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So much to do in San Diego,
the beach, the zoo, the aquarium, the marine park,
I mean, the whole sunny California dream.
You can spend weeks here and never go
more than a mile from the beach.
But for a deep dive into some of the best food in San Diego,
you'll want to venture a little further inland,
to a red hot restaurant row
that most of the tourists miss
and the locals have been keeping as their little secret.
But they can't keep it a secret forever.
It's 30th Street, San Diego, California.
Come on, let's eat the street.
Beautiful scenery, beautiful weather,
beautiful people.
Life in san Diego
is so laidback and friendly,
you can forget you're in
the eighth largest city in America.
In 1542, it was the first spot
visited by European explorers
on the west coast of what's now the U.S.
For a while, it was part of Mexico.
The border is only 15 miles from downtown.
By the early 1900s,
the city expanded inland where the South Park
and North Park neighborhoods developed.
And that's where the 30th Street food scene is booming today.
On a sunny morning in san Diego,
the way to start your day on 30th Street
is to roll up at the Roast Coach,
the sidewalk coffee cart run by the team
of Jenna Woodruff and Salpi Sleiman.
They do a brisk business in pour overs,
non alcoholic coffee drinks shaken like cocktails,
and a breakfast specialty
I've never even heard of, aebelskivers.
What? I got to check this out.
So tell me just a little bit about what you guys do.
Obviously coffee.
We specialize in custom drip coffee,
actually, do you want to try one?
I haven't had my coffee yet this morning.
The first thing we do
is we're gonna be taking some mint,
big scoop of brown sugar
and then cardamom, just a dash.
Now this is where the cocktail part comes in, we muddle it.
Salpi is gonna weigh out some beans,
just to keep with consistency.
This part of the process is called the bloom.
You want this take about 2.5 to 3 minutes.
This is where all the oils and the flavors
Beautiful.
and going right into your cup which you can see.
How did you guys get the name?
I mean, pretty witty and clever
but I just want to make sure I get it from you guys.
Originally, we were thinking about doing a coffee truck.
You know, people call them roach coaches,
which we thought was pretty hilarious.
And us brewing coffee, we though roast coach was pretty clever,
so we decided to do a cart instead.
Yeah.
Timing, timing.
We're good.
So we are at 3 minutes.
We actually pull out the mint.
Exactly.
So it's not necessary and plus,
it gets in your teeth, not good for coffee dates.
No.
I go ahead and drop our special cream.
So what--
Can't give you the secrets, man.
You can't give me all the secrets.
Wow.
Wouldn't be a cocktail without a garnish.
Beautiful.
The Turk at the Roast Coach.
Cheers, girls.
Cheers.
Wow, definitely unique.
Mmm.
I have anything in my teeth?
Are we good?
There's a richness to it, and the mint kind of just
breaks it down a little bit and the cardamom,
I mean, we just put a little bit, right?
This is fantastic.
But word on the street is that you also make
something called aebelskivers.
That's right. It's called aebelskivers.
Aebelskivers.
How would one go about trying these aebelskivers?
Well, we can go ahead and go inside
and make it, make a batch for you.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Today we're gonna be doing lemon curd
with fresh blueberries.
Beautiful.
Tell me a little about the history of them.
The Vikings went to war and when they came home,
they were tired and hungry
and they would use the divots in their shields
from the pounds from war
and cook the pancakes inside their shields.
Yeah.
Where do we start?
We have to turn on the stove.
CHUCK: beautiful.
Keep it on low heat.
We start out using these wonderful Danish pans.
Butter up the pan.
We got to quickly get the batter in there before it burns.
Okay.
That's your basic pancake batter
and we created our own recipe.
It's got just a little bit of
flour, eggs, some sugar, and buttermilk.
Chuck: mmm, buttermilk.
Buttermilk is our secret ingredient.
So then we take these fresh blueberries
and we pop them right in.
So you want to wait
until the outer edges turn brown.
Yeah, and it's kind of like your traditional pancake,
you know, when it starts to bubble
and it starts to turn brown on the edges,
Exactly.
You pick it up, you flip it, you let the batter spill out.
To create that kind of circle, just lift it out a little bit.
Yep.
And let the dough kind of pour out and cook.
Exactly.
You just keep an eye on the color,
so you want to make sure that it's a nice golden brown.
And obviously you've got to kind of be on your game
and you can't just let it go, you got to watch it.
All right, so these are done,
so let's plate these.
Let's do it.
Put the lemon curd right on top.
( moans )
Yes.
So how do you make the lemon curd?
You mix lemon juice and egg yolks
and you let it sit over the stove,
you slowly stir it.
So a traditional curd?
It's traditional curd.
Little powdered sugar.
