DINING Bankers Hill goes Al Fresco
San Diego Downtown & Uptown News October 2020
sdnews.com
VINCE MEEHAN | Downtown & Uptown News
of this opportunity to help get its business and staffing back up, and is currently running at about 50%. Kevin Alvarado is Chef de Cuisine at Azuki Sushi and has been keenly involved in the outdoor seating option. He notes that the first shutdown was hard, but the second was even harder to cope with. He is thankful for the outdoor option, which he says
Restaurants in San Diego have had to take a crash course in survival during this pandemic and outside dining has become an absolute must for our eateries. During the first shutdown, many restaurants adapted by offering to-go options or curbside service for its customers. But that only accounted for a small percentage off their original sales and that meant only being able to keep a small percentage of the staff working. That shutdown was lifted and restaurants began to bounce back from the edge of failure. Then, the State of California slammed a second shutdown on the industry and it was back to square one all over again. Through it all, the City of San Diego has fought for its business communities, especially the restaurants that make up so much of our economy. In this process, the city made it exponentially easier to expand outdoor dining options for our restaurants, even if those options were ex- Hob Nob Hill on First Avenue. tremely unorthodox. Bankers Hill has restaurants works in favor for Azuki Sushi scattered throughout its bound- because they can offer more taaries, but has recently established bles at a safe distance from each a “strip” if you will, located along other than they could inside the Fifth Avenue from Ivy to Upas. building. He said that after the The hub of this strip is located at second shutdown fell, the Bankers the corner of Fifth and Laurel an- Hill restaurants went into surchored by The Corner Drafthouse, vival mode and basically began Civico, Cucina Urbana and Hachi to set up outdoor dining without Ramen House. Many of these eat- waiting. eries were designed with outdoor “For the first couple of weeks options for their patrons before I think it was just a means to the pandemic, and these places survival,” explained Alvarado. had an easier time adapting to “Initially, we started seeing peostrictly outdoor dining. But they ple throw their tables out onto the still needed the city’s help in al- sidewalk on the first day of the lowing for the expansion of those second shutdown when they said options. This came in the way of outdoor seating was ok. So we the city allowing metered park- followed suit, but we also went to ing spots on the street in front the city to make sure everything of the businesses to be used for was right by the books. We now outdoor dining as well. And just have permits for both metered and like that, people were eating in sidewalk dining.” the street. With their new permits now Azuki Sushi is located on Fifth approved, Alvarado is looking at Avenue and has taken advantage contractors to get the build out
finished. He looks to other restaurants for inspiration, especially in Little Italy where he says they’ve got it nailed down. “I worked at Kettner for four years and I helped open up that restaurant, so I go down there to see what they’re doing a lot just to sort of guide what we can do and how we can adapt.” Pure Project Brewing is relatively new to Bankers Hill and was in danger of closing before it had a chance to take root. They too offered take out service, which included its ample collection of local craft beer. But that only amounted to half the usual revenue and so half the staff was put on hiatus. Mat Robar, one of the Managing Partners of Pure Project Brewing, found a unique way to use the outdoor dining policy to his advantage. Directly across the street from his tasting room is an empty lot, which is only used as a Christmas tree lot during the holidays. Robar was able to reach out to the property owner and gain permission to create a beer garden on the lot. It was fairly simple to do, and now his
Chef de Cuisine Kevin Alvarado and General Manager Dieu Trinh Dang of Azuki Sushi. (Photos by Vince Meehan) business and staffing are back up to 100%. The ground was covered with wood chips, and the garden was supplied with wooden picnic tables and market lights. To adhere to the food mandate, URBN Pizza is onsite with a mobile pizza oven to provide fresh hot pizza for the beer lovers — a match made in heaven. Barrio Star has been a highly successful Mexican restaurant in Bankers Hill for years, and featured a small number of outdoor seats. But by utilizing the sidewalk area around it to add seating, it is now operating at a much better capacity than before. The same goes for Hane sushi and Parq, which has taken advantage of the new normal. On the West end of Bankers Hill, Hob Nob Hill has created an outdoor patio complete
with wooden picnic tables, a deck and market lights. Even the infamous Cherry Bomb dive bar located on the same block in a strip mall has transformed itself into the Cherry Bomb Burgers and Booze via an outdoor corral built in their parking lot. The restaurants of Bankers Hill are surviving the pandemic and serving as a micro chasm example of what every other hospitality community in San Diego is having to do as well. Adjust and adapt, is a credo for survival at the United States Marines instill in their recruits here in San Diego as a mechanism to survive, and this advice goes well heeded in Bankers Hill. —Vince Meehan can be reached at vinniemeehan@gmail.com.
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