After nearly a week of intensive reader voting, today we announce the winners of the eighth annual Eater Awards, celebrating the chefs and restaurants that made the largest impact on all 24 Eater cities over the past twelve months.
Here now are the establishments — from steakhouses and cocktail bars to ramen shops and breweries — that have taken San Diego by storm. Thank you to everyone who voted last week, and congratulations to the winners of the readers’ choice and editors’ choice awards. Read on to learn more about this year’s best of the best. Editors’ choice winners will receive an illustrious tomato can trophy via FedEx, along with a full feature on Eater in the coming year.
Restaurant of the Year
Ramen is ramen is ramen, right? It was until the arrival of Menya Ultra Ramen, the first stateside restaurant for Japanese master chef Takashi Endo, who channels more than 20 years of ramen-making experience into crafting a bowl that is unlike any other. One of the few restaurants in San Diego that consistenly draws crowds throughout the day, this humble ramen shop has sold over 60,000 bowls of ramen and counting since its debut earlier this year. The concise menu values quality over quantity, specializing in a few ramen varieties based on fresh noodles, made in small batches every day. In its short tenure in San Diego, Menya has already attracted national attention; famed food luminary Andrew Zimmern visited this summer and declared that it just might be the best in America.
Restaurant of the Year Readers’ Choice Winner: Born & Raised
Chef of the Year
Jason McLeod, Born & Raised
The executive chef of Little Italy’s spectacular new Born & Raised was himself born and raised in British Columbia. With more than 25 years of culinary experience to his name, plus two-Michelin stars won during time spent cooking in Chicago, McLeod has been CH Projects’ corporate chef since 2012, partnering with the local hospitality collective to open Ironside Fish & Oyster and Soda & Swine and helping to oversee its growing stable of eateries. With Born & Raised, the group’s most ambitious and expensive project to-date, McLeod took on a lot of the heavy lifting, serving as the luxury steakhouse’s executive chef. His menu of carefully procured dry-aged meat and dishes prepared table side, at once both timeless and forward-thinking, seems built for success and longevity.
Chef of the Year Readers’ Choice Winner: Jason McLeod, Born & Raised
Design of the Year
The two-level Little Italy restaurant is impressive on all fronts, but the jaw-dropping design contributes mightily to its blockbuster status. Paul Basile of BASILE Studio, who was also behind KINDRED, last year’s Eater Awards design winner, created a stunning take on a steakhouse that combines luxurious materials with custom-crafted elements and keen attention to detail. The restaurant feels steeped in eras gone-by yet manages to be thoroughly modern, a fitting setting for the special occasion food.
Design of the Year Readers’ Choice Winner: Lionfish
Bar of the Year
Taking off on the tiki trend that swept San Diego this year, The Grass Skirt sets itself apart by offering two things that a typical tiki bar is not: ample space and actual good food. It also brought a welcome, and needed, dose of cocktail craft to Pacific Beach. The playful bar and restaurant gives SDCM beverage director Steven Tuttle the space to expand on the popular tiki cocktails that he’d developed at Kettner Exchange and lets executive chef Brian Redzikowski demonstrate his expertise with Asian flavors and ingredients.
Bar of the Year Readers’ Choice Winner: False Idol
Export of the Year
This fiercely-independant homegrown company, soon to be California’s first employee-owned brewery, is poised for impressive growth in San Diego and beyond. Also notable for making waves in the craft coffee scene, Modern Times Beer is bringing San Diego-brewed culture to the Los Angeles area, where it’s creating a beer and food wonderland in Anaheim and building a brewery and vegan eatery in downtown Los Angeles. There will soon be a little bit of San Diego in Portland, too.
Export of the Year Readers’ Choice Winner: Puesto