We top them with a blueberry.
Time to try.
Awesome. Look at that inside, the blueberry.
Mmm.
I mean, the lemon curd is obviously really, really good
but the taste is reminiscent of a pancake, obviously,
but the texture is completely different.
Mm-hmm.
It's like a little cake, it's really moist.
So what are the other flavors that you guys make?
One of our most popular is cheese with sausage
and some tomato sauce. Yeah.
Yeah, I could see how that would be really good.
Yeah, it's so good.
Obviously, you guys are changing the face of coffee in San Diego
in cooking these kind of dainty,
really fluffy, beautiful pancakes.
Or aebelskivers.
But you guys are doing an amazing job.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Make sure you don't have one of these, ay?
These are mine.
Coming up...
the tiny fruit with amazing powers.
It changes sour to sweet.
I mean, right away
Yeah.
Must kill.
CHUCK: The climate in San Diego is as good as it gets.
Mild and pretty much gorgeous all year around,
perfect for growing produce.
At Alchemy Restaurant on 30th Street
in the South Park neighborhood,
chef Ricardo Heredia works with
what has to be the most unusual farm in San Diego,
Seeds at City smack in the middle of downtown
at San Diego City College.
So this is it?
This is beautiful.
We're completely downtown, I mean, you can't get more
downtown than this.
You cannot.
Wow. What was this before it was a garden?
So we are on the campus of San Diego City College
and all of this was just a lawn and rose bushes
before a group of students, administrators and farmers
decided that we should be growing food here.
Good call. What are we getting?
We're gonna pick some vegetables here
that I think are at the height of ripeness right now.
Yeah, let's do it.
So this is borage.
It's a beautiful, beautiful plant.
The flowers are edible, the pods are edible as well.
It has a reminiscent flavor of cucumber.
Besides the fact that it's beautiful,
it also has a really, really good flavor.
Yeah, so we're gonna take some of these pods
and some of these beautiful edible flowers.
You know, and that's, I think that's the beauty of edible flowers
when they also have a flavor.
I agree, I'm in the flavor business, Chuck,
so although it looks pretty, it's got to taste delicious.
I love it, I like your style, man.
All right, man, what's next?
Next, let's go check out some tomatoes.
Let's do it.
These are black plum tomatoes
and they're just nice and sweet
and firm and delicious for whatever you want to do with them.
It doesn't get much better than this, right?
I mean, they're sun kissed right now,
they're super warm from the sun,
nice and sweet, amazing.
All right, what's next?
Let'*** this with a little bit of radish,
bring a little bit of spice into it.
Yes.
CHUCK: Now we really get a sense of urban farming.
I mean, concrete, metal, the railings,
I mean, the buildings right there.
And the radishes are right here.
They're here.
look at that.
Just absolutely beautiful.
All right, man, one more for the road.
Beautiful.
So I think we have one more ingredient, um,
I want to use for dessert, and then we can get cooking.
All right, let's go.
So we have some nectarines, man,
I think we're gonna send you off
Beauty.
So we're gonna pick some unripe nectarines.
Okay, cool.
Oh, you know what, I messed up,
this one is a little too ripe.
Oh-oh.
It happens.
Let's go cook, bro.
Let's do it.
CHUCK: Loaded up with fresh picked produce
from San Diego's downtown farm, it's time to get cooking.
At Alchemy, chef Ricardo
serves up what he calls cultural fare.
But his passion project
is working with an ingredient out of Africa
that people call a miracle.
Miracles, alchemy,
let's see what the magic touch
can do to some ingredients fresh
from the land and sea.
How lucky are you that you have an urban garden
about four blocks from the restaurant?
Yeah.
So I'm really excited, today we have white sea bass.
First, let's get our white sea bass going.
So hot pan, hot oil.
She's blazing.
A little sea salt
and then we're just gonna sear that skin,
we want the skin to be nice and crispy.
I love it. Nice thick filet.
Now we're gonna throw it right up in the sally
we're gonna let that cook.
So what you're doing is
giving it a good amount of heat on the skin,
so the skin gets nice and crispy,
finish it up in the salamander.
Right, direct heat, it's gonna keep it nice and moist.
Crank it up to broil. All right, beautiful.
So what are the dishes you guys are doing?
Currently, I'm working with something very interesting
called miracle berry.
I've never heard of the miracle berry.
It's a berry that has a protein
that coats the receptors on your taste buds.
And it changes sour to sweet.
I'm using it in a cocktail and also a cheesecake
made with yogurt, cream cheese,
a little lemon and vanilla, that's it.
CHUCK: No sugar at all?
Wow.
The world has been trying to do that for so long
with all these additives
and these unnatural ways of doing that.
