Juniper and Ivy is located in a converted warehouse at the northern edge of Little Italy in San Diego. Owner Michael Rosen opened it in 2014 with celebrity chef and Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais, initially describing the cooking as “left-coast cookery.” The menu features sophisticated but playful American food built around seasonal West Coast ingredients, with the menu changing frequently according to what local farmers and fishermen supply. Its longtime chef Anthony Wells, who is from West Virginia, joined the opening team as sous chef in 2014, worked his way up to executive chef, and was named a 2022 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: California. The restaurant itself received a Michelin Bib Gourmand designation in 2019. The inside of Juniper and Ivy is industrial but polished. It occupies a converted 1920s-era warehouse, and much of that character is still visible: very high ceilings, massive exposed redwood beams, concrete, exposed ductwork and an overall open, airy layout. The industrial elements are softened by warm wood tables, curved upholstered booths, camel-colored leather chairs, modern artwork and low lighting. Elote Arancini: The elote arancini were crisp, golden fried rice balls that combined the Italian snack with Mexican street corn flavors. They were served over a creamy, slightly spicy lime mayo with chile de árbol oil, then finished with what appeared to be crumbled cheese and fresh greens. The crisp exterior gave way to the softer rice filling, while the creamy sauce added richness underneath. Melons & Feta: The melons and feta was the lightest of the dishes, pairing chunks of watermelon with feta, thin ribbons of cucumber and wedges of pale melon. The menu also listed lemon balm, mojito snow and chocolate mint, with the icy green mojito component adding a cold, herbaceous contrast to the sweet fruit and salty cheese. It was essentially a more elaborate take on a watermelon-and-feta salad. Michelada Ceviche: The michelada ceviche combined pieces of octopus and shrimp with cucumber and other diced vegetables in a bright, chile-forward liquid inspired by the flavors of a michelada. A large sesame-avocado crisp stood upright over the seafood, while blue corn chips provided another crunchy element. It was colorful and textural, moving between tender seafood, fresh vegetables and crisp chips Wagyu Sliders: The Wagyu sliders were a more straightforward comfort-food option: small beef patties topped with melted American cheese and deeply cooked tallow onions on glossy sesame buns. The beef and onions made these particularly rich, with the cheese leaning into the classic cheeseburger profile rather than trying to make the sliders overly elaborate. Pickles served alongside helped cut through some of that richness. Everything was so good that we had to get dessert, too. Dubai Yodel: The Dubai Yodel takes inspiration from the viral Dubai chocolate combination of chocolate, pistachio and kataifi. A chocolate shell surrounds the dessert, with pistachio ganache providing a rich, nutty center. Pistachio snow and crunchy chocolate kataifi crumbs add contrasting textures, while the sauce underneath brings another creamy element. It is an elaborate, plated interpretation of the now-familiar pistachio-filled Dubai chocolate bar. Have you been? Grade: A

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

The Hillcrest Farmers Market is one of San Diego’s biggest and most established farmers markets. Held every Sunday in the Hillcrest neighborhood, the market dates back to April 13, 1997, when it opened with just 27 vendors. It was created as a project of the Hillcrest Business Association and originally operated from the DMV parking lot near Normal Street and Lincoln Avenue. Nearly three decades later, Hillcrest Farmers Market has grown to more than 175 vendors and draws more than 10,000 visitors during a typical week. Farm stands are loaded with the kinds of fruits and vegetables that benefit from Southern California’s growing climate, along with flowers and other agricultural products. San Diego County has nearly 5,100 farms, many of them quite small, and the region is particularly known for avocados, citrus, tomatoes, strawberries, flowers, mushrooms and nursery crops. Beyond the farmers, the aisles are packed with specialty food producers, bakers, beverage vendors, artists and craftspeople. Jewelry, clothing, gifts and handmade goods fill out the market, giving it almost a street-festival feel. Live musicians regularly perform as shoppers make their way through the booths. Hillcrest puts a particular emphasis on international cuisine, so it's entirely possible to make a meal out of walking through the market. Hot-food stands and specialty vendors sit alongside the produce booths, making the experience as much about deciding what to eat right now and then what to eat later. That mix is what separates Hillcrest from a more traditional farmers market. There are meat, seafood and dairy products, dry goods and specialty treats, but also plenty of food meant to be eaten immediately. The location is currently a little different from its longtime setup. The market spent years along Normal Street, but construction of the Normal Street Promenade prompted a temporary relocation beginning in January 2025. It now operates along University Avenue between Herbert Street and Park Boulevard while its new permanent home is being built. Have you been?

