George's Taps Chef for New Taco Project in La Jolla

The highly-anticipated second restaurant from the George's at the Cove team, Galaxy Taco, is underway in La Jolla Shores, where it's expected to open by early June.

To help run the kitchen, executive chef/partner Trey Foshee has chosen a chef from George's ranks. Christine Rivera, who has been with the Prospect Street restaurant for three years and is currently a sous chef at George's California Modern, will be shifting over to act as chef de cuisine of the new 4,000-square-foot restaurant, which will serve food inspired by Baja that utilizes San Diego's seasonal ingredients.

Foshee has been blogging about Galaxy Taco on George's website and in a recent post, documented visits to Chicago's Big Star and the uber-hot Cosme in New York, citing both as influences for Galaxy.

Rivera, a San Diego native, has been helping execute 4, 8 and 14-course dinners at California Modern while workshopping and refining the menu at Galaxy, where they will nixtamalize and grind their own corn for the tortillas that will anchor the taco-focused menu, which will also include hot and cold starters and sharable mains.

The chef helped to bring a rendition of a fish taco to the current iteration of George's TBL3 experience and last night, won her round of The Blind Burro's Taco Fights with a version of the taco that she, Foshee and George's California Modern's chef de cuisine Jonathan Bautista served at last year's Tacolandia event in LA. She says that she's looking forward to being "able to translate the food I grew up eating into a unique dining experience"; Rivera told Eater that she'll soon head to New York to stage and learn about masa production in the kitchen at Cosme, which Foshee says makes the best tortillas he has had in the U.S.