San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour
332 episodes - English - Latest episode: 1 day ago - ★★★★★ - 161 ratingsFood Network's Troy Johnson and San Diego Magazine's David Martin talk dining out, drinking up and what’s making news on the restaurant scene.
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Episodes
Fast Food Secrets with Jordan Howlett
April 24, 2024 14:44 - 1 hour - 171 MBJordan Howlett just needs a minute. Give him that, and he’s liable to have you hooked. Thanks to his highly recognizable, signature mirror-selfie videos, Howlett (San Diego Magazine’s cover star for our 2024 Best Restaurants issue) has amassed upwards of 30 million followers across his social channels by sharing fast food hacks and wisdom with deadpan delivery and a genuine love of food. Some 70 million people see his videos every month on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He's a one-minute, on...
Feeding San Diego Rescues 1.2 Million Pounds of Food a Month
April 17, 2024 23:51 - 1 hour - 123 MBThis week’s Happy Half Hour extra special guest is a longtime friend of San Diego Magazine, Feeding San Diego. If you tune into our channels, this fantastic organization probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. And if you’re lucky, you would have caught Troy emceeing their gala last month (in a sequin jacket, of course). But for the uninitiated, Feeding San Diego is easily one of the most impressive non-profits in town. We’ve covered food insecurity before in the magazine’s pages. Thr...
Making Wishes Come True With Chef William Eick
April 10, 2024 16:30 - 1 hour - 140 MBOur Happy Half Hour guest today is the local chapter CEO of probably one of the most beloved and recognizable charities in the world: The Make-A-Wish Foundation, San Diego chapter. We invited Suzanne Husby, who garnered her title in 2021, to talk all things Make-a-Wish at Matsu in Oceanside. Husby has been with the foundation for 17 years, moving up the ranks from intern to wish coordinator, a few more big titles, and finally ending up as chapter CEO most recently. Her specialty was overs...
The Beach Boys’ Mike Love Puts Us in a Kokomo State of Mind
April 03, 2024 19:52 - 1 hour - 126 MB“Close my eyes, she's somehow closer now / Softly smile, I know she must be kind / When I look in her eyes / She goes with me to a blossom world” The lyrics to the iconic Beach Boys song “Good Vibrations,” penned in part by Mike Love, are likely about a woman from long ago. But they could just as easily be about the flavors and sensations from his brand new rum, Club Kokomo Spirits. We had Love in-house along with his children who work for the spirits company to chat all things San Diego, a...
Lighting Up the Gaslamp
March 26, 2024 23:36 - 1 hour - 188 MBEveryone’s favorite Mission Hills karaoke joint, the Lamplighter, has brought its talents down the hill to the Gaslamp—and so has this podcast. The team, led by fourth-generation bar owner Frankie Sciuto, launched the Gaslamplighter, a new upscale cocktail and karaoke bar, in January. Sciuto joins us on the Happy Half Hour podcast today as we check out the bar’s digs. Sciuto hopes the Gaslamplighter will become the go-to spot for San Diego’s nightlife scene, like its successful sister hangs,...
The Story Behind the City’s Backyard Restaurant With a Year-Long Waitlist
March 20, 2024 17:52 - 1 hour - 187 MBIf you received this month’s San Diego Magazine, you already know about Warung RieRie. Happy Half Hour host and food critic Troy Johnson dubbed it “the star of the city's thrilling backyard restaurant scene.” Wait. There’s a thrilling backyard restaurant scene in San Diego? Indeed, there is, and the individual restaurants are formally dubbed MEHKOs—Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations. We had Chef Rie Sims and her right hand—husband, sous chef, host, and marketing manager Dave Sims—in ...
Is This the Best Falafel in San Diego?
March 06, 2024 22:05 - 1 hour - 122 MBStop us if you’ve heard the Happy Half Hour cast claim a particular food item was the “best in San Diego” before (to be fair, San Diego Magazine devotes an entire issue to the topic). If we assign superlatives, we tend to stand behind them, so buckle up for the following: We’ve found the best falafel in San Diego. Hands down, bar none, et cetera. Falafel Heights takes up a small storefront on 30th, near Lincoln, in North Park. This block, formerly decrepit due to many closures (Toronado, St...
