Panama 66 brings craft beer and local fare to Balboa Park

By B.J. Coleman

The courtyard garden outside the San Diego Museum of Art now houses the third restaurant from the talented quartet that brought us Blind Lady Ale House in Normal Heights then Tiger!Tiger! in North Park. The grand opening of Panama 66 on the Balboa Park museum grounds was held in mid-September, with hours of operation now extended into the early evening on most nights and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

The four restaurateurs behind Panama 66 are Jeff Motch, his wife Clea Hantman, and Lee and Jennifer Chase. The two couples met by happenstance in 2008 and soon learned that they shared passions for the arts, craft beer, locally grown food and bicycling.

A soft opening for training servers and perfecting the menu brought Panama 66 to life on July 5 with limited daytime hours. By the end-of-summer grand opening, the bill of fare was shortened and simplified. The craft cocktail menu was pared down to its three most popular concoctions, each a fresh revision of such classic drinks as the mule, the old fashioned and the margarita.

At Panama 66, Motch and his partners have put together a light-fare menu for the open-air sculpture garden setting. Soups, salads, vegetable sides and sandwiches are the heart of the Panama 66 menu. Most of the wines are from California. It successfully brands itself as Balboa Park’s only place for relatively low-cost dining at any time of day.

The partnership first collaborated to create Blind Lady Ale House’s farm-to-table take on Italian-Mediterranean provincial cuisine paired with craft brews or wines, which premiered in 2009. Annually voted among Draftmagazine’s “100 Best Beer Bars in America,” Blind Lady, or BLAH, primarily serves olive and cheese sampler platters alongside flat-crust pizzas and salads.

Next, the quartet brought forward a more German-Middle European “comfort food” approach with Tiger!Tiger! That second restaurant, which opened in late 2011, features house-made sausages and hot sandwiches prepared in its wood-fired oven. Tiger!Tiger! was also site of the partners’ foray into a special weekend brunch menu geared to fueling up cyclists with beer and doughnut pairings. And Lee Chase, formerly with Escondido’s Stone Brewing, now brews with the affiliated Automatic nanobrewery.

The Panama 66 selections incorporate favorites from the group’s other restaurants, including the especially delicious Blind Lady Caesar Salad, and from Tiger!Tiger!, Bratwurst sandwich, the weekend brunch and the Kennebec potato fries — relabeled “frites” in a nod to museum culture. Many of the recipe ingredients are grown in San Diego on Suzie’s Farm. As with the first two venues, the atmosphere is family friendly and invites strangers to strike up conversations over a beer. The kids’ menu focuses on simple sandwiches served on country white bread with sides of fruit.

The draft beer menu for September presented a baker’s dozen of selections, with something to please any palate, from the light Benchmark Blond to AleSmith’s intimidatingly dark Speedway Stout. The alternate taps rotate beer offerings weekly.

Whence the unusual name Panama 66? Even longtime locals may have forgotten that the magnificent Spanish-Renaissance architecture gracing the park, as too the name itself, draws from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. That large expanse beyond the restaurant is the Plaza de Panama. The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa was first European to view the Pacific Ocean while exploring Panama. And the May S. Marcy Sculpture Court where the bistro is located was built in 1966.

Panama 66 is located at 1450 El Prado and may be contacted at 619-232-7931. Members of the San Diego Museum of Art and those who bicycle in can enjoy a 10 percent discount on charges. The restaurant may close early on occasions when the museum hosts special events. The up-to-date hours and more information are available at panama66.com.

—B.J. Coleman is a writer in San Diego. Contact her at [email protected]