Food & Drink RESTAURANT REVIEW
you see the connection in the beef tartare, a French- Polynesian classic. It’s said to have originated with Genghis Khan, whose army was too busy conquering things to pause and cook their meat. Kingfisher gives it a fresh spin by swapping out English fish sauce (ahem, Worcestershire) for the various Asian versions, which are more elegant, less doctored, and more fish-forward. The egg yolk is cured in the fish sauce, the raw beef tossed with Thai chiles and herbs, and bitter greens, then given a Pop Rocks texture with puffed quinoa and crispy shallots. Somewhere in Bautista’s kitchen, there is a lever. When pulled, the trap door in the ceiling releases the herbs. It rains mint here. Tiny rainforests of basil. This pile of flavor leaves is one of my favorite signature markers of Vietnamese food (think about the fresh garden that arrives with a bowl of ph ố ). Kingfisher’s owners—the Phan family, who also own beloved-local restaurant, Crab Hut—have posited the concept as modern Vietnamese. But it’s also a bit Filipino and any (mostly East Asian) influence the kitchen sees fit to incorporate.
This place is also a prime example of a welcome trend in San Diego: Asian and Mexican chefs and those from other non-European/Western cultures who learned to cook in well-regarded French-Californian kitchens taking their training and applying it to the food they grew up eating. For decades, French was just about the only cuisine that seemed available for serious chefs in the U.S., so it became an established training ground. In Kingfisher’s case, Bautista is Filipino, and he was the chef de cuisine of George’s at the Cove. Tara Monsod is doing the same at Animae, and Wormwood’s success hinges on the chefs spiking Baja into the food of central France (the cream-saucy part, like Nouvelle Aquitaine). Hell, zoom out a little more and find the trend has wider legs in our region. The entire Valle de Guadalupe and its restaurants came up via this very concept—chefs like Jair Téllez of Laja, Roberto Alcocer of Malva (and Valle Oceanside), and David Castro Hussong of Fauna are all French-trained, as are others in Baja. French-Asian food gave the world one of its best sandwiches (bánh mì, which combines French liver paté with Vietnamese pickled veggies). At Kingfisher,
ABOVE This sells out every night—a Peking/ Mallard hybrid duck, dry-aged in house for two weeks, then glazed with palm sugar and pepper.
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FEBRUARY 2023
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