San Diego’s Legendary Tony Tee Drops By
February 21, 2024 21:35 - 1 hour - 128 MBTo know the illustrious Tony Tee, real name Antonio Ley, is to love him. The Chula Vista-born-and-bred, man-about-town has appeared in popular shows, like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Vice News, and he even had a brief career as a politico after he got his law degree in Tijuana. These days, the former party promoter is running a food truck parked in North Park at Fall Brewing. Called Corazon de Torta, it specializes in guisados, and is a local favorite. It’s half of the reason we ...
Feeling Lucky with Jason Mraz
February 12, 2024 21:14 - 1 hour - 166 MBI think it’s fair to claim that this week’s Happy Half Hour guest is the most special visitor we’ve ever had on the podcast (which is saying something): Jason Mraz, the two-time Grammy Award–winning singer and songwriter who has gone platinum and multi-platinum in more than 20 countries. His tune “I'm Yours” also surpassed one billion streams on Spotify and was the most-streamed song by a solo artist in the naughts. His eighth album, Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, dropped last June...
That’s the Spirit
February 08, 2024 20:53 - 1 hour - 170 MB“It’s not just a spirits company, but a way of life.” That’s what Fierce & Kind’s owners and founders, Cyndi Smith and Basem Harb, say when talking about the ethos behind their company. In addition to peddling high-quality vodka and bourbon, Fierce & Kind donates a whopping 25 percent of net profits to charity. To learn more, we asked them to come on Happy Half Hour. Smith and Harb, former tech entrepreneurs, stopped by the SDM office one Friday with bottles in tow. Fierce & Kind’s American ...
Let Us Eat Cake
January 31, 2024 23:55 - 1 hour - 120 MBIn case you haven’t noticed, we just debuted our first-ever issue dedicated to all things South Bay. On February 25, we are also holding our first Taste of South Bay food and drink extravaganza at Novo Brazil Brewing in Imperial Beach. In conjunction with that, we’re also asking various South Bay food folks to come on to the HHH podcast to talk about all things south of the border…of the city of San Diego, that is. This week, we asked to chat with Jose Barajas, a television chef and the owne...
Getting Real With Celebrity Chef Lauren Lawless
January 24, 2024 19:57 - 1 hour - 120 MBAvid HHH listeners will remember a few episodes back, when we announced that Ramen World, celebrity chef Lauren Lawless’ first restaurant, would open somewhere in San Diego. That opening is imminent, and so we decided to have the cooking show star and Pacific Beach native in to tell us what’s up. Ramen World’s opening is notable for a few reasons, but mostly that it’s the country’s first serve-your-own ramen joint. The model is otherwise popular in Japan and Korea, Lawless told us during the...
40 Years of La Jolla’s George’s at the Cove
January 16, 2024 23:05 - 1 hour - 175 MBOur HHH guest this week, the legendary Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove, has been in San Diego’s restaurants for a long time. Actually, scratch that. He’s been in one kitchen during the entire 27 years he’s lived, cooked, and managed here, and that’s in La Jolla at George’s (and its related establishments). In an age where people hop around faster than you can post about a new job on Instagram, there’s something to be said for digging in your heels and perfecting your craft, and, in turn,...
The Fishmonger Tommy Gomes Returns With Dry-Aged Fish
January 05, 2024 22:47 - 1 hour - 128 MBWhen your boss tells you to do something, you do it. When your boss is Troy Johnson, food critic and Chief Content Officer of San Diego Magazine, texting you: “I just left Tunaville. He’s doing amazing stuff. Get Tommy on the podcast,” well, you get Tommy Gomes on the Happy Half Hour podcast. Gomes, a commercial fisherman by trade and blood, is no stranger to the airwaves and pages of SDM. He’s been a guest on the pod a few times before, and we’ve written about him glowingly because of the w...
