9-Course Tasting Menu as Pop-Up at Delicias with Chefs Zach Hunter and Steven Molina (San Diego)

In every profession people tend to grow throughout their careers and develop their own style and identity. Part of this development is often based more on a trial and error approach but another part originates through the influence of mentors/supervisors. These influences can originate by a teacher-scholar relationship but more often they form unconsciously over time by just working together and continuously observing. Cooking on a professional level is perhaps one of the occupations where such influences are often particular distinct. At the same time, since chefs early on in their careers often work or stage at a number of well-known restaurants, these influences get mixed together so that at the end each chef has his unique style but the different influences are often noticeable even throughout single dishes.

San Diego has a rather fast rotation of chefs especially on a fine dining level so that very few of them stayed for a longer time and had a significant influence on subsequent generations of chefs. Some of the notable exceptions are Trey Foshee at George’s Modern, Jeff Jackson at AR Valentien and Paul McCabe formerly at Kitchen 1540 and Delicias. The most recent, unexpected move from Chef McCabe to Arizona was quite a blow to the fine dining scene in San Diego but during his stint at Delicias he worked with Sous Chef Steve Molina who took over the kitchen as Chef de Cuisine after McCabe’s departure. Chef Molina graduated in 2008 from the San Diego Culinary Institute and started working in the industry under Chef Vignau at Savory in Encinitas. He then moved to L’Auberge Del Mar were he started as a pantry cook before rising up the ranks to become Sous Chef under McCabe at Kitchen 1540.

 

McCabe’s move to Delicias generated quite some buzz around the restaurant and its future plans which was throughout the years more known as a kind of neighborhood restaurant for the wealthy in Rancho Santa Fe with good but not really ambitious cuisine. The future direction of Delicias was quite uncertain after the recent changes in the kitchen but we were for some time thinking about trying to set up a tasting menu with Chef Molina when we heard about a 9-course tasting menu at Delicias as a pop-up with Chefs Zach Hunter and Molina. Chef Hunter graduated in 2005 from the Arizona Culinary Institute to start at Wildfish Seafood Grille in Scottsdale where he quickly became Executive Chef. He decided afterwards to move to Mugaritz in Errenteria/Spain, one of the most respected restaurants in the world. After moving back to the US and working together with Molina under Chef McCabe at Kitchen 1540 he moved to New York to work as Sous Chef at Atera. Most recently he made the decision to move to Austin to work on an own restaurant concept in the near future but had a stopover in San Diego with this pop-up restaurant night which gave us the opportunity to experience two McCabe alumni with a hopefully daring tasting menu.

 

Snack 1: Albacore, pickled watermelon, pork fat, ice plant

The night began with a number of snacks to wet one’s appetite. First we had a small piece of slightly cured albacore, topped with a layer of pork fat and some pickled watermelon – light, refreshing and well balanced.

 

Snack 2: Chicken skin, romesco, dried corn

A play on chicharrones with puffed chicken skin - the slightly smoky romesco with peppery notes didn’t overwhelm the chicken skin too much and the dried corn not only added some additional texture but was also well integrated in the playful presentation with its chicken wire.

Snack 3: Fermented corn, dried shrimp, panko, aioli

The highlight of the four snacks – the corn was fermented for ten days and had a slightly sour taste not unlike good sauerkraut, the dried shrimp added some saltiness and panko gave texture to the dish. A wonderful combination of sour, salty and Umami, of which one was really hoping to have a whole cob of corn.

 

Snack 4: Chicken rillette, mole negro, peach butter

This dish presented in a small cocotte had a nice interplay of the crostini, smoked chicken rillette and mole negro but what brought this dish together was the slight fruitiness of the peach butter.

 

It is always interesting to see the interactions of a kitchen team during work and this night was no difference with both chefs and their team working side by side. It is still surprising why Delicias is not using this open kitchen better to bring a different dynamic and ambience to the restaurant instead of hiding it behind some high partition walls.

