Del Mar’s First Brewery Restaurant Reveals Menu

It’s a project more than two years in the making, but this month marks the long-anticipated opening of Viewpoint Brewing Co. Initially called Vigilante Brewing, the 7,000-square-foot brewery and restaurant is housed in a unique industrial space, formerly a commercial pottery studio, located just a stone’s throw from the Del Mar Fairgrounds alongside the San Dieguito Lagoon and Wildlife Bird Reserve.

A trained chef, Viewpoint founder Charles Koll cooked in San Francisco, Colorado and South Africa and worked locally at Prepkitchen Del Mar and Mille Fleurs. A former Mille Fleurs co-worker, Gunnar Planter, is now his executive chef. Planter, whose modern brewpub dishes for Viewpoint are influenced by classical cuisine, used a recipe for pretzels taught to him by Mille Fleurs’ master German chef Martin Woesle as a jumping off point for his innovation on pretzel bao buns filled with pork belly, oxtail or salt and pepper shrimp.

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For Viewpoint’s house beers, Koll worked closely with head brewer, Moe Katomski, who most recently brewed at Vista’s Bear Roots Brewing Company, and consultant Bill Batten, a star local brewer and alum of AleSmith Brewing Co. and Mikkeller Brewing. Planter has incorporated the beer into some of the dishes, from the coffee stout demi-glace that sauces his pink peppercorn-crusted hanger steak to the garlic-hefeweizen broth features in his mussuls with nduja, a soft and spicy Calabrian cured salami.

William Perls

Opening at 11 a.m., the brewery restaurant will start by serving a light menu of snacks until 5 p.m., when the full dinner offerings kick in. A counter-service lunch menu, as well as brunch, will follow. Planter and Koll tell Eater that their aim is to have Viewpoint’s food share equal billing with the beer; everything is scratch-made, including the naan bread that sandwiches curry fried chicken, and the nimble menu will be ever-changing, with ingredients swapped out according to what’s in season. Viewpoint will also offer a flight pairing board featuring beers paired with on and off-menu bites from the chef.

William Perls

William Perls