Is “America’s Finest City” on your travel docket this summer? We offer this trio of looks.
Beachy Bliss in Carlsbad
The “location, location, location” dictum is every bit as useful when choosing a resort hotel as it is when buying a home. Consider Hotel Solea, a recently rebranded and upgraded imprint of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, located in the coastal foothills of Carlsbad mere steps from LEGOLAND California Resort (legoland.com). Literally, steps. It’s so close, in fact, that a five-minute walk will take you from the hotel to an exclusive, semi-secret back entrance on the mostly forgotten east side of the theme park, where you can nibble at the older, Euro-centric fairy-tale rides before moving on to newer big-ticket stuff like LEGO Galaxy and Dino Valley. Your 8-year-old will be in heaven.
If you don’t happen to have an 8-year-old in your travel party, Hotel Solea remains a jackpot of accessibility in San Diego’s North County. Done in Modern Coastal tones, with a spacious, tastefully refreshed lobby and Moorish porte-cochère, the hotel is a little more than a mile inland from Carlsbad’s formidable collection of public beaches – including its very best beach, Tamarack, located mere steps (that phrase again!) from the town center, broad and clean with just enough swell to make it fun for the splash-around set. Solea offers free shuttle service to and from the beach.
Wedged between Encinitas (to the south) and Oceanside (to the north), Carlsbad is spoiled with natural beauty and, yes, Solea is near most of it – including Batiquitos Lagoon Hiking Trail (carlsbadca.gov), a 1.3-mile meander that begins in an upscale bedroom community and hugs a 528-acre tidal wetland enchantingly inhabited by all manner of exotic birds, including the wren-like snowy plover and fish-hunting California least terns. You’ll espy herons and osprey picking over the serene salt marsh, as well.
Finally, Solea has the virtue of being located next to well-outfitted neighbors, including Westin Carlsbad Resort & Spa (marriott.com), which boasts one special endowment that Solea lacks – a place to get a massage. Regardless of which property you’re staying at, the Westin’s Ocean Pearl Spa (oceanpearlspa.com) will happily book you for a service and give you access to its eucalyptus steam room, plunge pools and relaxation lounge. And then it will give you something else, something we all adore after a 90-minute sports massage – a short walk back to your room.
3 Must-Try Menus in Carlsbad
Verise
Hotel Solea’s flagship restaurant is a Modern Italian affair specializing in coastal cuisine – not unlike Pa’La back in Phoenix. Chef Riccardo Bilotta excites with hamachi crudo in a slick, emulsified bath of olio nuovo and fresno chile; and brings the cavallos home with rustic entrées like bucatini in a guanciale-studded pomodoro sauce and grilled sea bass under cannellini bean crema. verisecarlsbad.com
Campfire
Set in a repurposed Quonset hut, this disarming sharable-plates concept earned Michelin Guide “recommended” distinction for its flushed, take-no-prisoners cooking. Think crispy roasted broccoli in a zesty chermoula sauce and warmed oysters with smoked oxtail dashi – much served out of a hand-built 12-foot hearth. thisiscampfire.com
Nomada
Former punk-rock musician Alex Carballo plunges deep into ancestral Sinaloan cooking traditions at his new restaurant and cantina, splashing kumamoto oysters with charred chiltepin mignonette and serving his carne asada with charred green onions and a lusty side of pinto beans. But the pan-Mexican offerings are outstanding, too: tangy-sweet cochinita pibil and spot-on mole. nomadadining.com
Karlsbad vs. Carlsbad
Where and how you get your spa service in Carlsbad is no trivial matter. Founded in the 1880s, the city was named after the renowned Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad because it shares similar, mineral-rich ground water.
Inland Wellness at Rancho Valencia
Bundled between old horse trails and stands of eucalyptus in Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa is as cozy and unpretentious as any one-percenter wellness retreat could reasonably aspire to be. Renovated to the tune of $30 million by members of the Jacobs family (read: Qualcomm money) in 2012, the 40-acre Relais & Châteaux property is much more about pace and proportion than extravagance. A typical day might involve a late breakfast of lemon-ricotta pancakes followed by numerous short strolls among banyan-like fig trees and herb gardens; you might play a little tennis later, or something else with a racket, and nap on your private patio (because this is a suite-only property, and all the suites have one); then maybe enjoy some body work at the spa, then maybe miso-encrusted sea bass at the resort’s on-site Coastal Cuisine restaurant, The Pony Room. You might wind down with a chat over drinks with someone nice and then head to bed – on the most magnificently forgiving mattress you’ve encountered.
Ain’t wellness grand?
