The lost restaurants of San Diego series reaches a turning point in the final installment — not with any one single moment, but with a gradual shift that changed how the city looked and felt when people went out to eat.
By the 1970s and 1980s, San Diego’s restaurant and nightlife scene was no longer defined only by independently designed dining rooms, hotel cocktail lounges, and one-of-a-kind neighborhood spots. Those places still existed, but they were increasingly sharing space with national chains, standardized interiors, and a growing emphasis on branding.
The change didn’t announce itself. It appeared gradually in familiar places across the city.
Hotel dining gets a new identity
Hotels remained central to San Diego’s dining culture, but their interiors began to shift. The darker, more stylized cocktail lounges of earlier decades gave way to brighter spaces, simplified design, and more standardized hospitality formats.
The Westgate Hotel, which opened in 1970, reflects this transition. It marked a move toward modern luxury hospitality — more polished, more consistent, and less reliant on heavily themed lounge environments that had defined earlier eras…