Walk West Washington Street this month and you will pass three restaurant spaces in different stages of the same transition. One just said goodbye after twelve years. One has been running for almost two years under a name most of the block didn't recognize when it opened. One is still behind construction paper, weeks from its first pour. Stand at the corner of Washington and Goldfinch long enough and you start to notice something the food blogs miss when they write their roundups: none of these spaces are going to strangers.
That is the actual story of Mission Hills' restaurant scene right now. It is not that the neighborhood is "having a moment," the way every commercial strip in San Diego gets described eventually. It is that when a restaurant here closes, the people who take over the lease are almost never outsiders. They are already in the neighborhood, already running something two doors down, or already known by name to the people who organize the block's biggest annual event. The turnover is real. The churn of new ownership from outside the community is not.
Three Doors, One Pattern
Three moves define the current stretch of West Washington Street:
- 902 West Washington lost Harley Gray Kitchen & Bar after twelve years and is being taken over by the husband-and-wife team behind La Puerta Mission Hills, who already run a second location a few doors away.
- 901 West Washington, on the corner of Goldfinch, became home to Communion and Paradis inside a new 54-unit residential building, both from a restaurant owner with three decades of San Diego and Coachella Valley credits behind her.
- 301 West Washington is being rebuilt into Serafino, an all-day cafe and wine bar, by a team that includes a beverage director who already lives in Mission Hills.
Each of those is worth its own look, because each one tells you something different about how this particular strip absorbs change.
What Happened at 902 West Washington
Harley Gray opened in 2014, named by owner John Ealy after his nieces Harper Grace and Marley May, and spent twelve years building a reputation as a gay-owned, all-day staple of the neighborhood's restaurant row, known for approachable shared plates and a full bar that stayed busy through the week. Its last night of service was Friday, December 19, 2025.
The space did not sit empty and it did not go up for bid to a group from outside San Diego. Merritte and Hailey Powell, who already operate La Puerta Mexican Restaurant and opened a second La Puerta location near Harley Gray back in 2021, are the ones taking over 902 West Washington. As of the most recent reporting on the project, the Powells had submitted a liquor license application and were planning a new concept rather than a third La Puerta, aiming for seven-day-a-week service that honors what Harley Gray built without simply repeating it. If you have walked past that address recently, you already know more than this article can tell you about whether the doors are open. What the record shows is that the people replacing a twelve-year neighborhood fixture were already running a restaurant on the same block.
Ealy, for his part, did not leave the restaurant business. He kept the Harley Gray name, opened The Anvil Gym, and continues to run Ideal Bar & Grill in Santa Cruz and Zelda's in Capitola. The closure ended a location. It did not end the relationship between that owner and the neighborhood's business community, which matters for reasons that become clearer once you look at who sponsors the block's biggest annual event.
The Building That Split Itself in Two
A block away, at the corner of Washington and Goldfinch, a 54-unit residential building called The Sasan opened with fern-draped, curved architecture that made it the most visually distinct new structure on the strip in years. It houses two restaurants under one owner: Paradis, a ground-floor sidewalk cafe, and Communion, a rooftop restaurant with a nearly 360-degree view of the city, both from restaurant owner Jacquee Renna Downing.
Downing is not a newcomer to San Diego dining. She previously owned Pacifica Del Mar with her late husband, Kipp Downing, and has run La Quinta Cliffhouse and Pacifica Seafood in the Coachella Valley. Opening two concepts in one building in Mission Hills was not a bet on an unfamiliar market. It was a veteran restaurateur choosing to plant two flags at once in a neighborhood she already understood the appetite for.