1^st Course: Uni, crispy grains, dashi gelee, powdered yogurt

The first course as the start of the dinner reminded us on breakfast at the start of the day. Not unlike cereals with milk in the morning we had in this dish a variety of different grains and seeds with powdered yogurt but what deviated it from your standard sweet morning dish was the inclusion of some pieces of uni and dashi gelee which gave the dish a wonderful salty, maritime flavor. Interestingly this strong dish vaguely reminded us of a course we recently had at Atelier Crenn

 

2^nd Course: Tuna tartare, smoked trout roe, lettuce, smoked chicken gelee, breadcrumbs

The presentation of this course was unexpected with a larger piece of lettuce as the centerpiece and the other ingredient coating or surrounding it. At first the combination of the crunchy lettuce with the tuna and smoked roe tartare seemed not really to work but after a few bites the dishes started to grow on us and ended up as a surprisingly balanced dish.

 

3^rd Course: Salt roasted potatoes, dried squid, egg yolk vinaigrette

Sometimes good dishes don’t have to rely on unusual ingredients or complex preparations but live through their simplicity – here we had simple salt roasted potatoes with a matching vinaigrette – simple and homey yet somehow elegant. The dried squid chip didn’t add much to the dish and was more of a distraction.

 

4^th Course: Lobster, shaved Chinese sausage, Meyer lemon – ginger emulsion

The presentation reminded us on some fish’n’chips we got when we lived in England and the pork-fat poached lobster with its “coating” of shaved Chinese sausage worked also along this lines. As good as the surprisingly large piece of lobster was, not unlike fish’n’chips, some kind of starch component was missing in this dish which was a bit too one-dimensional.

 

5^th Course: Spot prawns, bone marrow, roasted summer squash, wheatgrass emulsion

This course was one of the highlights of the dinner with its perfectly cooked prawns and the roasted summer squash. The wheatgrass emulsion mixed with the liquid bone marrow gave the dish an earthy foundation.

 

6^th Course: Fermented long beans, aged lamb, Meyer lemon emulsion, lamb fat aioli

This was one of the dishes where it is necessary to get a little bit of everything at each bite to get a balanced flavor. The fermented long beans had a surprisingly sour taste which was tamed by the lamb fat aioli whereas the aged lamb brought some gaminess and minerality.

 

7^th Course: Venison loin, roasted tomato confit, charred onion

It was interesting and refreshing to see that throughout the night both chefs used some unusual successions and presentations of the dishes not always seen with tasting menus but it appeared with this course they seemed to step back to the default path of ending the savory part with a meat-heavy course. Even though technically very well made with tender sous-vide venison and strong tasting tomato confit the dish seemed to be out of line with the progression of the tasting menu so far and felt too monotonous with its focus on one large piece of meat.

 

8^th Course: Tartare of beet and sour cherry, coconut tapioca

The use of vegetables as part of desserts is becoming increasingly popular and this dish had a very unusual combination of beets and sour cherry which was mainly overshadowed by the earthiness of the beets with some hardly noticeable sweet undertones from the cherry and coconut tapioca. This dish was paired with an unusual cocktail based on champagne and vinegar which actually helped to lighten up the dish with its acidity but it was still a rather challenging course.

 

9^th Course: Candied carrots, chocolate-stout gelato, fermented carrot chocolate ganache

The last course was another, but much more successful, take on vegetables as dessert – the natural sweetness of the carrots paired perfectly with the maltiness of the chocolate stout and the fermented carrot ganache acted as an overarching theme to bring both together with the unexpected funkiness of the fermented carrots – a perfect ending to the tasting menu on a high note.

 

A pop-up restaurant event has always a unique character as the chef doesn’t really have to rely on return customers and so has the chance to take some culinary risks and try out some unusual flavor and ingredient pairings. It was good to see that Chefs Hunter and Molina were willing to take this road and served interesting courses with some highlights like the uni, spot prawns or the carrot dessert. And even courses which didn’t really work for us like the beet dessert are laudable as it shows their willingness to try to express their own culinary vision without much compromise. Hopefully Delicias will be encouraged by the good attendance of this pop-up, and GM Alex Campbell mentioned that they are thinking of having such events as a seasonal occurrence.