Trust is a Hillcrest restaurant known for seasonal New American small plates and live-fire cooking centered around a wood-fired grill. It is the restaurant that launched Brad Wise’s restaurant group and introduced the live-fire style that became his calling card. Trust has received Eater San Diego’s 2016 Best Neighborhood Trailblazer award and San Diego Magazine named it Best New Restaurant. The restaurant has a midcentury-modern feel, an open kitchen built around the wood grill and a substantial outdoor patio. When it opened, the interior was about 2,700 square feet with roughly another 1,300 square feet of patio. It feels polished but was deliberately conceived as a neighborhood restaurant rather than formal fine dining. The concept is wood-fired New American food, but the important part is the live-fire cooking. Wise became fascinated with Santa Maria-style grilling on California’s Central Coast, and cooking over flame became his signature. Trust’s menu uses that approach with seasonal ingredients and combines it with influences that range pretty widely—from Mexican and Mediterranean flavors to Asian ingredients and classic European techniques. Ultimate Sticky Bun — Trust’s oversized sticky bun, served warm with a glossy caramel-like sauce, a scoop/dollop of creamy topping, and chopped pecans.

Fried Rice — fried rice topped with two sunny-side eggs, with Korean beef, bok choy, furikake and chopped herbs. Furikake is a Japanese seasoning blend commonly made with ingredients such as sesame and seaweed.

Albacore Tartare — raw chopped albacore with black sesame, cilantro, avocado, sprouts, cucumber and trout roe, accompanied by taro root chips for scooping. Sampling all three made for a well-rounded brunch: the sticky bun was rich and indulgent, the fried rice was savory and satisfying with runny eggs tying everything together, and the albacore tartare provided a lighter, fresher contrast with creamy avocado, briny trout roe and crisp taro chips Grade: A

Cesarina is a handmade-pasta-focused Italian trattoria in San Diego’s Point Loma/Ocean Beach area, at 4161 Voltaire Street. It opened in February 2019 and was founded by three Italian natives: Cesarina Mezzoni, Niccolò Angius and Giuseppe Capasso. Mezzoni is the chef and namesake behind the restaurant. The concept is built around the idea of the Italian matriarch: “Cesarina” represents the grandmother/mother/daughter who feeds and takes care of everyone. That translates into a colorful, warm, slightly whimsical trattoria rather than a formal Italian fine-dining restaurant. One of the coolest features is its open-air pastificio — pasta factory — where you can actually watch fresh pasta being made. The restaurant has also received a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which Michelin uses to recognize restaurants offering particularly good food at a comparatively good value. Part of the menu lets you choose your fresh pasta shape and then choose the sauce. Shapes include fettuccine, spaghetti, pappardelle, paccheri, lumache, mafalde, rigatoni, gemelli and gnocchi, with sauces including Pomodoro Fresco, Bolognese, Funghi, Norma, Tartufona and Arrabbiatissima. There are also composed pasta dishes. The menu includes Lasagna alla Bolognese, made with hand-rolled egg pasta, Bolognese, béchamel and mozzarella; Paccheri Vodka and Scampi, with shrimp and a whole langoustine; and Gnocchi Salsiccia, Porcini e Tartufo, with truffle sauce, porcini and bone marrow. I had the "GNOCCHI, PORCINI, GAMBERI e TARTUFO" - Handmade Gnocchi, garlic, Peperoneino, shrimp, porcini mushroom, "crema al Tartufo", parsley, freshly shaved imported black summer truffle. This was easily one of those dishes where every ingredient sounded rich on its own, but somehow it all worked together perfectly. The handmade gnocchi were soft, pillowy and almost melted in my mouth, coated in a silky truffle cream that was earthy. Porcini mushrooms doubled down on that deep, savory flavor, while the shrimp added a little sweetness and made the dish feel more substantial. The freshly shaved black summer truffle on top made the whole thing feel incredibly indulgent. It was creamy, earthy, garlicky and ridiculously good — the kind of pasta dish I kept thinking about after it was gone. Grade: A