Everybody is trying to find a way
to sweeten things up in a natural way.
What it does is it's probably gonna
change your palate for about 20 minutes or so.
I mean, right away,
you can see there's something going on.
Yeah.
Must kill.
No.
Kind of looks like a litchi a little bit.
But it has that kind of acidic,
kind of, sweet flavor as well.
Oops, I just swallowed the pit.
Once you take that berry and eat a lemon,
tastes like lemonade.
Yeah, lemonade, huh?
Isn't that insane?
When's the last time you ate a lemon like that
and didn't pull one of these faces?
I didn't want to say I didn't trust you
'cause I don't have trust issues.
But I was like, "Miracle berry, come on, man."
Even unripened tomatoes
are gonna make them taste amazing.
It's like I just bit down on a really, really sweet peach.
Exactly.
Man, this is fantastic.
So it's gonna change your palate with any other food,
really just focuses on acidity and bitterness.
Wow. Let me try something else.
How about these tongs?
Check our bass.
And look at that, man, that's crispy golden brown.
Looks beautiful.
What's next?
We're gonna start with some radish here.
Okay.
So we have our black plum tomato
and just gonna take the seeds out.
Arbequina olive oil here from California,
we're just gonna fill that up, we're gonna take these seeds
and put them right back.
So let's grab a plate
and let's get this plated up.
Beautiful.
Coming up... we've got chicken down flat.
Simple, let the flavors speak for themselves.
You don't have to use ham, if you're anti-ham.
I am not anti-ham.
No.
CHUCK: Back in San Diego's South Park neighborhood,
culinary alchemist Ricardo Heredia
is about to transform
a piece of bass into a piece of art.
My idea I guess, was to almost make a tzatziki.
So we have some nice Greek yogurt.
These are palette knives,
an artist would use.
So I kind of like to use those when I'm plating.
Little borage with that nice cucumber flavor
is gonna work really well in this dish.
I'm not gonna add any lemon juice,
what I'm just gonna just do is add some zest
'cause I really want that aroma.
It's a lot of good flavor. I love that.
The olive oil in there, for sure, that's fantastic.
So now we have our nectarines that we picked.
So this radish works really, really well with the acidity
of this nectarine.
What's next is bass.
And look at that, man, that's crispy, golden brown.
Nice, looks beautiful.
So a little African blue basil.
I like to use grains of paradise,
it's comes from the pepper plant
but it has just a sweeter, more earthy,
less pungent flavor.
You know, in many ways people compare food to art--
Right.
But when's the last time you've eaten art?
First grade.
Okay, I guess, yeah, first grade.
Little paint, little glue,
Little crayon, yeah.
This is just beautiful.
Chef.
Oh, man, we're going for the same piece.
( chuckles )
I love it.
All I had was a little bit of that fish with tzatziki,
you can taste the ocean.
It's totally moist in the middle,
perfectly cooked.
Wow.
Is it singing to you?
Hmm,
it's definitely singing to me, man.
Little bit of plum with the radish,
a little bit of spice, that olive oil is phenomenal too.
Sorry for all you Greeks and Italians out there,
yes, the olive oil is good in California as well.
As lucky as you are to have a garden four blocks away,
now that I've tried the food,
I think it's the other way around.
Thank you for...
Chuck, thanks for coming, man.
Dude, thank you so much for everything.
I mean, from the garden to the plate, I mean,
everything is just fantastic, so simple and great.
Thank you so much for this.
Thanks for coming, man.
San Diego is a city of transplants.
It seems like nearly everyone you meet
moved here from somewhere else,
which comes as no surprise.
This city has it all.
One of those transplants is chef Fred Piehl.
He's a New England native
who got a classical French culinary education in Paris.
At this 30th Street bistro, The Smoking Goat,
Fred marries old school technique
with a dash of California cool.
Is it good?
Mais oui, dude.
We're gonna make a dish called poulet basquaise.
That's the French way to say it.
FRED: It's basically chicken and pepper stew.
What are we doing and how do we get started?
We take the chicken, we cut half of it off
and take out the leg bone, so it kind of looks like this.
There is no leg.
And then we make a nice little brine.
What do you put in the brine?
Salt, and sugar, we put pickling spice
which has sort of a mixture.
Probably like fennel seed, mustard seed.
Coriander.
Little bit of chili, yeah.
And ginger and lemon.
So how long would you leave that in the brine?
We let that go overnight and then pull them out,
lay it on trays and dry out the skin.
Okay.
So we heat up some oil, put this loin right
where the bone went in the leg.
Then I hit it with a little of butter too.
Tell me a little about the name "Smoking Goat."
Smoking Goat, yeah,
we just wanted to do something rustic.
