Grand opening in Oceanside
Light bites. Gift card giveaways. Beauty product experiences. And a charity partnership.
Nordstrom Rack is opening June 6 in Oceanside with all of the above.
The roughly 31,500-square-foot store, at Pacific Coast Plaza, just east of Interstate 5 in Oceanside, will sell 90 percent of the brands available at Nordstrom, including Vince, Madewell and adidas.
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The grand opening includes a give-back component: Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County will be invited to a private event, where children in the program will receive $400 each to spend at the store. Nordstrom Rack is a supporter of this nonprofit and funds interview career training and homework help programs, according to a news release.
Winery changes hands
Orfila Vineyards & Winery has new owners and a new management company.
The 70-acre Escondido family winery, which opened in 1993, is now owned by Sara De Luca, who also has two coffee shops, Invita Cafe, in Carlsbad and Rancho Santa Fe.
De Luca, in a Facebook post about Invita, said she grew up spending summers in Italy. Coffee, family and conversation were connected, she said. She imported that concept to Invita, whose name is a play on invitare, or “to invite” in Italian.
Now, with Orfila, she again plans to focus on hospitality through wine.
Orfila will work with PE Management Group, a lifestyle, office and hospitality operator whose portfolio includes Belmont Park, Lakehouse Hotel & Resort in San Marcos, Invita and properties up and down the West Coast.
A view of Belmont Park.
(Meg McLaughlin/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Renato De Luca, who leads Belmont Park’s food and beverages, and who will be Orfila’s general manager, is Sara De Luca’s uncle. Invita itself started as a coffee cart in Belmont Park.
Belmont was recently rebranded, and new experiences and services may be headed for Orfila. What those are remains to be seen.
“I think right now, we’re in the discovery stage,” Renato De Luca said.
At Belmont park, he added, “we’re taking it to another level. So it (Orfila) is just one more property that we could bring that elevation in that guest experience. For us, building memories is just part of our culture.”
Spotted: new Hillcrest cafe
In 1994, a trending Seattle coffee roaster set up shop in Hillcrest, at the busy intersection at Fifth and Robinson. Down the street were Gap and a row of secondhand bookshops. All those closed or moved, but that Starbucks persisted. Until last year, when it shuttered that location, citing safety.
“They’ve had to remove all of the retail items. They’ve had to remove all of the tables and chairs. They’ve had to lock the bathroom just because of the hostile behavior of a lot of the homeless community,” Benjamin Nicholls, the executive director of the Hillcrest Business Association, told ABC 10News then.
Soon, a new cafe will open in the same corner: Amore Caffe. The windows are covered. The logo — a coffee bean resting against the A, and the Italian spelling of caffe — suggests an attention to detail and a cross-cultural approach that is promising.
The co-owner, Rodolfo Salum, said the menu will be “a little bit different from a regular coffee shop.” For one, it will serve sandwiches.
“But big ones, not small ones,” he added. Also: Ice cream and croissants.
The menu will have global touches, reflecting his own ancestry from Italy, Mexico and the Middle East, he said.
At 31, Salum is already a veteran of the San Diego restaurant industry. He has three other restaurants, including The Butcher’s Cut Steakhouse in the Gaslamp Quarter.
He hopes to open by July in time for San Diego Pride.
Bigger digs for La Jolla cafe
It already has one location in downtown La Jolla and one at La Jolla Shores. Now, Brick & Bell Cafe has added a third cafe and restaurant, just a few steps from its original location on Silverado Street.
The new cafe, in the Merrill Lynch Building on Fay Street, is called Brick & Bell Plus. Along with coffee and snacks, it serves lunch, gluten-free baked goods and breakfast pancakes, parfaits and toasts, it announced on social media Tuesday.
Other treats: homemade jam, homemade granola and homemade peanut butter.
Slushies and gas on sale
If you need to fill your gas tank and can wait until 4 p.m. Thursday, you may want to head to Circle K.
The gas and convenience chain is again offering 40 cents off per gallon, from 4 to 7 p.m., at participating locations. This time, the company is donating 10 percent of profits from gas sales in that window to a charity: Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation.
The chain shared one more “cool” promotion: now through August, its Polar Pops drinks and Frosters slushies cost 79 cents.
Viral hit hits San Diego
Have you heard of the Texas Donut?
It takes brisket, bacon, jalapeño, yellow onions, cream cheese, shredded cheese, barbecue sauce, flour, cold beer or club soda, baking powder and five spices.
Chop it, slice it, stuff it, wrap it, batter it and, what else, deep fry.
Starting May 28, National Brisket Day, the Texas Donut stuffed onion ring will be sold for a limited time at Abbey’s Real Texas BBQ, in Mira Mesa off Miramar Road.
Way bigger than your mouth and Instagram famous, with more than 50,000 likes on a video posted in March, the “donut” was made famous by a cook named Michael Duarte.
Duarte is collaborating with Abbey’s to bring the dish to San Diego. It will feature Abbey’s green oak and mesquite smoked brisket, which takes between 18 and 24 hours to cook on-site.
A trio will cost $13.99.
Do you know any stores or eateries that are opening or closing? Do you have a tip about San Diego shopping deals or news? Send me the scoop: roxana.popescu@sduniontribune.com.