The excellent beaches of Del Mar and Encinitas, meanwhile, are only about 7 miles due west – but the beach really isn’t part of the wellness equation at Rancho Valencia. Instead, you might find yourself repeatedly using these coefficients:
The Spa. Like many resorts that take their spa programs really, really seriously, the spa at RV doesn’t have a special name – just as the engine in your car doesn’t have a special name. It’s simply that which propels the whole deal. A sprawling, indoor-outdoor space done in glass and elegant decking, The Spa includes hot-cold outdoor plunge pools; numerous studios for Pilates, sound therapy and other classes; and a yoga pavilion built around a serenity pool. Just as critically, the treatment rooms are bungalow-like affairs with their own outdoor showers, facilitating advanced services like Restore, a 90-minute odyssey in which you shower off after a vigorous full-body dry-brush scrub and infrared bundling session, then return to the bed and enjoy a traditional deep-tissue rubdown. If you’re a massage fan, it will spoil you permanently.
The Gadgets. Crude extravagances are few at Rancho Valencia, but Therabody red-light therapy masks, leg compression socks and other high-tech recovery gizmos? They’re everywhere – in your suite, on the tennis courts, racked like armory swords in the fitness center, everywhere. Vigorous exercise is an ever-present possibility at RV – as is the expectation to help heal yourself.
Rackets and Padels. Where exercise is concerned, most RV guests seem to do it on the tennis court, and many are quite good – accomplished amateurs drawn by the resort’s first-rate facilities and instruction. For the rest of us, the resort offers a diminished version of tennis played with a paddle, but it’s not pickleball. It’s called padel, and it’s basically pickleball crossbred with squash, obliging players to return caroms and wall-shots. And you know what? It’s fun. You probably won’t break quite the sweat you would at tennis, but if you do it right, you’ll definitely be reaching for the leg compression socks afterward on your patio.
Food Escapism in the City
Where eating and drinking in San Diego is concerned, we’ll go high, we’ll go low, we’ll go anywhere. Here are five recent culinary revelations from the PHOENIX travel team.
Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens
Maybe we’re late to the ball on this one. After all, Stone has been a “big thing” in the beer world long enough to become a fixture in the beer aisle at your local Safeway. But the IPA pioneer’s fortress-like taproom and restaurant in the jungles of Escondido really is a delight. It has taps, it has merch, it has interesting plants… it even has terrific eats, like chutney-topped Indian street nachos and a consommé-sided birria melt. It’s basically a Stone lifestyle center, and we’re so down. stonebrewing.com
A.R. Valentien
Culinary quality has never been an issue at this flagship restaurant at The Lodge at Torrey Pines. Still, the precision California cooking has arguably taken a back seat to the venue itself, a library-toned dining space with lordly forest views that fairly hums with collegiate dignity. With the recent hiring of chef Eric Sakai, the menu may be drawing even. A veteran of two Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurants, Sakai is expected to impart an expressive Romantic touch on the ARV menu this summer, given his aptitude for handmade pastas and wood-fired cooking. lodgetorreypines.com
Realm of the 52 Remedies
If you visit only one apothecary-themed Chinese speakeasy hidden inside a closet at a Kearny Mesa pizza joint this summer, make it Realm of the 52 Remedies. Conceived by one-time engineering student Cristian Liang, it’s a disarming onslaught of tastes, textures and cultural theater, serving both baroque Asian cocktails and a limited but electrifying menu of fusion-fueled small plates, including instantly addictive, honey-sambal-coated Korean fried quail and tangy chile-pickled cucumbers. Forget the elaborate qualifier: Just go. 52remedies.com
Raised by Wolves
San Diego is best known as a beer town, but it’s also the home of tiki trailblazer False Idol and other seminal cocktail bars. One of the most thrilling: this fin de siècle-inspired speakeasy set somewhat humorously in a La Jolla outdoor shopping mall. Entering through a revolving false fireplace, you step into a lavish, study-like drinking realm done in crushed velvet and Art Deco sky lights, where you sip mad-scientist stunners like the umami-centric Torta Verde (brandy and vermouth entwined with olive oil and lemon curd). raisedxwolves.com
Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken
With a mouthful of a name like that, it better deliver the flaky-crispy-sweet goods, and boy does it ever. Set near the San Diego State University campus in East San Diego, Rise is precisely the kind of late-A.M. fast-casual comfort food you crave after a night of, for instance, drinking cocktails at Realm of the 52 Remedies. Go orthodox (but delicious) with a ham, bacon and cheese breakfast sandwich, or break all the rules with a peppery Southern sausage patty wedged between two halves of a glazed blueberry biscuit. Mouthful, indeed. risebiscuitschicken.com
