A Treat for the Spirited 🎃
Wear your costume to The Plot on Halloween night and we’ll treat you to a free chef’s choice appetizer.
Sustainably spooky never tasted so good!
10/31 only, additional purchase required
CRISPY RICE RISOTTO 🔥🍅
— with flamenco sauce, mushroom bacon and zucchini.
It’s crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, savory, satisfying and so. damn. delicious! If you haven’t tried this one yet, trust us — you need to! Available for dinner 7 days a week.
A BERRY BIG happy 10th anniversary to our friends at Berry Good Food!
celebrating 10 years of The Berry Good Food Foundation, a decade of cultivating a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable food system across San Diego and Baja California.
from garden beds to classroom kitchens, The Berry Good Food Foundation has been planting seeds for the future, educating communities, connecting farmers and families and inspiring a local food culture rooted in justice and environmental stewardship.
join the celebration on Saturday, October 26 at Herb & Wood, featuring:
tastings from top local chefs (including our own Chef Davin!)
a live DJ and kids’ activities
a silent auction supporting community programs
generous pours from amazing local sponsors
learn more and grab your tickets, HERE.
We present thee: JUJUBE RAMEN! 💥🍜
— for the Storm Gods ⛈️⚡️and all of you!
Rainy Day JUJUBE RAMEN:
with grilled shiitake, zucchini, pickled kale stems, onion and smoked tomato. Come warm yourself up. This hot bowl of goodness is waiting for you to slurp it allllll up, and available until we run out!
Chef Davin Waite wants to show you his squash!! 💥
— well, Italian Heirloom Spaghetti Squash that’s been growing strong in our garden from the plant that keeps on giving!
He’s cooking it bbq-style over Dr. Pepper @rancho_gordo beans with citrus greens, and it’s coming to our dinner menu soon… very soon. 👀
You in? Trust us, it’s good. Like really, really good.
THE WASHINGTONO POST - “What a gut microbiome scientist wants you to eat every day”
read the full and original article here - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2025/10/08/what-to-eat-healthy-gut-microbiome/
Focus on eating fiber-rich foods, especially those high in a special type of fiber called resistant starch.
Every time you eat a meal, you’re hosting a dinner party. Your guests are the trillions of microbes that live in your gut.
These hungry microbes, collectively known as your gut microbiome, directly affect your long-term health for better or for worse depending on what you feed them. Eat the right foods, and your gut microbes will churn out beneficial compounds that protect and improve your health. Feed them the wrong foods, and they can wreak havoc on your gut, setting off inflammation and increasing your risk of chronic diseases.
That’s according to Karen Corbin, an associate investigator at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute of Metabolism and Diabetes in Orlando who has published groundbreaking studies on nutrition and the microbiome.
“If you take good care of your gut microbes, they’ll take good care of you,” said Corbin, who is also a registered dietitian nutritionist. “But when you don’t feed your gut microbes properly, they get hangry — they literally do. They break down the mucus layer of the gut, and they produce metabolites that aren’t healthy.”
You can make your gut microbes happy by doing the following, Corbin said: Limit your intake of ultra-processed foods, and try to eat items that contain plenty of fiber, particularly those that contain a special type of fiber called resistant starch. These include plant foods such as beans, peas, lentils, bananas (especially green bananas), apples, pears, and whole grains like barley, brown rice and oats. Health authorities recommend that adults eat around 28 grams of fiber daily — yet most people eat far less than that. If you make an effort to eat more fiber-rich foods, you’ll invariably end up eating a lot of resistant starch.
One simple thing you can do, Corbin said, is to make “upgrades” to your meals, by switching from low-fiber foods, such as white bread, to higher-fiber versions, like whole-wheat bread. “If you want to have a healthy gut, ask yourself one simple question every day: Have I fed my gut microbiome today?” Corbin said. “If the answer is no, then find something in your meals that you can upgrade.”
Here’s what you need to know about your gut microbiome and how to keep it happy.
Fuel your microbiome with fiber
Most of the microbes in your gut reside in your colon, which is near the end of your gastrointestinal tract. Your gut microbes love fiber. That’s great for us because our bodies don’t have the enzymes necessary to digest most of the fiber that we eat. Instead, the fiber that we consume travels down to the colon, where our gut microbes feast on it. As they metabolize this fiber, they produce by-products that are good for our health, such as short-chain fatty acids. These fatty acids help to lower inflammation, and they stimulate the production of GLP-1, the appetite-suppressing hormone that’s mimicked by Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs.