Paradise, Or Something Like It
December 28, 2023 21:37 - 1 hour - 172 MBAccording to some of San Diego’s finest food minds (umm, us), one of the hottest restaurants of 2023 is easily Bird Rock’s Paradisaea. The Michelin Guide thinks so, too—it recently gave the restaurant, which opened in late 2022, a special recognition for being pretty damn good (and also new). A year or so is a good length of time for a restaurant to find its groove. Ideally, the service kinks will have been worked out, the menu will have found its footing. Paradisaea’s first year also saw th...
The Big South Bay Brewery That Could
December 22, 2023 00:58 - 1 hour - 128 MB“I said to myself, this was the biggest failure of my whole life,” recalls Tiago Carneiro, founder and owner of Nova Kombucha and Novo Brazil Brewing. In this week’s episode of Happy Half Hour, he’s talking about his business’ epic near-crash-and-burn during the pandemic. Which, if you do some quick back-of-the-napkin math, wasn’t all that long ago. We learn a lot in this episode. Tiago tells us he’s from a restaurant family in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which is the cattle- and therefore beef-...
Top Chef Thanksgiving Day Tips: Lessons From Brad Wise
November 20, 2023 18:40 - 1 hour - 115 MB“People are always like, ‘You’re a chef I’m sure you’re smoking your turkey,’” says Brad Wise, head chef and owner of Trust Restaurant Group. “But I’ve tried it every way and I’m telling you that old bag is the best.” At his restaurants, he jockeys a nightly parade of red oak to smoke and char meats into various forms of yes. But for Thanksgiving turkey—the good ‘ole Reynolds’ Oven Bag. “I told a friend to try this and he said, ‘No way.’ I said ‘OK suit yourself. He came back a week later...
HOT TICKET: Susan Finegar & Liz Lachman
November 09, 2023 18:49 - 1 hour - 159 MBSusan Feniger and Liz Lachman pop. I first encountered their mutual hurricane of wit at the Del Mar Wine + Food Festival. They were setting up their table to cook. It looked like a movie set. Lachman immediately cordoned me, made me one of her own. Both of them struck me as whip-smart, funny, alive. James Beard Award–winning chef Feniger and Emmy-winning filmmaker Lachman join us this week on Happy Half Hour, our podcast exploring the world and people of food. They talk life and art and thei...
The Best First Date Bar in San Diego?
October 27, 2023 19:32 - 1 hour - 144 MBThey got weird with it, and it worked. Understory is a concept bar in the middle of a Noah’s Ark-looking food hall called Sky Deck in Del Mar, where it is surrounded by nine sit-down restaurants. “Understories” are the natural world of shade-craving trees, soils, and organisms in any forest. And so, this bar—along with its own barrel-aged boozes (their Woodford Reserve is used to make a fantastic Old Fashioned)—is filled with plants and plants and plants and white pseudo-tree limbs that loo...
Vegan Doom Metal Pizza
October 20, 2023 20:20 - 1 hour - 140 MBAin’t easy being a vegan. Harder being a vegan in the Midwest in the ‘90s. Your eating options were the steamed broccoli at the steakhouse (hold the butter), some room-temp air, or learning to cook in self-defense. “That’s why I learned to cook,” says Roy Elam, chef and owner of Donna Jean in Bankers Hill. He’s wearing a death metal t-shirt in our conference room. Actually I could have that wrong. It may be doom core or emo-dream core. So many dooms and cores. Point is, he and David are real...
Hell of a Pedigree for a Little Fish Shop
October 13, 2023 22:04 - 1 hour - 144 MBOn this week’s Happy Half Hour podcast… Pablo Becker named his new restaurant Fish Guts. That’s the kind of humor and gall you need to make it in life. It’s gonna make me like you. It helps that he’s using the 90 percent local seafood, the best damn things pulled off the boats a few blocks from his Barrio Logan fish sandwich-and-taco shop. “It’s crazy to me that you have the best seafood in the world right over there,” he says, pointing out of the SDM podcast studio window at the bay. “And...
Three-Star Michelin Chef Opens Burger Joint in San Diego
September 07, 2023 18:04 - 49 minutes - 90.2 MBA three-star Michelin chef has opened a burger joint in San Diego. It’s called Tanner’s Prime Burgers. Exclamation point. Another one. Some hyperactive emoji. Pass the fries. The chef is Brandon Rodgers, who cut his teeth in San Diego years ago. He originally moved here to work with Tony DiSalvo, a nationally known chef who was heading up the former Jack’s in La Jolla. Rodgers then joined Gavin Kaysen at El Bizcocho (now Avant). He cooked on Iron Chef with Kaysen, and their team defeated Mich...
