February 4, 2016
Occupying the former Nelson Photo Supplies building at 1909 India Street in Little Italy will be Born & Raised - the latest endeavor from San Diego-based hospitality collective, CH Projects (Ironside Fish & Oyster, Craft & Commerce, UnderBelly). Slated to open in late summer 2016, Born & Raised will pay homage to America’s greatest dining institution, the classic steakhouse.
The name ‘Born & Raised’ is derived from CH Projects’ deep-rooted commitment to San Diego, a city that is fully engrained in their core values as an organization. Since CH’s inception in 2009, the collective has seen steady growth, now operating eleven hospitality-driven concepts within America's Finest City. Born & Raised will be the collective’s fourth restaurant in Little Italy, a neighborhood that has experienced an immense cultural progression with CH as a definite catalyst for growth.
Behind the interior overhaul will be local designer Paul Basile of BASILE Studio, who will build out the two-story, 8,000 square-foot restaurant with a midcentury architectural influence. The custom layout will feature two oversized bars, and three dedicated dining spaces including the main dining room, a downstairs patio seating, and a 1,500 square-foot rooftop terrace with an adjacent 2,000 square-foot open-air urban garden that will be utilized to grow many of the restaurant’s herbs and produce needs.
Conceptualized to honor the deceptively complex art of a perfectly prepared steak, Born & Raised will exist within CH’s growing repertoire of restaurants as the land-based alternative to their wildly successful seafood establishment, Ironside Fish & Oyster, which opened in 2014.
Although details on the culinary team and menu are forthcoming, Born & Raised will operate its own dry-aging program on-site - a process by which butchers age beef carcasses in a low-temperature, high-humidity room for weeks at a time. While many industry professionals and restaurateurs associate dry-aging on-premises to be time-consuming and financially inefficient, for CH, the development of culinary creativity and ability to control the aging of prized cuts in-house is well worth the investment.
“The steakhouse is one of America’s most iconic dining institutions. Achieving the kind of simplicity and authenticity that makes a steakhouse great isn’t easy to do, but we are hoping to rise to the occasion and give San Diego – a city that is at the core of who we are – an experience that pushes the culinary conversation and standards of expectation forward,” says CH Projects’ Co-Founder, Arsalun Tafazoli.
Anticipated opening date for Born & Raised is late summer 2016. For more information, visit CH-Projects.com.
