Baja California-inspired Ponto Lago restaurant opens in Carlsbad

A dish served tableside at Ponto Lago restaurant at the Park Hyatt Aviara in Carlsbad.

San Diego Union-Tribune

June 30, 2021 10:15 AM PT

Ponto Lago, a new fine-dining restaurant at the Park Hyatt Aviara resort in Carlsbad, opened for dinner service on June 10.

Ponto Lago replaces the former Vivace restaurant, which closed during a $50 million, 18-month renovation at the resort that was completed in April. The dining concept under French-born executive chef Pierre Albaladejo and chef de cuisine Thomas Tuggle is global flavors mixed with inventive Baja California-inspired cuisine.

Pacific Manila clams with green rice at Ponto Lago at Park Hyatt Aviara resort in Carlsbad.

One feature of the new menu involves the chefs serving some dishes tableside. Diners can also create bespoke customized cocktails. Some of the features on the new menu, served from 5 to 9 p.m. daily, are Pacific Manila clams with green rice, quail with corn polenta and cherries, organic peri peri chicken with charred corn succotash, house-made chistorra sausage and daily roasted ducks, squab, rack of lamb and suckling pig. Entrée prices range from $24 to $72. Diners’ parking is validated.

Ponto Lago is at 7100 Aviara Resort Drive, Carlsbad. Visit parkhyattaviara.com/eat-drink/ponto-lago/.

Kragen writes about local restaurants for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.