Michelin Star Restaurants San Diego (2026): The 9 We Recommend
San Diego is a three-star city. Addison holds the highest honor in Southern California, and we book nine of the Guide's 38 area listings.
San Diego is a three-star city, which still surprises people. The MICHELIN Guide's San Diego area selection runs to 38 entries, four of them across the border in Tijuana, and at the top of it sits a restaurant that reached the Guide's highest honor before anywhere else in Southern California. Below that are two one-star rooms, a deep Bib Gourmand bench, and a long Selected list that covers most of Little Italy and La Jolla.
We book nine of them, including the three-star. This page lays out each one by its exact tier, what the kitchen does, and a direct link to the table. Last updated September 2026.
Three Michelin Stars
Addison by William Bradley is the only three-Michelin-star restaurant in San Diego. Bradley earned the first star in 2019, the second in 2021 and the third in December 2022, making Addison the first restaurant in Southern California to reach the Guide's highest honor. He has led this kitchen since 2006, which is rare consistency at this level, and the cooking has only deepened with time. The restaurant is a Relais and Chateaux member, a distinction that speaks to the hospitality as much as the food. Dinner in the main room is a contemporary California tasting menu of ten courses that evolves with the seasons.
This is the reservation to build a trip around, and the one to secure before anything else on the page.
For the record, San Diego has two further starred restaurants at one star, Soichi and Lucien, which are not on our roster. We would rather say that plainly than publish a starred list with quiet gaps in it.
Bib Gourmand
The Bib is the inspectors' mark for good cooking at a fair price, and San Diego's bench here is genuinely strong. We book three of them.
Callie is chef Travis Swikard's Mediterranean dining room, opened in 2021 in the East Village. A San Diego native, Swikard spent more than a decade in New York cooking alongside Daniel Boulud and Gavin Kaysen, and at Boulud Sud he fell for the flavors of Greece, Spain, Italy, Morocco and the Middle East. Callie brings that palette home to the farmers, fishermen and ingredients of Southern California. The name is Greek for the most beautiful. The menu is built for sharing and opens with spreads and a house pita: hummus with roasted garlic and spicy green zhoug, avocado labneh with pistachio.
Cesarina is a neighborhood Italian trattoria in Point Loma, opened in February 2019 and named for chef Cesarina Mezzoni, who leads its kitchen. It holds a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide. The room is convivial and unfussy, with bistro tables and custom booths inside and two dog-friendly garden patios. The heart of it is the open-air pastificio, a working pasta factory where guests can watch the dough being made and the pastries shaped. Pasta is made fresh every day and the format is mix-and-match.
Cucina Urbana has been part of Bankers Hill since 2009 and was one of Southern California's first restaurants built around a retail wine shop. The menu pairs the flavors of Italy with California seasonality. The wine model is what makes the reservation worth it: the shop carries more than 200 labels, with an emphasis on Italian and California bottles, and you can pick any bottle at retail price and drink it with dinner for a small corkage.
Selected by the MICHELIN Guide
Five of the rooms we book carry a Selected listing, which means the inspectors put them in the book without a star or a Bib attached. In San Diego this tier is mostly Little Italy and La Jolla, and it is where the city's wood-fire cooking lives.
Herb & Wood is built around rustic, wood-fired cooking that brings Mediterranean flavors and a California ethos of seasonality to the plate. A grand central bar anchors the space beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling, the kitchen shows its work through storefront-style glass, and a courtyard with a two-sided fireplace works as both lounge and dining room. Culinary Director Aidan Owens grew up on a small farm outside Byron Bay, Australia.
Juniper & Ivy occupies a once-abandoned warehouse on the northern edge of Little Italy, and the kitchen calls its cooking refined American with a Left Coast edge. A big open kitchen anchors a warm, lively room. Executive Chef Alex Penkin cooks alongside Chef de Cuisine Khine Moore, and the menu rotates daily around what local farmers and fishermen bring in each morning, so it reads differently each night. There is a chef's counter and a covered patio, and the bar seats are first-come.
Born N Raised opened in September 2017 in Little Italy, a two-story steakhouse with mid-century, Art Deco bones designed by local architect Paul Basile. It calls itself an ode to the high church tradition of European fine dining and West Coast hip hop, and the main dining room shows it, lined with black-and-white photographs of old-school rap legends and backed by a glassed-in meat cutting room. Dry-aged beef drives the menu, anchored by the 20-ounce bone-in ribeye. An open-air rooftop bar looks out over the neighborhood.
Trust is the Hillcrest restaurant where chef Brad Wise put wood-fired cooking at the center of the menu, and the flame still anchors the whole experience. The idea is bold flavors cooked simply over an open flame, with wine and cocktails chosen to pair with each plate. Wise fell for Santa Maria-style grilling on California's Central Coast, and after serving as executive chef at JRDN and Belmont Park he opened Trust in 2016. It was his first restaurant.
Catania sits on the top floor of the La Plaza center, on the La Jolla corner of Wall and Girard, with panoramic views over the village to the Pacific. The kitchen cooks coastal Italian drawn from a two-week, 1,400-mile road trip the founders took across Italy, anchored in the idea that simpler is better. At the center sits Beatrice, a 5,000-pound wood-burning oven that turns out the pizzas.
How to plan a San Diego Michelin run
Addison is the constraint. It is a ten-course tasting menu in a Relais and Chateaux property, it runs on a release calendar rather than a rolling window, and it is the single hardest table in the county. Fix that date first and let the rest of the trip settle around it.
Everything else is close together, which makes this an easy city to eat well in. Five of the nine sit in or beside Little Italy, so a lunch and a dinner on the same day is genuinely comfortable. Catania is the outlier at 20 minutes north in La Jolla, and it pairs better with a beach day than with another Guide room the same night.
Browse every San Diego restaurant to fill in the nights around these.
Frequently asked questions
Does San Diego have a three-Michelin-star restaurant? Yes. Addison by William Bradley holds three stars and was the first restaurant in Southern California to reach that level.
How many Michelin-starred restaurants are in San Diego? Three: Addison at three stars, and Soichi and Lucien at one star each.
Which San Diego restaurants have a Bib Gourmand? The Guide's San Diego selection includes several. The three on our roster are Callie, Cesarina and Cucina Urbana.
What does a Selected listing mean? A Selected restaurant, such as Herb & Wood or Trust, appears in the MICHELIN Guide without a star, Green Star or Bib Gourmand. It is a recommendation from the inspectors rather than a lower grade of cooking.
Why do Tijuana restaurants appear in the San Diego guide? The Guide's area selection for San Diego reaches across the border, so four Tijuana entries sit in the same list. They are a separate trip, not a same-night option.
The MICHELIN Guide in our other cities
The Guide publishes a selection in 11 more of the cities we cover. Each of these lists is built the same way, checked against the Guide's own entries rather than against reputation, and says plainly which tier a room actually holds.
Bangkok - Chicago - Dubai - Las Vegas - London - Los Cabos - Mexico City - Miami - New York - Saigon - Vancouver
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