San Diego, CA
Inside Michelin-Starred Drew Deckman's 31ThirtyOne in North Park
He’s responsible for one-third of Mexico’s Michelin stars for sustainability and has a regular ole Michelin star, too. He’s a failed baseball umpire. His truck smells like Persian cucumbers and quail. He makes his own wine, his own olive oil, and shucks oysters like a robot. And now, Drew Deckman is finally opening his first restaurant in San Diego, with his son Sam cooking on the line with him and Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove, a partner.
Overhyping restaurants is as gross as it is predictable, puts too much pressure on what is ostensibly a dinner party with a permanent address. But, f*ck it. His arrival here, in this tiny New Yorkian fissure of a restaurant space, is the beginning of a new era for North Park.
31ThirtyOne opens Wednesday, August 14.
Deckman’s existence alone is imposing. He’s 6’6” or 6’13”. Sitting in his office, two days before opening night, he has to duck to not concuss himself on a low part of the ceiling.
“It’s an air duct, so we can’t move it,” he laughs.
On the white board behind him, the words “PRECISION” and “EXECUTION.” Below that, in wobblier script, “I love my dad,” written four or five times. His nine-year-old has been here for this whole process, watching her dad gut a failed restaurant, endure protracted delays, beg mercy from governing bodies that must sign-off before he can serve a single grain.
“I’ve had a shaman come in here twice to cleanse the place,” he says. “She’s coming again Friday.”
His hair, whitish-gray like the coals he cleaned out of his grill under that Baja tree for the last decade at Deckman’s en El Mogor, makes him look snow-topped. He is alpine. He has a constant, slight hunch, either the result of many years leaned over a cutting board in famous places run by famous food names (Paul Bocuse, Jacques Maximin, his mentor Madeleine Kamman) or because he’s trying to un-impose himself. Lower his altitude to relate.
Last night was his final “friends and family” dinner—dress rehearsals for his staff. Invite-only, free meals served to investors and friends and loved ones. Grateful guinea pigs who are told to expect everything to go wrong and be kind. Friends and families are an exorcism of last fatal mistakes by staff, before the doors fling open to the savage gen-pop of foodieland.
The food was incredible and imperfect. A 14-day, dry-aged ribeye with potato mousseline is steak and potatoes of your dreams, the crust of the steak so good it turns you feral. The Mindful mushrooms (from growers in El Cajon) with kale and smoked bacon are under-seasoned. At one point, the whole ordering system goes dark. The kitchen staff flies blind. A door handle to the restroom keeps falling off. I pass by the kitchen (everyone passes it, it’s wide open in the tiny middle of the place, a laying bare of the process) and he looks mad, ravenous for a little bit of control, a very seasoned and capable captain on a boat with an engine fire.
The next day, I walk in to see how he’s doing. His staff is gathered around him.
“Last night was terrible,” he says to them. “I was terrible. I never want us to get there again. But this is why we do this. If we did a test run and everyone said everything was great, that does us no good.” He makes six or seven metaphors. At one point he holds up a strainer and equates its perfect circle to the gaggle of humans that make up a restaurant organism.
He’s not chiding. He got his college degree in philosophy. He’s doing that.
It’s such a wild thing to see Deckman here, in a formal kitchen. For years, he’s stood under pine trees in the dry, open wild of Baja, goggles on, smoke billowing around him, giant tongs in hand. I ask him how it feels to be caged again.
“I love it,” he says. “I can handle it now. This was my life for so many years, that decade in Europe. It became my whole life back then, and not in a healthy way. It was 24 hours a day, no ability to have any relationship. I remember distinctly when Bernard Loiseau shot himself because he was afraid he was going to lose a Michelin star. That changed me. I stopped and said, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’”
And so he went free-range. He got work on fishing boats in Hawaii, then Mexico. When he saw how much biomass was being thrown back into the oceans, he got a bigger perspective on food. Deckman’s, and now 31ThirtyOne, is the reflection of that. All produce and greens are from San Diego farms. Oysters from Baja. Food of its place.
“At some point, you get so close to it all you can see is a single dot on the page,” he says of the unhealthy side of the chef obsession, The Bear–type kitchen life. “Then you back away and you see all these other dots that make up the bigger picture. When you’re only seeing that dot it’s all ego. In the beginning it was all about me. I thought I was the best thing since beer in a can. But you can only be a dick so long until people won’t answer your phone calls. As I moved away from the kitchen and found other things. I had to stand back from the fire. And then you realize it’s not about you. There are all these people holding up the ship. So stop trying to be the ship and be the water.”
