The 10 Best Restaurants in University City and UTC

It's a Friday night in University City, it's getting close to midnight, and somebody at the table still wants truffle udon carbonara. JOEY La Jolla is the place that says yes. This globally inspired dining room at Westfield UTC serves until midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 1 AM on Friday and Saturday, the longest late-night window of any restaurant on this list. The late hours are a bonus. The food is why it's number one.

The menu travels, and it does it well. Korean fried cauliflower and Japanese gyoza sit a few lines away from Szechuan chicken lettuce wraps, steak frites and lobster spaghetti. The dish people bring up most is that truffle udon carbonara, Japanese udon noodles dressed up carbonara-style. For a table that can't decide between surf and turf, the steak and lobster spaghetti settles the argument. Fans of the place also talk about the champagne, the short rib French dip sandwiches and a spicy crab dip that comes with slices of baked bread. Dessert has two camps: the butter cake and the crème brûlée cheesecake.

JOEY is a family-owned restaurant group that's been in business since 1992, with restaurants across Canada and the US. The group says every location is custom built for its surroundings and no two are alike. Here, it describes a patio built around a fire bowl, framed by landscaping and wrap-around seating, at the mall's northwest corner near valet parking, plus a private dining room and an art collection inside.

What puts JOEY on top is how many kinds of nights it handles. It books tables on OpenTable. It works for a date, a birthday dinner for six, or a late drink and a plate of gyoza. The happy hour, which the group runs in the lounge, bar and patio both during the day and late at night, is one of the things people mention most. If Haidilao is the dinner that becomes the whole evening, JOEY is the one that fits whatever evening you already had planned.

Hot pot is dinner as a group project, and Haidilao Hot Pot San Diego at Westfield UTC is the one full hot pot dining room in University City. A pot of broth heats up at the table, everyone orders plates of meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles, and you cook it all yourselves, one dunk at a time. It runs until midnight every night of the week, which makes it one of the easiest late dinners in the neighborhood for a crowd.

Start with the broth, because that's where the big decisions happen. Tomato and tom yum are the two bases people name most, and the smart order is a split pot with one of each, so the heat seekers and the tomato fans each get a side. The sukiyaki spicy bone broth is the other favorite. Then build out from there: shrimp paste, short rib, some beef and lamb, a round of vegetables, and noodles to finish.

The brand has a story of its own. Zhang Yong and three partners opened the first Haidilao in 1994 in Jianyang, in China's Sichuan province, and it grew into a company known for its service, from free snacks to manicures to hand-pulled noodle performances at some of its locations. Its first US restaurant opened in 2013 at Westfield Santa Anita, so a mall address runs in the family.

Haidilao lands a hair behind JOEY, and the gap is about as small as a ranking gap gets. The difference is the format. Hot pot is a two-hour commitment built for four or more, and JOEY works just as well for two people on a weeknight. When the meal itself is the plan for the night, this is the pick.

The best single bowl of food in University City comes from a plaza on Towne Centre Drive. VIET NOM is an independent Vietnamese restaurant, and its short rib pho is one of the most talked-about dishes in the whole neighborhood.

The short rib bowl is the place to start: sliced short rib and brisket in what the menu calls an extra beefy pho broth. Hungrier? The Pho Nom is the house showpiece. It piles a bone-in back rib, sliced short rib, brisket and beef balls into a 12-hour slow-simmered beef bone broth seasoned with 40°N fish sauce, then finishes it with a poached egg. There's also a meatball-and-short-rib bowl, and a back rib pho built around slow-cooked bone-in ribs.

Get something for the table first. The chili tamarind wings are sweet and sour with a kick and come with a toasted coconut ranch, and the shrimp spring rolls and pork-and-taro egg rolls are both crowd favorites. Not in a soup mood? The broken rice plate brings grilled marinated pork with scallion oil, egg meatloaf and a fried egg, and the grilled pork vermicelli has plenty of fans. Close with a Vietnamese egg coffee or mango sticky rice with sorbet.

The restaurant says it wanted to give Vietnamese cooking a home-cooked feel with a modern twist, and the praise starts with the broth. A few people say they can smell it on the way in. VIET NOM sits at number three only because it closes earlier than the two above it and doesn't take reservations. On the food alone, it's right there with them.