Every time you eat fiber-rich plants — especially those high in resistant starch — you’re nourishing the beneficial microbes in your gut. One particular benefit of eating resistant starch is that your gut microbes will convert it into butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that helps to reduce inflammation, though all fiber is beneficial. “The microbes in your colon turn that fiber into molecules that signal processes that are important, such as keeping your blood sugar where it needs to be and helping to release hormones that make you feel full,” Corbin said.
Ultra-processed foods have the opposite effect. These foods, such as white bread, bagels, pastries, sugary cereals, chips, crackers, cookies and desserts, tend to be very low in fiber. This extends their shelf life, and it affects their texture, making them easier to chew, swallow and digest. This causes them to be rapidly absorbed in the upper gastrointestinal tract, which means more calories for your body and fewer for your gut microbes, Corbin said. This leads to blood sugar spikes. It increases weight gain because we absorb more calories. And we effectively starve our gut microbes, because there’s little or no fiber for them to consume, Corbin said.
All calories aren’t created equal
When our gut microbes aren’t properly nourished, they end up eating the thin layer of mucus that lines our intestines, Corbin said. This mucus layer acts as a protective barrier, preventing pathogens and toxins from leaving our guts and infiltrating our bloodstreams. The destruction of this barrier can lead to chronic inflammation, infections and other disorders. Studies show that low-fiber diets cause alterations in your gut microbiome that can play a role in obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
In one landmark study in 2023, Corbin and her colleagues recruited a group of healthy adults and fed them two different diets for roughly three weeks at a time. One diet, called the Western diet, consisted primarily of ultra-processed foods such as white bread, sweetened breakfast cereals, cheese puffs, vanilla wafers, potato chips, American cheese, sugary snacks, fruit juices, deli meats and processed meats.
The other diet, called the “microbiome enhancer diet,” was the opposite. It contained plenty of fiber-rich foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and multigrain bread, as well as nutritious whole foods like plain yogurt, sirloin steak and grilled chicken.
For part of the study, the participants lived in a tiny, airtight room called a metabolic chamber, which allowed the researchers to determine exactly how many calories they burned and consumed. The researchers also collected and analyzed their bowel movements so they could determine the amount of energy and bacteria in their feces.
The scientists found that the participants absorbed fewer calories on the fiber-rich diet compared with the ultra-processed diet. They lost slightly more weight and body fat on the fiber-rich diet, and even though they absorbed fewer calories from their food, they didn’t show any signs of increased hunger. This may have been related to the fact that they produced higher levels of GLP-1, the satiety hormone, while on the fiber-rich diet. They also had higher circulating levels of health-promoting short-chain fatty acids. Microbiome analyses indicated that their gut microbes were thriving on the fiber-rich diet.
How to upgrade your meals
To maintain a healthy diet, you have to enjoy the foods that you eat. So rather than trying to force yourself to eat meals that you don’t enjoy, think about some of your favorite foods and then look for ways to “upgrade” them by choosing versions of those foods that are less processed and higher in fiber, Corbin said. Here are some ways to do that:
Breakfast: If you enjoy eating cereal in the morning, try switching to a cereal that has less sugar and more fiber. You could upgrade to steel-cut oats — which are high in resistant starch — topped with nuts, seeds and berries or sliced fruit. You could also try plain Greek yogurt, which contains plenty of protein and probiotics, topped with nut butter, berries, and flax and chia seeds, which are both good sources of resistant starch.
Lunch: If you like sandwiches for lunch, ditch the ultra-processed white bread and choose a brand that says “whole grain” or “100 percent whole grain,” such as Dave’s Killer Bread or Food for Life’s Ezekiel Bread. If you like cold cuts, choose a brand that has few additives, such as Wegmans Just Turkey Turkey Breast or Applegate sliced turkey, chicken and roast beef. You could add spinach, tomatoes, onions, peppers and other veggies to your sandwich.
Dinner: If you like pasta for dinner, try upgrading from a white pasta to a whole-wheat pasta or legume pasta made from chickpeas or edamame. These pastas contain large amounts of fiber and protein. For the sauce, add as many veggies as you can, even if it’s a store-bought pasta sauce. “When my husband makes pasta, he adds a bunch of vegetables to the sauce that he gets from the store — mushrooms, carrots, onions, peppers,” Corbin said. “You don’t even know that they’re there. Hide the vegetables in wherever you can.” Serve your pasta with the least-processed source of protein you can find, such as a lean cut of meat, grilled fish, tofu or tempeh, Corbin said.
Snacks: If you like potato chips as a snack, upgrade to something that tastes similar but is higher in fiber and better for you, such as Terra vegetable chips or crackers made from whole grains and almond flour. Some other good options are nuts, trail mix and minimally processed snack bars.