That’s why there are no titles in his kitchen at 31ThirtyOne. No hierarchy. “We’re all just cooks, we’re all just bartenders and servers.”
At one point in opening 31ThirtyOne, he was so deep in blueprints and permitting applications and sheetrock contractors, he couldn’t see the vision of what the food would be. “My PR team kept saying, ‘What do you mean you don’t have a menu? Do you realize you open in a month?’”
So after construction crews had gone home, he sat alone in the kitchen in the dark and tried to see it. “I sat there for 45 minutes to an hour every night,” he says. “And it finally started to come.”
Wednesday, we’ll see what came.
The San Diego State Aztecs are exuding a vibe that is catching recruits’ attention both on and off the field.
The latest is Travon Garrison, a 1,000-yard receiver at Damien High in La Verne, who announced his commitment to the Aztecs on Tuesday afternoon.
“I thank God for this opportunity. Grateful to all the coaches who helped me through this process. I’m excited to announce my commitment to San Diego State University!” he posted on X.
On3.com posted a picture of Garrison, some family members and SDSU coach Sean Lewis at Snapdragon Stadium. Garrison is wearing sunglasses and a sign in the picture reads, “Speed Limit None,” with the interlocking SD logo forming the “S” in Speed.
Why Travon Garrison committed to SDSU
“I’ve been on campus at San Diego State a lot,” Garrison said in an interview with on3.com. “Every time I go, I feel more comfortable, more at home. The city of San Diego is great, there’s a lot to do, the weather is nice and it feels like a place I can see myself living and growing in for the next few years.”
He added that he “really clicked well” with wideouts coach Matthew Middleton, and that he thinks he will “fit in really well with the offense. It’s very similar to what we run at Damien, so I feel comfortable with it and believe it will allow me to play fast and showcase my strengths.”
BREAKING: La Verne (Calif.) Damien WR Travon Garrison has committed to San Diego State and broke down why he chose the Aztecs
“Everything about SDSU, the coaches and the environment made it the right place for me.”
Intel: https://t.co/GW6CDqLW6Y pic.twitter.com/e2YajRQjGy
— Greg Biggins (@GregBiggins) June 23, 2026
The 6-foot, 185-pound Garrison told the recruiting website that it was a tough decision after making official visits to SDSU and Washington State, which is part of the reconfigured Pac-12 that the Aztecs will officially join on July 1.
“I had to think about what was best for me, but in the end San Diego State felt like home,” Garrison told on3.com. “Everything about the program, the coaches, and the environment made it the right place for me.”
The three-star had an impressive list of offers that, besides SDSU and WSU, included bids from Kansas, UCLA, Washington, Utah, West Virginia and Colorado State.
As a junior, he had 46 passes for 978 yards and 13 touchdowns. He had four 100-yard games and one three-touchdown game.
How Garrison could fit in at SDSU
Garrison is at least the fifth wideout from the class of 2027 to commit to the Aztecs, which should make for some lively competition a year from now.
The Aztecs currently have an intriguing wide receiver room. Although the group was hit by injuries last year, when the Aztecs had an impressive turnaround season that ended with a 9-4 record, they do return all three starters and their top four pass catchers.
The most eye-catching development in spring was when Bert Emanuel Jr. switched from backup quarterback to wide receiver. That will allow him to showcase his big-play skills while sharing the field with returning starting quarterback Jayden Denegal. They are both seniors.
The wideout corps is senior-heavy.
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The Padres have a serious issue in their starting rotation.
That reality brazenly slapped them in the face again Tuesday.
And then it became a side story, at least for the night.
That is how crazy things got at Petco Park.
The Padres beat the Braves 7-6 when Mason Miller worked two scoreless innings and Manny Machado grounded a walk-off single up the middle to score Jackson Merrill in the 10th inning.
“I think the most important part is just how the team fought today,” Machado said. “I think that was impressive, being down four and then coming back and winning that ball game and fighting to the end. I think that shows a lot about the team. We picked up each other. We picked Griff. Bullpen came in and did their job too.”
The game was decided eight innings after the Braves took a 4-0 lead and the Padres took a 5-4 lead.