Eat With Your Hands
September 05, 2023 23:30 - 1 hour - 143 MB“He was wearing two dog tags. The bullet went through the first dog tag, but the second deflected it down into his ankle. The bullet’s still in his ankle.” As Ky Phan shares on this week’s Happy Half Hour podcast, her father’s dog tag with the terrifying hole not only saved his life, but eventually became the ticket to a new life for his young family. The Phans are from a small village in South Vietnam, near a river where they would pull crabs, snails, and shrimp. They’d boil them in pots, s...
THE NEXT BIG THING: New School American Cheese
September 01, 2023 22:59 - 58 minutes - 107 MBEric Greenspan didn’t do what he did—go through the years of training at the world’s best restaurants, slog and hustle and cut a metric **** ton of onions and carrots, become one of SoCal’s star chefs, make his way onto national TV, open an L.A. restaurant that earned raves from everyone, including Jonathan Gold—to become known, widely, as “the cheese guy.” But he’s not mad at it. “As a chef, you’re going to give me this identity and platform that will ultimately expose you to the other t...
The Hit of Coronado
August 17, 2023 18:14 - 1 hour - 132 MBIce cream shops don’t usually spawn modest empires—but this one did. Born and raised in Coronado, David Spatafore opened a little scoop place, MooTime Creamery, in 1998. He built it in the same neighborhood where he grew up and met his wife. Now, his food hall, Liberty Public Market—the market that started the trend in San Diego—is the epicenter of life in Point Loma. He’s got a steakhouse, Stake, and a flip-flop-and-tiki-shirt concept with The Islander, which is now home to a tiny donut shac...
The Life of Failed Umpire Drew Deckman
August 12, 2023 00:02 - 1 hour - 166 MBHis kitchen is under or near a tree. Lots of them. He’s got goggles on because of the smoke. The first time you see Drew Deckman weidling his giant tongs over live fire at Deckman’s en El Mogor, it feels like you’re in some sort of movie. His bed and car and clothes and family must also smell like smoke. “The minute I first drove into Valle de Guadalupe, I knew I was home, I felt like I’d been there my whole life,” he says of Baja, Mexico’s wine region, which started humble and has now grow...
Napatini Takes Off in Carlsbad
August 04, 2023 22:31 - 51 minutes - 93.5 MBLynn and Gary McLean both spent years in the military. A very serious, at times tense path. Based for most of their lives in the Bay Area, they’d spend their downtime exploring every corner of Napa and Sonoma, getting to know the winemakers, the people, the culture. It was their place, their solace. So when Gary retired (a lifelong Marine doesn’t sit still for long), they built Napatini, a wine bar in Carlsbad Village designed like the caves and architecture of their favorite place. Named Na...
The Roberto Alcocer Formula That Led Valle to a Michelin Star
July 28, 2023 19:18 - 1 hour - 133 MBIf there’s a formula for snagging a Michelin star, chef Roberto Alcocer doesn’t know what it is. And yet his Oceanside restaurant, Valle (2023 critic's choice for best Mexican), just received its first from the guide. On this episode of the Happy Half Hour podcast, Alcocer sits down with hosts Troy and David to discuss the achievement and the lengthy road he’s taken (passport required) to get to this point in his career. Here’s the Alcocer formula, though: Taking his staff to yoga so they can...
Openings, Closings, Bib Gourmands & Machaca
July 21, 2023 18:17 - 55 minutes - 101 MBYou know that giant bin at Best Buy that carries all those DVDs? Think of this latest episode of the Happy Half Hour podcast like that bin. There’s a little bit of everything. So, prepare for a lesson on machaca and Vietnam trivia. After finally being removed by Petco Park security, hosts Troy and David are back at the SDM office catching listeners up on all the food happenings around America’s Finest City. The duo discuss the splashiest move yet from Consortium Holdings, the re-opening o...
