Call me shallow, but San Diego County's pretty face has been drawing me back for years. The external attractions are so obvious.

Family activities abound, from the incredible zoo to its sister San Diego Zoo Safari Park to SeaWorld (see accompanying story). The Pacific Ocean, which is anything but that during our Northwest winters, is Southern California's winter playground, with kayaking, surfing and more. And -- noteworthy as Oregon's rainy season drags on -- you can count on near-perfect year-round weather, tending to the high 60s and low 70s.

But on a spring visit to San Diego and surrounding cities I came to know a different side of the region: its emerging slow food and craft beer scene. It's a kind of inner beauty that Portland has embraced for years, and that has blossomed over the past decade in San Diego.

If, as Mama will tell you, the surest path to a man's heart is through his stomach, that would explain why I came away with a deeper feeling for the area. With dozens of cutting-edge dining and brewing venues to choose from, it's a little hard to know where to begin ...

In Del Mar, where executive chef Paul McCabe's Kitchen 1540 is making contemporary American synonymous with fresh and local?

In Escondido, where Stone Brewing Co. has parlayed its phenomenal growth as a regional brewery into an onsite bistro for locavores? Or nearby San Marcos, where Port Brewing Co.'s cult army forms block-long lines for limited releases of its Lost Abbey Belgian-style beers at (gulp) as much as $30 a bottle?

From my seat in the audience, the chorus of the San Diego area's dynamic food and beer scene sings most sweetly along the city's 30th Street Corridor, and its impassioned voice belongs to Jay Porter, a onetime software marketer with an unruly mop of gray hair.

High quality slow food



"I know what good food tastes like," Porter says, "and the stuff you buy in the store doesn't taste right."

In 2005, Porter and others launched The Linkery, a gastropub that Porter describes as a "pre-industrial village" -- an eatery that makes much of what its customers consume on site, from cask-aged beer to sauerkraut to bread to sausage and cured meats.

"The quality of meat that comes in our back door is the best in the U.S.," Porter says. "We get whole-carcass animals and break them down with a band saw."

The menu details local food sources, right down to where the animal was raised or where the peppers or rice were grown. Bring an appetite and dig into From the Pit ($35), a family-style selection of smoked pork, bacon and hot links, complemented by coleslaw, beans and beer bread.

Just as the Linkery maintains its connections to food sources, it cherishes its place in the neighborhood. Moving into new digs in 2008, Porter devised a system of roll-up garage-door walls on two sides that transforms the Linkery into an open-air restaurant on pleasant days. In effect, the Linkery flows onto the sidewalk and the remainder of 30th Street.

Many of the local eateries and pubs have embraced similar values.

"Jay was really the pioneer," says Ron Troyano, an owner of Alchemy, a nearby restaurant featuring seafood, seasonal menus and mouth-watering desserts made in-house, such as strawberry tarts and chocolate chile crème brulée.

San Diego sampler

Where to stay:

Paradise Point Resort & Spa

(1-800-344-2626,

) completed a $20 million renovation earlier this year, and the modern, comfortable rooms complete the Polynesian feel of this island getaway. Bungalow rooms (no high-rise here) feature flat-screen TVs, marble vanities and iPod docks, and if you get a beachfront bungalow you can make s'mores on the sand and watch the sun go down. Five pools are sprinkled throughout the resort, including a faux beach at the main pool, plus there's a mile of beach along Mission Bay. This is also the closest resort to SeaWorld (less than a five-minute drive). There's a world of activities, from bike rentals to tennis courts to watercraft rentals at the marina. Rent a Jet Ski, as we did, and zip around Mission Bay. Rates are exceptionally reasonable for the fun and comfort you can expect here, starting at $145 per night.

La Valencia Hotel

(1-800-451-0772,

) in La Jolla is a stately, historic, world-class hotel built in 1926. From the pink exterior to tiled roofs to talavera tiles sprinkled throughout to the pool setting with its ocean view, you will run out of superlatives to describe this elegant property. Stay here if you can, and if you can't, come in for lunch or drinks on the Ocean View Terrace and soak in the ambience. Rates start at $239 per night.

La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club

(1-800-640-7702,

) is slow-paced and comfortable, with a gorgeous beachside setting, heated pool and tennis courts. Walk from your room down the steps and directly onto the beach for a moonlight walk. The location is also perfect for surf lessons or kayaking (see related story). The Shores restaurant at a neighboring sister property, La Jolla Shores Hotel, is a great breakfast spot. Rates start at $209 a night. The Modern

Hotel Indigo

(1-877-846-3446,

) opened in July 2009 in the Gaslamp Quarter and is centrally located for baseball games at Petco Park or shopping at Horton Plaza. Rates start at $171 per night.

Where to eat:

In San Diego, try

The Linkery

, 619-255-8778,

;

The Ritual Tavern

, 619-283-1720,

;

Alchemy

, 619-255-0616,

;

Cafe Chloe

, downtown, 619-232-3242,

. Further out, visit

Kitchen 1540

, Del Mar, 858-793-6460,

.

