San Diego Magazine

San Diego Magazine From beaches to breweries, mountaintops to museums, we seek and share the best of San Diego. linkin.bio/sandiegomag

From beaches to breweries, mountaintops to museums, we seek and share the best plates, pours, faces, and places in San Diego. With a curious spirit and a deep love for our city, we give you all you need to experience the best of San Diego life.

Meet The Cookie Lady, chef Lea Dennis. (Does a more honorable title exist?) That’s what her friends’ kids call her, and ...
10/29/2025

Meet The Cookie Lady, chef Lea Dennis. (Does a more honorable title exist?) That’s what her friends’ kids call her, and for good reason. She’s run a catering and private chef business out of a commissary kitchen in Barrio Logan since 2010, and launched Sugar Kiln, her line of small-batch cookies, around 2018.⁠
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After Covid, everything about operating a small business seemed to get harder and harder—from inflation instability on supplies to property insurers pulling out of California to unsubstantiated immigration shakedowns toward her employees.⁠
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“I could do something easier than this,” Dennis says.⁠
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But she keeps baking anyway. Because making cookies means more people can actually afford her creations—and she gets to see them enjoyed at places like Panama 66, Gelato Vero, and TNT Pizza.⁠
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“That’s a really, really rewarding feeling,” she says.⁠
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Sugar Kiln bakes and packages around six to eight different flavors of cookies out of its Barrio Logan kitchen—available for nationwide shipping and local San Diego pickup—but one stands out from the bunch. With browned butter, two types of chocolate, crunchy toffee and a bit of finishing salt, the “Oh My God” cookie tends to make eyes roll in the back of heads. (A close second: the mazapán snickerdoodle.)⁠
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For the full story on Sugar Kiln, by food reporter Beth Demmon, click here. https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/food-news/sugar-kilin-cookies-barrio-logan-bakery/

Seven-day pastrami, caramel corn ice cream, and crispy katsu? Is this the room-service menu you get when you finally unp...
10/28/2025

Seven-day pastrami, caramel corn ice cream, and crispy katsu? Is this the room-service menu you get when you finally unpack after passing through the pearly gates? Or is this simply another SD odyssey of choice eats compiled by your humble, hungry San Diego Magazine editors?

Pull out your bucket list; you have a few additions to make.

Click below to read more about our favorite eats lately—and drop your own recent finds in the comments.

https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/best-meals-san-diego-restaurants-october-2025/

Tacos are San Diego’s lingua franca. There are 1,700 Mexican restaurants in SD county—the third most of any county in th...
10/28/2025

Tacos are San Diego’s lingua franca. There are 1,700 Mexican restaurants in SD county—the third most of any county in the U.S—and the food in our border region is the real deal. But with that many choices, how to know where to go?

We’ve got you. In our November issue, we’re pointing you to 40 tacos that you gotta smash before you die, plus 10 of our favorite margaritas, ranging from utterly simple to fantastically complex.

This issue also unveils the winners of our Celebrating Women Awards. We asked San Diegans to nominate incredible women across 15 categories, from fitness to finance. Change makers. Pioneers. Rising stars. Visionaries. On November 5, at our Celebrating Women Summit, we’ll raise a glass to them in person, too.

And we’re taking you inside the story of the local company that brought San Diego Monopoly (and a version for pretty much every other city) to life, and offering interior design inspiration from a modern home in Del Cerro.

On the cover: a shot from Marshall Williams’ photo series . Williams has spent years patiently photographing our city’s taco havens, crafting a visual record.

It’s an issue worth saving. Just try not to spill birria on it.

Get a copy at sdmagstore.com. Better yet, subscribe. We can’t mail you a taco, but this is the next best thing. Link in bio.

The industry titans. The rising stars. The change makers. The visionaries. A few hundred of San Diego’s most inspiring w...
10/27/2025

The industry titans. The rising stars. The change makers. The visionaries. A few hundred of San Diego’s most inspiring women, all together in one room. Our annual Celebrating Women Summit—November 5, 4 to 6:30 pm at UCSD Park & Market—is a night of networking, personal development activities, and educational experiences. Plus, you’ll find local women-owned retail pop up shops, photo moments, bites, and drinks.

The heart of the event is our Celebrating Women Awards program. Earlier this year, we asked San Diego to nominate the most impactful women they know across 15 categories, from Finance to Food + Beverage to Fitness + Wellness, then to participate in People’s Choice voting. On November 5, we’ll come together to honor the incredible nominees and winners.

You, your friends, family, and colleagues are invited join us for a positive and impactful night to remember. Get your tickets now at https://sandiegomagazine.com/magazine-event/celebrating-women-summit-2025/.

Thank you to our sponsors who make this program possible:
Rancho La Puerta
Kaleo Marketing LLC
Kaiser Permanente

San Diego Mojo
KOA + ROY
Sister League of San Diego - SLSD

Photography by Kambria Fischer

A San Diego icon has passed. A donut legend, a human legend. “I guess I’m not the rocking chair type,” Mary Hennesy told...
10/21/2025

A San Diego icon has passed. A donut legend, a human legend.