The Meals to Eat in San Diego Before You Die
July 12, 2023 19:38 - 1 hour - 134 MBIs it dark in here? Maybe a little. This week on Happy Half Hour, David and I invent the ways we’d like to undo this mortal coil (our deathways include expiring from overexposure to the almighty T-Swift and falling from a helicopter into a pool of sharks). The whole point? To name what we’d eat if it was our last meal on earth. And then point you to the San Diego restaurants we suggest getting these last-meal greats. I start with the meal I order every Sunday when the scaries hit, and jus...
Raising the Bar on Stadium Food in San Diego
June 27, 2023 23:04 - 44 minutes - 82.3 MBPetco Park is known for having some of the best food in baseball. They were even one of the first stadiums in the nation to bring in iconic and emerging local restaurants, craft beers, wine, and cocktails for a more upscale experience (we still love a good, classic hot dog). On this episode of Happy Half Hour, co-hosts Troy and David get the inside scoop on the ballpark’s food and drink scene at Alesmith’s 394 bar inside of Petco. With a stadium that holds nearly 50,000 visitors, vice presi...
The Food People of the San Diego County Fair
June 13, 2023 19:09 - 54 minutes - 101 MBFair food is legendary—the logical extreme of American cuisine. The food court is Pinocchio’s island for people whose favorite invention is a deep fryer. We train for this. And this year we partnered with the San Diego County Fair to bring you the ultimate “Fairtastic Food Competition.” All told, three judges—myself, Chris Stone of @sdfoodies, and Nirit Wigdor of @sandiegoeats—tasted 36 dishes across six categories and named six of the best things to eat at the fair. One of my favorite humans...
Coffee in Offices with Guitarists
April 28, 2023 18:10 - 1 hour - 159 MBThis week on Happy Half Hour, our food and drink podcast that won a national award and we’ll never shut up about that fact… I try somewhat awkwardly to establish nostalgic bonds with David Kennedy, co-owner of James Coffee Co. James is the younger brother of a longtime friend (Lisa Kennedy, who owns The Corner Mercantile & Eatery in La Jolla). I vaguely remember going over to their house when we were in high school, and I’m fairly certain I falsified a memory of him learning guitar while we ...
It Will Rain On Your New Outdoor Restaurant
March 24, 2023 21:59 - 1 hour - 130 MBLong before “pivot” became a silver-lining buzzword, Tracy Borkum made a career out of it. For instance, the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla recently spent $105 million and tapped one of the top architects in the country to recast its iconic building into an ocean-facing art compound. And Borkum—a San Diego restaurateur who years ago got her BA in art history from UC Berkeley—became a big part of it. It was a dream, really: a merger of what she loved and studied (art) and what she ...
Incoming: Izola Bakery Builds a Bread City of Glass in City Heights
March 17, 2023 20:12 - 1 hour - 75.2 MBDuring the first terrifying shutdowns of the pandemic, Pulitzer-nominated photographer Jeffrey Brown and his partner started lowering bread out the window of his third-story studio in downtown San Diego. They used a basket and rock-climbing rope (Brown is serious about rocks and ropes, and once climbed El Capitan). People—very few people, at first—would pay for the bread Brown and his partner Jenny Chen were making upstairs. They’d always enjoyed food, pored over cooking mags, and made elabo...
The Salt-of-the-Earth Star Power of Catherine McCord
March 10, 2023 23:32 - 1 hour - 66.7 MBI may not still be on TV if it weren’t for Catherine McCord. Nowadays, she’s one of the foremost cookbook authors in the US, with recipe bibles issued under her brand name Weelicious. She helps parents manage cooking without losing their minds and angrily writing off food as a concept, or just loading a Super Soaker with Goldfish crackers and shooting them at their kids as they head to work with stains on their shirts. She’s the CEO of her own nationwide meal delivery service for families, ca...
The Salt-Earth Star Power of Catherine McCord
March 10, 2023 23:32 - 1 hour - 66.7 MBI may not still be on TV if it weren’t for Catherine McCord. Nowadays, she’s one of the foremost cookbook authors in the US, with recipe bibles issued under her brand name Weelicious. She helps parents manage cooking without losing their minds and angrily writing off food as a concept, or just loading a Super Soaker with Goldfish crackers and shooting them at their kids as they head to work with stains on their shirts. She’s the CEO of her own nationwide meal delivery service for families, ca...