Soup dumplings are the reason to put your name on the Din Tai Fung waitlist at Westfield UTC, and the kurobuta pork xiao long bao are the tray to order first. The restaurant is known for its paper-thin wrappers, each dumpling pinched into 18 folds.

The story starts in Taipei with a cooking oil shop. Yang Bing-yi and his wife, Lai Penmei, opened Din Tai Fung as an oil retailer in 1958. Around 1970, a Shanghainese friend suggested turning half the shop over to xiao long bao, and the dumplings took over so completely that by 1972 Din Tai Fung had stopped selling oil and become a full restaurant. The first US location opened in Arcadia in 2000, run by the founders' son Frank.

The best way to eat here is in rounds. Cucumber salad is the plate people photograph and talk about more than anything else on the menu, and it's a cool, crunchy opener. Then the xiao long bao, a tray of chicken dumplings or the chicken wonton soup, and the braised beef noodle soup if someone wants a full bowl. The sweet and sour pork baby back ribs are the sleeper pick. End with kurobuta pork buns or, better yet, the chocolate buns.

Waits are the one thing to plan around. Din Tai Fung takes reservations, and the waitlist opens at 10:30 AM, so book ahead or get on the list early. Weekend service starts at 10 AM, which makes it a strong late-morning family table. It ranks fourth because those waits shape the visit more here than at the three spots above it.

Lucrezia La Jolla is the Westfield UTC room built to feel like a vacation. The restaurant calls itself coastal Italian with a contemporary twist and pitches the whole place as a sunny terrace on the Amalfi Coast. The outdoor patio and the live music are two of the things people mention most, so the pitch seems to be working.

Pasta is the heart of the menu. The cacio e pepe is made with casarecce and finished with shaved black truffle. The spicy vodka rigatoni gets a tomato vodka cream and grana padano, and the house tagliatelle comes with a six-hour meat sauce. Linguine vongole brings Manila clams, white wine, garlic, chili and lemon. Outside the pasta section, the grilled lamb chops, served over a cannellini purée with an heirloom tomato salad, are the plate people name most, and the Al Tartufo pizza layers ricotta, sautéed mushrooms and shaved Italian truffles.

The easiest way in is happy hour, which runs from 3 to 5 PM every day at the bar. That menu covers oysters, calamari fritti, meatballs, rosemary fries with grana padano, and the arancini, fried arborio rice with mozzarella and arrabbiata. It's a good way to turn a late-afternoon meet-up into dinner without anyone noticing the switch.

Lucrezia and The Amalfi Llama are the two Italian-leaning rooms on this list, and they split the job neatly. Lucrezia is the pasta, patio and glass-of-wine night. The Llama, one spot down, is the fire-and-steak one.

Fire runs the kitchen at The Amalfi Llama, a wood-fire Italian steakhouse on La Jolla Village Drive at Westfield UTC. The restaurant describes its cooking as the rustic live-fire style of Patagonia meeting traditional Italian flavors, with an open parrilla grill and a wood-burning oven doing the heavy lifting.

The menu reads like a steakhouse and a trattoria sharing a kitchen. On one side sit a prime New York strip and a center-cut filet. On the other, truffle tagliatelle and lobster arrabbiata. Start with the focaccia and the short rib empanada, a menu favorite, and keep an eye out for the branzino, the crab cake and the Maine lobster roll, which fans bring up again and again.

Live music is the thing people mention most about the room, and the kitchen stays open until 11 PM on Friday and Saturday, one of the later weekend kitchens at UTC. The restaurant says it's designed for everything from date nights to group dinners.

This is the biggest-ticket dinner on the list, and people report spending $100 or more per person. That makes it the pick for the night that has to land: the anniversary, the big promotion, the parents in town who'd like a steak. Book ahead, settle in, and let the grill do its thing.

At MARUGAME UDON in Westfield UTC, the show starts before you order. The udon is made to order in an open, theater-style kitchen, where the dough gets rolled, cut and boiled right in front of the line. It's the most fun you'll have waiting for lunch at the mall.

The brand takes its name from Marugame, Japan, and makes Sanuki-style udon from imported flour that's kneaded and then aged in a climate-controlled space before it becomes noodles. Chef Aki Matsuo, whom the company calls its master of handmade udon, oversees how the staff is trained.

