San Diego’s Top Ten Restaurants of 2011

SOLACE
Urban Solace chef-owner Matt Gordon always had the cooking chops. Now he’s got the food ethics to go with ’em. And that veggie faro at his new joint in Encinitas (Solace & The Moonlight Lounge)? Ancient-grain awesomeness.

Needing solace from my own kitchen, I paid a visit to the new spot while it was still within the first few weeks of the soft opening. Normally, I’d give a place much longer to work out the kinks, but it was there and I was hungry, so let’s everybody stop arguing. (Dramatic foreshadowing: Had the evening not gone well, I’d be reviewing someplace else.)

Props to the Solace crew for accommodating my, shall we say, demanding dining friend. She’s sweet and has a twinkle in her eye, but she has inflexible food likes and dislikes. “Apparently, I’m picky?” she guilelessly said to me, before politely asking the server if it would be too much trouble to substitute two-thirds of her choice for something else. She wanted the Jidori chicken, but instead of sweet potatoes, she wanted french fries, and instead of chard, how about asparagus? (I considered quietly moving to a different table to avoid being tainted.)

Now, I realize chefs out there are probably shaking their fists in outrage because they work so hard at creating their menus and developing flavor combos; they’re not wrong to find this particular trait of their patrons to be, at minimum, irritating. But the kind folks at Solace could not have been more easy-going about giving my persnickety pal a delicious dining experience and a plate filled with tasty menu items pieced together all custom-like.

Like what you’d find at the North Park locale, the Jidori chicken is excellent. This version is lemon-and-salt crusted, and although, to me, the skin wasn’t too outrageously flavorful when nibbled on, that hardly matters when you’re eating chicken as tasty as this. She may avoid sweet potatoes, but my friend left hardly a shred of meat on that bird’s bones.

They’re doing some great things with seafood, which makes sense considering you could easily throw a picky patron and hit the ocean just a few blocks away. The mustard-crusted local halibut is quite tasty, as halibut usually is and as anything crusted in mustard should be. But be sure to check out the black bass glazed with smoked salt and sugar. I expected a very strong flavor but instead tasted something subtle and layered. The fish was pillowy-soft and tender, and the salty-sweet glaze didn’t beat me over the head with a kettle-corn-contrast of flavors but instead gently permeated the fish like a light and tenderizing brine.

Save room for dessert. Though you’ll be tempted by the novelty and Girl Scoutiness of the “Les S’mores” offering, I say go for the goat-cheese cheesecake, plated on a pool of spiced honey and a this-shouldn’t-work-but-shut-the-front-door-it-does drizzle of basil syrup.

There’s no question that Chef Gordon and his crew know how to create good food in a nice atmosphere. Both Solace spots offer a hard-to-quantify feeling of being welcomed, embraced and well fed. Sitting down to share a meal there is the best way to understand the restaurant’s name.

The sister restaurant to North Park’s Urban Solace, a local favorite, Solace sits on the north end of Pacific Station in Encinitas, serving plenty of modern comfort food and seafood.

Chef/owner Matt Gordon said Solace has been busy since its opening, with great feedback from diners in the opening nights.

“We plan on being here a long time, so a few months late is no big deal,” Gordon said.

While a handful of Urban Solace staples —- such as the Warm Cheddar & Chive Biscuits, Watermelon/Tomato/Cucumber Salad, BBQ Glazed Duroc Pork Belly, and Grilled Four Cheese Sandwich With Fresh Basil And Tomato And Creamy Tomato-Fennel Soup —- have migrated north, a few customer favorites remain on the North Park menu only, including the Duckaroni and Pulled Chicken And Buttermilk Dumplings.

But what Solace lacks in standbys, it more than makes up for in seafood dishes, which Gordon said pays tribute to the new location’s proximity to the ocean.

Seafood dishes include Mustard Crusted Local Halibut With Farro Stew And Toasted Black Pepper Sauce; Sumac Rubbed Wild Salmon With Toasted Quinoa, Spiced Butter Sauce And Roasted Lemon; Smoked Sea Salt & Sugar Glazed Black Bass With Fennel Braised Root Vegetable Hash; and more.

“We want to have fun and do some new stuff,” Gordon said. “It (the menu) flows together.”

