Vulture lands on Park Boulevard with vintage vibes and vegan decadence

Taking flight on June 16 in University Heights, Vulture is a new vegan restaurant and cocktail bar from the people behind South Park standouts Kindred and Mothership. It is the latest offering from owner Kory Stetina and longtime business partner Arsalun Tafazoli, the co-founder of CH Projects whose own restaurant empire is separate from his partnership with Stetina.

Vulture also marks the first time that Stetina has purchased the property on which his project stands — a fact that’s especially meaningful because he conceived of the vegan food and beer pairing pop-up that launched his hospitality career in the co-working space that was once housed there.

The building actually holds two concepts: Guests will need to through Dreamboat, the team’s recently opened retro vegan diner, before entering into the velvet-curtained Vulture.

While the 10-year-old Kindred is an irreverent cocktail bar with a heavy metal soundtrack and Mothership mixes tropical drinks in a space-y, far out atmosphere, Vulture is decidedly more grown-up. Designed with Brooklyn-based Home Studios, its long narrow dining room is lined with floral patterned walls and luxe carpeting with oversized head sculptures on pedestals looking down on plush booths.

Both nostalgic and forward-thinking, its menu of throwback fine-dining dishes includes oysters Rockefeller, a late 19th-century invention, and steak Diane, which ruled restaurants in the mid-1900s. Vulture’s take on Rockefeller scoops artichoke-spinach dip into blue corn shells and subs in a seared slab of local lion’s mane mushroom for sirloin in the steak Diane. Trendy tableside service will also be featured, for a Caesar’s salad based on Stetina’s family recipe and flambéed cherries jubilee.

For executive chef Pancho Castellón, this is an opportunity to channel his culinary experience from the seafood-focused Serea Coastal Cuisine at the Hotel del Coronado and San Francisco’s Michelin-starred Niku Steakhouse, where he helped man its custom grill.

Vulture’s own wood and coal-fired grill is the linchpin of its kitchen. Though he’s been working in omnivore restaurants, Castellón is himself a vegan and now uses his familiarity with live fire cooking to coax the produce that is the centerpiece of the menu to its peak potential. Elements from the grill factor into almost every dish, from a tartare of beets and tomatoes with horseradish to roasted squash agnolotti with morels and pine nuts.

“Pancho understands how to get flavor into vegan dishes”, declares Stetina, who says that plates should generally feel a little less heavy just by virtue of their veganess.

Its bar is the domain of cocktail and spirits manager Lucas Ryden, ired for his work at Convoy speakeasy Realm of 52 Remedies before he became a lead bartender at Kindred. In keeping with the classics, his list for Vulture includes twists on archetypes like the Manhattan, French 75 and Bee’s Knees, as well as an entire section dedicated to martinis and other martini-adjacent cocktails such as the sweeter Martinez.

Composed of three gins and four vermouths blended in specific ratios, their house martini — which Stetina calls the most “fussed over” in the city — can be ordered three ways, including a mini version and a supersized one that comes with pickles and a truffle caviar-topped potato pavé. Ryden has also developed a variety of creamy dessert cocktails that have been veganized with dairy-free alternatives.

San Diego native Stetina, who has been vegan since his early 20s, strongly maintains that Vulture is for every kind of eater, choosing an “all are welcome” approach rather than a more stringent stance.

“I’m not an evangelist,” he says. “I just hope people will come in with an open mind and leave satisfied.”

Vulture

Address: 4608 Park Blvd., San Diego

Hours: Open 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday

Phone: 619-790–8587

Online: vulturerestaurant.com