 
When two chefs cook together it is of course hard to determine who had which influence on which course but overall it was interesting to see how far the cooking style of these both chefs has evolved from that of their mentor Paul McCabe. It will be interesting to track how Chef Hunter’s first attempt at an own restaurant in Austin will turn out to be (and hopefully it won’t be the last time he cooked in San Diego) but the night also really reminded us that it is time for us to set up a tasting menu with Chef Molina at Delicias and experience his cooking first-hand.

 

Delicias

6106 Paseo Delicias

Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067

(858) 756-8000

Evolve Cuisine (San Diego) – “Explore your Senses” Tasting Menu

Trends in the food world are no different than trends in other parts of life. Some of them evolve over time and become part of the mainstream food world like “farm-to-table”. Today hardly any restaurant doesn’t use some kind of play on the theme of farm-to table to describe their approach towards ingredients and dishes. And even though the concept gets overused by now it also describes a pleasant development of a stronger consciousness of restaurants and customers alike towards a more thoughtful approach regarding sourcing of ingredients. Some other trends get so overhyped that they become more of a stigma than description so that they slowly fade away and only might reappear under a completely different premise as it happened with molecular gastronomy. One of the big buzzwords of the restaurant world in the 90s with pioneers like Ferran Adria, it became more and more a cuss word for restaurants who didn’t understand the original intend but forgot that the quality of the final dish is key to a successful restaurant not the abundant use of new fancy techniques. Over time many of the techniques and tools used during the molecular gastronomy heydays became standard tools of many advanced kitchens like, sous-vide, vacuum sealer, different stabilizers and enzymes and are used today without much reluctance. Chefs using these modern tools understand by now that these are just tools to achieve a better dish and not their main focus. This new attitude was also captured by the seminal work of Nathan Myhrvold and his team who wrote the book which labeled this field – Modernist Cuisine.

We have seen quite a few restaurants in San Diego using tools from the modernist cuisine arsenal and incorporating it in very impressive ways, like at Blanca, Georges and Kitchen 1540 by using for example sous-vide, liquid nitrogen or transglutaminase to name a few. But at the same time none of these restaurants strongly advertised their use of these tools as they were just aids to achieve their final dishes. And so it was just a matter of time until the first chef in San Diego would use a more “direct” way to clearly advertise his work as part of the Modernist Cuisine movement – Evolve Cuisine.

Evolve Cuisine is the brainchild of Chef Daniel Barron. We first heard about Chef Barron when we read about his work at Anqi in Costa Mesa which is an Asian Fusion restaurant that also offered special molecular gastronomy tasting menus at their chefs table. He got his start into the culinary world through the American Culinary Federation Apprenticeship Program at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan before he worked successfulyl in a number of restaurants in Nashville (Mad Platter), New York (Cesca) and Atlantic City (Donald Trump’s Premier Casino Restaurant). More recently he moved to San Diego to take a position as Executive Chef at Blue Point Costal Cuisine where, similar to Anqi, a special molecular gastronomy tasting menu was offered on request beside the regular standard menu. Finally beginning of this year he decided to be able to create dishes without any restrictions in a conventional restaurant setting and started Evolve Cuisine to focus on the “culinary intersection of modernist cuisine and fresh, organic fare”. Chef Barron is working at Evolve cuisine together with Pastry Chef Jeff Bonilla, who is best known in San Diego for his work with Cups and as Executive Pastry Chef at Kitchen 1540, and Mike Yen, mixologist who worked at Nine-Ten, Avenue 5 and Kitchen 1540.