The North Park restaurant’s menu is also a reflection of its location. Urban Solace took over a building that had a French Quarter feel; Southern-style comfort food fit the mold. With Solace, Gordon and his team were able to decide the design and feel themselves.

The new Solace space has a downstairs dining room and an upstairs lounge with a “raw bar” that serves oysters, steak tartare and more. There are also cheese plates and salumi available upstairs.

As far as the design, the downstairs dining area is split into two areas, with stairs and a servers’ station acting as the divider in the middle. The north side offers more natural light with large windows facing E Street, with benches lining the walls and wood decorating much of the space.

The south side shares space with the kitchen, offering a noisier, more bustling atmosphere. There’s also a patio outside, though Gordon sees that more as a lunch space.

Upstairs, plenty of bar-height tables take up the floor space not occupied by the large wood-paneled bar. There’s another outdoor seating area upstairs, and Gordon said the whole place can seat up to 190 guests. Upstairs patrons can order off the full menu as well as from a bar and raw bar menu. Reservations can be made for the downstairs area, while upstairs is open seating (but as witnessed on a recent weeknight, it fills up fast).

The goal in both restaurants is not supposed to be about design, Gordon said. “We want people to remember, first and foremost, who they ate with, the company they had. Then, great service, and we hope in all of that, the food filled the last little hole.”

Drink-wise, Solace partnered with Blind Tiger Cocktail Co. to create the cocktails for the new location. Gordon said his wife concocted the drinks at Urban Solace, but found she didn’t have time to also take up the task at Solace, so she worked alongside Blind Tiger to fine-tune the new creations.

Solace also offers several craft beers on tap, including Airdale and Green Flash; it’s also one of the first restaurants in the area to offer draft wine.

The wines, mostly from Paso Robles and the northern California wine country, come in casks that hold 25 bottles and are offered by the glass.

Now that the doors have been open for dinner for almost two weeks, Solace plans to begin offering lunch next week, with brunch hopefully coming along in early September.

Gordon said he was already looking for a second location when the developer for Pacific Station contacted him about the project a few years ago. Gordon said he came up to check out the location and felt in his gut that Encinitas was the right choice.

“When we opened Urban Solace, it was an old building, but you could feel change in the air,” he said. “That’s exactly what I felt standing in a dirt strip over there.”

Gordon said Encinitas has become a downtown hub for North County residents, with many restaurants filling by 6 p.m. And when he started getting more diners from the area down at Urban Solace, he knew there was a need for something similar up north.

“We want to be that restaurant … that chef-driven restaurant, on that corner,” like other neighborhoods have, Gordon said.

Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/article_f28c4bb3-a926-5c2a-bcdc-5e285a4c2ae7.html#ixzz1W6fwLSjK

There’s another meaning, for sure. But this week’s soft launch of Solace and the Moonlight Lounge in laidback Encinitas – I’d call this a quiet, cozy, non-ballistic approach to opening a restaurant.

(For explosive restaurant launches, please see Del Mar’s Burlap. It had lion dancers…who were probably overshadowed by Burlap’s mega-personality chef, Brian Malarkey.)

For more than a year food journalists have been doing a drum-roll for Moonlight. (See mention of it in this story I wrote last August.) Finally, 18 hours ago, came this low-pitched tweet from chef-owner Matt Gordon. “oh.. and by the way.. WE’RE OPEN!!!! #solace&themoonlightlounge.”

You may recognize the chef at the heart of Moonlight’s mission control center. Gordon has put a warm cheese biscuit lathered with honey-butter into the hand of every North Park visitor, courtesy of his comfort-food-but-cosmopolitan Urban Solace restaurant.

And the under-$20 menu at Moonlight looks comparable to Urban. There’s Braised Brandt Farms Beef Cheeks and BBQ Glazed Duroc Pork Belly at both, a peek at their menus reveal. But North County should riot if there really isn’t any duckaroni (mac ‘n cheese with duck confit, bleu cheese).

