San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

According to some of San Diego’s finest food minds (umm, us), one of the hottest restaurants of 2023 is easily Bird Rock’s Paradisaea. The Michelin Guide thinks so, too—it recently gave the restaurant, which opened in late 2022, a special recognition for being pretty damn good (and also new). A year or so is a good length of time for a restaurant to find its groove. Ideally, the service kinks will have been worked out, the menu will have found its footing. Paradisaea’s first year also saw the departure of the restaurant’s founding chef and culinary director, Mark Welker. Jeff Armstrong stepped in to take his place. Jeff will kick off 2024 with a new menu. We brought Jeff and his boss, Paradisaea’s co-owner Zoe Kleinbub, into the studio to talk shop. Zoe is a native of Westchester County, NY. She moved to San Diego—where her husband Eric Kleinbub (also a co-owner) grew up—a handful of years ago. The Kleinbubs met moving around in San Francisco’s food circles, and, once they arrived to our sunny shores, it beca