{"id":236951,"date":"2014-07-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/oysters-at-your-service\/"},"modified":"2014-07-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T07:00:00","slug":"oysters-at-your-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/oysters-at-your-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Oysters at your service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ironside Chef dishes on his new restaurant and raw bar<\/b><\/p>\n

Kai Oliver-Kurtin | Downtown News<\/b><\/p>\n

Little Italy\u2019s newest restaurant, Ironside Fish & Oyster, has splashed onto the dining scene with Executive Chef Jason McLeod at the helm.<\/p>\n

As the only raw bar in the area, McLeod hopes to bring an oyster culture to the neighborhood that\u2019s history is rooted in the tuna fishing industry. Ironside has a unique open-layout concept that places three culinary hubs inside the dining room: a raw bar, bakery and European-style open kitchen.<\/b><\/p>\n

Ironside is the newest project from hospitality group Consortium Holdings (CH) that has brought other successful eateries to the region, such as Craft & Commerce, Neighborhood and UnderBelly, among others. McLeod has also served as executive chef at The Grand Del Mar, but Ironside is his first venture as a restaurant owner.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An inside look at Ironside’s raw bar (Photo by Zack Benson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kai Oliver-Kurtin (SDDN): How did this newest culinary project come to life?<\/i><\/p>\n

Jason McLeod (<\/i>JM): I met Arsalun Tafazoli (co-founder of CH) about two-and-a-half years ago. We started out as friends and then I ended up joining CH, and this project [Ironside] came about not long after. Originally we planned to open a breakfast place, but we started talking about what San Diego really needed. We have such a bounty of seafood here, but it\u2019s mostly at high-end steakhouses \u2014 there wasn\u2019t really a seafood restaurant with a mid-market price point. So that was our goal, and I fit in what CH is all about, too.<\/p>\n

SDDN: How would you describe the menu at Ironside?<\/i><\/p>\n

JM: Fresh. It\u2019s constantly changing. After the first month, there are six or seven things on the menu that will be stable and won\u2019t change. We have more fish suppliers here than suppliers for the entire group of CH restaurants. All seafood suppliers specialize in something specific, and we need a high volume of a variety of seafood. We want guests to be able to get a mix of what they want without having a 300-item menu. It\u2019s a simple menu \u2014 there\u2019s not a lot of masking with garnishes and sauces. When you order fish, you\u2019re going to get a piece of fish. We put ourselves out there and let the food speak for itself.<\/p>\n

SDDN: Why did you decide on a seafood\/oyster-focused restaurant?<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Ironside's<\/a>
Ironside’s Chef Jason McLeod (Photo by Zack Benson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JM: I\u2019m from the west coast of Canada and grew up in oyster beds, and spot prawn and salmon fishing on an island. That\u2019s what I was around so it\u2019s in my blood. But Ironside was really more about what San Diego needed.<\/p>\n

SDDN: What\u2019s the general response from diners been since opening in April?<\/i><\/p>\n

JM: Overall, for the amount of volume we\u2019ve done so far, it\u2019s been very positive. We\u2019ve had some constructive criticism but it hasn\u2019t been anything that was a surprise. We\u2019ve gotten lots of good feedback and have evolved because of it. At Ironside we\u2019re going to do more than double what our other CH projects do. This is new for us in terms of sheer volume. Street festivals in Little Italy, like ArtWalk and the Sicilian Festival, have been bringing in a lot people. We\u2019ll also be participating in the Taste of Little Italy, where one of our servers who\u2019s a top shucker in the country will be out front shucking oysters and entertaining guests.<\/i><\/p>\n

SDDN: How many oysters do you go through in a day?<\/i><\/p>\n

JM: Right now between 15,000 and 17,000 oysters per day. We sell about 600 \u2013 800 during $1 oyster happy hour [Mon through Fri, 3 to 6 p.m.] There were so many people who were just waiting for something like this. I\u2019ll be excited when we get East Coast oysters in the fall \u2014 they\u2019re a bit saltier. Most of our oysters right now are from Baja. We carry seven varieties of oysters every day, six for the chef\u2019s choice selection and one especially for oyster happy hour.<\/p>\n

SDDN: You\u2019re already a two-star Michelin chef. What\u2019s the next professional goal for you?<\/i><\/p>\n

JM: I\u2019d like to explore the ownership and entrepreneurial roles more. I\u2019ve been focused on operations, and as I get older it\u2019s harder on my body. Of course I would miss the hands-on stuff because I love what I do. When you open a restaurant together, you create a bond with the staff that you just can\u2019t describe. <\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014Kai Oliver-Kurtin is a local freelance reporter who also works full-time doing social media marketing for the U.S. Navy. She enjoys covering events, restaurant news, culture and entertainment. Contact her at <\/i>kai.sdnews@gmail.com<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ironside Chef dishes on his new restaurant and raw bar Kai Oliver-Kurtin | Downtown News Little Italy\u2019s newest restaurant, Ironside Fish & Oyster, has splashed onto the dining scene with Executive Chef Jason McLeod at the helm.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":236952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Oysters at your service","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}