I figured that was the criteria for being a hot city for restaurants. The openings in LA and SF, for example, are assuredly world-class. Maybe not all 3-michelin stars or whatever, but they would be excellent restaurants anywhere in the world.
Curious what one ought to eat at these places? Not the best reference, but Yelp is not very promising for most of them. Galaxy Taco is apparently not even good enough to convince La Jolla’s elite that it’s good… but then again, maybe that’s a good thing. Lena looks somewhat interesting, though.
The new American places remind me of The Playground in their plating a lot…maybe a shallow approach, but hard to say. For some reason the majority of them look like they would be 3rd tier restaurants if they were in SF for example (Lena maybe the one exception; but then again, it’s interesting to look at, say their Yelp photos versus Cala’s yelp photos).
Pictures can be deceiving, of course, but there is something to be said about a lack of finesse in plate composition being indicative of overall quality… it feels hard to tell if most of these places would be worth a drive from the LA area. Outside of the photos most of the menus sound very standard, as if SD is sort of just hopping on a couple of restaurant trends (people seem super excited about brussel sprouts at several places for example). Great for people who live there, but hard for me to see one of the hottest dining cities in the entire country in this compared to places listed in the other cities I guess.
Maybe I’m biased somehow, but I feel like I’m not…I would enjoy it if SD somehow had a restaurant scene that was extraordinary, as it’s much closer to LA than any other city, but it still feels like it’s just barely getting going. Not that there aren’t a bunch of things that are good to eat there though…in terms of widespread availability of casual food of high quality it is tremendous.