John Resnick and Eric Bost, the restaurateur and executive chef behind Carlsbad’s two State Street restaurants Campfire and Michelin-starred Jeune et Jolie, have expanded their footprint on the bustling road this month. On Saturday, they opened Wildland, a huge, all-day, no-reservations-needed restaurant, bar and bakery.
The indoor/outdoor 190-seat restaurant was built inside a 10,000-square-foot warehouse-style building that served as home to the Morey Boogie Boards factory in the ’70s, and was later a large auto shop. Wildland occupies 8,000 feet of the building, and Resnick and Bost’s next culinary project, Lilo, will open in a 2,000-square-foot space in the back portion of the building in February. Lilo will be a Michelin-caliber 22-seat tasting-menu restaurant.
Resnick said the idea behind Wildland, which has a coyote logo and sunny Southwestern look designed by the L.A. firm Bells & Whistles, was to create a restaurant that complemented Campfire and Jeune, which are both dinner-only, date-night spots.
Wildland is a walk-ins-only, family-friendly spot with a full-service bakery and deli case, open kitchen and a walk-up bar (no stools). There’s also a private dining room for 12 to 18, and the back area of the dining room can be cordoned off for parties of 50-60.
Bost said Wildland’s menu capitalizes on this region’s superb produce, seafood and land proteins, but it evokes the rustic cuisines of Southern , Italy and Spain. Breakfast, served from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., features toasts, egg, breakfast sandwiches, smoked fish and coffees, teas and juices. Lunch, served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., features salads, sandwiches, house rotisserie chicken, pastas and wood-fired pizzas. And during the dinner hours, there’s an expanded menu of shareable plates, seafood, steak, porchetta, lamb meatballs and shellfish. Daytime diners order at the counter, but that transitions to full table service during the dinner hours.
Bost said the central element that runs through all of Wildland’s menus is its ambitious bread program, which is headed up by James Belisle, a Boston native who’s an alum of Thomas Keller’s Michelin three-star Per Se and was the founding boulanger (baker) at 11-year-old Lafayette, an all-day French bakery and café in New York City’s NoHo district.
Belisle said he got into the restaurant business 20 years ago as a cook, but quickly found his ion as a baker because he loves working with his hands and doesn’t mind the solitary overnight shifts that bread-making requires. He was ready for a change of pace from New York and liked the idea of building the bread and pastry program from scratch at Wildland, which will also supply Campfire, Jeune et Jolie and Lilo.
A graduate of the former French Culinary Institute in New York, Belisle was famous at Lafayette for his baguettes and for his ability to oversee heavy production (he estimates the Wildland kitchen is turning out several hundred loaves and pastries a day).
Wildland’s bakery program features a multitude of breads for morning toasts and afternoon sandwiches, croissants and other laminated pastries, pizza dough and desserts.
Meats and fish are cooked over fire, but the Wildland kitchen, overseen by chef de cuisine Kaitlyn Jean Smith, cooks with almond wood, which doesn’t leave as bold a flavor imprint on the food as the red oak used at sister restaurant Campfire.
Wildland was unintentionally four years in the making. When the pandemic hit, Jeune et Jolie shut down and its founding chef, Andrew Bachelier stepped down to launch his own restaurant projects (Atelier Manna and soon-to-open Chick & Hawk, both in Encinitas). Resnick had heard great things about Bost, who co-owned the much-acclaimed L.A. fine-dining spot auburn that unfortunately didn’t survive the 2020 COVID lockdown.
The two men clicked instantly over their shared values, ion for the industry and innate curiosity. And a month after Bost moved to Carlsbad in October 2020, he and Resnick did their first walk-through of the then-empty warehouse that would become Wildland. The restaurant’s long gestation, Resnick said, was the result of equipment, permitting and construction delays.
Perhaps the wait helped build diner anticipation. When Wildland opened its doors at 8 a.m. Saturday, 30 people were lined up outside, and within an hour the place was packed. The restaurant served more than 1,000 customers on its first day, including 10 parties that came in for both breakfast and dinner.
Resnick said that Wildland was built to serve the community, and hearing locals’ enthusiastic responses about the food, drinks, cocktails and space has been gratifying. Bost agrees.
“It’s been great seeing happy people in the space,” he said.
Wildland
Hours: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Where: 2598 State St., Carlsbad
Online: wildlandallday.com
