On Thursday, Nov. 5, the San Diego Food + Wine Festival and Fairmont Grand Del Mar will mark 80 years of Chino Farm with a multi-course dinner paired with Napa Valley wines. The harvest behind that dinner is also sold at the farm's wooden stand, The Vegetable Shop, at 6123 Calzada del Bosque. The stand opens at 10 a.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
The farm has spent eight decades supplying some of the country's most famous kitchens. The way it is set up says the stand comes first and the restaurants second. That ordering is the best reason for anyone who lives nearby to treat this anniversary as a reason to stop by.
The dinner, and who is cooking it
The Legacy of the Land dinner is held in the Grand Social at Fairmont Grand Del Mar, 5300 Grand Del Mar Court. The reception starts at 6 p.m. and dinner at 6:30 p.m., and Napa Valley Vintners is presenting the evening. The Del Mar-Solana Beach Record reported that chefs Tara Monsod, Matt Vawter and Aron Schwartz are confirmed to cook. The Union-Tribune's Oct. 20 roundup listed tickets at $399.
The festival says members of the Chino family will be there, along with the chefs and a group of Napa Valley winemakers, for a menu built around the season's harvest. The dinner falls in the middle of the festival, which runs Nov. 1 through 8.
A farm built to sell over its own counter
The festival's own write-up of the farm reads more like a note about a neighborhood shop than one about a supplier to famous restaurants. "There's no VIP treatment at the stand," it says. "Celebrated chefs and neighborhood regulars shop side by side."
The farm describes itself the same way. Its website says much of the business deals "directly to the public through our vegetable stand," and that it also "regularly" supplies a number of chefs and restaurants. In 1992, The New Yorker set that model against the rest of California agriculture. At least 95 percent of the state's crops were sold through brokers. The Chinos sold at the Vegetable Shop and to a handful of restaurants, and the magazine added, "Nobody gets a volume discount."
The farm's size makes the point clearer. A 2025 California Grown profile puts it at 50 acres, about a tenth the size of an average American farm, yet it grows hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables. The same profile says a visit to the stand can come with a quick lesson from staff on the difference between Lyon artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes.
How the counter came first
The anniversary counts from 1946. The Union-Tribune reported in 2011 that Hatsuyo and Junzo Chino, both from Wakayama, Japan, arrived that year after farming at a World War II incarceration camp in Poston, Arizona. The festival's history says the couple left Japan in the 1920s and farmed in Los Angeles first. After the war they came back to the San Dieguito Valley, started over, and eventually bought the Rancho Santa Fe land where they raised nine children. The New Yorker dates the deed to that land to 1952 and describes the parcel as a coastal floodplain bordered on one side by the San Dieguito River.
The Vegetable Shop opened in 1969, according to the Los Angeles Times and the festival's account. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley was the first well-known chef to praise the produce publicly, the farm says, and others followed. By 1992, The New Yorker reported, several bushels went to Chez Panisse every Wednesday. A weekly shipment also went to Wolfgang Puck's Spago, where a dish called the Chino Ranch Chopped Salad was one of the most popular items on the menu.
Today Tom Chino runs the farm with his brothers Frank, known as Koo, and Fred, known as Fumio, and his sister Kay, known as Kazumi. In that 2011 Union-Tribune story, Tom put the farm's whole philosophy in one sentence:
"We just want our vegetables to taste the way they should."
The same story credited part of that flavor to picking and selling on the same day. Same-day selling only works when the buyer is close by. The stand is the place where that happens every day.
Visiting The Vegetable Shop this fall
The stand is at 6123 Calzada del Bosque, Rancho Santa Fe, 92091. These are the hours on the farm's website:
| Day | Hours |
|---|---|
| Sunday | 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Wednesday through Saturday | 10 a.m. to 3:33 p.m. |
The 3:33 closing time comes straight from the farm's posted schedule. The website lists weekly hours but no holiday schedule, so check chinofamilyfarm.com before planning a trip around Thanksgiving on Thursday, Nov. 26. Sunday is the short day, closing at 1 p.m.
A few practical things help a first visit go smoothly:
- Payment. California Grown's August 2025 profile calls the farm a cash-only operation that also accepts Venmo.
- Asking questions. Stand staff, many of them long-time employees and family friends, are known for handing out samples of just-harvested produce and suggesting the right tomato for a salad, according to the same profile.
- Variety. The farm is best known for sweet corn, strawberries and tomatoes, and it grows hundreds of other varieties over the year. The festival mentions beans in many colors, several kinds of eggplant and unusual greens. What's on the table on any given day depends on what was picked that morning.
California Grown names some of the more distinctive crops: baby Cherokee tomatoes, Concord grapes, French Mara des Bois strawberries, and a sweet white corn it says "has its own cult following." In 2011, the Union-Tribune listed sweet potatoes from Japan, strawberries from France and chili peppers from England among the specialty crops Tom Chino grew, and quoted him on the farm's search for the best growing methods worldwide to adapt to local conditions.
Where the harvest lands on nearby menus
For anyone who would rather have the vegetables cooked, the farm's website names a sample of its restaurant partners:
- Mille Fleurs, on Paseo Delicias in the Village
- Rancho Valencia
- Market Del Mar
- 24 Suns
- Kingfisher
- Sushi Ota
- Lilo
- Ken Sushi Workshop
- Chez Panisse, still on the list more than three decades after The New Yorker described those Wednesday shipments
The farm calls this list "just a small sample" of its partners, so it isn't a complete map of where Chino produce turns up.
Mille Fleurs has another November date for anyone already thinking about the season. On Wednesday, Nov. 11, from 5 to 9 p.m., the Vision of Children Foundation holds its "Gathered in Gratitude" Vintner Gourmet Dinner at the restaurant, 6009 Paseo Delicias, with B Cellars wines and a Mille Fleurs menu. The Union-Tribune reported that advance reservations are encouraged.
A Thanksgiving table, the Chino way
The 2011 Union-Tribune story ran on Thanksgiving morning and described Tom Chino serving 15 vegetable dishes at his family's table. "We like to serve highlights of the vegetables we grow as a way of giving thanks for the bounty of the year," he told the paper.
On the farm's posted hours, the stand is open Saturday, Nov. 21, Sunday, Nov. 22, and Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, from 10 a.m. Wednesday's closing time is 3:33 p.m.
For Nick Wright and the team at The Wright Group, Chino Farm shows what makes Rancho Santa Fe distinctive. Some of its most famous addresses are still working places run by the families who built them. If you'd like to talk about the places along the San Dieguito Valley that make daily life here feel rooted, we would be glad to set up a time. Schedule a Call.