San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week our special guest was requested by listeners, and we’re excited to have him on the show: Kory Stetina, owner of Kindred in South Park. Kindred is a vegan restaurant and bar with a heavy metal vibe that opened in 2015, and it's regularly been named both a critic’s and readers’ pick for Best Vegan Restaurant in our annual Best Restaurants issue. Kory says he’s been vegan since his early 20s, and he was first exposed to vegetarianism through his love of punk rock. He initially started Kindred as a pop-up when he couldn't find any local food-and-drink events that catered to his diet, so he started with vegan dinners paired with beer. He anticipated a small crowd, but a couple hundred people came out instead—seeing that demand eventually led to him opening the full restaurant. Since then, Kindred has redefined ideas of what vegan cuisine is and could be, and its “Permanent Vacation” tropical-themed cocktail nights have been a hit—Kory estimates that most of his client