The opening brings an end to an unusually prolonged development saga that began in 2017, after local institution Bully’s North closed following nearly five decades in business. What followed was years of design reviews, demolition plans, neighborhood scrutiny, pandemic-era delays, construction and a revolving series of proposed Hillstone concepts.
The project was initially introduced as an R+D Kitchen, later repositioned as an outpost of Hillstone’s seafood-oriented Gulfstream, and ultimately emerged as Honor Bar - a smaller, tightly controlled concept built around sushi, sandwiches, salads, cocktails and polished service. The finished restaurant is a significant departure from the old Bully’s property. Hillstone demolished the aging structure and replaced it with a purpose-built restaurant featuring indoor and outdoor dining, a street-facing patio and parking beneath the building accessed from the alley off 13th Street.
Del Mar approved a revised design in 2018 for a 4,169-square-foot restaurant above two levels of parking containing 59 spaces. At the time, city officials described it as the first newly constructed commercial building in downtown Del Mar in more than three decades.
Rather than opening with the expansive seafood menu once expected from Gulfstream, Honor Bar arrives with a deliberately concise selection that reads like a compact survey of Hillstone’s most recognizable dishes. The menu features nine sushi preparations, beginning with a $14 spicy carrot and avocado roll and extending to a $22 hiramasa roll with avocado, jicama, cilantro, sashimi and roe. Other options include a Thai tuna roll, rainbow roll, spicy tuna roll, coconut shrimp roll and “Osaka style” pressed sushi.
That unusually prominent sushi section distinguishes the Del Mar restaurant from the image suggested by the Honor Bar name. Hillstone’s website specifically highlights its hand-rolled sushi alongside the brand’s traditional favorites, positioning the location somewhere between an intimate neighborhood bar and a full Hillstone dining experience.
The main portion of the menu is equally restrained. There are just ten house specialties, including the $21 Honor Burger, topped with melted cheddar, tomato and coleslaw, and the $21 Ding’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich, made with buttermilk-fried chicken, baby Swiss cheese and spicy slaw.
That unusually prominent sushi section distinguishes the Del Mar restaurant from the image suggested by the Honor Bar name. Hillstone’s website specifically highlights its hand-rolled sushi alongside the brand’s traditional favorites, positioning the location somewhere between an intimate neighborhood bar and a full Hillstone dining experience.
The main portion of the menu is equally restrained. There are just ten house specialties, including the $21 Honor Burger, topped with melted cheddar, tomato and coleslaw, and the $21 Ding’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich, made with buttermilk-fried chicken, baby Swiss cheese and spicy slaw.
Hillstone’s famously devoted French dip arrives at $26, with thinly sliced roasted prime rib piled onto a toasted French roll and served with jus. The sandwich has become one of the group’s defining dishes, praised for its rosy roast beef, house-baked bread and almost obsessive consistency across locations.
Other entrées include a $25 macho salad, emerald kale with rotisserie chicken for $25, ahi tuna tartare for $27, chilled jumbo shrimp for $24, a classic omelette for $18, cedar plank roasted salmon for $36 and a $46 USDA Prime flat iron steak with chimichurri, fries and roasted peppers.
A short supporting list offers smoked trout dip, deviled eggs, chicken meatballs, Southern-style sprouts, roasted peppers, salads, coleslaw and French fries. There is no sprawling collection of appetizers, endless substitutions or encyclopedic entrée section. The kitchen is instead organized around a relatively small number of dishes expected to be executed repeatedly and precisely.
Other entrées include a $25 macho salad, emerald kale with rotisserie chicken for $25, ahi tuna tartare for $27, chilled jumbo shrimp for $24, a classic omelette for $18, cedar plank roasted salmon for $36 and a $46 USDA Prime flat iron steak with chimichurri, fries and roasted peppers.
A short supporting list offers smoked trout dip, deviled eggs, chicken meatballs, Southern-style sprouts, roasted peppers, salads, coleslaw and French fries. There is no sprawling collection of appetizers, endless substitutions or encyclopedic entrée section. The kitchen is instead organized around a relatively small number of dishes expected to be executed repeatedly and precisely.
