Where to Drink in La Jolla: A Local's Guide to the Bars

If you are asking where to drink in La Jolla, the honest answer is that it depends on which La Jolla you mean, because there are three of them and they do not really talk to each other. There is the Village up on Prospect Street, where the hotel bars and the rooftops are, and where every visitor ends up on their first night. There is the Shores down the hill, which is a beach town with a beach town’s bars on one street. And there is Bird Rock at the south end of La Jolla Boulevard, which is where the people who actually live here drink, and which almost nobody on a weekend visit ever finds.

Three of the shops that carry SUNGOD are in La Jolla, so we drive up more than most people who live south of it, and this is the guide we would text a friend coming up for a day and a night. If the day is really about the sunset, the green flash guide ranks the rooftops in more detail, and if it is a group weekend the bachelor and bachelorette guides each have a La Jolla plan in them.

The Village, which means Prospect Street

Start at La Sala, the lobby bar at La Valencia, the pink hotel that has been on Prospect since 1926. It has a hand-painted ceiling and windows that look straight down at the Cove, happy hour runs every day from three to six, and we think it is the right first drink in La Jolla for anyone, staying there or not, because it sets the tone for the town better than any rooftop does. Go early in that window, because by five on a Saturday you are standing.

The rooftops are next door and they are what everyone asks about. Birdseye sits on top of the Cormorant hotel on Prospect and it is our pick because it is the least formal of them, it does not take reservations for groups under ten so you just walk up, and the Monday through Thursday happy hour from three to five is a real one. Level2 is the middle floor of George’s at the Cove, with the most serious cocktail list on the street and a weekday afternoon happy hour, but it has a restaurant’s polish and we go for one very good drink before dinner rather than for the evening. Duke’s is the obvious one, the Barefoot Bar opens at three every day with the Cove right under the railing, and it is a chain in a very good spot, so see it once and then go elsewhere.

Now the two rooms that make the Village a real place instead of a hotel district. Jose’s Courtroom has been in the Village since 1956 and on Prospect since 1973, it is a Mexican restaurant with a proper bar and margaritas nobody has updated in decades, and it is open until one thirty on Fridays and Saturdays, which in La Jolla counts as a late bar. A block along, The Spot is the sports bar, forty-some years on Prospect, open eleven in the morning to two in the morning every day with a kitchen that runs to midnight, and it is where every La Jolla night ends if it goes past eleven, because there is nowhere else for it to go. Hennessey’s on Herschel is the other two in the morning option, an Irish pub with a happy hour people in the Village genuinely use.

One more for the beer people: Public House on Kline has forty-odd taps and a garden patio, and it is where we send anyone who says La Jolla does not do craft beer.

The Shores

The Shores runs on a different clock, because you are there for the beach first. Kellogg Park is the flattest, most forgiving stretch of sand in the county, with a lifeguard tower, showers, a playground, and seven fire rings that are first come first served and get claimed absurdly early on a summer Saturday. The lot fills by eight in the morning on summer weekends and by nine on weekdays, so be there before that or park up the hill and walk down.

Everything you would drink in the Shores is on Avenida de la Playa, the one street that runs from the boulevard to the sand. Shore Rider is the open-air bar a block up from the beach and the locals’ room down here, cold drinks and a burger with sand still on your feet. Barbarella has patios front and back with heaters, wood-fired pizza and a menu for the dog, and it is where a beach day turns into a long dinner without anyone changing. Galaxy Taco does the tacos and the mezcal until eleven on weekends, as late as the Shores gets.

Here is the part that catches people. There is no drinking on the sand, and there has not been since 2008, when San Diego voted alcohol off every city beach, boardwalk and beach lot after the Pacific Beach mess the year before. Kellogg Park has a round-the-clock ban of its own, and glass is banned on the beach, the cliffs and the lots as well, so the drinking starts when you walk up Avenida de la Playa and the cooler you packed is for the house afterwards.

Bird Rock and Windansea, where the locals are

Drive south on La Jolla Boulevard past the Village and the street turns into a neighborhood with a little main street on it, and that is Bird Rock. Bird Rock Coffee Roasters opens at six and is where the day starts for everyone on this end of town, surfers included. Across the street, Beaumont’s is the neighborhood bar, live music, a nightly happy hour, weekend brunch from ten, and open until midnight Thursday through Saturday. If we had to pick one bar in all of La Jolla for a Thursday night with people who live here, it would be this one.

Back up the boulevard toward Nautilus Street is Nautilus Tavern, a block inland from Windansea, with a dog-friendly patio, trivia and music through the week, and doors at three on Monday through Wednesday, so do not show up for lunch early in the week. It is the bar for the walk back up from the beach.

Windansea is where we watch the sun go. It is sandstone shelves instead of sand, the palm-frond surf shack on the rocks was built by surfers coming home from the war in 1947 and has been a city historical landmark since 1998, and the crowd on the shelves actually goes quiet when the sun hits the water, which never happens at the Cove. The lot on Neptune Place holds sixteen cars and is full by breakfast, so park a couple of blocks up on Nautilus and walk down. The beach rule applies here too, no alcohol and no glass on the shelves or in the lot.

Where to buy cans in La Jolla

This is a long day when it goes right, the Shores from ten, Windansea at six, Prospect Street until whenever, and that is the day we make SUNGOD for. It is five percent, organic, and there is no carbonation in it, which sounds small until it is four in the afternoon and beer has started to feel like a chore. Four shops in La Jolla carry it, all of them on the way to somewhere in this guide.

La Shore Market at 5590 La Jolla Boulevard is the Bird Rock one, on the same block as Bird Rock Coffee and a two-minute walk from Beaumont’s, a deli and liquor store that has been on that stretch for more than twenty-five years with a Boar’s Head counter for sandwiches, open until eight thirty most nights and nine thirty on Fridays and Saturdays. It is the newest of the four, so if you are there in the first week and cannot find the cans, ask. Valley Farm Market La Jolla at 6902 La Jolla Boulevard is open eight to eight every day, a block up the boulevard from Nautilus Tavern and a short walk from Windansea, and the butcher counter and the barbecue make it the grocery stop for a house on this end of town. Keg N Bottle La Jolla sits in the plaza at Torrey Pines Road and Herschel on the way into the Village, open nine in the morning to midnight every day, with a real craft beer wall and a deli counter. And La Jolla Liquor at 7474 La Jolla Boulevard is open eight to ten daily and delivers locally, which is the one to call when the house is already full of people. The locator has the full list with directions, and if you are coming from out of state the shop on the homepage ships to the door.

How we would do a day here

Coffee at Bird Rock, the beach at the Shores until the wind picks up in the early afternoon, a late lunch at Shore Rider, then back to the house to shower and load the cooler from Valley Farm Market. Walk down to Windansea for the sunset with nothing in your hands, walk back up to Nautilus Tavern, and then decide as a group whether it is a Beaumont’s night or a Prospect Street night, because doing both means two rideshares and a lot of standing around on the boulevard. If it is Prospect, La Sala first, Jose’s second, and The Spot whenever it gets late enough that nowhere else is open. For the honest version of what is in a can like ours and what is not, the clean drinking guide goes through it without the marketing.