Campfire

Campfire opened in Carlsbad Village in 2016, from restaurateur John Resnick, inside a converted mid-century Quonset hut with a twelve-foot wood-burning hearth at the centre of the room. Executive chef Eric Bost — who went on to open the Michelin-starred Lilo behind Wildland a few streets away — runs a seasonal, communal live-fire menu organised into sections named Trailhead, Kindling and The Fire. The restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and remains in the Guide, and the camping conceit is carried off without tipping into kitsch, which given the premise is an achievement in itself.

The bar programme extends the kitchen's thinking rather than running parallel to it, and the non-alcoholic drinks are culinary in construction. San Diego Magazine highlighted the zero-proof "Thank You, Please," built from yellow corn, jicama, hoja santa, lime and koji — a genuinely unusual set of ingredients for a drink, and one that only makes sense coming out of a kitchen rather than a bar. Koji, the fermentation culture behind miso and sake, brings savoury depth and a faint sweetness that is very hard to achieve in a non-alcoholic drink by any other route; hoja santa is a Mexican herb with an anise and eucalyptus character. The result is closer to a savoury course than to a soft drink. The magazine's broader assessment of the programme was that Campfire's "alcohol-free cocktails are culinary creations with the same visual appeal and depth of flavor as spirited beverages," which is precisely the standard this directory looks for. For a non-drinker in North County who wants a real dinner out around an open fire, this is one of the strongest options in the region. Dinner nightly. The Quonset hut is a genuinely unusual room to sit in, and the communal format means a table can share across the whole menu — which, combined with the drinks, makes it one of the easier restaurants in the county to bring a mixed group to.