Herb & Wood

Herb & Wood is a wood-fired Mediterranean restaurant on Kettner Boulevard in Little Italy, opened in April 2016 by Top Chef alum Brian Malarkey and partner Christopher Puffer under the Puffer Malarkey Collective, which also runs Herb & Sea up the coast in Encinitas. It marked its tenth anniversary in March 2026 — a long run in a neighbourhood that turns over as fast as Little Italy has. The kitchen is organised around a custom wood-fired hearth producing housemade pastas, flame-cooked proteins and seasonal vegetables, in a room that has stayed one of the more reliably full dining destinations in central San Diego.

The bar keeps a standing Spirit-Free section of four named drinks, which is the difference between a restaurant that can make a non-drinker something and one that has already decided what. Lemon & Herbs works lemon against a roasted lemon-thyme syrup with grenadine and soda. The Kauai Chickens is the most technically involved of the four, combining cinnamon pineapple and a spiced grapefruit cordial with lime, egg white and mineral water — egg white being the ingredient that gives a zero-proof drink the weight and foam that alcohol otherwise provides, and one most kitchens will not bother with. There is a non-alcoholic Sbagliato built from alcohol-removed sparkling wine and aperitivo, which covers the bitter aperitif register properly, and Malarkey in Paris pairs smoke tea with bergamot and spearmint, carbonated. Four composed drinks across sweet, savoury, bitter and smoky is a genuinely complete list rather than a gesture — enough that a non-drinker can order differently across three courses. Dinner nightly. Little Italy is among the densest restaurant districts in the county and one of the harder places to eat without drinking, since almost every room on Kettner is built around a wine list. Ten years in, Herb & Wood remains one of the few there with a printed spirit-free section.