A.R. Valentien

, La Jolla, 858-777-6635,

Have a brew:

Stone Brewing Co.

, Escondido, 760-294-7866,

;

The Lost Abbey/Port Brewing Co.

, San Marcos, 1-800-918-6816, ext. 107,

;

Toronado

bar, San Diego, 619-282-046,

Brew tours:

Brew Hop

, 858-361-8457,

; 2 1/2-hour tours start at $75 per person.

More info:

San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau

,

Along 30th Street you'll also find Toronado bar, where I counted no less than 90 beers on the board, from local favorites to Belgian imports to Oregon's own Deschutes Brewery Hop Henge IPA.

Also nearby, at The Ritual Tavern, co-owner Staci Wilkins says her philosophy has been to "keep it simple" by attracting customers to "a place where you know the people and you know where your food comes from."

What that translates to are things like vegan bread, onion rings that melt in your mouth, or a heavenly asparagus-mushroom soup. When Wilkins and co-owner Mike Flores couldn't find condiments that weren't heavy on preservatives and high-fructose corn sweetener, they started making their own.

The tap list is constantly being rotated, and every Thursday a new cask is tapped. I sampled Green Flash's 30th Street Pale Ale, a full-bodied pale that honors the 30th Street food and craft brew scene.

"If you like beer," Wilkins said, "This is the place to be."

Brews to choose from

"No other place in the U.S. offers the diversity of (beer) styles, techniques and flavors that San Diego County does," proclaimed a 2009 article in Food & Wine magazine. Another article in Men's Journal magazine the same year named San Diego the top beer town in the U.S., with Portland (sigh) in third place.

While the rankings are debatable, there's no doubt that San Diego and the surrounding area have joined the ranks of the best craft-brew scenes in the country, along with Portland, Seattle and Denver.

I set out to sample two area giants, Stone and Port Brewing, in the back of a Lincoln Navigator driven by Summer Nixon, co-founder of Brew Hop, which conducts customized brewery tours. First stop was Stone, where co-founder Greg Koch has realized double-digit sales gains for years despite spending nothing -- zero -- on advertising. The nonprofit Brewers Association ranked Stone 15th nationally among craft brewers in sales volume for 2009.

"We're a philosophy-driven company," Koch says. "We don't focus on trying to meet a sales goal -- we focus on what we do."

What Stone is doing, besides making a variety of acclaimed hoppy ales and Belgian-style beers in its sleek brewery, is pushing the envelope of locally sourced comfort food in its gorgeous on-site bistro. The restaurant flows into a scenic garden that Koch and others labored to design and plant themselves.

San Marcos is a short drive away, but the vibe at Port Brewing is decidedly different -- much more blue-collar. Set in an industrial warehouse, the brewery is a maze of stainless-steel tanks, French oak barrels and snaking hoses.

The brewery's line of Lost Abbey Belgian-style beers has attained cult status, thanks to a willingness to experiment with wild yeast strains and equally wild methods. Hot Rocks relies on super-heating chunks of granite in a turkey fryer and pouring the lager over them. Judgment Day ale required a brewer to wield what amounted to a mini-flamethrower to caramelize a batch of raisins.

The combination of industry, artistry and crazy genius, says Sage Osterfeld of Port Brewing, has put Lost Abbey and other innovators in the San Diego area in the same position that Chateau Montelena of Calistoga found itself in 1976 after winning a blind taste competition against French wineries. The great German beers are under assault.

"We take risks on all kinds of wild stuff," Osterfeld says.



Branch out nearby

Katie Grebow, chef at Cafe Chloe, a French bistro in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, walks with me through the Little Italy farmers market, eyeing fresh greens, colorful peppers and local seafood.

She relies on as much as 90 percent of her produce to be delivered by local vendors, to complement the succulent coq au vin or dreamy macaroni, pancetta and bleu d'auvergne gratin (that's bistro-speak for mac and cheese).

Just as many of the best breweries "in San Diego" are actually in neighboring cities, some of its best new and evolving restaurants are as well.

At A.R. Valentien in La Jolla, executive chef Jeff Jackson has been a regional pioneer in the slow-food movement. In a glorious white-linen-and-dark-woods Craftsman-style setting, with views of the pines and the ocean, expect the organic chicken to be tender and moist, the wild striped bass to be slightly crispy on the outside and mild and juicy inside.

At the modern and cozy Kitchen 1540 in Del Mar, the charcuterie plate of cured meats and cheeses is superb, with American organic prosciutto and Spanish chorizo. Tempura vegetables are moist puffs, light as air, and the flavor-packed roasted young chicken and vegetable succotash leave dessert beyond consideration.

They have run out of the Stone IPA, but that's OK. I know where to find some tomorrow.

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