My sister, a friend, and I will be taking a short decompression vacation to the San Diego area in late February. We arrive in San Diego early in the morning on a Friday and will leave around 8PM the following Monday. We’re renting a car and can only check into our Encinitas AirBnB at 3, so we have 6-7 hours in San Diego coming in (8AM-2PM) and then 7 hours on Monday (noon-7PM) before leaving. We’d love recommendations for a wonderful leisurely brunch in San Diego or a good light breakfast (coffee, croissants) and a great lunch, and an early dinner there. Also any recs for Encinitas and vicinity, including markets and specialty foods.
We’re coming from the high desert, so one good sushi experience would be wonderful, as well as any other seafood recommendations. Our home state also lacks great options for Ethiopian, Senegalese, Malaysian/Indonesian, and fresh, authentic Italian. Any of those cuisines would be a treat. We’re Indian and cook that cuisine a lot at home, so not that interested in South Asian unless it’s really special, although we’ll never say no to a great dosa.
Any suggestions, even nonfood suggestions for places to visit, would be most appreciated.
Linking a few threads below on past recs for the area.
Addressing some of your goals in no particular order:
Sushi – Ken sushi workshop is wonderful, Shimbashi in Del Mar is more casual and has an ocean view, both are frequent spots for us.
Asian – I’d prioritize Vietnamese over other Asian, and divier places on Convoy, Mira Mesa, Miramar over sanitized / fancy ones. There’s better Sichuan than most other Chinese sub-categories. Lucky is a Viet supermarket with make-your-own banh mi, freshly squeezed sugarcane juice, a hot station with all the favorites, and freshly fried cha gio. There’s a restaurant attached too.
Dosa & Idli – San Idli (there’s other good food near there to take back to your airbnb, including banh mis and kababs of various origins). There’s a BAPS mandir near there too, which might have a shop with excellents snacks & more.
Crack shack is close to the airport, you should hit in either direction, delicious.
You can kill time in many places on your way from the airport – La Jolla might be a good start, the village has good food, or you can go to the beach, or head north to Del Mar and Solana Beach and wander the beach and the stores across from it.
In Encinitas, La Especial Norte is our fam favorite divey Mexican – it shows as temporarily closed (weird, I know it was open a few weeks ago), but check back before you go.
Thank you so much, Saregama. You are always wonderfully helpful. From reading your posts here and on CH, I think we have similar palates, so I very much look forward to trying as many of your recommendations as possible!
I mentioned Buona Forchetta on one of the linked threads, but the location we used to frequent is in Encinitas. Wonderful pasta and Neapolitan style pizza, and a gorgeous lasagne. Haven’t eaten there in a while, so check recent reviews, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t still wonderful. (Other Italian favorites are Cucina Enoteca in Del Mar and Catania in La Jolla.)
In the non-food recs, beach related stuff trumps most other things, but you can kill some time with digestible museum stuff in Balboa park (plus delicious mexican food around the corner at several options, including Jimmy Carter’s), and the zoo is definitely worth a visit if you’ve never been.
The beach vibe varies from town to town as you go up the coast too. Some beaches are walk-on from the road with an adjacent park and many restaurants, others require more effort / focus. Beach sunsets there are particularly special, with surfers and seagulls coming off the water — I have a camera roll full of variations on the theme .
Since you’ll have a kitchen, you may want to try Cardiff Crack from Seaside Market in Cardiff — it’s a marinated tri-tip that’s legitimately famous.
We had a family reunion in San Diego last summer and needed some not family time as well
Agree with the LaJolla recommendation. It’s reasonably close to the airport and lots of food options. The sea lions on the beach are worth the stop alone. I forget where we ate but it was excellent. Fish tacos and a mango margarita for me the city is very vigilant about parking enforcement on a previous trip we had an excellent brunch but I that was 10+ years ago
https://thefishshops.com we had dinner at one of the locations I forget which one excelled and supper fresh fish tons of locals not fancy at all but good
I don’t have any real reservations for for food but we were hoping to get lunch on Coronado but there was no parking as a couple of navy vessels were due to come in that day it’s 20 ish minutes from the airport so might work with your timeframe our departure schedule was very similar to yours
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