Soda & Swine Set Sights on Liberty Station for Meatball Expansion

2014 was a doozy for CH Projects, a milestone year that saw the hospitality group open a series of stunners — Ironside Fish & Oyster, Rare Form, Fairweather and a second UnderBelly. With the recent reopening of Juice Saves in the East Village, their holdings now total eleven venues in and around metro San Diego.

Now, the prolific partners behind CH Projects are headed slightly farther afield to Point Loma's Liberty Station, where they've been working on a second Soda & Swine that will slot into the space vacated by Roseville Cozinha at 2750 Dewey Road Ste 104, which shuttered in 2013.

Joining an exciting new influx of food and drink that includes a huge public market and another restaurant from The Patio Restaurant Group is an expanded and evolved version of the meatball-centric eatery; CH Projects opened the original shop on Adams Avenue in 2013.

The new Soda & Swine will likely open by early April, says CH Projects' principal Arsalun Tafazoli, with both an indoor and outdoor bar and communal tables throughout, in a space designed by frequent collaborator Paul Basile. Though there won't be another Polite Provisions adjacent to Soda & Swine's Liberty Station outpost, the restaurant will have a cocktail component based on different renditions of the Negroni.

A larger kitchen means an expanded menu, with more meatball variations and meatball-topped flatbreads; an existing wood fired oven means that Soda & Swine may venture into pizzas too. Other new elements will include an in-house bakery and retail pie shop.

When reached for comment about their latest tenant, Nathan Cadieux, Vice President of McMillin Companies, the developer behind Liberty Station, said, "The way Liberty Station and people connect with each other evolves daily. This is what excites us at Liberty Station, but we’re also inspired by the ideas that endure. We’re all about new school thinking with old school character. It’s this same type of thinking we see in the local San Diego restaurant scene. We are ecstatic to have CH Projects opening Soda and Swine here in Liberty Station; their commitment to authentic community and a straight forward attitude to delivering a great guest experience is exactly the type of places we want here at Liberty Station. We are all very excited about having some meatballs in the near future."

Tafazoli tells Eater that after Soda & Swine opens, the group will hit the rewind button. Though he's personally involved in South Park's new vegan restaurant, Kindred, other big openings aren't forecasted for CH Projects this year. Rather, they'll spend the rest of 2015 focusing on refining their existing projects; last year, they gave El Dorado a redo and now, two of the establishments that helped to launch the empire, Little Italy's Craft and Commerce and Neighborhood in the East Village, are due to be refreshed and expanded.