Loading...

PODCAST

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour

San Diego Magazine

The weekly guide to San Diego"s food + drink scene, hosted by award-winning food writer and Food Network host Troy Johnson and San Diego Magazine"s culture brain, Jackie Bryant. Field notes and perspectives on restaurants, bars, and chefs—including dishes and drinks you gotta try, restaurant openings and closings, events worth your time, and laugh-cry interviews with chefs, restaurant owners, farmers, brewers, and makers who make San Diego"s food + drink scene hum.

society & culture food

All Episodes

48:51

The Wild Tale Behind Relic Bakery's Origin Story

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/05/14

On this episode of Happy Half Hour, Relic Bakery owners Samantha Bird and Derek Hadden pulled up with a selection of their best fare including Crunchwrap Supreme croissants, paté en croûte, an XO sausage wrapped in laminated dough, and a tahini strawberry cookie. Derek and Samantha share their Midwestern pandemic love story and discuss their culinary training in Copenhagen which includes a bike crash outside of Noma (Chef Rene Redzepi's restaurant) that remains the most expensive night in bakery

en

01:02:17

Pro Surfer Benji Weatherley Credits Cooking With...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/05/07

The Blink-182 muse who grew up feeding Kelly Slater and Rob Machado at his mom's North Shore Hawaii house debuts Breakers Cafe, Bar & Grill Benji Weatherley walked into San Diego Magazine and immediately made everyone in the room feel like they'd known him their whole lives—which, if you grew up surfing in San Diego, you basically did. The Momentum Generation kid; the guy whose mom essentially ran a free hotel for Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, and Shane Dorian while they were terrorizing Pipeline; the

en

01:21:55

The Steakhouse That Replaced Saska's Is Worth the...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/04/30

Happy Half Hour co-hosts Troy Johnson and Jackie Bryant pull up to Moe's by the Beach for a live episode with two guests who, between them, have thrown some of the most legendary parties Mission Beach has ever seen. Eric Lightstein—who gave San Diego Cane's, the city's scrappiest and most beloved rock club—now runs this steakhouse out of the old Saska's space, and he's grinding his prime steak trimmings into a Brie burger that stops conversation cold. Bebemos co-founder Preston Caffrey also joins

en

01:06:15

10,000 Pounds of Crawfish & One Big Accordion-Fueled...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/04/23

Some festivals happen because a city needs them. Others because one guy walked into a bar in Louisiana, saw someone playing accordion with their whole body, and never recovered. And thankfully, the latter is how Gator by the Bay became San Diego's largest Louisiana-themed festival. It returns to Spanish Landing park May 8 through 11. On this week's Happy Half Hour, co-founder Peter Oliver explains how a trip through Lafayette and New Orleans in the late '80s turned into a lifelong obsession with

en

01:09:35

French Food Isn't Just Butter and Cool-Sounding Words

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/04/16

"I've wanted to be a chef since I was 4 years old. I'm a humble dude with a skateboard in the back of my truck. I'll stand behind the ingredients and let them shine before I do." This is why Travis Swikard has brought a plate of lightly poached local veggies to the Happy Half Hour studio this week. It's both not what you expect from a chef who's trained under some of the biggest global names in French cooking, and exactly what you'd expect from a San Diego native. When he was working as the right

en

57:22

San Diego Mag's Chef of the Year (2024) Looks Back at...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/04/10

Brad Wise of Trust, Fort Oak, and Rare Society talks restaurant wins and terrors and names the best sandwiches in San Diego. "We were scraping by, praying that we were going to have a busy weekend to make rent and—not only that, but payroll," recalls chef Brad Wise. Thank god his food was good and his wife had a job. It's been 10 years since his first existential terrors as a restaurateur. A decade of woodsmoke in nice places. When Wise and team first opened Trust around the corner from the main

en

57:20

San Diego's Accursio Lota Has Won Italy's Highest...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/04/02

A few years back, Accursio Lota—2017 World Pasta Champion and chef-owner of Cori Pastificio and the new Dora Ristorante which was named for his nonna—told us he raised snails under his family's staircase as a child in Sicily. Fattened them up on raw spaghetti and fresh herbs, eventually ending their journey on this planet with some butter and garlic. Turns out this was an entire neighborhood kid thing. Some kids ride bikes. Some puree their brains playing video games. Kids in Lota's neighborhood

en

01:08:40

The Best Hot Dogs in San Diego

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/03/24

It is now time, when hot dogs become communion wafers once again. The weather is Joe Musgrove's elbow. The Fernando Tatis baseball dance-swagger reenters. He is the most exciting right fielder in the history of the game, almost appearing on every play as if he has no idea to execute the task in front of him—until he defies gravity and pulls a baseball out of the the beginning of space, then throws a 600 mile per hour strike to catch someone trying to steal. And for this episode of Happy Half Hour,

en

01:37:49

The Best Sardines in San Diego

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/03/19

All due respect to their highly sustainable role in the ecosystem and feeding the world, but sardines served as a dish on their own can be a significant challenge to your ability to enjoy eating as a concept. They are the seafoodiest seafood—as if the ocean itself was poured into a pot, reduced into a deeply intense stock, and served in tiny-fish form. But at The Fishery in Pacific Beach, chef-partner Mike Reidy—who cooked under two-star Michelin chef Josiah Citrin at Melisse, then was chef de

en

38:32

The Short List for SDM's Best Restaurants

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/03/12

As the food writer for SDM since 2011, Troy has been compiling the "Best Restaurants" list in San Diego Magazine for the past 15 years. All year long, he eats throughout the city and keeps a running Notes document filled with the best restaurants and dishes and drinks he finds. It operates like his personal leaderboard. He shares that list in the issue every year alongside the readers' picks. He's putting this year's list together right now, out June 1. For this episode of Happy Half Hour, he

en

01:04:02

Your Favorite Bartender Eats Here

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/03/05

The industry built this one. Had it been half-ass, it never would've worked. Lion's Share opened up 14 years ago, a sliver of a dark den of a craft cocktail bar and semi-restaurant near Seaport Village. But on the wrong side of the street. Not a destination. Foot traffic, zilch. And yet, the bartenders were some of the best in the city, experimenting with the fringes of what was possible. Back then, craft cocktails were actually a new thing. We were coming hot and heavy off of the

en

01:01:13

James Beard Nominee Tara Monsod on the Rise of...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/02/26

