeply knows their stuff and can translate the stories of the food, drink, people, and place is both key and exceedingly, exceedingly rare. Well—found one.

Valentina General Manager Todd Henderson is a likable certified sommelier who can wax on about the history of the breed of pigs used to create the famed jamón (Cinco Jotas), trace each Spanish pintxo back to its origin tale, or orate the Ken Burns doc of 20 different types of Champagne. Valentina had the design charm and the roots (Leucadia locals wanted better restaurants, so they built them). But with Henderson and chef Enrique Ñol (who trained under Davin Waite at Wrench & Rodent), Leucadia’s date-night bistro feels like it pulled up a rung.

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Best Holy Land Preservation Society

Kiku Room

Some local legends engrave so deep that it’d feel wrong if even their original locations they outgrew became, like, some chain lamp store. Kiku Room feels like a rightful heir to the Casbah’s first throne. Kurt Cobain played in this tiny box on Kettner, dammit. Kiku’s a minimalist steel-concrete-and-punky-wheatpaste box, loaded with enough red lights to summon some beanie diehards and chill demons. One “bar” is a DJ deck (dark disco, Balearic house, everything), and the other is proper craft cocktails. They even brought back Midori Sours. The room is small and the line is not, so plan ahead or amiably accept fate.

Best Spike in the Historic Punch Bowl

Baby Grand

Some locals would prefer if Coronado’s historic charms were flash-frozen and preserved. Others feel that Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story (the 19th-century developers who modernized the “island” and birthed the Hotel del) were radical change agents, and that spirit should be renewed. Undoubtedly, Baby Grand is a renewal. The newest hotel from CH Projects (Lafayette Hotel) turned an old, meh motor lodge (La Avenida Inn) into a freshly feral cocktail lagoon with Greek food and statues and plus-sized plant life, a tuckaway bar (Fallen Empire), and rooms with clamshell beds and obscenely giant bathrooms. All due respect to our hearts’ desire to embalm old magic—this feels like a grand Coronado win.

Best Places to Visit Captain Keno’s Ghost

Anigma and Breakers

Two local dreamers truly understood the emotional voltage of Captain Keno’s, Leucadia’s affordable family restaurant/dive bar (a real hospitality mullet). When owner Gerry Sova closed it after 54 years, they basically battled it out to buy Keno’s beloved bones—knickknacks, plucky furniture, signage—and memorialized that old meatloaf-and-vodka-cranberry voodoo in their own places. The first is Encinitas’ tuckaway bar, the highly designed, Tarot-fied Anigma (from the DIY industry vets who own The Roxy). Second is Breakers, the Hawaiian-inspired hang from pro surfer Benji Weatherley, who grew up between Encinitas and Oahu. Long live Cap.

Best Homecoming for Food City

Ironside Fish & Oyster

When it opened in 2014, Ironside Fish & Oyster hit all the right notes. A giant fish house and craft cocktail spot dedicated to local fishing lore—created by locals. They put in the area’s first oyster bar at the time. It didn’t make the rapid evolution of Little Italy feel like a cheap land grab, and filled holes rather than piling more glitter on already-filled holes. A key part of that magic was opening chef Jason McLeod, who was in charge of Ria in Chicago when it earned two Michelin stars. Twelve years later, after bouncing between big projects, he came back this year and set down permanent roots in a landmark kitchen.

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