That economy is central to Hillstone’s appeal. The company has spent decades demonstrating that a restaurant does not need a particularly adventurous menu when its roast beef is carefully sliced, its fries arrive hot, its martinis are cold and each dining room operates with almost unnerving consistency.
Martinis, Napa Wine And $10 Beer
The cocktail list is similarly compact, with most drinks priced between $16 and $18. Selections include a signature margarita made with Milagro Silver tequila, a Hendrick’s gin Crisp Martini, the tequila-and-Campari Jackrabbit, a vodka-based grape and mint Crush, a grapefruit Aperol spritz, Bee’s Knees and Hillstone’s interpretation of a Negroni. The weekend-only Kickstart is the restaurant’s version of a Bloody Mary, served up with either vodka or tequila.
Wine is offered primarily by the glass, with bottles represented by familiar producers such as Schramsberg, Frog’s Leap, Frank Family, Cakebread, Duckhorn, Hall, Turnbull and Post & Beam. Beer choices are limited to five selections, including Reissdorf Kölsch, Chimay Tripel, Peroni, Societe Brewing’s Coachman IPA and a nonalcoholic Best Day Kölsch. The short beverage menu reinforces the larger Hillstone strategy: offer enough range to satisfy most diners, but not enough to slow the restaurant down or introduce uncertainty.
Martinis, Napa Wine And $10 Beer
The cocktail list is similarly compact, with most drinks priced between $16 and $18. Selections include a signature margarita made with Milagro Silver tequila, a Hendrick’s gin Crisp Martini, the tequila-and-Campari Jackrabbit, a vodka-based grape and mint Crush, a grapefruit Aperol spritz, Bee’s Knees and Hillstone’s interpretation of a Negroni. The weekend-only Kickstart is the restaurant’s version of a Bloody Mary, served up with either vodka or tequila.
Wine is offered primarily by the glass, with bottles represented by familiar producers such as Schramsberg, Frog’s Leap, Frank Family, Cakebread, Duckhorn, Hall, Turnbull and Post & Beam. Beer choices are limited to five selections, including Reissdorf Kölsch, Chimay Tripel, Peroni, Societe Brewing’s Coachman IPA and a nonalcoholic Best Day Kölsch. The short beverage menu reinforces the larger Hillstone strategy: offer enough range to satisfy most diners, but not enough to slow the restaurant down or introduce uncertainty.
The Del Mar kitchen is overseen by culinary manager Dain Raner, who has spent approximately a decade with Hillstone Restaurant Group. Before joining the company in 2016, Raner worked as a chef de partie at Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, part of chef Thomas Keller’s acclaimed restaurant organization. He later held the same title at Seattle’s celebrated Canlis, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most respected fine-dining institutions, before serving as a traveling chef and West Coast regional manager for Dinner Lab. That background combines classical fine-dining training with the operational discipline required to reproduce Hillstone’s recipes at high volume. His appointment also suggests that the company is treating Del Mar as more than a minor satellite location despite the restaurant’s concise format.
Hillstone first appeared before Del Mar officials in July 2017 with a proposal to demolish Bully’s North and build a restaurant above three levels of subterranean parking. Bully’s had occupied the property since 1969 and was one of the village’s enduring gathering places before closing in late 2017. Its disappearance left a conspicuous vacancy on a valuable corner near Del Mar Plaza and only a few miles from the Del Mar Racetrack.
Hillstone subsequently revised the design, reducing the proposed restaurant and modifying the parking configuration in response to city and neighborhood concerns. The Del Mar Design Review Board approved the revised project in September 2018, but the restaurant remained years away from completion.