You order at the counter. The signature is the Nikutama udon, topped with sweet beef, and the curry nikutama puts curry into the same idea. Then add tempura, which is battered by hand: shrimp, sweet potato and a potato croquette are the popular picks, and tamagoyaki is an easy extra. If someone would like rice instead of noodles, the chicken katsu curry and the bolognese rice bowl have them covered.

It's the easiest meal on this list on the wallet, with most people spending between $10 and $20, and long lines are the thing to plan around. The noodles are the reason it made the cut. It sits at number seven because counter service answers a smaller question than a sit-down dinner does.

Telefèric Barcelona La Jolla brings a Barcelona family's tapas restaurant to Westfield UTC. Soledad and Ramón Padrosa opened the original Telefèric in Sant Cugat, just north of Barcelona, in 1992. Their son Xavi carried it across the Atlantic in 2016, starting with Walnut Creek, and Telefèric now has nine locations across California, Arizona and Spain.

The move here is to order for the table and pass everything around. Pan con tomate comes on toasted bread with chorizo butter. Patatas bravas get brava sauce and aioli, and the crab croquetas are topped with tuna sashimi and spicy aioli. For bigger bites, go for the gambas al ajillo, garlicky prawns in olive oil, and the pulpo Telefèric, grilled Spanish octopus over potato cream with pimentón XO. Wagyu empanadas filled with braised short rib round out a strong first round.

If the table can wait, order a paella as soon as you sit down. They take 25 to 30 minutes and are made to share: lobster, mixta with pork belly, chicken and shrimp, negra with squid ink rice and seafood, and a veggie version. Sangria comes three ways, and dessert means churros with chocolate and toffee or the torrija, a Catalan toast with crème brûlée, passion fruit and ice cream.

Its spot at number eight reflects a smaller pool of reviews than the rooms above it. On the food alone, it scores in the top half of this list.

Seasons 52 at Westfield UTC is the lighter dinner on this list, and it's built that way on purpose. The kitchen cooks on an oak-fire grill and in a brick oven, with no fryers, and the company says its entrées are designed to come in naturally under 595 calories.

True to the name, the menu moves with the seasons, with the core menu changing four times a year, so what's on it depends on when you go. This summer's menu featured a wood-grilled corn flatbread, wild Alaska salmon and a watermelon margarita. The dishes people name most are the lump crab and shrimp-stuffed mushrooms, ahi tuna tartare, brick oven-roasted Chilean sea bass, cedar plank-roasted salmon and caramelized grilled sea scallops.

Wine is the other draw. The wine bar pours a long list by the glass and by the bottle, with flights if you'd like to compare a few, plus seasonal cocktails. Leave room for the pecan pie mini, one of the most popular things on the menu.

The first Seasons 52 opened in Orlando in 2003, and the UTC location is a dependable pick for a bookable table, a business dinner or a meal with someone who'd like to keep it light. It takes reservations and runs until 10 PM Monday through Saturday. It ranks ninth because opinions spread a little wider here than at the rooms above it.

Outcast Grill is the neighborhood pick, out on Regents Road on the residential side of University City, and it's the only restaurant on this list that opens at 8 AM on weekends. It's an independent, family-friendly spot with a menu that roams from Mediterranean plates to pizza, burgers and Mexican dishes.

Hummus is the dish people talk about most. It comes with kalamata olives, paprika, tahini and pita, and you can add mushrooms and onion on top, the version fans single out. From there, the kebab fries pile seasoned kebab beef, tahini and hummus over fries with a spicy Yemenite sauce, and the shawarma wrap rolls seasoned chicken, hummus, Israeli pickle and grilled onion into laffa bread. For a bigger plate, the Mediterranean lamb dinner brings three lamb chops with hummus, pita and a Greek salad.

Weekend brunch runs from 8 AM to 3 PM, with specialty pancakes on the menu, and the chilaquiles and shakshuka both have their own followings. The chile relleno is a house favorite that the restaurant asks you to check on, so ask about it when you order.

There's a large patio, a bleu cheese burger with sautéed mushrooms and onion, battered cod fish and chips, and a happy hour. The kitchen closes at 8:30 PM on weeknights, so it fits an early dinner or a slow Saturday morning.