Because North Park is so hip it’s barely even hip anymore, the good folks behind Urban Solace have popped open a new bi-level Enc spot in place of the old Redsand warehouse/ bowl, with a ground floor full of reclaimed wood booths, and a lofty lounge boasting a massive communal table, plus an s-shaped drinks station with an attached raw bar lorded over by a wooden stencil of a Ralph’s-card-carrying Jeff Bridges, who hasn’t been near that many clams since Tron Iron Man…ok, whatever, he’s rich. Vittles range from shareable bits like a dungeness-crab-filled Brik served with spiced aioli & fried lemon, to man-fortifiers including an all grass-fed rib eye with crème fraiche dill mashers/ grilled asparagus, and a creamed corn/ herb puree-paired, BBQ-glazed Duroc pork belly, though with all this grassy herb, one would expect it’d be the rib eyes that’d be glazed. The bar’s 12 taps spew the likes of Avery Salvation and Coronado Brewing’s Mermaid’s Red, while house ‘tails (developed with Blind Tiger Cocktail Co.) weigh in at a staggering 23, from the Lebowski-inspired Dude Abides (white whiskey, Kona coffee liqueur, chilled coffee, half ‘n half), to the classically twisted cucumber vodka/ ginger syrup/ ginger beer Cuke Mule — leaving you to wonder “where did that smuggler hide that cucumber?”

Because wine sometimes does the trick, the bar’s rocking 12 rotating taps, all pouring elevated varietals, with no “jug wines” — so, feel free to drink them with No Fear.

The flurry of activity probably couldn’t happen fast enough for local foodies, who have been anticipating the opening of the sister restaurant to acclaimed North Park eatery Urban Solace since chef-owner Matt Gordon signed the lease to come here more than two years ago. With Solace and the Moonlight Lounge now open for business, expect crowds flocking to see if it’s been worth the wait.

Gordon will be ready to welcome them. He says he knew Encinitas would be a prime spot for another restaurant. At Urban Solace, Gordon and his staff learned by chatting informally with guests that more patrons came there from Encinitas than any other North County city. And when he began discussions about opening at Pacific Station, he had a familiar feeling.

“When we first identified our location in North Park in December 2005, it was early in the gentrification process there. There were some new things coming in, and we felt a resurgence in the air,” says Gordon, whose wife, Young-Mi, partners with him in the restaurants. “Up here, there is a completely different resurgence. Encinitas is far from what North Park was, but this is the first new development project like this in 22 years. We felt a charge in the air.”

Gordon and crew are aiming to amplify that charge in Solace and the Moonlight Lounge. The space is kind of coastal industrial—soft mauve and blue walls offset wood beams on the ceiling and a black staircase to the second floor. Wood-carved art from the David Alan Collection in Solana Beach and abstract paintings soften the angles of the rooms. The lower level has been divided into different dining spaces, including a chef’s table adjacent to that kitchen window. Upstairs is the lounge, where, as Gordon says, the only thing missing are giant TV screens. Instead, the focus is on the company you keep with communal tables, outdoor deck seating to soak up the view of Coast Highway 101 and a handsome bar. Light fixtures are fashioned from repurposed wine bottles; the restaurant takes that sustainability up another notch by trading the use of some bottles for 12 wines on tap. A dozen beers are also on tap, and the cocktails are made from fresh mixers.

Urban Solace built its reputation on quality comfort food, and while some dishes will make their way to Encinitas—such as the cheddar and chive biscuits, the beef cheek, and the watermelon salad in season—Gordon says the new restaurant gives him the chance to spread his wings. There is a healthy selection of seafood, such as the mustard-crusted local halibut served with a farro stew and toasted black pepper sauce or the sumac-rubbed wild salmon with toasted quinoa, spiced butter sauce, and roasted lemon, plus offerings from the raw bar upstairs. Other entrees include grass-fed ribeye, leg of duck confit, and roasted Jidori chicken. While the Urban Burger boasts Niman Ranch chuck in the patty, vegetarians aren’t left out, thanks to the housemade quinoa-hazelnut veggie burger. Desserts include seasonal items such as berry-peach shortcake and more timeless options such as peanut butter ‘n’ chocolate crème brulee.

But just as important as the menu is the atmosphere, which is why all those staffers were so focused on the last-minute details.

“What I’ve noticed in coming up here is that everyone knows everyone else; there is a real sense of community,” Gordon says. Combining a welcoming space with his trademark culinary sensibility, Gordon believes “we have something creative to offer [Encinitas] that’s new.”