Best Local Chain Restaurants

Best Local Chain Restaurants

San Diego has a few homegrown chains as well as many stand-alone eateries that will amiably fill you up without demanding too much in return.

The Mission, a local mini chain open only for breakfast and lunch, has three locations: Mission Beach, North Park, and the Petco Park district. The latter, the newest, occupies a vintage 1870 building originally known as Rosario Hall. Called the Mission SoMa (short for "South of Market Street"), it fulfills its mission as a breakfast-and-lunch destination (as at the other two, there's no service after 3 PM) with a menu that runs the gamut from banana-blackberry pancakes to a Zen breakfast complete with tofu and brown rice, to creative black bean burritos and a smoked turkey sandwich.

If there's something for everyone at the Mission, the statement is equally true of San Diego's enormously popular Sammy's Woodfired Pizza chain. With convenient outlets in La Jolla, Mission Valley, and the Gaslamp Quarter, Sammy's makes friends with oversize salads, a vast selection of pizzas, entrées, and pastas, and the fun "messy sundae," which lives up to its name.

Filippi's Pizza Grotto locations (the best are on India Street in Little Italy and in Pacific Beach) please crowds with vast platters of spaghetti and meatballs, as well as very good pizzas.

Also homegrown and from the same post-World War II era as Filippi's, Anthony's Fish Grotto enjoys considerable renown for batter-fried fish fillets and shellfish, as well as chowders, charbroiled fish, and other simple, well-prepared offerings. Anthony's on the Embarcadero, downtown, is built over the water and often has a line at the door; the Chula Vista branch is at freeway Exit 10, minutes south of downtown.

If you can't leave San Diego without downing a fish taco, be advised that the nation-spanning Rubio's chain was founded here and has multiple locations.

Besides chains, keep these streets or neighborhoods in mind for refueling: funky Ocean Beach, famed for its easy-going breakfast places; Little Italy (India Street), with endless Italian options; and Hillcrest in the vicinity of the 5th Avenue-University Avenue intersection, a buffet of international cuisines. If you want Asian, Convoy Street is the place to go.