After four years and a few left turns, the acclaimed Izola Bakery has finally found its feet with a soft-opening at 1429 Island Street in June. Moving two blocks from 13th Street to the new flagship location took “seven months, three weeks, and five days,” laughs Jeffrey Brown, who launched Izola with his partner Jenny Chen in 2020. But who’s counting when it’s only the first step in building a bread empire?

The 7,211-square-foot space next to Fault Line Park includes nearly 3,000 square feet of an interior ground-level dining room with its finishing ovens, a 1,546-square-foot patio, and almost 1,900 square feet of basement area, where Izola’s dough kitchen now resides. Brown walked me through the facility last week during a surprisingly uncrowded morning.

“This is a step towards building what we envision, or really to deliver on our stated mission, which is to change the way people think about croissants and sourdough,” he explains, which he hopes to accomplish by building a state-of-the-art, zero-emission factory at Fairmount Avenue and Thorn Street in City Heights sometime next year. 

Once operational, the City Heights Dough Factory would allow Izola to increase its production 20x, potentially launch wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels, and eventually open more bakeshops across San Diego. Brown says they’ve already got eyes on location in La Jolla and aspirations for North County, Orange County, and Los Angeles. Still, they’d most likely start with one attached to the Dough Factory to help build community in the neighborhood.

“City Heights has some amazing food and a whole bunch of amazing stuff. But in terms of investment in the community, it’s under-invested,” he explains. Izola will focus on hiring from within the immediate community and the Second Chance program, which helps pair formerly incarcerated employees with employers. It’s part of Izola’s five social justice principles: economic, gender, LGBTQIA, racial, and environmental. 

But expansion at the cost of quality would be a “deal killer,” explains Brown. He and Chen scoured the world to find equipment that could increase output and quality, looking everywhere from Germany to the Netherlands, Spain, Japan, and the United States. He thinks they’ll have it dialed for the buildout, but in the meantime, they’re full steam ahead in East Village. Izola is only available Tuesday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., but Brown assures me they’re “moving mountains” to open on Sundays.

“We’re growing production at somewhere between four and six percent a day,” he says, a slow ramp-up to get his primarily brand-new team of employees up to speed without pushing too hard. But he says in about a month, they’ll likely be able to double their inventory, which will get them closer to his goal of “having a hot croissant for everyone who wants one.”

San Diego Restaurant News & Food Events

Every Sunday in August is a Pepino Pop-Up

Suppose you can’t wait for Chef Sebastian Becerra (Eleven Madison Park, Herb & Wood, COI) to open Pepino, his Peruvian eatery and bakeshop coming to La Jolla next year. In that case, I have good news for you. Every Sunday in August, he’ll be on hand at Michele Coulon Dessertier (7556 Fay Avenue) from 8 a.m. through noon (or whenever he sells out), slinging some of his signature menu items as well as some works-in-progress, like shakshuka on toast, Peruvian-inspired sandwiches and burritos, and pastries like dulce de leche-stuffed chocolate muffins. Keep an eye out for his menu every week on Instagram, and for more support, check out Pepino’s Kickstarter, which launches August 1. 

Chef Obi Comes to Matsu For One Night Only

On Tuesday, August 6, chef Saransh Oberoi (a.k.a. chef Obi, a.k.a. the guy who beat Bobby Flay on Food Network) joins chef William Eick at Matsu for a seven-course dining experience that promises to play on Obi’s modern Indian cuisine expertise, as well as a few surprises. Book your reservation for August 6, or live with regret.

Beth’s Bites

• Troy made the touchdown when he announced Travis Swikward would be opening a new restaurant in UTC, but here I come with the extra point—the name of said restaurant. Fleurette will open sometime next year with modern French cuisine and one hell of a lot of pressure to follow up Callie.
• Fox Point Brewing Company is Encinitas’ latest brewery. Situated at Fox Point Farms—an agriculturally-centric planned community with a cafe, farmstand, the city’s first new brewing operation in 30 years.
• I’m all in for Java Joe Musgrove. I’ll drink his coffee, cheer his strikeouts, and definitely eat the taco he created with Puesto to benefit the local animal shelter, The Animal Pad. Can I have it with one of Doug Hasker’s famous Puesto lagers?
• Rancher Hat Bar, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, is making a California appearance on Sunday, July 28, from 2 pm to 6 pm at The Original 40 Brewing Company in North Park. Gobble a Western Cheeseburger, slam a Mexican lager, and enjoy some country tunes while you craft your very own cowboy or trucker hat for keepsies.

