Early this September, our community welcomed Campfire restaurant to Carlsbad. This family-friendly and unique eateries invites customers to an outdoor experience with food cooked in an open kitchen. In order to prepare, the staff worked to guarantee a non-chaotic opening for both workers and customers.

The restaurant was simply inspired by the space available and the imagination of the staff. Although the workers have had the space for about a year, four or five months was spent building the restaurant and making their vision come to life.

“The name is from celebrating the spirit of the campfire, so sitting around with good friends, good family, and food and drinks in the middle of the table. It’s a very fun and intimate group activity that we were trying to recreate here,” consigliere Matthew King said. “Everybody has their own idea of what they want to do and this is just ours.”

Campfire covers 6000-square-feet and includes 185 seats, including 25 at the bar. Most of the furniture is wood to go along with the outdoor theme of the restaurant along with a teepee outside to keep the kids busy. This original restaurant has high hopes of becoming a neighborhood restaurant where people will hang out with friends and family.

“I think it will be very successful because they have a lot of really good food, and the service was quick and they were really nice,” sophomore Avery Smith said.

Customers should expect small but filling portions cooked by Campfire’s executive chef Andrew Bachelier. The open kitchen format was created with the idea of having a good time with friends and family, just like you would at a campfire.

“The good news about Campfire is you cannot make a wrong move on the menu. Our menu is broken into a small protein section, a veggies and grains section, and a larger protein section. I would recommend one or two items from the small proteins, two items from the veggies, and one with a possible two from the larger proteins, and sharing it. It’s meant to be shared. It’s meant to have taste of all the different ingredients and flavors that we have,” King said.

Campfire hopes to separates itself from other local restaurants through its originality. 

“The restaurant in general it had a family vibe, and when you walk in there’s the bar and all the workers and it’s really cool because you can see them cooking your food,” Smith said. “The people working there were all really nice and friendly and they started conversations so it wasn’t like just they were serving you; it was more you were having a conversation.”

As well as having a meaning behind the name Campfire, the workers have a reason for building the restaurant in Carlsbad.

“We love Carlsbad. We think it’s a different neighborhood. There’s a fun, funky vibe to it. A lot of murals around. A lot of cool architecture. This building was very beautiful,” King said. “We just saw something in the neighborhood. We saw an area that we could fill a void, where something different could happen and people would respond well to it. That’s kinda how we had chosen Carlsbad.”

You can find more information here.