CHEF’S CHOICE
YEAR-OLD RESTAURANTS MATSU AND SEMOLA ARE TRANSITIONING TO TASTING MENUS EXCLUSIVELY
Two of San Diego County’s newest finer-dining restaurants — Matsu in Oceanside and Semola Gastronomic Experience in La Jolla — celebrated their first birthdays this spring, and their owners marked the occasion with big news.
Both restaurants are transitioning from traditional a la carte menus to tasting-menu-only service, where diners pay a fixed price for a chef-chosen multicourse menu. Matsu made the move on Thursday and Semola will transition in September.
William Eick, executive chef and owner of Matsu, and Giacomo Pizzigoni, co-owner of Semola, both say that a restaurant’s first year is about experimenting and evolution, so change is a necessity of doing business. Over the past 12 months, both restaurateurs discovered that the majority of their customers opted for a tasting menu option rather than ordering a la carte. Transitioning to a tasting menu will streamline kitchen operations, improve consistency and ensure that all customers get to enjoy the most popular dishes.
Many chefs in San Diego have been moving toward tasting menus for another reason: Michelin stars. The Michelin Guide introduced an all-California guide in 2019, making San Diego restaurants eligible for stars for the first time. All four of the local restaurants that have earned stars since then — twostarred Addison and one-starred Jeune et Jolie, Soichi Sushi and Sushi Tadokoro — have tasting or omakase menus. Chefs feel Michelin inspectors can best judge their culinary vision if they serve a progressive tasting menu.
Here’s a look at how both restaurants are transforming.
Matsu
Over the past two years, the restlessly creative Eick has launched three food-related businesses, the modern Japanese restaurant Matsu, the karaage chicken sandwich pop-up Naegi and the wholesale Japanese milk bread bakery Hokkaido Bread Co.
From the day it opened on April 29 of last year, Matsu offered both an eightcourse omakase option and a la carte options. Eick said his goal was always to go omakase-only after a few years of building a clientele, but so few customers were dining a la carte that he decided to move his timetable forward.
Eick’s menu is known for his fresh and from-scratch interpretations of traditional Japanese dishes, including raw, smoked and fermented fish dishes, duck, Japanese Wagyu beef and housemade dashi broths, sauces and flavor powders. An example is his new cuttlefish three ways dish, which has braised sunflower choke and rayu (chili garlic sauce) infused with dried cuttlefish, sunflower seeds and petals and fried
cuttlefish, topped with a sheet of pureed steamed cuttlefish that’s sprinkled with dehydrated sunflower oil.
The new omakase-only menu has been expanded from eight to 10 courses to ensure that all diners get to taste Eick’s popular grilled cabbage “dumpling” and caviar appetizer and enjoy a second dessert (Eick makes all of those, too). While the menu will change somewhat every few weeks, Eick said the current 10-course menu will also include tomato with hamachi and strawberry; scallop with romaine and macadamia miso; whelk (sea snail) with carrot and sunsho; cuttlefish two ways with powdered sunflower oil; ebi shrimp with tenkasu (tempura crisps) and tentsuyu dip; sakana fish with sweet potato and seaweeds; duck with sunchoke and matsuyaki sauce; and desserts of mochi waffle with kokuto syrup matcha crumb and yuzu/pine needle sorbet, and tangerine sherbet with orange blossom and marigold.
The price is $155, with an optional 11th course of A5 Wagyu steak from Japan for an additional $55. Wine pairings are $95.
There is also a 10-course vegan tasting menu priced at $130 per person. For those who don’t want a full meal, the bar menu offers a handful of a la carte items.
Hours are 4 to 10 p.m. Thursdays-Mondays. 626 S. Tremont St., Oceanside. eatatmatsu.com
Semola Gastronomic Experience
Semola opened May 26 of last year in the former PrepKitchen space in La Jolla. It’s part of Milano Five Group’s Ambrogio15 restaurant group, which includes three Ambrogio15 pizzeria-restaurants in Pacific Beach, Del Mar and Little Italy.
Initially, Semola’s culinary concept was modern Italian with the influence of Argentine, Japanese and Korean cuisines. But with so many other nearby Italian restaurants in La Jolla, Semola has repositioned itself as an international fusion restaurant
Semola offers the Bob Ross Risotto dish, in honor of chef Daniela Martinez’s favorite painter, which allows guests to “paint” their food with powdered tomatoes, olives and prosciutto. Also on the menu is the Leche de Tigre, a shrimp, passionfruit and Argentine tiger’s milk dish.
“with an Italian soul,” said Pizzigoni, who is managing director for Milano Five.
The current spring-summer menu — which will be replaced in September by a tasting menu — features appetizers, salads, risottos, pasta, red meat and seafood entrees, and desserts — available a la carte or in a five-course tasting menu for $99. Pizzigoni said about 80 percent of customers now opt for the tasting menu.
The menu has been developed and overseen by head chef Daniela Martinez, who is Argentine American. The menu also features four “specialty of the house” dishes created by consulting chef Silvio Salmoiraghi, who helms the Michelinstarred Ristorante Acquerello, a modern Italian restaurant just outside of Milan. Salmoiraghi and his chef-partner Choi Cheolhyeok, who is Korean, fly to San Diego every two months to create new dishes for the Semola menu.
When the restaurant transitions completely to a tasting menu in the fall, Pizzigoni said the menu will likely always include Martinez’s bestselling Wagyu carpaccio and her Bob Ross Risotto dish, which diners can “paint” with olive, tomato and prosciutto powder using a rosemary sprig “paintbrush,” as well one of Salmoiraghi’s specialty dishes, like the ravioli kaiseki, a pasta and tuna dish created in the Japanese style to balance taste, texture, appearance and color.
Other changes at Semola over the past year include a new indoor dining room, weekend brunch service from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the creation of a six-seat chef ’s table near the kitchen, where Martinez has created her own eight-course, three-hour dinner menu for two to six diners. Her current chef ’s table menu — inspired by her childhood memories, family heritage and love for Brazilian and other cuisines — includes a whimsical za’atar-topped sunchoke hummus vegetable “garden” planted with baby root vegetables served with a side of warm Italian gnocco fritto fry bread. Another dish is the Alice in Wonderland, with tiny mushroom tortellini and a grilled trumpet mushroom “scallop” topped with a mushroom broth that’s been steeped in a glass infusion teapot.
For each course, Martinez presents the diners with her own hand-illustrated cards of each dish with notes on the back about the dish’s origins and ingredients. The dinner has one seating nightly from 5 to 8 p.m. Cost is $180 per person for two diners, $160 for three to five diners, and $150 for six. Wine pairings are an additional $99.
Hours are 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. 7556 Fay Ave., La Jolla. (858) 412-3432, semolalajolla.com