Good Food, Well Done

Inside

WHEN IT COMES TO FOOD, San Diegans are fanatics. We love to dine out, and we crave to know the best places to go. Well, for starters, go to page 118, where our annual Ultimate Dining Guide begins.

We’ve been doing our Readers’ Poll and Critic’s Picks for decades. Longtime subscribers are probably used to seeing some of the same names year after year in the same categories: Marine Room for Best View; Extraordinary Desserts for Most Decadent Desserts; Bronx Pizza for Best Pizza; Mille Fleurs for Best of the Best and Most Romantic. All have established legacies in their categories.

To enliven our coverage, we’ve devoted less space to the annual list and used more pages to delve into what’s new. Tara Sharp profiles the three restaurants voted by you as Best New: Market Restaurant + Bar, Blanca and Modus. And veteran foodie David Nelson gets inside the remodel that transformed iconic La Jolla eatery George’s at the Cove into George’s California Modern.

Since this is San Diego, where we spend as much time outdoors as possible (because it is so comfortably possible), Julia Spalding looks into the best places to dine alfresco. And Tom Gable answers the most divine question about wine: Since there’s so much of it, and so little time, which ones should we be imbibing?

THERE’S NO QUESTION about which local magazine offers the widest swath of award-winning editorial. On June 28, San Diego Magazine took home dozens of awards at the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual awards dinner. Our art and edit departments won a combined 28 awards in the 15 magazine categories (including firsts, seconds and honorable mentions).

The art team won seven awards in four categories. Our designers swept the Photography and Layout/Design categories and took home three first-place awards.

Edit staff and freelance writers took first place in nine of 11 categories and swept in Investigative, Feature, Real Estate and Sports. Freelancer/Web editor Shane Liddick’s “Down and Out in Balboa Park” (a first-person account of living homeless for two weeks——including two nights in jail) took first place in Investigative. Liddick’s fascinating feature also won the special Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and took Best in Show for magazines.

So along with this issue’s dining coverage, look for Liddick’s latest——a reminiscence on Tom Wolfe’s The Pump House Gang. Read Lillian Cox’s profile on Marlon Shirley, the world’s fastest amputee. Check out Tom Blair’s Dialogue with First Lady hopeful Cindy McCain.

And have fun devouring the entire issue.

RON DONOHO
Executive Editor

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