| Address | What left | What's arriving | Who's behind it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 902 W. Washington St | Harley Gray Kitchen & Bar (12 years, closed Dec. 19, 2025) | New concept, name not yet announced | Merritte and Hailey Powell, La Puerta Mission Hills |
| 901 W. Washington St / Goldfinch | New construction (The Sasan, 54 units) | Communion (rooftop) and Paradis (ground floor) | Jacquee Renna Downing |
| 301 W. Washington St | Two separate storefronts | Serafino, all-day cafe and wine bar (slated Fall 2026) | David Cross, Rebeca Cross, Michael Di Carlo, Amanda Sarich |
A Wine Bar Built by Someone Who Already Lives Here
The newest project on the strip is Serafino, which is combining two adjacent storefronts at 301 West Washington into a single 3,100-square-foot space slated to open this fall. The team reunites founders who first worked together fourteen years ago across hospitality, wine, and culinary leadership. Co-founder David Cross previously founded Civitas Living, which supports adults with developmental disabilities in independent living and employment, and co-founder Rebeca Cross brings a background as a high school special education teacher. Serafino will not operate as a nonprofit, but the ownership team has said it plans to build a team of employees of all abilities inside a standards-driven hospitality environment, with accessibility built into the layout from the start alongside architectural planning from San Diego-based Hollander Design Group.
The beverage program is being led by Amanda Sarich, a San Diego native who already lives in Mission Hills and brings existing relationships in California's wine community that are expected to shape both the wine list and a forthcoming wine club.
"Inclusion and excellence aren't competing ideals," says co-founder David Cross.
That is not the language of an outside group testing a new market. It is the language of people who already have a stake in how this specific stretch of Washington Street treats its neighbors.
The Anchors That Never Left
None of this churn touches the restaurants that have made Mission Hills a dining destination for years without needing a rebrand. Izakaya Masa has served what many consider the city's best tonkotsu ramen for over two decades out of a tiny, wood-paneled room with maybe a dozen tables, and there is almost always a line. The Red Door, run by chef and owner Luciano Cibelli, still shops daily and bakes its own bread and pasta, including a gluten-free bucatini, with a Beef Wellington that remains the house signature. Venissimo Cheese is still where residents build a cheese board for a dinner party or a picnic in Balboa Park.
These places are the baseline. Against them, the turnover at 902, 901, and 301 West Washington reads less like disruption and more like new chapters being written by people who already understood the rules the anchors set.
The Same Names Sponsor the Trolley
The clearest evidence that this is a closed loop, in the best sense, shows up every October. The Mission Hills Business Improvement District runs Taste of Mission Hills, an annual fundraiser that in 2025 marked its 13th year with 28 participating restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and specialty purveyors along a five-mile route covering West Lewis Street, Fort Stockton Drive, Goldfinch Street, West Washington Street, Reynard Way, and India Street. That is up from 26 participating venues the year before, a small but real sign that the food scene here is adding more, not fewer, stops even as individual leases change hands.
Free trolley transportation between stops has been funded by a specific list of sponsors: John Ealy of Harley Gray Kitchen & Bar, Hailey and Merritte Powell of La Puerta Mission Hills, Jacquee Renna of Communion, and Keiko and Don Holmes of Sushi Deli 1 Mission Hills. Those are the same names attached to the restaurant transitions above. The people funding the neighborhood's biggest annual celebration of its own food scene are the same people deciding what happens to the spaces when a lease ends.
What It Means If You Live Here
If you have watched a favorite restaurant close somewhere else in San Diego and reopen months later as a regional chain outpost, Mission Hills is worth noticing precisely because that has not been the pattern here. The Mission Hills Business Improvement District counts more than 470 business license holders across West Lewis Street, Fort Stockton Drive, Goldfinch Street, the West Washington Street and University Avenue corridors, Reynard Way, and India Street's International Restaurant Row. Within that footprint, the restaurant closures of the past two years have each been absorbed by someone who already had equity, reputation, or a home address in the neighborhood.
That does not mean every future closure will follow the same path. It does mean that the people worth watching, if you want to know what is coming next to West Washington Street, are not investors from outside San Diego. They are the names already on the sponsor list for next October's Taste of Mission Hills.
Mission Hills' food scene keeps changing hands without changing character, and that kind of continuity is exactly the sort of detail that tells you what a neighborhood actually values. If you are curious what that says about the market for the homes around this corridor, Tami Fuller & Associates has spent decades watching Mission Hills up close. Request a complimentary neighborhood market consultation whenever you are ready to talk about it.
