The 9 Best Waterfront Restaurants in San Diego

The idea for Mitch's Seafood reportedly started on a boat. Mitch Conniff was the executive chef aboard the American Angler, a long-range Baja sportfishing boat co-owned by Brian Kiyohara, and the plan they landed on was simple: a restaurant serving local fish, from local boats, run by local people. It opened in Point Loma in 2008, founded by three longtime San Diego fishing families: Brian and Viola Kiyohara, Randy and Tracy Toussaint, and Conniff himself, a chef whose résumé also includes a stint as sous chef at Jsix.

That origin still decides what lands on the plate. Nearly all the seafood comes from the waters off San Diego and Northern Baja, and most of it is caught by the owners or by fishermen they know personally. The restaurant stands on stilts over the water at the Point Loma Sportfishing dock on Scott Street, on the same spot where an earlier restaurant once stood, and it shares the dock complex with the sportfishing fleet. You're eating lunch at a working harbor, boats and all.

The order is the Fisherman's Stew: fish, shrimp, scallops, clams and mussels with tomato, fennel and saffron, plus garlic bread for the last of the bowl. After that, follow the reviewers, who keep coming back to the grilled octopus, the ceviche and the crab cakes. The fish tacos and sandwiches get plenty of love too, and a mixed seafood platter is the easy answer for a table that can't agree on one thing.

Mitch's takes the top spot because the food would hold up even without the view. Of every restaurant considered for this list, it has the steadiest run of strong recent reviews, and it serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, so it fits almost any plan. Breakfast is the lower-key way in, a separate morning menu to start the day on the dock. There are no reservations: you order at the counter and grab the next open table, inside or out, and at peak times both the line and the seats fill up.

George's at the Cove has been a La Jolla fixture since 1984, set on Prospect Street directly above La Jolla Cove. George Hauer opened it at 1250 Prospect, and for its first 16 years he ran it together with general manager Mark Oliver and chef Scotty Meskan. The piece everyone pictures came later. In June 1991 the restaurant added the Ocean Terrace, the glass-edged outdoor space that defines George's today.

The kitchen has a strong line of chefs behind it. Trey Foshee, a past Food & Wine Best New Chef, joined as executive chef and partner in 1998, and Chef Masa Kojima now leads the kitchen. The restaurant has passed 40 years in business and has been named among the Top 100 Best Al Fresco Dining Restaurants in America. The praise centers on the crudo, the hamachi, the yellowtail and the grilled octopus, along with a citrus salad, the pasta and a lobster roll that feels made for an ocean terrace.

The smartest way in is Little Luxuries, served from 2 to 5 PM at the Ocean Terrace Bar and at Level2 Bar. Each item is a pairing: Burger & Beer, Bluefin Crudo & Grey Goose, Salmon Rillettes & Pinot Grigio, or Shrimp Roll & Chardonnay. It slots neatly into an afternoon in La Jolla and gets you onto the terrace without turning the visit into a full dinner.

George's lands at #2, a whisker behind Mitch's. Its full-service ocean terrace is the more polished of the two, while Mitch's has been the steadier kitchen lately. Two tips help here. The premium glass-edge seats come with their own reservation conditions, so request them on purpose when you book. And on busy nights plates can take their time, which is an easy wait with the Cove below you.

Island Prime is about as literally waterfront as dinner gets in San Diego. The main dining room at this Harbor Island steakhouse is built on wooden stilts over the bay, with floor-to-ceiling windows and the downtown skyline across the water. Billed as the only waterfront steakhouse in the city of San Diego, it opened in 2005, along with its C Level Lounge, at the easternmost tip of Harbor Island, on land that was once home to the Rubens and Ruben E. Lee restaurants.

It's a Cohn Restaurant Group house, and that's a San Diego story of its own. The family-owned group started with one small diner in 1982 and now runs 22 restaurants around San Diego, plus two in Maui. The steak-and-seafood menu comes from chef and partner Deborah Scott, who also runs Coasterra next door. Plenty of people have found this room: Island Prime has been the highest-selling restaurant per square foot on the Port's tidelands.

Go for the Island Prime Filet Trio or the Seared Blackened Tuna, or make a night of the 38-day dry-aged New York steak. Fans of the place point first to the filet mignon, the lobster bisque and the popovers, and the ocean view comes up about as often as any dish. Want something besides steak? The Seafood Platter and Chicken Under a Brick are both on the menu.

Island Prime sits at #3, behind George's and its more ambitious kitchen. Think of it as a very good steakhouse with an extraordinary setting, where the view is part of what you're paying for. It's dinner only, with Saturday service starting an hour earlier than the rest of the week, and a water-side table near sunset is the one to book ahead.

Point Loma Seafoods started in 1963 with one small display case. Kelly and Marie Christianson sold fish out of it, and their sons Jack and John helped build the business into a fresh fish market, a processing stop for the sportfishing boats and a fish-and-chips restaurant. The Christianson family has run it for more than 60 years.

You'll find it on Emerson Street in Point Loma's boat basin, a working harbor with working boats in it. Fish arrives daily. The smoked selections spend eight to twelve hours over hickory, the sandwich bread is locally sourced, and the sauces and soups are made every day from family recipes. Sushi, beer and wine are on offer too, so a group can split up at the counter and meet back up to eat.

The move is to check today's fresh catch first, then add something hickory-smoked. What's in the case, and what it costs, follows the market, so come with a little flexibility. That's part of the fun of buying lunch from a fish market that also handles the sportfishing boats' catch.

In 2019 the family finished a $2.8 million modernization, tied to a new 40-year tidelands lease with the Port of San Diego. Point Loma Seafoods sits at #4 as a casual market-and-counter meal with lines and parking to plan around, and it earns the spot on character. Few meals on this list put you this close to the working waterfront.

