North Park welcomes Verbena Kitchen to the neighborhood

Verbena Kitchen restaurant opened July 14 in North Park.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Aug. 2, 2021 12 PM PT

Veteran event planner Jillian Ziska has teamed up with San Diego chef Ronnie Schwandt to launch a new hospitality company that debuted July 14 with their flagship project, Verbena Kitchen in North Park.

The venue is now serving a dinner menu from 2 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, as well as Sunday brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The company will also offer catering services at the Verbena location, 3043 University Ave.

Ziska, the owner of Verbena Kitchen, is the founder of To Be Designed, which offers bespoke event planning with custom furniture, decor and venues. Schwandt formerly worked for Blue Bridge Hospitality and the Trust Restaurant Group. The team also includes general manager Dallas Juanes, who is overseeing the wine and cocktail program.

Schwandt’s kitchen program includes house-made mustards, pickling and fermentation. Dishes include Wagyu beef tartare with cured egg yolk, deviled eggs and Peruvian shrimp ceviche. The brunch menu includes “not avocado toast,” a stuffed avocado served with pickled onions, poached eggs and cauliflower tabouli, and beet poached salmon salad with local peaches and corn. Juanes’ cocktails include TeaTime, made with Earl Grey tea-soaked gin, Cherry Blossom with cherry-soaked unfiltered sake and the Wonky Donkey with lemongrass-soaked Korean soju.

For details, visit verbenakitchensd.com.

Kragen writes about 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.