The Best Date Night Restaurants In San Diego

San Diego has seen a wealth of amazing restaurants pop up over the last decade – serving modern fresh food in lovely and thoughtful settings – making these the perfect places for a date night or a special night out in the city. Date night spots allow you to dress up a bit, order a fancy cocktail, get some food with ingredients you don’t know how to pronounce, and talk to your date without shouting.

When Dorsia is full, you can take your date to one of these spots to ensure a nice night out with great ambiance and delicious food where you don’t have to shout over twenty drunk people to get your order heard.

THE BEST DATE NIGHT RESTAURANTS

The Rose Wine Bar – South Park

The Rose Wine Bar in South Park is a natural wine bar and a charming restaurant that sits on a charming street in a charming neighborhood in a charming city. They serve brunch, lunch, and dinner with an eclectic cuisine style – leaning Spanish tapas with some French and Mexican influences. The Rose serves mostly natural wines that are creative and diverse and delicious, so don’t be shy to enlist the servers for help deciding what to drink. Their cocktails are delicious as well. In short, they do it all well.

Juan Jasper Kitchen & Wine

Juan Jasper Kitchen & Wine is one the most romantic restaurant in San Diego. Located in Golden Hill, this a tiny wine bar and restaurant that serves delicious food and wine to match. The space itself is very small, with only a few tables and a communal seating bar outside, so be ready to be friendly with your neighbors. Juan Jasper feels more like having a meal at a friends house, if your friend was a rich Spanish gentry who knew a lot about wine, was an amazing chef, and an even better host.

Starlite San Diego

Starlite restaurant delivers a stellar dining experience, both literally and figuratively. Inside are three separate dining areas, each one an entirely unique experience and ambiance from star studded skies, to jungle patio, to a glamorous waterfall surrounded by mirrored tiles. The menu matches the elegance of the decor, from shared plates like wagyu and local yellowtail tartare, or honey gochujang carrots, to mains like bison short ribs in a cabernet reduction, or jidori chicken, and desserts like a honey cake. Wine and cocktails are elevated like everything else, and well worth it – try the Beretta for a rye whiskey drink, or Broken Meanings for gin lovers.

Mabel’s Gone Fishing

Mabel’s Gone Fishing is a Spanish influenced restaurant in the heart of North Park that seems to get everything just about right. The space is cozy but not cramped. The cocktails are perfectly well balanced. The food is beautifully crafted without being pretentious and unapproachable. And the service is knowledgeable without being, well… pretentious and unapproachable. Mabel’s is a great neighborhood spot for North Park and a destination restaurant in San Diego itself.

Trust Restaurant

One place that dominates the San Diego dining scene is Trust Restaurant. With a regularly updated and seasonal menu, its as good as it gets for brunch, dinner, and happy hour. Shared plates are the main jam here, with some of our favorites being the octopus fritters with bonito flakes, coal roasted carrots with pistachio butter, chicken liver toast, or the braised oxtail raviolini. Cocktails are crafty and delicious, with names inspired from places in Balboa Park such as the Zoo Place with smokey mezcal. The vibe is modern, chic, and elegant, where (nice) jeans and a polo are just as suitable as slacks and a dinner jacket, or your finest Sunday dress.

The Wildflour Delicatessen

Variety is the spice of life (so they say) and at Wildflour Delicatessen you’ll find variety. Wildflour is a cafe, a bakery, a deli, a bar, and a casual restaurant all rolled into one. And surprisingly, they pull this off with grace and confidence, making Wildflour is one of the best restaurants in Point Loma. Located in Liberty Station, Wildflour breaks away from the mold of traditional, stuffy dining and pulls off a classic, modern SoCal charm that is perfect for date nights, meeting with friends and family, or posting up at the bar. With so many restaurants trying to emulate Dorsia these days, this casual atmosphere and multi-concept approach from Wildflour is a nice, refreshing take on dining in San Diego.

Cori Pastificio Trattoria In North Park

Few Italian restaurants hold a candle to Cori in North Park, which is why they deserve your appetite. Chef Accursio pours his heart into each dish, including homemade focaccia bread with crispy capers and olives, pappardelle with wild boar sugo, or ditalini pasta infused with squid ink. It’s classic, contemporary, and all delicious. Fine wine and cocktails, excellent service, and beautiful furniture with vibrant colors make it an excellent place for date night or to impress your partner’s parents.

Il Posto South Park

Located on the cozy, tree-lined streets of South Park, Il Posto offers a smaller, more intimate setting. We often sit at their bar for a little more socialization with the friendly staff (and prime seats to watch videos of the Italian country-side on their television), or you can take a seat at one of their dining tables. On their menu is a great selection of fine Italian food including fresh-made pastas, seafood dishes, and salads. We highly recommend starting with their burrata e prosciutto (because why wouldn’t you). For a main course, the linguine alla vongole is as fresh and light as you should expect from a white white clam pasta, or you can try their incredible cioppino, which is a galaxy of seafood swimming in a rich tomato broth, all to be soaked up with some crispy grilled bread.

Civico 1845

Located a block away from the main bundle of Italian joints on India Street, Civico 1845 stands out, both literally and metaphorically. The restaurant itself is handsome, with an elegant dining room designed from reclaimed materials and a cozy outdoor patio by the sidewalk. But Civico does not rest on its ambience and location as it so easily could – their food is the star of the show. The menu at Civico is Calabrian cooking (think sausages and chilis) headlined by their homemade pasta dishes. If you get anything, get the papardelle brasato with a short-rib ragu – the sauce is savory and bold and something you get a strange craving to drink if only they would serve it in a glass. There is something addictive about it. The raviolo al gamberi is a delectable, rich, buttery choice of a dish for patrons who don’t have heart disease. Or those who do have heart disease and just don’t care anymore. Perhaps their most impressive feat at Civico is they have an entirely vegan menu that is not an afterthought – the dishes are just as good as the non-vegan menu.

Callie

Callie is an upscale restaurant in East Village that serves modern Mediterranean food in an elegant setting. Callie is a restaurant that would be acclaimed in New York or LA, one of those places, and it is one of the best restaurants in San Diego, particularly for nights when you want to fancy it up a bit. Take your parents or your date or your new business partner if you want to experience top quality food. Reservations are still tough to get, but there is a large elegant bar with comfortable seating that serves the full menu and is walk in only. Go for that.