Café One Three Innovates San Diego Cooking Classes

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When it comes to new restaurants in San Diego-bold originality is hard to find. We've seen arrayed cuisine fusion, daring interior design, charming garden patios, and even inventive cooking classes and events. With the dawn of each new San Diego restaurant, local diners are perpetually harder to please.

Café One Three is a Hillcrest neighborhood bistro that engages a county-wide clientele with none other than cuisine fusion, interior design, garden exterior, and cooking classes. So, despite the seemingly fixed restaurant recipe, what is the key ingredient that makes Café One Three rise above the rest?

To discover what makes Café One Three one of the top neighborhood restaurants in San Diego, we dug deep from foundation past to plans forward.

From the old location of Indulgence Café in Hillcrest, Café One Three was born. This self-proclaimed eclectic eatery is the vision manifest of supreme chef and owner, Jason Dean. A southern boy raised in Tennessee, Jason developed an early passion for comfort food, and elevated passion with innovation and skill as he traveled the world and finally landed in San Diego. Jason managed The Prado in Balboa Park under the Cohn family for several years and eventually took over the Food and Wine School at Balboa Park. The combination of his southern upbringing and international experience nearly forced him to embark on a culinary venture of his own.

On a jet-set mission to discover signature items from each travel destination, Jason brought international comfort food to San Diego. Café One Three serves sophisticated global comfort food with an eclectic twist. The inventive menu incorporates brunch, lunch, and dinner; featuring an amalgam of southern dishes such as the herbed potato pancake with gravlax for brunch, the Thai turkey burger for lunch, and the molasses and roasted garlic grilled jumbo prawns and signature house meatloaf for dinner.

Café One Three is above-all a neighborhood bistro, blending Jason's vision with Hillcrest's omnipresent vibe. The charming garden patio takes allure to the next level. The garden serves both an aesthetic and culinary role-as Jason picks fresh basil and other seasonal spices on a daily basis. An intimate patio overlooking Park Avenue welcomes guests with modern black and steel furniture shaded by oversized umbrellas during by day and warmed by heat lamps by night.

Inside, globally-inspired art paints Café One Three with hues of Paris, Venice, and even Morocco. Guests choose from a generous selection of petite tables or the wrap-around bar overlooking the open-air kitchen. A comfortable, understated elegance defines the interior of Café One Three. Rather than force a concept or style onto the guests, the chefs and service staff are trained and dedicated to cater each dining experience to the guest's individual needs and desires.

This flexible nature extends into Café One Three's premiere cooking classes. Different from the larger cooking schools in San Diego, Café One Three offers an intimate setting that promotes hands-on learning and over-the-top fun. With 6 front-row seats at the kitchen-front bar, the new cooking classes are perfect for a night out with the girls, an avant-garde family dinner, or a romantic date for two. Also different from traditional cooking classes, the restaurant will still be open to the public during the demonstrations, to maintain the exciting nightlife atmosphere with educational instruction. Café One Three will feature pre-designed classes such as All Things Vegetarian: Not Just Veggies Anymore and No Time to Cook? Meals in Minutes. Jason will also open a public discussion forum to encourage fresh ideas, ensuring guests always come first.

Chef Deborah Shubert will lead Café One Three's cooking classes. With her own catering company, Decidedly Better, and an impressive culinary class background at Williams-Sonoma, Chef Deborah mixes a fun-loving attitude with top-notch cuisine tips, enabling you to become a top chef in your own home.

Café One Three Cooking Classes launch Sunday, October 28th, 2007, and will be offered every Sunday then after. Make sure to make your reservation quick, as the classes will fill.

For more information on Café One Three and the all-new Cooking Class schedule, get the details here.