Evolve Cuisine is at this point not planned as a restaurant but as a catering service which uses the currently highly popular pop-up concept to promote its ideas, dishes and philosophy. The most recent incarnation of the Evolve pop-up was focused on “exploring the senses” with a 7-course tasting menu at Fixtures Living.

Fixtures Living is during the day an interesting place to buy furniture for kitchen, bath and outdoor but not the first place you think about for a pop-up restaurant. As it turns out the space is very well suited for such an event with its few communal tables, several small booths and bar. It’s a beautiful open space which allowed a lot of interaction between the guests.

The open kitchen gave everybody the chance to see the chef and his team preparing and plating the different courses.

Amuse Bouche 1: Duck confit ravioli

The night started with a reception and three amuse bouches prepared by the three cooks helping Chef Barron throughout the night. The first one was a deep-fried ravioli filled with duck confit. The ample duck confit had a good but delicate flavor which was easily overshadowed by the fried pasta dough. The amuse bouche would have been more successful if the pasta wouldn’t have been deep-fried to let the duck confit shine. So the dish had mainly the ubiquitous flavor of deep fried food.

Amuse Bouche 2:  Smoked duck breast

If there is one kind of utensil which symbolizes best what went wrong with molecular gastronomy it is any kind of syringe – unwieldy, awkward to use in a restaurant setting, doesn’t add anything to any dish and should simply be forbidden to be used by any chef. This amuse bouche proved the point as the idea of combining smoked duck breast, bing cherries and coconut milk was interesting but the execution lacked and it was hard to get a good taste of all the components.

Amuse Bouche 3: Seared Yellowfin tuna

For us clearly the most successful amuse bouche of the night – Conceptually a simple dish with some seared tuna and a yuzu based aioli but the flavors of the fish and the aioli nicely came together to form a very tasty bite which we would have liked to have as a larger portion.

Cocktail 1: Tequila shooter

Mike Yen also prepared two excellent small cocktails to go with the amuse-bouches during the reception. The tequila shooter resembled visually a hefeweizen beer but also the flavors reminded us of this class of beers with its slight fruitiness and subdued tartness.

Cocktail 2: Cranberry-lime Cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan was slightly on the sweet side but nicely balanced by the encapsulated cranberry and lime juice. A good play on this classical cocktail and we couldn’t resist to ask for seconds.

1^st Course: Smell – Crab consommé, sweet pea, truffle

For this dish we were instructed to pour the broth over the peas and pea shots and stir everything. By this, one created a kind of chowder with a wonderful mix of truffle and crab aroma. The flavor of the liquid resembled the heady aroma with a very delectable taste of the crustaceans which was never overwhelmed by the truffle flavor. The balance between both flavors was impressive. The peas delivered a welcomed textural counterpoint and made this dish to one of the highlights of the tasting menu.

2^nd Course: Sight – Sculpin, honeysuckle, red chile

Sculpins, also known as scorpion fish, are very unusual looking creatures and even though we weren’t served a whole one this dish was a good example for mildly flavor fish. This piece of fish was lightly coated but the crust didn’t interfere with the flavor of the sculpin. Both sauces, one of them characterized from Chef Barron as an Asian-inspired pesto, accompanying the fish had some Asian influences and the red chile added some heat to the dish. The dish would have benefited from another component, like a vegetable, otherwise it was too protein heavy and felt one-dimensional.

3^rd Course: Sound – Lavender, pork jowl, mustard

Some grassfed beef, smoked, sous-vided and then seared, was the foundation of the dish. It was combined with pork jowl, starting point of guanciale, mustard green and a lavender based vinaigrette to yield an impressive salad which only had the “mistake” of being too small. The pop rock made from mustard were a nice gimmick but didn’t add much to the dish.

4^th Course: Touch – Chicken liver, ahi, pumpernickel, peach

With the controversy around foie gras in California and a few protesters somewhere outside Chef Barron decided to rename all foie gras into “chicken liver” for the evening. Here the foie gras was incorporated into a panna cotta which still had the characteristic taste of the foie gras but at the same time made it particular light. Pairing foie gras with ahi is quite unusual but due to the lightness of the foie gras panna cotta this combination worked really well as the foie gras didn’t overwhelm the fish. The pieces of peach brought some burst of fruitiness and sweetness and completed the dish.