“I guess I’m not the rocking chair type,” Mary Hennesy told when he sat with her in 2021. She was the owner and ever-present social grace at since 1984. Open 24/7/364 (they close for less than one day on Christmas), Mary’s was (and is) a center of a whole community.

“To be near neighbors in a tensionless place, no matter how brief, is a crucial function of the American donut shop,” Troy wrote. “Especially for one like Mary’s, which has been around a couple generations, with a clientele into their years, people who’ve lost people. As we talk in the pool of shade outside her store, one by one her regulars say their salutations, recant an old story, toss out a memory (to one of which Mary chuckles, ‘Oh yes, I remember; he loved his corncob pipe and always had a flask in his pocket’). Each person seems to want more of her—that spark, her warm, dependable chat. I’m hoarding her time this morning, interrupting a ritual.”

She could tell if an apple fritter was good just by lookin’ at it. And she will be missed.

Her granddaughter Kelly carries on the Mary’s tradition, as she has for a few years.

To read the whole story on Mary, click here: https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/the-institution-marys-donuts/

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A San Diego icon has passed. A donut legend, a human legend.“I guess I’m not the rocking chair type,” Mary Hennesy told ...
10/21/2025

A San Diego icon has passed. A donut legend, a human legend.

“I guess I’m not the rocking chair type,” Mary Hennesy told when he sat with her in 2021. She was the owner and ever-present social grace at since 1984. Open 24/7/364 (they close for less than one day on Christmas), Mary’s was (and is) the warm center of a community.

“To be near neighbors in a tensionless place, no matter how brief, is a crucial function of the American donut shop,” Troy wrote. “Especially for one like Mary’s, which has been around a couple generations, with a clientele into their years, people who’ve lost people. As we talk in the pool of shade outside her store, one by one her regulars say their salutations, recant an old story, toss out a memory (to one of which Mary chuckles, ‘Oh yes, I remember; he loved his corncob pipe and always had a flask in his pocket’). Each person seems to want more of her—that spark, her warm, dependable chat. I’m hoarding her time this morning, interrupting a ritual.”

She could tell if an apple fritter was good just by looking at it. And she will be missed. Goodnight, Mary.

Her granddaughter Kelly carries on the Mary’s tradition, as she has for a few years.

To read the whole story on Mary, click here: https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/the-institution-marys-donuts/

Photo by

In a bright, sunny café in Poway, a cartoon goose peers impishly at you over a mirror. The speech bubble above the goose...
10/18/2025

In a bright, sunny café in Poway, a cartoon goose peers impishly at you over a mirror. The speech bubble above the goose says, “We are so alike.” It’s instantly delightful.

“We were looking for something with a subtle Ukrainian touch, but not something that would feel too themed or unfamiliar to local guests,” says Anton Ocheretin, who co-owns Need to Eat Café with his wife, Mariia, and friends Taras and Natalie Alipin, who are also married. Like many children in Ukraine, the Ocheretins and the Alipins spent their summers in the countryside with their grandparents.

“And there were always geese around,” Anton reminisces. “It’s a nostalgic, cozy memory for us. Geese are always looking for food, and our name is Need to Eat.”

The quartet’s restaurant serves bites familiar to Americans, like avocado toast and sandwiches, but the real treasures on the menu are Ukrainian classics like borscht; dumplings; and syrniki, or cottage cheese pancakes. It’s hard to leave without grabbing a few sweets from the café’s colorful pastry case.

“[We’re] passionate about desserts,” Anton says. “[We’re continually] experimenting with unusual flavor pairings.”

For more on the owners’ exceptional story—and their plans for a second location—click here. https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/need-to-eat-cafe-restaurant-poway/

Boy meets girl. Girl brings boy home to meet mom. Mom cooks for boy. Boy is smitten with mom’s cooking and they all live...
10/15/2025

Boy meets girl. Girl brings boy home to meet mom. Mom cooks for boy. Boy is smitten with mom’s cooking and they all live happily ever after. Plot of a rom-com? Nope–it’s the story of Ming Oun’s Kitchen.

You might catch Darius Hilario and Kelly Ouk’s Cambodian-Filipino pop-up at Bica in Normal Heights, Pizza Kaiju in Barrio Logan, La Mesa Wine Works, or The Soap Factory in Logan Heights. Most dishes center around Ouk’s family’s Cambodian comfort food, with dashes of Hilario’s Filipino heritage and other Southeast Asian influences. Chicken wings might have fish sauce (Vietnamese), or maybe salt and pepper (Cantonese). Sometimes there’s mango sticky rice (from Thailand). It’s a conglomeration of flavors from that part of the world, and it’s delicious. But it all started in Ouk’s mother’s kitchen.

Ouk’s mother’s family was displaced from Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era of 1975-1979, but she managed to pass down the recipes they had made for generations. The name “ming oun” (pronounced ming own) is for Ouk’s mother, which translates to “younger aunt” or “auntie” in Khmer. And Hilario grew up in the Philippines—the marinade he remembers fondly from childhood (banana ketchup, soy sauce, and black pepper) is slathered on Ming Oun’s liempo (pork belly).

Neither Hilario nor Ouk is a formally trained chef—just experimentation, often centered around memory. “We just want people to feel [at] home,” says Hilario.

Link in bio for the full story by .

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