Have breaking news, exciting scoops, or great stories about new San Diego restaurants or the city’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].

A book came out some time ago about the five “love languages” that people have in relationships and the problems couples get into when they don’t speak the same ones.

The five languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service and physical touch.

For example, some people feel most adored by being lavished with gifts, while others feel most loved when hearing positive words (affirmations) from a spouse. Honestly, it would seem like having some of all five in a relationship would be a good thing, though frankly, neither my husband nor I care about gifts.

Olof and I are mostly in sync on the love languages, except for the ones that neither of us speaks at all. Now that we’re retired, we get to spend lots of quality time together, a huge improvement from all those 80-hour weeks Olof worked when he would literally fall asleep at the dinner table. It’s very hard to have a conversation with someone face down in their linguine.

And while he isn’t big on getting massages, he gives the greatest back rub ever.

I’m very good at giving words of affirmation. However, I don’t get as many back as I might like. Is this a guy thing? An engineer thing? Olof’s view of communication is that couples should be able to talk to each other about anything. So long, he adds, as you never actually do it.

He will never offer an opinion about anything personal unless asked. Nay, begged. No, implored. Actions, he maintains, speak louder than words.

OK, but as I’ve pointed out to him on more than a few occasions, sometimes words would come in really handy.

For me, the acts of service are really high on my list. One such example: Olof has taken over cleaning our outdoor aviary, a job I had for two decades but am physically unable to do anymore. And it’s not the type of job you can hire out. The aviary cage is built into our back porch and requires a lot of shoveling bird poop and seed hulls, then laying down fresh newspaper, which will be coated with more bird poop and more seed pretty much instantly.

After he retired, Olof graciously also took over cleaning the dishes, though I think it might have been more self-defense than an act of love. I’m not the worst housekeeper in the world, although it has been suggested I’m a contender. (Was he a single working carpooling Cub Scout-leading parent for 12 years??? I think not.)

As happy as I am not to be doing dishes after all these years, he runs the dishwasher practically empty. It makes me nuts.

“Inga,” I have to say to myself. “Step away from the dishwasher!  The man is doing the dishes. If he wants to run it with two friggin’ forks, let him!”

So I’d like to amend the “acts of service” love language to say “providing acts of service as the previous service provider would have done them.” Is this too much to ask?

There is no question Olof and I have very different styles of doing things. My biggest love language is action.  If I see something that needs attention, or is pointed out to me by my husband, I’m on it. No time like the present!

It is definitely not Olof’s idea of a love language, however. Olof has a different word for this love language: “nagging.” If I point out something to him that he needs to take care of that I can’t do myself, it goes on a list where it generally languishes until it dies of old age (or I hire a handyman to do it).

Olof is clear that he hates being nagged worse than just about anything.

I have tried to explain over the years that there is an amazingly simple solution to nagging: Just do what you were asked to do! Maybe even this week! You’re retired! You have time!

I confess I’ve had malevolent moments when he’s asked me to make copies of financial documents for him (the printer-copier is on my desk) and I’m tempted to let them languish instead of making the copies right away. If he should ask, my fantasy is to smile brightly and announce, “It’s on my list!”

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, escalation of hostilities is never a good approach to problem resolution.

I guess the ultimate love language might be accepting the person you’re married to with all their quirks, including running an empty dishwasher that wastes a ton of water and reduces the life of the machine by a decade.

But every week, when I see him out there mucking out the bird cage, I feel loved. Really, really loved.

Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at inga47@san.rr.com. ♦

Originally Published: July 22, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.