Cocktail Intermezzo: Acid rain

Mixologist Mike Yen introduced another one of his creations midway through the tasting menu. In addition to having a nice flavor profile with strong notes on lemongrass and some sweetness from the pink cotton candy rose which slowly dissolved in the cocktail the visual aspect of the cocktail was also entertaining – once you poured the cocktail over the small rocks in the glass you created some “fog” from the dry ice.

5^th Course: Taste – Beef cheek, uni, fava beans

This course showed again the advantages of sous-vide cooking. Instead of braising the beef cheeks which would result in tender meat with a more fibrous texture cooking it sous-vide gave an equally tender meat but with a much more satisfying texture resembling a steak. The beef checks were paired nicely with some grits made out of hominy and pumpernickel and a sauce created from uni and eel as two main components -a strong dish and one of the highlights of the night.

6^th Course: Sensory overload – Duck confit, spot prawn, blackberry, horseradish

Chef Barron described this dish as using every part of the duck – the spot prawn was filled with duck confit accompanied by some seared foie gras, dried duck sausage and a blackberry sauce. Even though the different components were executed well this dish also showed what happens if you are using too many techniques just for the sake of it. The dried duck sausage didn’t add anything to the flavor and had a distracting texture but would have been much more enjoyable if it wouldn’t have been unnecessarily dried. This dish also was again too protein-heavy and felt unbalanced, some non-protein components would have helped the dish.

7^th Course: Dessert – Watermelon, prosciutto, basil, love & break dancing

Pastry Chef Bonilla mentioned that he wanted to capture different parts of summer and the dish indeed included variations on ingredients which are associated with summer and its grilling season – grilled corncake, candy prosciutto, caramelized goat cheese, lemon air and watermelon semifreddo. All components of this dessert came nicely together and created a great finale of the tasting menu. Especially the watermelon semifreddo was exceptional and so it was no surprise that an extra portion of it was successfully requested at our table.

We went to this tasting menu from Evolve Cuisine with little expectations and were even a little bit skeptical if we would witness an evening where technique trumps flavor and creativity. But we came away quite impressed from this night and enjoyed the whole experience a lot. Starting from the location with its communal tables which created a nice setting for interesting conversations to the professional but yet pleasant service to the good pacing of the menu. But most importantly the food presented throughout the night turned out to be creative, well executed and used all kinds of techniques just trying to achieve the best flavors for any dish. It was good to see another new chef in San Diego who could bring new creativity and culinary momentum to this city which recently lost some of its best chefs. If there could have been perhaps one improvement to this tasting menu it would be that Chef Barron tended to cook quite protein-focused but those dishes which had more vegetables and other components, like the consommé, mustard green salad and beef cheeks, were the highlights of the night and hopefully he can extend this to all of his dishes. Evolve Cuisine positions itself as focusing on modernist cuisine and even though they use, like many other chefs, modern techniques advertising themselves in this direction might limit their customer base. Buzzwords like modernist cuisine might attract a few foodies but still discourage many other potential guests and it also doesn’t do dishes of Evolve Cuisine justice enough. They should instead describe themselves as what they are – a team of very talented chefs focusing on developing creative, well executed dishes exploring new flavor combinations. Even though Evolve Cuisine won’t have any pop-up events until fall we are already looking forward to visit them again in the future and take part in their culinary journey.

