#380 This week, we head from a La Jolla strip mall to the glitter of LA’s reality TV scene before landing in the heart of Old Town. Pietro Busalacchi—bartender, hustler, and heir to one of San Diego’s most iconic restaurant families—joins us to talk about growing up in Little Italy, working at Lisa Vanderpump’s TomTom, and how he brought that chaos and charm back home to launch Trattoria Don Pietro, El Sueño, and TAKO, his bold Mexican-style sushi bar. We talk stories, like a tree catching fire on set, surprise tequila nights with Nickelback, and why escargot and Dover sole at Bistro du Marché still make Troy emotional. Plus: Bianchi opens at the Bahia, PopUp Bagels lands in San Diego, and College Area scores a maximalist burger joint. To follow El Sueño click HERE. To follow Trattoria Don Pietro click HERE. To follow TAKO click HERE.

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#379 In this episode of Happy Half Hour, Troy Johnson and Jackie Bryant sit down with Janet Flores Pavlovich, the force behind Coyotas, a local brand making cassava flour tortillas with just four ingredients and a lot of soul. Janet tells the story of growing up in Sonora, Mexico, where tortillas were handmade daily and tied to memory, ritual, and identity. After culinary school in San Diego and a stint behind the scenes at the Food Network, she realized the tortillas on grocery store shelves didn’t reflect what she knew. So she went back—literally—to the desert heat of Hermosillo to relearn the craft from master tortilleras. The result: a San Diego–based company now stocked across Whole Foods and indie markets, built on tradition, simplicity, and stubborn devotion to doing things the right way. To follow Coyotas click HERE.

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#378 In this episode of Happy Half Hour, hosts Jackie Bryant and Troy Johnson crack open the origin story of Juneshine with co-founder Forrest Dein, tracing its unlikely path from a backyard kombucha experiment to a nationwide phenomenon. Dein recounts Juneshine’s early days brewing in a cobwebbed garage, its cult-favorite Blood Orange Mint flavor, and the brand’s meteoric ascent—including opening the country’s first hard kombucha bar, landing a Super Bowl ad, and expanding into new horizons with Easy Rider lager and Willie’s Remedy, a THC-infused social tonic launched with country legend Willie Nelson. To follow JuneShine click HERE. To follow Easy Rider click HERE. And to follow Willie's Remedy click HERE.

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