Bali Hai has one of the best origin stories on the San Diego waterfront. The building went up on Shelter Island in 1953 as one of several Christian's Hut tiki bars, named for Fletcher Christian, the character Clark Gable played in the 1935 Bounty film, which was shot partly on Catalina Island. San Diego restaurateur Tom Ham then took over full control, and in 1954 it became Bali Hai.

Today it's one of the largest and oldest original mid-century tiki temples still operating anywhere. Shelter Island's zoning at the time required a Polynesian architectural theme, and the tiki-carved timbers were hauled down from the mountains of the San Diego backcountry. Two icons are still on site: Mr. Bali Hai, a large carved wooden headhunter figure who greets guests, and The Goof, a carving from the original Christian's Hut days that still sits on top of the building.

Order a mai tai. It comes in a tiki mug, and it's the drink people mention most, by a wide margin. The restaurant has water on three sides and runs separate lunch, dinner, brunch and lounge menus, and Polynesian floor shows have been part of the Bali Hai story over the years alongside the cocktails.

The mai tai and the building are the stars here, and the ranking reflects that. This list weighs the kitchen first, and reviewers talk about the drinks and the room far more than the plates, which puts Bali Hai at #5. Coasterra has the sharper kitchen, but nothing else on the list is an original mid-century tiki room on the water. For a first visit, plan it around a cocktail and the view.

Coasterra is Harbor Island's big modern bayfront room, with a view that takes in the bay, downtown and the Coronado Bridge all at once. Cohn Restaurant Group opened it in August 2015, right next door to Island Prime and C Level, after nearly a decade in development. It's a 28,000-square-foot venue with a restaurant, a lounge and event space, a build of roughly $15 million or more designed by the late San Diego architect Graham Downes. Coasterra has also been included in the Michelin Guide for San Diego.

The menu is modern Mexican with a Baja accent, from chef Deborah Scott. She's a Virginia Beach native who moved to California in 1992 and opened Indigo Grill, Mediterraneo in Alpine and Vintana in Escondido before this one. Share the Mexican paella for two, or start with the ahi tuna tostada, and pair either one with a Frida Rita or Deb's Coconut Margarita.

Pick your seat by the weather. The patio is solar-heated, and inside, the mural-painted dining room has floor-to-ceiling windows, so the skyline comes along either way. Coasterra lands at #6 on the strength of that skyline payoff, which edges out the more relaxed lagoon setting at Viewpoint.

Viewpoint Brewing Company brings the waterfront to Del Mar by way of the San Dieguito Lagoon. It's a 7,000-square-foot brewery and restaurant built over the lagoon, with seating inside and out, 20 taps of house-brewed beer, and a kitchen led by executive chef Dustin Karagheusian, who is credited with reinterpreting familiar dishes for the menu.

The setting is the calmest on this list. You're looking out over lagoon water rather than surf, which suits a slow afternoon, and Viewpoint is dog-friendly, so the whole household can come along. With seating inside as well as out, a gray marine-layer day still works.

Start with a small flight to work through what's pouring, then settle in for a full meal. Weekends open earlier, at 10 AM, which makes Viewpoint a good late-morning start to a North County day. Tuesday through Friday it opens at noon, and it's closed Mondays.

Viewpoint ranks #7 because a lagoon view is quieter than an oceanfront sunset. What it offers instead is dependability: easy access, a relaxed pace and a full kitchen behind the beer, which makes it one of the easiest outdoor meals on this list to plan.

Sunday brunch at Tom Ham's Lighthouse is a harbor-view buffet made for a big table with big appetites. The restaurant sits on Harbor Island Drive, with harbor-facing dining at the center of the room, and on Sundays the spread runs from a raw bar to the dessert stations with just about everything in between.

Start at the raw bar: lobster claws, crab legs, ceviche, scallops, oysters and peel-and-eat shrimp. From there, go wherever the table's cravings lead. There are omelets and eggs Benedict, lemon pancakes and cinnamon French toast, made-to-order pasta, short-rib hash, yellowtail and tri-tip. It's the kind of brunch where the oyster person and the pancake person can both get exactly what they came for.

This one takes a little planning. Brunch is $78 for adults, $30 for ages 5 to 11 and free for kids under 5, with a two-hour table limit plus listed surcharge and gratuity terms. Reserve with your full group size, arrive together and head for the raw bar first. It's on the same stretch of Harbor Island as Island Prime and Coasterra, a short drive away, if you want to scout a dinner spot for later.

Tom Ham's is on this list specifically for Sunday brunch, and it lands at #8 because it's a once-a-week meal with a clock on it. For a harbor-front brunch with a crowd, it's a one-reservation plan that feeds everybody.

Cannonball puts a rooftop right on the Mission Beach boardwalk. It's inside Belmont Park, the historic Mission Beach amusement park at 3105 Ocean Front Walk, and it's a full-service sushi and cocktail restaurant with a rooftop built for the oceanfront view.

Thursday is the day to aim for. Rooftop happy hour runs from 2 to 5 PM, Monday through Thursday, and on Thursdays the Acoustic Sunsets live music set picks up from 5 to 8 PM. That means you can roll straight from one into the other: sushi and a cocktail in the afternoon, then live music into the evening.

Belmont Park and the boardwalk make this an easy add-on to a beach day, and the rooftop is the reason to come. Outside the happy-hour window, Cannonball serves lunch and dinner every day, with later closing times on Friday and Saturday.

It closes out the list at #9 because Mission Beach crowds and boardwalk parking take some planning, and the setting is a big part of what you're paying for. Still, no one else on this list gets you onto a rooftop this close to the sand.