Evolve Cuisine

(239) 287-5463

Relate Restaurant at St. Germain’s Café (Encinitas) or San Diego’s first pop-up restaurant

Most trends in the restaurant industry are focused on variations of the food by using new techniques, different ethnic influences or ingredients characterized by buzzwords as molecular gastronomy or farm-to-table. The restaurant as a business entity and the base for a restaurateur to conduct business always remained the same over the years. The chef and cuisine could change but the location and the name normally stayed the same and was the characteristics of this business. Only in recent years did some restaurateurs start to think about the concept of the restaurant as a business entity as itself and how it could be transformed. As a consequence two new restaurants styles recently emerged – food trucks and pop-up restaurants. Food trucks could be described as a new twist on fast food places whereas pop-up restaurants try to establish themselves as the trendy version of more upscale restaurants.

Pop-up restaurants are an interesting concept as they could be described as temporary restaurants within a restaurant - restaurants which only serve breakfast or lunch rent out their space for a limited time to other restaurateurs for dinner service. This deal appears to have many advantages for everybody: the pop-up restaurateur doesn’t need a long term lease and has much less overhead costs. The temporary character of the pop-up restaurant often creates a lot of interest without much advertisement and ensures a well booked restaurant. The renter gets money for renting out the unused restaurant for dinner. The customer often has the chance to experience some very creative and unusual cuisine at pop-up restaurants.

It is hard to track down or agree when the first pop-up restaurant started but some people think that the Chinese restaurant Lung Shan in San Francisco was the starting place of the pop-up restaurant boom several years ago as it transformed twice a week to host the Mission Street Food as a venue for chefs to cook without many limitations. Over the last few years more and more chefs started their own pop-up restaurants and today there is hardly any bigger city which doesn’t have its own versions and it was just a matter of time until even San Diego would have a first pop-up restaurant.

Perhaps the most well-known pop-up restaurant currently is LudoBites from Chef Ludo Lefebvre in Los Angeles. Sous Chef for LudoBites incarnation 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 was Chef Dan Moody. Chef Moody has San Diego connections as he graduated from Torrey Pines High School before enrolling at CIA at Hyde Park. Already during his time at CIA he worked for Ludo at L’Orangerie. After some years in the restaurant industry he decided to change fields and started working in the financial sector after earning a degree in economics. But after a few years he realized that his true interest was really in the restaurant business, got back in touch with Ludo and worked first as line cook and then as sous chef at LudoBites. Seeing the success of the pop-up restaurant concept he decided to move it to San Diego. He choose St. Germain’s Café in Encinitas as the location for Relate - San Diego’s first pop-up restaurant.

St. Germain’s Café is located on the Pacific Coast Highway close to the city center of Encinitas. The signs of the café are hard to miss whereas only a few small signs show that during the night this is the home of the Relate Restaurant

About 1/3 of the seats are located outside on the patio where some heating lamps help to make the area comfortable.

The inside of the restaurant reminds that it is during the day a café with its rustic table and chairs. Overall the ambience was lively and at the same time relaxed. It’s a nice feature to be able to see Chef Moody throughout the night work between the kitchen and the front of the house coordinating everything. He also took the time to visit every table at least once during the service. Relate has every night a five course tasting menu with the possibility to add one or two extra dishes.

Amuse Bouche: “French Onion Soup”

A regular French onion soup has bread surrounded by the liquid. This amuse bouche was a clever play on an inverse soup where the bread is surrounding the liquid. Once you bite on the pillow the warm onion soup is oozing out. A very promising start of the tasting menu.

1st Course: Foie gras & chicken liver mousse, sautéed apples, onion jam, baby lettuce, golden beet vinaigrette.

Even though foie gras and chicken liver mousse both start from livers they have quite distinct different flavors. Mixing them together in one mousse blurred the unique character of both. It might have been better to have both mousses on one plate but separated. One of them could have a sweet pairing with the sautéed apple whereas the second mousse would have worked nicely with a more savory onion jam.

Supplement: Crispy escargots on toast with garlic crème anglaise.

We decided to order one extra course with the crispy escargots. The escargots were indeed crispy without being rubbery which is often a problem with escargots. The garlic crème anglaise was a good idea for the classic pairing of escargots and garlic but would have needed a stronger garlic taste. The toast was very crispy which reminded us of zwieback and overshadowed the crispiness of the escargots. A softer toast could have also been soaked up with some garlic preparation to intensify the garlic flavor.

