Liberty Public Market is a large food hall and artisan marketplace inside Liberty Station in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood. The roughly 25,000-square-foot building originally opened in 1923 as the mess hall and commissary for Naval Training Center San Diego. After the Navy base closed, the larger property was redeveloped as Liberty Station, and the market opened in 2016 as San Diego’s first food hall.
The current vendor roster covers a broad range: Argentinian empanadas, Thai street food, Hawaiian food, sushi, ramen and noodles, Mediterranean kebabs, lobster rolls, Texas-style barbecue, Nashville hot chicken, pizza, Mexican food, French pastries, Hungarian chimney cakes, coffee, smoothies and more. There are also nonrestaurant businesses including a record shop, barber shop, specialty retail and Bottlecraft’s beer shop and tasting room.
Slurp Taiyaki & Ramen combines Japanese-inspired ramen with an eye-catching dessert: taiyaki soft serve. Taiyaki is a Japanese fish-shaped waffle/cake traditionally filled with something sweet such as red bean paste, custard or chocolate.
Slurp turns it into an ice-cream cone, filling the open-mouthed fish pastry with soft serve. Flavors including vanilla, taro and swirls such as taro/vanilla or ube/vanilla. The cone is made fresh, giving it a combination of crisp and chewy textures beneath the soft serve. And despite looking like a fish, the dessert isn’t fish-flavored.
If I had more time, I would have stopped at each and every shop, sampling everything along the way.
Have you been?
Grade: A
