A century after its first incarnation, Wonderland has returned to Ocean Beach.
\nOnce hailed as San Diego\u2019s first amusement park with a roller coaster from 1913 to 1916, the reincarnated Wonderland is now an ocean pub where Qwigg\u2019s and Nick\u2019s At the Pier once were at 5083 Santa Monica Ave., Suite 2C.
\nMina Desiderio, who co-owns Wonderland and owns The Local downtown, said her goal in reinventing the restaurant space was to “pay homage to the history and lifestyle of OB.”
\nThe restaurant space has been remodeled in a unique hybrid style Desiderio characterized as “urban beach.”
\n“We transformed this space, really opened up all the windows so you can see from the pier all the way down to La Jolla,” she said adding, “The view is absolutely breathtaking.”
\nThe ocean pub\u2019s seating is also atypical.
\n“It\u2019s community-style seating with shared tables and booths and a lot of bar space,” Desiderio said, noting full advantage is taken of the pub\u2019s remarkable ocean views.
\nWonderland is half sports bar, half sit-down restaurant.
\n“The Pier Pub is our sports bar with more than 40 televisions and a complete sports package,” Desiderio said. “On the other side is a full-service restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner.”
\nWonderland serves up pub-style grub with a twist, including seafood, fish tacos, fresh mussels and oysters on the half-shell \u2014 and burgers too. Desiderio calls her cuisine “islander coastal.”
\n“The food reflects what you\u2019d eat in coastal Mexico, Hawaii and in San Diego, all three of those areas,” she said. “We don\u2019t limit ourselves to a particular type of genre of food. We just want to serve good food we know we can make well.”
\nWonderland\u2019s atmosphere is described by Desiderio as laid-back with a local flair.
\n“It\u2019s more casual to fit in with the OB lifestyle,” she said. “The people from our place can catch the best surfers.”
\nDesiderio said Wonderland “complements the town because we\u2019re featuring the history of Ocean Beach, including the name of our restaurant, as well as having lots of great photographs.”
\nDesiderio said being an entrepreneur is in her DNA. Both her father and mother were in the restaurant and bar trades. She became a bar owner at age 27 downtown with The Local 10 years ago.\u00a0When Nick\u2019s at the Pier became available, she and a business partner jumped at the opportunity to reinvent the restaurant space.
\nDesiderio said Wonderland is family-oriented until 9 p.m. After that, on many nights, music offered up by DJs livens things up for the adult crowd, turning the establishment into more of a night spot.
\nDesiderio talked about her bar\u2019s signature cocktail, a Greyhound made with fresh-pressed citrus juice.
\n“We squeeze all of our citrus in big metal juicers,” Desiderio said. The bar also has 25 beer taps, 80 percent of which feature local craft brews.
\nDesiderio said she\u2019s happy to “provide the best view for this town,” and hopes Wonderland draws new people to the community, giving them “one more reason now to come to Ocean Beach.”
\nWonderland is open Mondays through Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 8:30 a.m. to 2 a.m.
\nFor more information call (619) 255-3358 or visit www.wonderlandob.com.i<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A century after its first incarnation, Wonderland has returned to Ocean Beach. Once hailed as San Diego\u2019s first amusement park with a roller coaster from 1913 to 1916, the reincarnated Wonderland is now an ocean pub where Qwigg\u2019s and Nick\u2019s At the Pier once were at 5083 Santa Monica Ave., Suite 2C. Mina Desiderio, who […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":272949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Wonderland restaurant\/tavern making a splash with its view, historic theme","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272948","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=272948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}