Zuma opens its first California room in San Diego
The London-founded izakaya group has taken 12,000 square feet inside the Guild Hotel downtown, its sixth US restaurant and a bet that San Diego can support a global fine-dining brand.
Zuma has opened its first California restaurant, a 12,000-square-foot room inside the Guild Hotel in downtown San Diego, the London-founded izakaya group's sixth US location after New York, Miami and others.
The space seats around 220 across indoor and outdoor areas, with a garden terrace, a wraparound bar and a DJ booth. The design draws on the Baja California landscape: stone surfaces, timber screens that nod to Balboa Park, and details keyed to local flora and fauna rather than the dark, urban rooms Zuma has built elsewhere.
The kitchen runs a sushi counter and a robata grill, with the menu holding roughly 85 percent consistent with Zuma's other rooms worldwide. Signature dishes include pork belly with yuzu mustard miso, miso-marinated black cod wrapped in hoba leaf, a 32-ounce wagyu tomahawk and a rice hot pot with wild mushrooms and truffle. The bar stocks more than 40 sakes alongside Japanese whiskies and a cocktail list that includes the Burning History, smoked over barrel stave.
San Diego has room for a globally recognized contemporary Japanese concept delivering outstanding cuisine.
A sixth US address
Zuma now operates in Hong Kong, Dubai, Madrid, New York and Miami as well as San Diego, part of a group that has expanded steadily on the strength of a format built around shared plates and an open kitchen rather than a single showcase dish. Japanese dining formats have moved into new US cities on both ends of the price scale this year, from budget conveyor-belt chains to rooms like Zuma built for a bigger check.
Company leadership said San Diego's dining scene has room for "a globally recognized contemporary Japanese concept" delivering polished cooking alongside a louder, later-night atmosphere than the city's fine-dining rooms typically carry.
What comes next
Zuma has openings planned in Cabo San Lucas and Saint-Barth before the end of the year, plus a December pop-up at the Niseko ski resort in Japan. The San Diego room gives the group a West Coast base to draw on as it plans further into the Americas.
