When chef-owner Brad Wise opened Fort Oak restaurant in Mission Hills in January 2019, the new American restaurant’s signature feature was a 10-seat chef’s counter where Wise and his culinary team could craft gourmet tasting menus with beverage pairings.
A little over a year later, the pandemic arrived and temporarily shuttered Fort Oak and the rest of Wise’s Trust Restaurant Group properties. Eventually, Wise was able to reopen his restaurants for indoor seating, but the popular Chef’s Counter dinner series at Fort Oak did not return.
Wise said he didn’t relaunch the Chef’s Counter for two reasons: In recent years’ he has been focused on expanding TRG’s culinary footprint across Southern California, and the restaurant industry has struggled through a prolonged post-pandemic labor shortage.
Since fall 2020, Wise has opened two Wise Ox Butcher & Deli outlets in North Park and Carlsbad; he re-concepted his Italian chophouse restaurant Cardellino and nearby walk-up ice cream scoop shop Wild Child in Mission Hills; and his Rare Society Steakhouse concept has grown from one location in University heights to five across Southern California, with a sixth location opening soon in Las Vegas. He is also at work on opening a French brasserie in mid-2025 at the northeast corner of 30th Street and University Avenue in North Park.
With the pace of openings now slowing down and staffing issues improving, Wise said he finally felt ready to bring back the Chef’s Counter series.
“The Chef’s Counter can’t be opened at the snap of fingers,” he said. “I had to see three to four months of continuous staff with no high turnover. The staffing market was volatile. But we finally got to a place where we could start talking about it again.”
In May, the Chef’s Counter returned. Since its relaunch, every seat has sold out, with a waiting list for cancellations. Served at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays only, it’s priced at $180, or $240 with optional beverage pairings. Wise and his Fort Oak team of chef de cuisine Ivanhoe Fair and sous chef Kalyn Bigelow create a new menu every two months that’s served for six weeks, followed by a two-week break for R&D on the next menu. The next block of reservations for the next menu opens Thursday.
The details of each Chef’s Counter menu aren’t disclosed until diners arrive at Fort Oak. Except for a focus on serving whatever produce and seafood are in season, there’s no set culinary theme for the menus, though Fort Oak is known for its bold-flavored, wood-fired cooking. The most recent menu had what Wise called a “Mexican-ish” twist, inspired by chef Fair’s recent trip to Oaxaca.
Dishes on that menu included a puffed tortilla and caviar amuse-bouche called an infladita, and an abalone ceviche first course with gooseberry and sea beans served on the half-shell. There was also a Mediterranean-style duck dish with mole negro, duck sausage wrapped in cabbage and fresh peach, and also a corn agnolotti pasta dish made with huitlacoche (a tasty fungus that grows on corn). Another course was the curry de siete mares, a classic Mexican seafood stew, that had tropical/Asian accents of coconut, pineapple, potato and curry leaf.
The Chef’s Counter dinners last about two hours, with Wise, Fair and Bigelow all taking an active hand in the preparation of each dish.
Despite the demands of running the fast-growing restaurant company, Wise said he enjoys co-creating the menus and then executing them elbow to elbow in the kitchen with his fellow chefs Fair and Bigelow.
“I give the outline of making sure we’re hitting all our key points that I feel are good for the guest’s overall experience, but then we create everything together. I like to be actively involved,” he said.
Since the relaunch of the Chef’s Counter, Wise said he’s been gratified to see that many of the diners at these events are visiting a TRG location for the very first time.
“We’re seeing a higher percentage of people at the Chef’s Counter who’ve never been to the Trust family. On a few nights, six of the 10 people were there for the first time,” he said. “That’s good. That shows you that people are still willing to spend money at restaurants and on tasting menus.”
Fort Oak Chef’s Counter
When: 6:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays
Where: Fort Oak restaurant, 1011 Fort Stockton Drive, Mission Hills, San Diego
Cost: $180 (optional beverage pairings service is $60)
Reservations: fortoaksd.com/chefs-counter