Early plans associated the address with R+D Kitchen, Hillstone’s polished-casual brand found in affluent communities including Newport Beach, Santa Monica, Dallas and Yountville. By 2023, the anticipated concept had changed to Gulfstream, the company’s American seafood restaurant founded in Newport Beach in 1999. Construction proceeded with the expectation that Del Mar would receive a seafood-driven restaurant specializing in fish, shellfish, steaks and cocktails. Then, late in the process, Hillstone changed course again.
SanDiegoVille reported in December 2025 that the company had abandoned Gulfstream in favor of Honor Bar. The pivot brought the project closer to Hillstone’s compact Beverly Hills, Montecito, Santa Barbara and Dallas restaurants, although Del Mar’s larger sushi selection and range of entrées make it more substantial than a simple cocktail-and-sandwich bar. The company was hiring its opening team by spring, initially advertising a mid-July debut before the restaurant ultimately began serving customers this week.
Early plans associated the address with R+D Kitchen, Hillstone’s polished-casual brand found in affluent communities including Newport Beach, Santa Monica, Dallas and Yountville. By 2023, the anticipated concept had changed to Gulfstream, the company’s American seafood restaurant founded in Newport Beach in 1999. Construction proceeded with the expectation that Del Mar would receive a seafood-driven restaurant specializing in fish, shellfish, steaks and cocktails. Then, late in the process, Hillstone changed course again.
SanDiegoVille reported in December 2025 that the company had abandoned Gulfstream in favor of Honor Bar. The pivot brought the project closer to Hillstone’s compact Beverly Hills, Montecito, Santa Barbara and Dallas restaurants, although Del Mar’s larger sushi selection and range of entrées make it more substantial than a simple cocktail-and-sandwich bar. The company was hiring its opening team by spring, initially advertising a mid-July debut before the restaurant ultimately began serving customers this week.
Founded by George and Carol Biel with the first Houston’s restaurant in Nashville in 1977, Hillstone operates a national portfolio under names including Houston’s, Hillstone, Honor Bar, Gulfstream, R+D Kitchen, Bandera, South Beverly Grill and White House Tavern. The separate names allow individual restaurants to feel more like local institutions than links in a national chain, even as the company maintains rigorous common standards for ingredients, preparation, interior design and service.
Hillstone has inspired an unusually intense cultural following for a corporate restaurant group. Admirers praise its ability to remove uncertainty from dining: the lighting is flattering, service is controlled, cocktails are dependable and dishes arrive almost exactly as remembered. Critics see the same qualities as overly calculated and culturally sterile. One recent essay described Hillstone as “smooth brain food” and “excellence in mediocrity,” while simultaneously acknowledging the almost narcotic comfort of its martinis, salads, sushi and French dip. That tension has become part of Hillstone’s mythology. Its food is rarely presented as revolutionary, yet its most ordinary-sounding dishes inspire extraordinary loyalty.
For San Diego diners who previously traveled north to Newport Beach, Corona del Mar or Los Angeles for a Hillstone fix, Honor Bar provides a much closer source for Ding’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich, the French dip and the group’s meticulous style of hospitality.
Honor Bar is open daily from 11am to 10pm and currently accepts walk-ins only. The restaurant states that it prefers smaller and more intimate parties of two and is limiting larger groups. It is also entirely cashless, accepting Visa, Mastercard, American Express and debit cards.
Guests are asked to follow a “smart casual” dress code. Hillstone specifically prohibits team jerseys, hoodies, gym clothing, tank tops, sweatpants, sports bras, casual slides, foam-style flip-flops and excessively revealing clothing. Dress shorts and collared shirts are encouraged.
The rules may sound unusually prescriptive for a restaurant serving burgers and chicken sandwiches, but they are consistent with Hillstone’s carefully managed universe. Everything from the menu length and music volume to the lighting, clothing and size of the party is calibrated to create a particular kind of relaxed order. After almost nine years of proposals, revisions and changing identities, the most important development is that the restaurant is finally real.
Honor Bar is now open at 1404 Camino Del Mar in Del Mar. For more information, visit honorbar.com/locations/delmar and check out the launch menus below.
Originally published on August 4, 2026.