Corbin emphasized that it’s also important to be a realist. If you can eat healthy meals most of the time, that’s great. But it’s also fine to treat yourself. “I don’t eat perfectly,” she said. “I try to make the best choices that I can. But I also know that one terrible day of eating is not going to mess up your whole life.”
October is already BRINGING IT 👏
one day in and october is already bringing it all to the table. a brand-new tasting menu, a fresh lineup of cock/mocktails, and some exciting new additions to our menu. fall is ALL IN.
NEW TASTING MENU IS HERE!!
five courses of bold, rebellious flavor. from scallop sashimi with butternut squash salsa to charcoal-roasted eggplant katsu curry, this menu hits hard. 🔥 our chefs crushed it, and it all kicks off tonight.
served nightly wednesday through sunday, 4–9pm.
what do a squirt gun, a troubadour and rosemary's baby have in common?
they are all part of our new drink menu drop! inspired flavors, original creations, and a reason to toast every night.
CHEERS!
and lastly, fresh new menu adds 🤘
our menu is getting fresh additions, and we can’t wait for you to try them! to name a few...
our Panko-Crusted Charcoal-Roasted Eggplant has a bold new look, now featuring baba ganoush, apricot sultanas, cucumber, fresh herbs, and a sprinkle of pistachios.
the Kelp-Simmered Daikon Radish (aka Chili Ponzu Scallops) brings layers of flavor with butternut squash and seaweed salsa, eggplant jus, and a kick of jalapeño ponzu.
and for sandwich lovers, our brand-new BLT is stacked with lentil bäcon, butter lettuce, garden-fresh tomatoes, and truffle aioli, all layered between two slices of housemade sourdough focaccia.
Who wants to sacrifice taste for a healthy meal?
HELL NO! At The Plot, we’re all about zero compromise, just like these devil crab fritters made with lions mane mushroom.
We rolled these babies out at our Plantscape dinner last week and the reception was so awesome they’re now on the menu! Plus, we feel so good about serving them to you. Benefits of eating lions mane mushrooms have been celebrated for centuries in Chinese medicine, for their role in fighting inflammation and free radicals, fighting dementia, reducing anxiety and depression, regenerating nerves, and managing diabetes… just to name a few!
Chef Davin Waute LOVES lions mane and so do we, and we’re stoked to have this fritter on our dinner menu seven days a week!
Take a peek inside our dry ager 👀
Watermelon Brisket — yes, you heard that right! Chef @davinwaite has been letting these beauties age for days in a Southern dry rub. 🍉🔥
a reason to celebrate!
we’re excited to share some wonderful news with all of you!!
Nancy, who many of you know and love from her time serving in our dining room, is stepping into a new role on our Community & Culture Cultivator. she has been a true advocate for The Plot in the community, while also showing incredible care for service details and the way our entire restaurant ecosystem works together, and we’re excited to see her passion and skills shine even brighter in this new role.
we’re feeling deeply inspired by the diverse skills and passions across our leadership team right now, and grateful for every single person who helps build and grow this restaurant every day.
please join us in celebrating Nancy and cheering her on as she steps into this exciting new chapter! 🌱
🚨🚨🚨 final call!
if you have been following our socials (you should if you don’t, they are rad), you may have seen talk of our Plantscape Giveaway! WELL, WE HAVE A WINNER! congratulations to @djdeitii!! and thank you to everyone who entered! we still have tickets left to our LAST PLANTSCAPE (for now at least). we are switching things up so this really is your final opportunity for a while to enjoy our Planstcape dinner series. to say we will top it off with a bang, tuesday, is an understatement.
😊 seriously. get your tickets.
join us for the fun and magic of these madly (and slightly mad) creative chefs. they are ready to show you a good time.
65 seats. one unforgettable night.
experience live-fire cooking stations and music under twinkling lights, with DJ BUCKY LEE!
september 23, 2025 | dinner starts at 6:30 PM
CLICK HERE >> TICKET LINK
and follow us to catch all the action HERE
🔥 GIVEAWAY TIME 🔥
We’re giving away seats to next week’s Plantscape: The Outdoor Uprising — an all-outdoor, no-rules dinner party where the garden comes alive at night with live-fire cooking, rebellious creativity, and a celebration of food, community, and connection. One lucky winner will receive 2 tickets to the event.
And this isn’t just any Plantscape — it’s the last one for a while as we take a pause on the series. If you’ve been waiting to experience it, this is your chance.
