3 Contemporary Restaurants

They’re annual winners and reliable standbys for a reason: They keep it fresh while also holding to tradition

SINCE 1941, the year the Marine Room introduced the novelty of dining in the embrace of a frequently feisty ocean, the prices have risen with the times, if not in concert with the tides. An instant hit, the Marine Room is one of several luxury houses whose local roots reach deeper than those of many patrons but which has changed with diners’ tastes to remain contemporary and fresh. The same is true of Grant Grill and (Bertrand at) Mister A’s, rock-solid members of San Diego’s dining firmament that respectively date to the 1950s and early 1960s. The concept of prestige dining has changed immensely during the decades in which these restaurants have provided high-line hospitality, but the glow of prestige that burnishes their names hasn’t dimmed.

MARINE ROOM

The strikingly contemporary cuisine served by old-fashioned candlelight owes to Bernard Guillas’ taste for travel, awakened when he apprenticed at a restaurant some distance from his home in France’s Brittany. The unrivaled globe-trotter among San Diego chefs—he followed 12 days of high-publicity cooking in Hong Kong in February with a May adventure as guest chef aboard a luxury Mediterranean cruise—Guillas regularly vacations in Australia, and he acknowledges that culinary influences from the 30-plus countries he has visited inspire his unique menus.

Marine Room specialties are creative, to say the least, and even someone capable of sketching the globe from memory might fail to identify the cuisines that collude in dishes such as an appetizer titled “smoked almond zaatar-spiced wild prawns.” Costars to the shrimp with smoked almonds and zaatar (sumac powder) include coriander sprouts (micro-cilantro); ancho chile aioli, a French sauce with Mexican heat; and limoncello bulgur tian, a cracked-wheat cake with Italian, Middle Eastern and French patrimonies. The dish eats like an $18 world tour.

Unquestionably San Diego’s most media-savvy chef, and also among the more popular (his Saturday cooking classes at Macy’s Mission Valley sell out regularly), Guillas never competes with the Marine Room’s signature attraction, otherwise known as the Pacific Ocean. Every evening at dusk, guests study the sea as waves and sky merge in blue-gray tones streaked red by the fleeing sun. Generations of patrons relish memories of stormy nights, when pounding breakers have attempted to send the Marine Room to Davy Jones’ locker.

The menus change often, but the tradition of polished service seems never to vary. Since 1994, Guillas has kept the staff on its toes learning the intricacies of entrées like “country meadow rack of lamb with hazelnut suneli, St. Andre kabocha bread pudding and rosehip saperavi reduction.” The dish takes a while to explain, but at the Marine Room, the mood never is hurried—even when the Pacific roars. 2000 Spindrift Drive, La Jolla, 858-459-7222; marineroom.com.

GRANT GRILL

Pretty pink roses bloom on the tables of the Grant Grill, the calm haven of privilege in the U.S. Grant hotel that has weathered the vicissitudes of downtown since 1951, survived a succession of owners and undergone two radical renovations in the past 25 years. Late in 2006, it emerged from the second of these to mixed applause, but on re opening day, those who understand the essence of Grant Grill could tell you the mood of coddled serenity had been preserved in a nicely freshened, ineffably el - egant package.

Even with new owners and a new look, the Grant Grill owns traditions that loyalists insist upon—and that several of the executive chefs who have governed the hotel since the 1980s renovation have at tempted to jettison. A case in point: the mock-turtle soup, a Grant Grill signature for nearly six decades. Upon reopening, the restaurant blithely printed menus that omitted this rich, sherry-scented broth—which, after a certain degree of public outcry, returned to the list much more speedily than might be expected of anything associated with turtles, mock or otherwise.

Today’s menus, collaborated on by hotel executive chef Mark Kropczynski and Grant Grill chef Christopher Kurth, focus on contemporary luxury. In other times, an appetizer billed as “aromatic pork belly” (served with English peas and young celery in a maitake-mushroom broth) might have seemed more mad than daring in conservative San Diego. But now, it comfortably prefaces specialties like local halibut with tarragon and red artichokes or Maine lobster with braised veal cheeks, cavalo nero (rather dressy cabbage) and Cara Cara oranges.

Always formal, Grant Grill continues to provide the kind of service not easily found elsewhere. It is more relaxed now, however; servers wear golden vests instead of black-tie, and are friendly without indulging in familiarity. The 2006 renovation changed the look, but the treasured booths along the Fourth Avenue side of the room remain, now upholstered in leather a tone or two darker than cream, as if drops of Kahlúa had been stirred into the dye vat. The result: comfort from another age that looks very 21st century. 326 Broadway, downtown San Diego, 619-744-2077; grantgrill.com.

BERTRAND AT MR. A’S

Decorated richly in the crimson and gold that defined the era, Mister A’s opened in 1965 as a palace in the sky atop the gleaming new Fifth Avenue Financial Center. A rather substantial feather in the cap of major San Diego player John Alessio, the restaurant was quite literally the summit of elegant dining, made wonderful by unrivaled views of Balboa Park, downtown, the bay and airport.

Well before the millennium arrived, changing tastes had relegated gilded décors, tuxedoed waiters and flaming tableside preparations like steak Diane to the culinary archives. But the view remained, and when savvy restaurateur Bertrand Hug of Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe bought the place in 2000, he used the panoramas as the background of a radically new décor that directs diners to focus on the outdoors, one another and their plates. In an irony that reflects the revival of the Bankers Hill neighborhood, the Balboa Park view vanished when the chic Park Laurel towers rose across Fifth Avenue, several years after Hug acquired the restaurant. He coped.

The restaurateur’s purchase agreement required him to maintain “Mister A’s” in the title, hence a new name that simultaneously preserves and updates history. Hug continued his modernization by installing a new service staff, dressed in blue blazers and ties, that takes a contemporary approach to serving clients who generally know exactly what they want.

There was never a thought of retaining the continental cuisine that had been Mister A’s hallmark. Hug hired French chefs from the beginning, and for several years the toque has rested comfortably on the head of Stéphane Voitzwinkler. From Colmar, a small Alsatian town a brief train ride from cuisine-rich Strasbourg, Voitzwinkler understands modern French cuisine perfectly, and he writes menus laced with dishes like baked oysters on the half shell with braised leeks and champagne sabayon (hollandaise lightened with whipped cream). His pairing of sautéed diver scallops and tempurafried slipper lobster tail garnished with truffled butter and pesto-flavored basmati rice is light-years from the old days, when vegetarians must have despaired of much more than salad. Now, they’re offered a handsome plate of spinach gnocchi with French tomato sauce, wild mushrooms, a gratin of Swiss chard and a mousseline (molded purée) of celery root. This close to the heavens, times indeed have changed. 2550 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, 619- 239-1377; bertrandatmisteras.com.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »