On Jan. 31, 24 Suns restaurant held its grand opening in Oceanside, and just 3 1/2 months later, it earned a prestigious recommendation from the Michelin Guide.
It’s not unprecedented to receive Michelin recognition that quickly (Carlsbad’s new Lilo restaurant also earned a recommendation less than a month after it opened in April). But it does show that Michelin’s anonymous inspectors had their eyes on 24 Suns’ founding co-chefs Nicholas “Nic” Webber and Jacob Jordan for a while.
Before teaming up to start their own concept, Webber and Jordan honed their skills working in the Michelin three-star restaurant Addison by William Bradley in San Diego and Benu in San Francisco. And their concept for 24 Suns, a project they gradually developed over the past 3 1/2 years, stands alone in its uniqueness.
Former Addison chefs are exploring Chinese cuisine and culture at Oceanside’s 24 Suns
The 60-seat restaurant/bar on Mission Avenue is named after the 24 solar cycles on the Chinese calendar. The menu highlights produce and seafood that are in peak season during each of these two-week cycles. And the chefs’ goal is to explore the cuisines from all of China’s 35 provinces, not just the Cantonese and Sichuan dishes most familiar to Americans.
But Webber and Jordan don’t just re-create dishes from China. They reinterpret them through a Southern California lens, using local produce and ingredients. And they also reimagine how these elements are prepared and presented, doing all of their own smoking, fermenting, aging, curing and noodle-making in-house.
On a couple of dining visits in recent months, I’ve had the opportunity to try many of the dishes on the 24 Suns menu, which offers a shareable plates-style mix of snacks, dumplings and noodle dishes, chef selection entrées and a couple of “for the table” offerings.
Among my favorite dishes on the menu is the umami-rich Smoked Beef cheek Shanghai Noodle, which spotlights Jordan’s house-made longevity noodle, stretching 17 feet in length (by Chinese tradition, the longer the noodle, the longer the diner’s life). Also wonderful and surprising is the Lap Yuk Silky Egg Custard, a flan-like steamed egg dish topped with a savory house soy broth, scallions and strips of lap yuk, which is pork belly cured in Chinese baiju spirits.
The bright and festive Bird’s Nest snack dish, a fried noodle “nest” topped with smoked swordfish rillette and green Szechuan peppercorns, is beautiful to look at and just as tasty to eat. And the melt-in-your-mouth house jiaozi (dumplings) with Doubanjiang (broad bean chili sauce) butter are made from a recipe the chefs have been perfecting since they first started their 24 Suns project as a dumplings-only pop-up in 2021.
But a new dish on the restaurant’s menu, the Five Regions Half Duck, perhaps best represents the 24 Suns mission of digging deep into all of China’s regional cuisines. Served as an entrée for two or a tasting course for the table, it features five dishes from five different Chinese provinces or cities — all prepared from the meat, skin, bones, fat and jus of the same duck.
Not only is it a creative idea, it’s also masterfully prepared and complementary group of dishes, particularly the heavenly broken rice duck neck congee.
I asked the chefs to describe how they conceive and prepared each dish in the Five Regions Half Duck to show the thought and care that goes into each element. Webber wrote these descriptions:
Zhangcha duck: This is a classic dish from the Sichuan region where the whole duck is marinated and then hot smoked over tea leaves and wood. We leave the duck breast on the “crown” or breast plate, smoke it cold over spent (previously steeped) smoldering Paru jasmine tea. This creates a nice outer layer and depth of flavor without cooking the duck breast and promotes great aging. We then age ducks only for a few days. Some tasting menus age for weeks, but we think when enjoying a lot of duck that can be too intense. We finish it more French style basting it in butter after rendering, but our butter is also cold-smoked over the jasmine tea. We finish with jasmine tea-infused duck jus on the plate and a light brushing of our house-made soy sauce on the breast.
Yunnan salad: This salad is based off of a beautiful salad from Yunnan called “Ghost Chicken Salad,” not based on ghost peppers! The stories around the salad usually revolve around the sacrifice of a chicken and the frugality and desire not to waste any of the chicken, they would eat the shredded meat afterwards in a cold salad with Thai bird chilis and lime. To honor their efforts to waste not, we use crispy duck skin cracklings on our fresh spring salad and serve it with a smoked lime vinaigrette featuring Thai bird extra virgin olive oil.
Fujian duck leg: Fujian duck is slowly simmered with aged ginger, giving it a distinct flavor reminiscent of other foods from there. Fujian cuisine comes from Southeastern China and has influenced many other Southeast Asian cuisines: think bright and herbaceous and fresh seafood. So we braise the duck leg first entirely in ginger juice, which rather than stock gives an intense aroma, then we fry it crispy, and finish it by glazing it in our fermented ginger honey, which we ferment in house for about three weeks. A couple of pickled serrano chilis give an extra pop.
Guangdong congee: Cantonese cuisine is one of the most famous and definitely the most seen in America. First we braise the duck necks in stock made from the leftover bones alongside aromatics. We remove the duck necks and then using the liquid we make a broken rice congee, or rice porridge. We then painstakingly pick out the meat off the necks careful not to grab the tiny bones between and return it in a nice pile on the congee, finished with some puffed rice for an added crunch. Congee is an essential Chinese dish and a personal favorite. I eat it all year round with my partner, Maria, on a near-weekly basis.
Lanzhou: Lanzhou chili oil is known for being a particularly aromatic chili oil, rather than a spicy one. More garlic, ginger, scallion, floral fragrant aromas. We take the rendered duck fat we get from making crispy cracklings and infuse it slowly with aromatics to offer this accompaniment that goes well poured on everything or used to dip the breast. I am partial to adding it all to the congee, though it gets rich.
In a February interview, Webber and Jordan said they were grateful for the neighborhood’s embrace on 24 Suns in its opening months. But following the Michelin announcement, business has definitely grown, expanding the restaurant’s profile beyond Oceanside to the San Diego community at large.
On June 25, the Michelin Guide will announce its latest California Stars and Bib Gourmand honorees at a ceremony in Sacramento. A Michelin recommendation can be a first step toward earning one of these two higher-tiered honors, which often recognize innovation and imaginative cooking done well. That’s a good way to describe the work being done by Webber and Jordan at 24 Suns.
24 Suns
When: 4 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays; 4 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
Where: 3375 Mission Ave., Oceanside
Phone: 760-433-5086
Online: 24sunsdining.com