That is correct. The craziness commenced when for the second time in five games the Padres were part of a runaway inning.
They were on the wrong side of an 11-run inning Friday in Texas when the Rangers responded with six runs in the bottom of the first inning after the Padres scored five at the start of what ended up a 9-7 loss.
On Tuesday, the Padres came out on top of a nine-run second inning.
Griffin Canning jogged in from the bullpen to start that inning after Wandy Peralta worked a scoreless first as the Padres’ opener.
Canning would get just two outs, allow four hits, hit a batter, walk another and allow three runs before he departed.
His 40th pitch completed a walk that loaded the bases. That drew more than a few boos from the seats and brought Craig Stammen from the dugout.
The game didn’t really get wild until a little bit after that.
Kyle Hart walked the next batter to make it 4-0 before ending the top of the second on a groundout.
That is how the bottom of the second began for the Padres as well.
And then six consecutive batters reached base, and they scored five runs against Braves starter JR Ritchie.
The comeback began with walks by Xander Bogaerts and Will Wagner before singles by Rodolfo Durán and Sung-Mun Song cut the Braves’ lead in half and a double by Fernando Tatis Jr. got the Padres to 4-3 and got Song to third base.
An infield single by Samad Taylor flipped the lead.
Song easily scored on Taylor’s grounder up the middle, and when Braves shortstop Mauricio Dubón bounced a throw that got past first baseman Matt Olson, Tatis raced around third and beat a throw home by Olson.
The Braves tied the game 5-5 in the fourth and retook the lead in the fifth.
Michael Harris II singled, went to second on a wild pitch by Hart and scored on Ozzie Albies’ double in the fourth. Dubón homered in the fifth off Yuki Matsui, who had come in to get the final out of the fourth and ended up working through the sixth, leaving the bases loaded in that inning.
Jackson Merrill missed a game-tying home run by a foot and instead got a double leading off the fifth inning when his fly ball to right field hit the top of the wall and bounced back to right fielder Mike Yastrzemski.
Merrill finished the inning at second after a fly ball out by Machado and strikeouts by Gavin Sheets and Bogaerts.
Tatis did not miss a home run as the first batter in the seventh, sending a sinker from Carlos Carrasco 406 feet to center field to tie the game 6-6.
David Morgan worked the seventh and Adrian Morejón the eighth before Miller threw just 11 pitches in the ninth and went back out for the 10th.
“One, we didn’t have a ton of bullpen left,” Stammen said of the decision to have Miller work a second inning . “And he’d been kind of asking me over the course of the season: ‘Hey, I got another one, come on, let me have it.’”
Austin Riley began the 10th by hitting a long fly ball to right field that moved the automatic runner from second to third before Miller struck out Rowdy Tellez and ended the inning by getting a groundout from Eli White.
“It definitely goes a long way,” Miller said, “when you empty everybody out early and you have another game tomorrow, being able to carry two innings there and keep two guys fresh for tomorrow and give us a chance to win again tomorrow as well.”
Merrill was the runner on second to start the bottom of the 10th after he made the final out in the ninth. Machado walked to the plate against Raisel Iglesias, the Braves closer, who had also worked the ninth.
“Looking for a strike,” Machado said. “He’s a strike thrower, one of the best in the game right now. So just trying to be aggressive on that first pitch, something I can drive. Don’t really need much, just just a base hit to score Jackson. So just trying to hit it hard somewhere.”
No matter the result, the Padres are left to figure out what to do about Canning, whose ERA swelled to 7.38 after he yielded his ninth multi-run inning among the 45 innings he has begun for the Padres this season.
He is but one of the flat tires on the rotation bus.
The Padres got seven shutout innings from Michael King in a 1-0 victory over the Braves on Monday. It was the first time a Padres starter went seven innings since King did it on May 18 and just the third quality start by a Padres pitcher in 24 games.
The members of the starting rotation, including the two times Canning has worked after an opener and the two times Lucas Giolito has done so, have a combined 4.76 ERA over the past 25 games.
But the Padres figured out how to win Tuesday, just the second time in a month they have won consecutive games.
“Griffin didn’t have his stuff like he wanted to,” said Taylor, who finished 3-for-4 with a walk. “But we fought. We’re going to keep fighting until the game is over. We fought. Got back in the game. Good at-bats, good pitching. And you leave it into Manny’s hands, he’s going to take over and win the game for us.”
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