Le Petit Chef is one of -- if not THE -- most unique dining experiences I've ever had. Why? Because it's both dinner and a show. Le Petit Chef is an immersive dining experience where a tiny animated chef appears to cook your meal right on your table. Using 3D projection mapping, animations are projected onto your plate and table. Before each real course arrives, you watch the miniature chef “prepare” it — sometimes struggling with ingredients, making a mess, or going on a little adventure. Held in a Hilton Hotel restaurant, the room is specially set up with the projectors overhead, projecting onto each individual plate.
I was fortunate to experience this with my best friend Kaitee, and we made the trip all the way to San Diego to check it out. There's a little bit of wonkiness with my phone camera vs. the projector and trying to get the lighting correct, so the photos don't do it justice.

First Course: The Garden — Burrata Salad

The little chef starts out in his garden, planting and harvesting vegetables. He tends his crops, gathers tomatoes and other ingredients and begins assembling the first course.

Then comes the mole.

The mole starts stealing/messing with his vegetables, and Le Petit Chef tries increasingly ridiculous ways to get rid of it. He eventually resorts to dynamite, with the explosion sending vegetables flying around the table. The real dish: tomato compote, basil oil, rocket and balsamic vinegar Second Course: Under the Sea — Seafood Bisque

The table transforms into an ocean.

Le Petit Chef goes fishing and dives underwater, encountering sea life as he tries to collect ingredients. In one version, he uses a fish to lure a lobster, then rides across the plate/ocean on the lobster.

Eventually he gathers the seafood he needs and prepares a soup. The real dish: East Coast Lobster, shrimp, octopus and chive brandy cream Third Course: Deep Sea - Lobster

Le Petit Chef heads to the seaside in search of the perfect lobster, diving into an underwater world filled with colorful sea life. He eventually encounters a giant lobster, leading to a playful chase as the tiny chef tries to catch his much larger dinner. After wrestling with the lobster and figuring out how to get it back to the kitchen, he prepares it for the table — with the animation making the lobster appear to move right across your plate before the actual lobster entrée arrives. It’s one of the more elaborate sequences in The Beginning because the projection turns the entire table into the ocean, making the transition from the animated underwater adventure to the real lobster course feel like one continuous scene. The real dish: Lobster, pearl barley, caviar and beurre blanc
Fourth Course: The Grill — Beef

This is the big meat course.

The table becomes a grill/barbecue scene, with Le Petit Chef cooking beef over the flames. The animation actually emphasizes the cooking process — fire, smoke and the little chef trying to manage the grill. Other versions have a particularly funny sequence involving a giant bee that causes trouble around the barbecue.

At the end, the real dish arrives. The real dish: Filet mignon au poivre from Circling Hawk Farm, honey glazed carrots, broccoli yukon gold potato mash and peppercorn sauce. OPTIONAL: Birthday Cupcake

This is a sweet part of to Le Petit Chef's adventure.

After all of his cooking exploits, the scene shifts into a celebration, with Le Petit Chef preparing for a special occasion. A tiny cupcake appears as the centerpiece, and the animation turns the table into a festive setting as he puts the finishing touches on the dessert.

The celebration builds around the cupcake, with music, decorations and a birthday-style surprise before the real dessert arrives at the table -- but you only get the cupcake if you're someone actually celebrating something. I was so disappointed to just have an empty plate after that animation. FINAL COURSE: The Celebration — Crème Brûlée

This is the final course of Le Petit Chef's culinary adventure.

The table transforms once again as Le Petit Chef prepares a crème brûlée, working through the dessert-making process in his tiny kitchen. The animation builds toward the most important part — the crackly caramelized sugar topping — before the projection gives way to the real dessert arriving at the table.

At the end, the real dessert arrives. The real dish: Crème brûlée, with Tahitian vanilla custard, burnt turbinado sugar cust and fresh berries Grade: A