2nd Course: Seared local redrock, white bean puree, wilted kale, garam masala buerre blanc.

Nicely seared fish with a crispy outside and moist flesh was accompanied with some earthy bean puree and slightly bitter kale. What really brought the dish together was the garam masala of buerre blanc. It added an interesting and unexpected flavor to the dish without overpowering any of the other components and made the dish come alive.

3rd Course: Sauteed scallop, miso lentils, baby bok choy.

Lentils are a versatile ingredient as they add texture to a dish and also some background flavor without dominating everything. Therefore they are often paired with milder tasting proteins like fish or in this case with perfectly sautéed lightly sweet scallops. At the same time lentils can be combined with many different spices to steer a dish in a certain direction, e.g. adding some curry gives the dish an Indian touch, cumin can be reminiscent of North African influences and adding miso shows some Japanese/Asian direction. The baby bok choi helped to accentuate this influence but unfortunately the miso flavor wasn’t noticeable in this dish and left us with good ingredients but compared to the previous dish where the garam masala elevated the dish this time it felt flat.

4th Course: Spiced beef, spinach avocado puree, crispy porcini spaetzle, green flash double stout gastrique.

This was perhaps the most balanced dish of the night. Very tender beef cooked to rare/medium rare had a spice coating which gave the beef an interesting spicy kick. The creamy spinach avocado puree had a bitter undertone which together with the green flash double stout gastrique complemented the spicy beef. The crispy spaetzle with a discernible porcini flavor was a fitting side.

5th Course: Mascarpone mousse napoleon, lemon, dragon fruit, orange.

Good variation on mille-feuille with light puff pastry and mascarpone cream which together with the lemon jam made a flavorful “filling”. The orange slices added some fruitiness to the desserts whereas the dragon fruit were nice to look at but didn’t add much to the dish.

We went to San Diego’s first pop-up restaurant without really knowing what to expect. Pop-up restaurants have the reputation to often try to push the limits of the culinary expectations. At the same time San Diego isn’t really known to be a successful place for overly creative restaurants. So the question for us was what Chef Moody and his team at Relate would think about this situation and how they would position the restaurant. After experiencing the first tasting menu at Relate we had the feeling that we weren’t the only ones to have this question. It appeared that Chef Moody asked himself the same question without really having a clear answer and used, understandably, the first round of Relate restaurant to test the situation in San Diego. As a consequence Relate’s first incarnation was a solid presentation without any major missteps but also without any really memorable dishes. The execution of the dishes was overall solid but also felt often as if Chef Moody’s creativity was muted and he downplayed any sparkles of culinary excitements in favor of playing it safe. The amuse bouche and the beef course showed where a future direction of Relate might lead to but too often we had the feeling that Chef Moody wasn’t willing yet to do the last 2-3 steps within a dish to make it special. Even though San Diego isn’t known as the stronghold of culinary creativity there are still quite a number of excellent restaurants as Blanca, Kitchen 1540, George’s, Cavaillon, and Café Chloe, and it is obvious Chef Moody with his ambitious cooking style is targeting a similar customer base as these restaurant but it will be necessary for Relate to step up the game in the future to be really able to compete with these restaurants. Overall it would be too early and unfair to judge Relate’s quality after the first round which more or less is just a get to know between San Diego and the restaurant. It will be interesting to see which direction Chef Moody is planning to go – focusing on pop-up restaurants as a novel concept for San Diego and relying on this type of restaurants as an event for the success or just seeing pop-up restaurants as vehicle to present excellent cuisine. But we are glad that Chef Moody was willing to take the risk and expose San Diego to the concept of pop-up restaurants and we are looking forward to follow and participate in future iterations.

Relate Restaurant (at St. Germain’s Café) 

1010 S Coast Highway 101 # 103

Encinitas, CA 92024-5067
(760) 753-5411