Valle, Oceanside's 2-year-old modern Mexican restaurant, gets a Michelin star
In the spring of 2021, Baja California chef-restaurateur Roberto Alcocer moved his family from Mexico to Carlsbad with a singular mission in mind: to win a Michelin star.
On Tuesday evening, his mission was accomplished.
Alcocer, the chef and founder of 21-month-old Valle restaurant in Oceanside, earned his first star at Michelin Guide’s 2023 California awards recognition ceremony in Oakland. The modern Mexican tasting-menu restaurant at the oceanfront Mission Pacific Hotel is one of just six California restaurants that earned new stars in 2023. The other five are in Long Beach and Northern California.
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The 155-seat Valle joins just four other San Diego County restaurants that have received Michelin stars in recent years: three-starred Addison in Carmel Valley, one-starred Jeune et Jolie in Carlsbad and Soichi Sushi and Sushi Tadokoro, both in San Diego. All four restaurants had their stars renewed on Tuesday.
At the ceremony at Oakland’s Chabot Space + Science Center, Alcocer was invited to don a white chef’s jacket embroidered with a Michelin star and joined the other new star winners onstage before a large and enthusiastic audience.
Born in France, the Michelin Guide has been awarding stars to its recommended restaurants since the 1920s. The guide arrived in the U.S. in 2005 and started honoring California Bay Area restaurants in 2007. Southern California restaurants became eligible for awards in 2019.
Michelin employs a corps of secret inspectors from the restaurant industry who dine anonymously year-round looking for restaurants excel in five areas: quality products; harmony of flavors; mastery of the cooking techniques; the voice and personality of the chef in the cuisine; and consistency between visits and through the menu as a whole.
Valle restaurant at the Mission Pacific Resort in Oceanside. (Pam Kragen/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
In their written remarks on Valle, the inspectors described Alcocer’s cooking as a “refined, modern expression of Mexican cuisine” and wrote: “Dishes strike a winning balance between tradition and creativity, as in a tetela (pan-fried masa snacks) made with heirloom corn masa and hoja santa, filled with juicy chanterelle mushrooms and creamy goat cheese, and paired with a complex salsa of morita chiles — at once earthy and bright.”
In an interview via email, Michelin’s chief inspector added: “We love the blend of tradition and creativity, and chef Roberto Alcocer hits the sweet spot at Valle. ... Chef Alcocer’s modern takes on classic dishes truly bring it to another level.”
Valle is one of only seven Mexican restaurants in the United States that have earned Michelin stars. By comparison, there are 84 Japanese restaurants, 24 serving California cuisine and 16 French restaurants.
In San Diego, two past efforts by regional chefs to launch upscale Mexican restaurants have failed. Baja chef Javier Plascencia’s Bracero Cocina de Raiz in Little Italy closed in 2017 after two years in business, and in 2018 Mexican-American chef Claudette Zepeda’s El Jardín at Liberty Station closed after less than a year.
Alcocer said in 2021 that having the full support of the Hyatt Corp., which operates the Mission Pacific Hotel, gave him the time he needed to build a clientele and fine-tune his menu without the crushing financial obligation of opening a restaurant from scratch.
Chocolate de Metate at Valle Restaurant in Oceanside. (Valle)
Valle gets its name from Baja’s Valle de Guadalupe, where Alcocer has operated Malva Cocina de Baja California restaurant for the past 10 years. Five years ago, a restaurant industry consultant stopped by Malva and asked Alcocer if he’d consider creating a menu for a future restaurant in San Diego. A few weeks later, Alcocer’s then-2-year-old son was diagnosed with autism.
Because Mexico doesn’t have the advanced therapies and educational programs that San Diego could offer his family, and because Alcocer’s son is a U.S. citizen, he started thinking bigger. Maybe instead of writing recipes for someone else, why not open his own San Diego restaurant where he would have the potential to earn a Michelin star — something not yet available in Mexico.
“Michelin has been in my head since day one,” Alcocer told the Union-Tribune in 2021. “I started my cooking career 20 years ago as an apprentice in a Michelin-starred restaurant in France. If I’m leaving my stability and moving to another country, I’m going to play for all the marbles.”
A dish from the summer 2020 menu at Michelin-starred Valle restaurant in Oceanside. (Courtesy of Jordan Younis)
Born in Mexico City and raised in Ensenada, Alcocer found a passion for food as a young boy eating in fine-dining restaurants with his paternal grandfather and gorging at buffets with his maternal grandmother. After high school, Alcocer asked his parents if he could take a sabbatical year before attending college and he moved to France, where he apprenticed for a year in an award-winning restaurant in the Bordeaux region.
His father, an auto mechanic who races cars, wasn’t a fan of Alcocer’s plan to become a chef until his son cooked for him. Then he was proud. After attending culinary school in Puebla, Mexico, Alcocer moved to Spain, where he worked in Madrid’s Michelin-starred La Broche, and later worked at Mexico City’s Pujol, which ranks No. 9 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurant List. Alcocer also worked for a time as the corporate chef for Sempra Energy’s Casa Azul retreat near Ensenada. Finally, in 2014, he opened Malva.
Valle restaurant, which serves an eight-course tasting menu for $165, was created with the heart and soul of Malva, but it raised the bar in terms of style, service and presentation, incorporating American ingredients and influences.
Alcocer is known for his artful trompe l’oeil plating techniques and his love for culinary contrasts, like mixing sweet and spicy flavors, the pop of bright acidic sauces, buttery starches, rustic house-baked artisan breads.
The other California restaurants that became first-time Michelin star winners on Tuesday are Aphotic in San Francisco; Auro in Calistoga; Chez Noir in Carmel-by-the-Sea; Heritage in Long Beach and Nari in San Francisco.
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