San Diego's next-gen Filipino American chefs are bringing their adobo roots to the top kitchens Multiple-time James Beard nominee Tara Monsod comes in to talk about kitchen life and the rise of Filipino food—the fare she grew up with—in San Diego. She and host Troy Johnson run through their list of the best date spots in the city, including oysters on the only rooftop hideout in North Park (Deckman's North), a tuckaway in Mission Hills that Troy named "Restaurant of the Year" (Wolf in the

en

51:29

Where to Get a $12 Ribeye in San Diego

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/02/19

Terra chef Jeff Rossman spills secrets of the catering world and we name our favorite farm-to-table restaurants One of the absolute best deals in San Diego recently? A $12 ribeye from one of the better chefs in the city. A $10 pasta dish he made for a wedding. Jeff Rossman was one of the first local chefs to cook modern farm to table with his restaurant, Terra. Opened it in 1998 with his dad, who had run a restaurant in Mission Valley called Pam Pam. Last year, he started getting so much catering

en

01:06:37

Naming the Best Soups in San Diego at Coco Maya

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/02/12

At Coco Maya, try chef Phil Humphrey's skirt steak with chimichurri, his big-knuckle lobster tacos, and a damn phenomenal coconut shrimp (the '80s classic will be slandered no more). What's your favorite soup in San Diego? The one that rearranges your DNA into a dumb, smiley emoji? On this episode of Happy Half Hour we do a fantasy soup draft of our 12 favorites in the city—from the corn piñon soup at Wolf in the Woods to the pozole at Super Cocina and pho at Pho Hoa. We set up shop in the Yucatan

en

56:41

A Per Se Alum Opens a Bodega and Ozempic is Bumming...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/02/05

#419 You've barely touched your fries. Why do you look hungry and not hungry at the same time? The big discussion on this week's episode: Ozempic is the wobbly, wet-gremlin Yelp commenter who wants to rain on America's happy restaurant parade. We re-air the interview you probably skipped the first time we had it a year ago because it sounded like tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory stuff. But now, the Ozempic effect is real. Almost every restaurateur who talks to food editor and Happy Half Hour host Troy

en

01:01:49

Why San Diego's Neighborhood Bars Still Matter

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/01/29

Broadcasting from The Shanty in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Happy Half Hour looks at the week's biggest restaurant news, including the upcoming closures of Dreamboat and Vulture and the shuttering of Cucina Enoteca—plus an examination of why unpretentious neighborhood bars continue to anchor San Diego communities. Host Troy Johnson also checks in on what's opening, welcomes back Bebemos tequila founder Preston Caffrey for a Golden Hour conversation about building a drinks brand in a tough market, and wraps

en

55:21

One of Little Italy's Top Chefs Returns

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/01/22

One of Little Italy's top chefs is back. Hard to overestimate how much Ironside Fish & Oyster changed the game when it opened in Little Italy in 2014. It was the dream concept for Jason McLeod, a chef who'd earned two Michelin stars in Chicago (for Ria). Little Italy was the unloading dock of San Diego's legendary fishing fleets, had that rich seafood history but no epic seafood joint. McLeod and CH Projects took over the old Farkas furniture store and turned it into a sort of ghost ship ocean

en

59:45

San Diego's First Women's Sports Bar Lands in North Park

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/01/15

Patricia Sebold, Kalani Millsaps, and Kerry Pierce join Happy Half Hour to discuss their new concept: a women's-focused sports bar opening in North Park. We find out how the project came together and why San Diego is ready for it now. From Title IX to the Wave's record-setting crowds, they talk about the rise of women's sports, the frustration of watching games on phones in bars that won't put them on TVs, and how packed pop-ups proved there was real demand for a permanent space. One of Us is

en

39:39

San Diego's Roast Beef Awakening

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2026/01/08

#415 On the latest Happy Half Hour, host Troy Johnson traces a proper Sunday roast into its evolution as a distinctly American handheld obsession. Following the breadcrumbs leads straight to Big Jim's Roast Beef in Pacific Beach, which is owned by today's guest, James Jones. He's a North Shore Boston transplant who brought the "super beef" to our fair shores. His version has a griddled onion roll, rare- to mid-rare beef, and the cult-favorite James River barbecue sauce shipped in from back East

en

01:14:50

Cesarina & Elvira's Niccolò Angius on Pasta's Staying...

San Diego Magazine"s Happy Half Hour ·

2025/12/31

On this episode of Happy Half Hour, co-hosts Troy Johnson and Jackie Bryant sit down with Niccolò Angius, the Italian-born chef-owner behind Cesarina and Elvira, to explore why pasta holds such an enduring grip on our hearts, memories, and nervous systems. Raised in his parents' Roman trattoria in Trastevere, Angius traces his journey from Rome to San Diego, where he and his wife Cesarina Mezzoni launched a farmers' market pop-up in 2015 focused on handmade vegan pastas and all-natural sauces. That

en

453 results

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

Searching For Heroes With Benjamin Hall

FOX News Podcasts

It"s Been a Minute

NPR

Cheat Stories Official

True Cheat Stories Official 2026

JasonTheWeen

JasonTheWeen