Creating Consortium Holdings: The Story Behind Its Success
March 03, 2023 23:12 - 1 hour - 131 MBLook, there are enough excellent brunch restaurants in San Diego that waiting hours for a seat at Morning Glory—Little Italy’s rose-hued bastion of breakfast pork belly and morning booze—feels, admittedly, a little silly. Our out-of-town friends gaze forlornly at happy, well-fed-looking strangers while we assure them that the forthcoming pancakes will be worth the delay. “There’s a Champagne vending machine,” we promise. Maybe it’s the pink tile ceiling. Or the trippy mirrored bathroom. But ...
Small-Batch Aquavit Is Here (and it's gooooood)
February 24, 2023 19:41 - 1 hour - 142 MBDuring the pandemic, actor Matthew Arkin got a call from his dad, Alan Arkin. “My dad says, ‘Hey, you know you can make aquavit at home?’” Matthew explains, sipping a damn delicious aquavit tonic in the SDM conference room. Matthew’s response was, essentially, “Uh, thanks, dad.” In Scandinavia, aquavit (the word means water of life) is everything. There are over 200 songs dedicated to it. In the U.S., it’s mostly known as the stuff they drink in Scandinavia—a bracing blast of northern booze...
JC Select Wines Shows us How to Indulge in a Different Kind of Wellness
February 17, 2023 21:34 - 1 hour - 147 MBJennifer 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 launched her own company, JC Select Wines, which specializes in hand-picking wines for special e...
Co-owner of IZO, Gaston Martinez, shares how his mezcal helped their agave spirits stand out
February 09, 2023 22:03 - 1 hour - 188 MBIn 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, Happy Half Hour brings on an old friend who’s expanded his company’s rotation since his last f...
The World’s Happiest Rice Starts in National City
February 02, 2023 19:14 - 1 hour - 119 MBMost 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,” he admits on this week’s podcast. The two women across from him on the mic are working to make...
The Farm Adopted by San Diego's First 3-Star Michelin Restaurant
January 27, 2023 22:34 - 1 hour - 131 MBOver 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 some eggs look like mandarins and some look like a vague notion of the color yellow? Farmers mar...
Cold Beer and Pink Boots with Small-Batch Brewer Laura Ulrich
January 17, 2023 17:37 - 57 minutes - 105 MBListen, 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 of Stone’s “small batch brewers,” it’s Laura’s job to research and develop new suds, tweaking re...
Carol Roizen built a healthy cafe in San Diego for their daughter, and it turned into a huge success
January 10, 2023 17:25 - 1 hour - 118 MBThis 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 extra jobs, do whatever it takes to help them regain their health. Parakeet Cafe is what Carol R...
Carol Roison built a healthy cafe in San Diego for their daughter, and it turned into a huge success
January 10, 2023 17:25 - 1 hour - 118 MBThis 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 extra jobs, do whatever it takes to help them regain their health. Parakeet Cafe is what Carol R...
Year in Review, we talk through the best things we ate, the biggest news, and trends
December 24, 2022 00:03 - 1 hour - 170 MBOh 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 zero or near-zero idea what we were doing. Flailing at mics. Loghorrea-ing our way into the digi...
The San Diego Company Growing the Future of Global Seafood in a Beer Chamber
December 16, 2022 20:42 - 1 hour - 112 MBThe 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 without the need for fish. In turn, transforming a limited and unpredictable resource (seafood) into...
This Restaurant Only Has One Teeny Tiny Trash Can
December 09, 2022 23:03 - 1 hour - 160 MBThey 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 being perfect and it’s not an evangelical radical screed against any and all industry. The iss...
Three Thanksgiving Cooking Tips from Top Chef Josh Mouzakes of Arlo
November 23, 2022 17:32 - 1 hour - 146 MBMashed 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 Joel Robuchon in Vegas, a couple years at Hotel Del, and two recent appearances on Food Network—s...