'Cause I know you guys smoke a lot of stuff in California,
I just didn't know about the goats.
We're gonna go ahead and go to the stew part.
So I'll take some of this Tasso ham
and I'll cut some slices.
And I have this little chicken jus we made with the bones.
Which is basically a chicken stock reduced.
Yeah, and we're gonna fortify it with the Tasso ham
and some tomatoes in.
These have been roasted with garlic and thyme.
We have the Fresno chiles,
and we have roasted peppers.
Beautiful.
All right, so basically this has got crispy skin.
We're gonna plop it right over the stew,
actually just pop this in the oven,
forget about it for a few minutes.
Oh, yeah.
Tell me a little bit about your menu.
We try to keep a small menu but we change it up a lot,
you know, so, you know, maybe we'll take the quail off,
we'll do a duck instead and we'll do a lamb and...
And that's the beauty of cooking, especially here,
'cause you have so many great options.
It goes a lot further.
Goat's a lot further.
Okay, so this should be about ready.
And I heated up some polenta.
So what goes into the polenta?
We use coarse corn grits and chicken stock and water,
a little bit of cream, and manchego cheese.
Beautiful, all right. Let's plate it up.
Put a little on the plate, put the stew in the well.
Place the chicken on it.
What do you think?
I'm hungry.
Wow, look at that.
I like it.
That's phenomenal.
I mean, the polenta is definitely creamy,
you know there's still a little bit of texture in there as well.
Obviously, the sauce is just fantastic.
You got the peppers, you've got a little bit of spice,
not too much, just enough.
I love it, man.
To me, this is my favorite way to eat,
big bold flavors.
Right, and we don't actually use that many ingredients,
you don't have to use ham if you're anti-ham.
I am not anti-ham.
No.
This is what I want right here, wing bone, man.
You're a wing man?
After this dish, I'm your wing man.
Coming up... it's the Golden State on a plate.
Get some mint here,
Same thing with the mint.
Exactly.
Beautiful.
For a long time san Diego wasn't known
as a restaurant town.
Lately though, a generation of young chefs have been
revolutionizing the San Diego food scene.
One of them is chef Matt Gordon.
His restaurant, Urban Solace,
has helped bring a fresh point of view
and a lot of attention to 30th Street.
Let's meet Matt.
Today we're gonna do something kind of simple
Right.
We're gonna make one of our real favorite dishes
here at the restaurant, comes back on the menu every summer
and it's a watermelon tomato cucumber salad.
Beautiful.
So we're gonna start with some sherry vinegar here.
Sha-llots, dude.
Toasted coriander seeds, grapefruit juice,
some lemon and lime juice, honey, pomegranate molasses,
just pomegranate juice reduced down to a major syrup,
we have some Dijon mustard, of course.
So, you want to grab that oil
and we'll just slowly emulsify this dressing.
Summer time sunshine.
Beautiful. Let's put the salad together.
I have a couple of different watermelons here.
I have a yellow watermelon and cut it into nice big chunks.
Take some red watermelon,
I use seedless watermelons for this.
And start putting our ingredients in the bowl here.
And I'm gonna try not to eat this whole thing
before we actually make the salad.
Armenian cucumbers,
cherry tomatoes here.
Uh, you know, at home, you might want to
just take your time and cut every tomato one by one.
We just met, but we share this trick in common, which I love.
So you kind of turn over a plate upside down,
another plate right on top and super sharp knife,
slice it like that and voila.
Go ahead and put these tomatoes right into that salad.
All right, so we're gonna put our basil in here.
Here's another trick that I do with basil,
we really want to get all the essential oils out of this,
bartenders do this a lot now.
Give it a slap.
When you slap it, you smell it right away.
Let's get some mint here, same thing with the mint.
Damn, mint slap.
And then we have some wild arugula.
Arugula, it's actually my first love.
Feta cheese here, feta is traditionally
a sheep's milk cheese and it's pressed
and then soaked in salt water,
so it's just got a real salty good flavor.
Pine nuts, we have-- we toast them real lightly
and then we dust them with a little chipotle powder,
currants which a are dried raisin really
they're not really a member of the currant family.
And then our last ingredient here is this dressing we made,
lovely pomegranate vinaigrette
and this is just summer time in a bowl right here.
First taste for you.
Mmm.
It's kind of like rustic-simple, but really all about flavors
and I think this is the beauty of it,
I mean, obviously the watermelon is fantastic,
it's like a burst of flavor.
The mint, the arugula,
you got the crunch of the pine nuts,
the salty cheese,
that's kind of creamy at the same time.
This is a salad for people who don't like salads.
Fantastic.
California in a bowl, man.
I love it, thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you.