One of the best things about living in Los Angeles is that a great escape is just a short drive away: We have Palm Springs and the desert to the east, Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley up north and San Diego just a couple of hours south.
One quiet coastal city in San Diego’s North County, though, could be the next big Southern California getaway. In recent years, Carlsbad has transformed into one of the newest dining destinations for Angelenos, thanks in no small part to the partnership between proprietor John Resnick and chef Eric Bost.
To back up a bit: Carlsbad, which has a population of just over 113,000 people, has long been a resort city. The discovery of a mineral-rich spring akin to the spa waters of Europe in the late 1800s prompted the building of the luxe Carlsbad Hotel and turned the coastal area into a health and wellness destination. Hotels like the Mineral Springs and Royal Palms sprung up in ensuing decades.
These days, Carlsbad is a destination for its beautiful beaches, its proximity to Legoland, and the charming, walkable shopping and dining area known as Carlsbad Village. And just off the 5 Freeway, between a Costco and an In-N-Out, are the sprawling Flower Fields filled with rows and rows of colorful ranunculus as far as the eye can see.
But until more recently, acclaimed fine dining wasn’t necessarily on the docket.
John Resnick initially moved to San Diego in 2007 to help open the Hard Rock Hotel and later opened two restaurants in the city, Craft & Commerce and Ironside Fish & Oyster. After moving to North County with his wife in 2013, he saw an opportunity to elevate the dining options in Carlsbad Village. In the decade since, he has opened four restaurants along a single long block of State Street.
It all started with Campfire, the sweeping, rustic wood-fired California restaurant he opened in 2016.
“I was actually looking in Encinitas for Campfire. It was sort of by accident that I found Carlsbad, but I immediately fell in love with this place and Carlsbad Village,” Resnick tells SFGATE of finding the building the restaurant now occupies. “It really felt like this was an area that has an incredible lifestyle, with people who really enjoy getting together and hanging out. There was room for things that I like but hadn’t been here yet.”
A year later, a friend of Resnick’s was buying the building that now houses Jeune et Jolie, his gorgeous French-leaning restaurant.
“We started talking about what we felt the area needed, and that became Jeune et Jolie,” Resnick says. “I was excited about the concept, the team was excited, and we hoped our guests would be excited, too.”
Jeune et Jolie opened its doors in 2018, but, like all California restaurants, had to shutter only a year and a half later due to the pandemic.
Around the same time up in Los Angeles, Bost, a fine dining vet who had worked with legendary French chef and multiple-Michelin-star-recipient Guy Savoy for years, was thinking about his next steps. He had opened his critically acclaimed tasting menu restaurant Auburn in March 2019 but shuttered it in May 2020 because of complications from the pandemic. A mutual friend introduced Resnick and Bost, who started talking about working together.
“I was looking for like-minded people who were trying to create interesting identities and holistic dining experiences,” Bost says. “I had lived in San Diego with my wife, Elodie, in the early 2000s, so I already knew the area had incredible products to work with.”
The opportunity to put his stamp on Jeune et Jolie was also appealing to Bost.
“The restaurant was already doing amazing things,” Bost says. “It strikes a balance between being a neighborhood restaurant and a celebratory restaurant. Plus, it was seeing French food through the lens of Southern California. It played to my strengths in so many different aspects.”
Bost moved down to San Diego in September of 2020 to work with Resnick. Together, they refined the focus of Jeune et Jolie, turning it into a set menu restaurant (with a la carte options at the bar) focusing on elegant dishes like a croque madame topped with caviar. In 2021, Bost and the team bagged a Michelin star for their work, an honor the restaurant still holds today.
“In a strange way, that year, with the pandemic and Eric joining us, helped the restaurant find its core identity and become what it was supposed to be,” Resnick says.
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The pair was just getting started. In April of 2021, the duo started working on Wildland, an airy, industrial, 8,000-square-foot all-day restaurant and bakery that serves breakfast dishes like shakshuka and exceptional pastries (like an out-of-this-world almond croissant) in the morning, and approachable but dialed-in pasta, pizza and wood-fired vegetables at lunch and dinner. Bost and Resnick had actually toured the space, across the street from Jeune et Jolie, in their first month of working together; Wildland opened its doors this past December.
“We knew we wanted a place that’s open all day long, that could welcome a community in a big space with delicious food with breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Resnick says.
Just this past week, Resnick and Bost added a new project: Lilo, an intimate, 22-seat tasting menu restaurant serving coastal-inspired fare in the back of the Wildland building (which used to be a boogie board factory). Outfitted with a small garden where guests start their meal, interior counter seating and only two tables that look into the substantial open kitchen, it might be their most ambitious project yet.
“The counter here was really a way to do something immersive for the guests, and to get them as close as possible to the people making the food,” Bost says. “It’s a three-hour experience, so they’re giving us a lot of their time. We want to make sure they’re engaged.”
Having several restaurants in one town is no small feat, but Resnick and Bost have done it strategically and thoughtfully.
“When you have four restaurants on one street, they really need to each be independent, individual expressions of who we are. But we all felt like they could fill a different need,” Resnick says.
He adds, “They’re all different expressions of the same thing: California restaurants with people who really care about what they’re doing and are working with the terroir of this place where we live. They all feel like they belong here.”