On a trip to San Diego earlier this year, I informed a friend of mine that I would be coming into town and suggested that we get together for dinner one night while I was there. He was ecstatic that we would be getting together in his hometown and he suggested we meet up at one of his favorite places his wife and he like to go to. On a usually cool summer evening, we met up at Nick's in Del Mar.
Nick's in Del Mar is part of the Nick's Restaurants group which feature upscale bistro fare in seafood, steaks, sandwiches, and shareable appetizers with a extensive cocktail, beer and wine selection at each of their 7 locations which sprawl from Los Angeles County down through Orange County and with two locations in suburban San Diego. The first Nick's opened in 2008 in Laguna Beach, but the family lineage that brought us the Nick's Restaurants goes back much farther than that.
Nicholas "Nik" Nickoloff was born in Bulgaria and brought his family over to the U.S. when the Soviet Union made Bulgaria a satellite nation after World War II. Nickoloff first settled in Michigan, then moved his family out to Southern California in the 50's. In the mid-50's, Nickoloff opened a coffee shop in Long Beach - Nik's Coffee Shop. Long Beach at that time was more of an industrial area with oil fields and a shipping port along with its namesake beach that attracted thousands to the area.
Nik's son Carl managed the family's restaurant and eventually took it over in the 60's. Seeing how Long Beach was getting more residential than industrial, Carl and his son Craig came up with a concept that would offer a large menu to cater to all members of the family with big portions of food, and make the decor fun and whimsical. Craig Nickoloff came up with a theme of old California during the gold rush of the mid-19th century for the decor of the restaurant due to he and his father's love of old Western movies. In September of 1977, the Nickoloff's - along with Scott McIntosh, an assistant manager at Nik's Coffee Shop - opened the first Claim Jumper restaurant in Los Alamitos, CA.
The Claim Jumper was an immediate hit and within 20 years about two dozen Claim Jumper restaurants had opened in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, as well as in far off places such as Louisiana and Tennessee. Revenues of the popular restaurant chain reached nearly $150 million by the end of the millennium. At its height, there were 45 Claim Jumper restaurants in 8 states.
Like a lot of restaurants in the late 2000's, the Claim Jumper felt the pinch from the financial crisis in 2008. By 2010, the company listed liabilities of nearly $500M with assets of $100M. Forced into bankruptcy, the chain was bought by the Landry's Restaurant Group out of Houston which was the parent company of such notable restaurant chains such as Rainforest Cafe, Bristol Seafood Grill, Joe's Crab Shack, Houlihan's and upscale steakhouses such as Mastro's, Morton's, and McCormick & Schmick's. Landry's also holds interests in casino gaming, amusement parks, and hotels and resorts.
Nick Nickoloff cut his teeth in the restaurant industry working with his father Craig at some of the Claim Jumper restaurants. He had his own ideas for a restaurant concept which centered on grown-up foods for grown-ups. In 2008, the first Nick's Restaurant opened in Laguna Beach and others soon opened in San Clemente, Long Beach and Manhattan Beach. By 2020, Nick's was ready to open their first location in the San Diego area, but the pandemic put those plans on hold. They finally opened the Nick's Del Mar location in the fall of 2020.
I was driving down from Los Angeles and was going to be a little early than I had originally planned on meeting my friend at Nick's Del Mar. He said that it wasn't a problem and that he would meet me there around 5 p.m. for an early dinner. (My stomach was still on Central time and I was getting kind of hungry, so the early west-coast dinner time for me worked out.)
Nick's Del Mar is located in the One Paseo shopping center just a short distance off Interstate 5 at the corner of Del Mar Heights Road and El Camino Real. (see map) The restaurant is sort of hidden within the outdoor mall from the street, so after parking in the garage at the mall I had to walk around a bit before I found the restaurant with its distinctive A-frame facade.
As I was walking into the restaurant, I got a text from my buddy who said he was on his way and would be there in 10 minutes. I told the hostess that I was waiting on someone and if it was OK to hang out at the bar until he showed up. She said it was no problem and I saddled up at the bar to order a beer. I ended up getting a hazy IPA from the Harland Brewing Company, another one of the many outstanding microbreweries in the great San Diego area.
The interior of the restaurant was very contemporary in its furnishings. Booths and tables hugged the walls while the large rectangular three-sided bar was the main feature of the inside dining area. There was an open window out into the outdoor patio opposite from where I was sitting at the bar.
My buddy showed up and I saw that he was having a conversation with the young lady at the hostess stand. After he talked to her, he saw me at the bar and came to sit down with me. After exchanging hugs and pleasantries, he told me that my early arrival caused some change of plans for dinner that night. "My fiancée's mother is in town," he explained to me. "We were going to have dinner here around 6:30 and we figured you'd join us." He said that his fiancée, her son and mother were out doing things and were going to meet him at the restaurant at 6:30. My buddy said, "I'm going to eat with you, then just nibble on stuff with my family when they come." I felt sort of bad that I had fouled up his plans, but he said not to worry. It was all good.
The hostess came by the bar and said that she had a table for us out on the patio. The patio was semi-enclosed with a roof overhead and the two ends closed up. It was in the low 60's with a brisk wind coming off the ocean that day. The whole week I was in Southern California, the weather was colder than normal and somewhat dreary.
We were given menus and our server came over to greet us. We had beers already from the bar and he went over the specials they had that evening - the seafood special sounded really good.
We started out with an appetizer - the tuna tartare that was served with crispy wonton chips along with a spicy soy sauce mixed with a wasabi cream and avocado slices. The sashimi grade tuna was outstanding and mixing it with the wasabi/spicy soy cream was just a delicious taste combo.
For my main course for dinner, my buddy was trying to talk me into the prime rib dip sandwich. He asked our server if they still had some of the prime rib available for the sandwich. "Oh, yeah," the waiter said enthusiastically. "It's still pretty early. We usually start running out of the prime rib for the sandwich later in the evening." They both really talked up the sandwich and I was tempted, but there were a couple other things on the menu that I was interested in.
I figured that I could get prime rib sandwiches back in the midwest pretty much about any time, but fresh seafood is always something I'm on the look out for when I get close to an ocean. The San Francisco Cioppino featured chunks of fresh salmon and sea bass, jumbo shrimp, clams and mussels in a hearty broth with fresh sourdough bread. But the buttermilk chicken strips sounded like a good meal on a cool California day. Our server said that Nick's was known for their buttermilk chicken.
In the end, I went the fresh seafood route and got the Chilean sea bass, pan-seared and served with a lemon butter/wine sauce. It came with sautéed spinach with garlic and almond slivers, and whipped potatoes. It was all very good, but I almost went with the seafood special that my buddy ended up getting.
The special was the Alaskan halibut - a nice 8 to 10 ounce chunk of fresh halibut that was pan-seared and oven-baked. It also came with the same spinach and whipped potatoes on the side. The halibut looked great and my friend said it was as good as it looked. As much as I was happy with the Chilean sea bass, I knew that I should have gone with the halibut. But, I didn't.
We finished up our dinner and as I was walking out, my buddy's fiancée, her son and mom were walking in. After some quick introductions and a bit of back and forth, I was on my way. They all seemed nice and I sort of wished afterward that I had waited to eat with them as a group.
I shouldn't make it sound like my visit to Nick's Del Mar was full of "what if's?" and second-guessed choices. It was a very nice experience with very good food, some excellent service and a great meal with a good friend. I did like the Chilean sea bass and the tuna tartare appetizer was outstanding. Any one of Nick's seven locations across Southern California would be a good place for nice casual meal. I have a feeling I'll be running into one during my upcoming visits back to SoCal.
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