Here’s how to enter:👇
FOLLOW @theplotrestaurant on Instagram https://lnkd.in/gUX4suER
TAG a friend you’d like to bring in the comments
Each tag = 1 entry || *Bonus: share this post in your stories + tag us for an extra entry! Entries are unlimited, and the winner will be announced on Thursday, 9/18. 🔥
we know our why. what’s yours?
at The Plot, we exist to rewrite the future of dining through boundary-pushing, chef-led cuisine that honors the planet and all who live on it. rooted in sustainability and guided by a zero-waste ethos, we champion animal welfare, environmental welfare, and the creative possibilities of plants. you don’t have to be vegan, and you don’t have to be super extreme, you just have to care. even one plant-based meal a week is progress. we’re proof that food can be indulgent, rebellious, and good for the planet all at once.
“The single most important thing you can do for the planet is eat less meat.” - Sir David Attenborough
The uprising returns September 23rd.
local’s late summer plantscape: THE OUTDOOR UPRISING
it’s back. on september 23rd, The Plot South Oceanside sets the garden ablaze for another all-outdoor, no-rules dinner party. expect live-fire cooking stations, chefs stirring up trouble and DJ Bucky Lee spinning under the lights as the night rebels.
dinner starts at 6:30pm
65 seats available
$125 per guest
$45 optional wine & cocktail pairing
$35 optional non-alc wine & cocktail pairing
this isn’t just dinner. this is the uprising 🔥
book on our special dinners tab!
Costa Mesa, let’s do one last round 🌿🍻
Costa Mesa friends, The Plot CM is closing its doors on sunday, september 28. though Costa Mesa didn’t fully take root, we had one hell of a time, and we love you all for making it unforgettable.
now we’re channeling all that energy into The Plot South Oceanside, where the gardens are thriving, the chefs are turning up the creativity, and our roots are digging deeper every day. stop by Costa Mesa on or before the 28th to grab your favorites and say hi before we go, and then come see what we’re growing in South O!
✨ The word is getting out…
There San Diego just caught on to our nightly tasting menu at The Plot South Oceanside! Come see what all the buzz is about.
Check out what they have to say HERE.
currently craving SPÄM & KIMCHI!! 🔥
currently craving SPÄM & KIMCHI!! 🔥 — aka, bowl of our dreams, with our savory red lentil späm, crispy rice, kimchi, yum yum sauce, napa cabbage, sea beans and the perfect pinch of sesame. available in O’side and Costa Mesa, and waiting for you to dig in!
It was fire 🔥
To everyone who joined us for Plantscape: The Outdoor Uprising—thank you. You showed up with open hearts (and hungry bellies), and made the night unforgettable. From the fire-fueled cooking stations to the music under the stars, it was pure magic.
We’re still glowing.
So tell us…
Should we do it again? 👀
Let us know if you’re down for another round—and keep your eyes peeled. The garden has more stories to tell.
Luxury Catering at The Plot.
plant-based, purpose-driven, and elevated by design.
The Plot is redefining what luxury catering looks (and tastes) like. whether you're planning an executive lunch, a private dinner, or a full-scale corporate event, we deliver bold, sustainable cuisine that feels as good as it tastes.
delivery, pick-up, or fully staffed events.
menus ranging from vibrant whole-food plant-based to indulgent vegan comfort food.
customizable experiences for office gatherings, wellness retreats, brand launches, and more.
need a venue? our Oceanside and Costa Mesa locations are available for private or partial buyout—curated, intentional spaces for unforgettable events.
let’s plan something spectacular!
What Was Once Radical Is Now Michelin 🎇
Haute Cuisine, Reimagined—From Oceanside to Paris.
when Chef Alain Passard announced 3 Michelin star L’Arpège would go fully plant-based, the culinary world took note. at The Plot, we’ve long believed that the future of fine dining is grown—not raised or caught. from our zero-waste approach to unapologetically bold flavors, we’re proud to see the evolution of plant-based cuisine take root from oceanside to paris.
"Just like Eric Ripert is one of the undisputed masters of seafood, Alain Passard holds the title for vegetables. His commitment to the dish from soil to plate is inspiring in how he cares for every ingredient. The length of time he has been cooking at that level, and the flavors he achieves, has created a new level of respect for vegetables amongst chefs. He has long been one of my heroes."
-Chef Davin Waite
when paris follows your lead. L’Arpège’s recent shift to an entirely plant-based menu is a watershed moment for haute cuisine—and a quiet validation of what we’ve championed for years at The Plot: that plants, when treated with reverence and creativity, are not only enough—they’re everything. this is more than a trend. it’s a recalibration of values, flavor, and future.