The construction fence at 1404 Camino Del Mar came down the first week of August, roughly two and a half weeks after Opening Day had already filled the village with race-goers in linen and fascinators. That timing is the whole story. Everyone who watched this corner sit dark for nearly a decade assumed whatever finally opened there would ease in quietly before the crowds arrived, the way most new restaurants do. Instead it opened in the middle of the loudest three weeks Del Mar has all year.
The building itself has a longer memory than most locals realize. Bully's North ran on that corner from 1969 until it closed in late 2017, built by George Bullington and Lester Holt, two Del Mar Racetrack regulars who couldn't find a restaurant that matched the energy of racing season. What followed the closure was less a renovation than a decade-long identity crisis. The project was initially introduced as an R+D Kitchen, later repositioned as an outpost of Hillstone's seafood-oriented Gulfstream, and ultimately emerged as Honor Bar, a smaller format built around sushi and sandwiches rather than a full seafood house. The Del Mar Sandpiper, the village's community paper, caught the mood exactly in its April 2026 edition:
"Sooner or later, maybe in 2026."
It landed a little later than sooner, but the paper called the year right. Honor Bar opened at 1404 Camino Del Mar in the first week of August, and it is now serving Hillstone's first restaurant anywhere in San Diego County.
What actually sits on that corner now
The new building is not a renovation of the old bar. Del Mar approved a revised design in 2018 for a 4,169-square-foot restaurant above two levels of parking containing 59 spaces, which city officials described as the first newly constructed commercial building in downtown Del Mar in more than three decades. That detail matters more than it sounds. Downtown Del Mar's building stock is old and its footprints are small, so a ground-up commercial project of any size is rare enough that the design review process alone can eat years, which helps explain why this corner took as long as it did.
The menu that finally arrived is tighter than the space's history might suggest. Nine sushi preparations run from a $14 spicy carrot and avocado roll to a $22 hiramasa roll with avocado, jicama, cilantro, sashimi and roe, alongside a short list of Hillstone standards: the $21 Honor Burger, topped with melted cheddar, tomato and coleslaw, and the $21 Ding's Crispy Chicken Sandwich, made with buttermilk-fried chicken, baby Swiss cheese and spicy slaw, plus a $26 French dip with thinly sliced roasted prime rib on a toasted French roll. Even the dress code reads like it was written for a different decade. Hillstone's house rules bar team jerseys, hoodies, gym clothing, tank tops, sweatpants, sports bras, casual slides, foam-style flip-flops and excessively revealing clothing, with dress shorts and collared shirts encouraged instead. For a restaurant serving burgers and chicken sandwiches, it is an unusually formal ask, and it tells you exactly which crowd Hillstone expects to walk through that door during a race meet.
Why opening mid-meet was the smarter bet
The easy assumption, and the one most people made watching the fence come down, was that Hillstone would want a quiet soft launch before the racing crowd showed up. That is not what happened, and the reason has to do with how Del Mar's economy actually works in August. The village doesn't get a steady flow of foot traffic across the year. It gets a concentrated burst tied to the summer meet, which runs from Opening Day on July 17 through Labor Day, September 7, and then a long, quiet stretch until next summer. A restaurant that opens before the meet has to survive on regular local business until the crowds arrive. A restaurant that opens in the middle of the meet gets to skip that waiting period entirely and start with the busiest audience of the year already walking past the door.
That is effectively what happened here. Honor Bar opened nearly a decade after the corner went dark, an unusually prolonged development saga that began in 2017, and it did so during a stretch when the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club had already shifted first post to 2:00 p.m. on nearly every race day for 2026, including Fridays, which had moved up from the traditional 4:00 p.m. start. Post time moving two hours earlier means the after-race crowd hits Camino Del Mar earlier too, which is exactly the audience a new restaurant on that corner wants walking by at dinnertime.
The rest of August at the track
If you already live here, the calendar worth keeping isn't Opening Day, which has passed. It's what's left of the meet.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Aug. 1 | Uncorked: Del Mar Wine Fest |
| Aug. 8 | Turf & Surf Fest (new for 2026) |
| Aug. 15 | Taste of New Orleans |
| Aug. 22 | Pacific Classic, the meet's marquee race |
| Aug. 29 | College Day |
The Pacific Classic is the day to actually plan around. It's a $1 million Grade I race, the richest on the West Coast, and it anchors a Saturday card that also runs the $300,000 Del Mar Oaks, the $300,000 Del Mar Mile Stakes, and the $200,000 Green Flash Handicap, all part of a season featuring 37 stakes races offering $7.775 million in total purses. It is the one Saturday where reservations up and down Camino Del Mar fill first and fastest.
Every Friday through Labor Day also carries its own reason to show up even if you skip the betting windows. The track runs a free concert lineup after the last race each Friday, with new acts booked every year, and it's open to anyone holding that day's race ticket. With first post now landing two hours earlier, that concert fits into an afternoon that used to be all racing and no evening.
The corner is not the only thing that changed
Honor Bar is the loudest opening of the year because of how long it took, but it landed in a village that had already been shifting under it. Inland at Del Mar Highlands Town Center, Culinary Dropout, Sam Fox's first California restaurant, has opened its doors, a meaningful marker for a chef whose restaurant group has largely stayed out of the state until now. Down on Camino Del Mar itself, the former Zel's space at 1247 has become Coral Del Mar, running a Baja-Hawaiian fusion menu, while just a block from Honor Bar's own corner, Queenstown Del Mar opened this spring at 1435 Camino Del Mar bringing a New Zealand-inspired menu of grass-fed burgers and a glass pavilion dining room with retractable windows, the same team behind a pair of well-known spots in Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach.
None of this displaces the anchors. Jake's Del Mar, Poseidon on the Beach, and Pacifica Del Mar still hold their stretch of Coast Boulevard, and on any given race weekend all three still run a wait. What's changed is the range of options between the beachfront view tables and a quick bite before the last race, and that range only got wider this year.
What to do with the rest of the meet
If you've been putting off trying the new corner, the Pacific Classic weekend on August 22 is going to be the worst possible day to walk in without a reservation. Go before or after it. If you want the quieter version of what changed this year, Coral Del Mar and Queenstown are both right on Camino Del Mar and neither carries the same nine years of anticipation, which usually means an easier table. And if the only thing you take from this meet is the new Friday schedule, that alone is worth knowing: with post time two hours earlier, a full afternoon at the track no longer means choosing between the last race and dinner.
Del Mar in August rewards people who already know which three weeks matter and which corners are worth the wait. That kind of pattern recognition, watching how a village actually moves through its busiest season, is the same instinct that matters when the conversation eventually turns to buying or selling a home here. If that conversation is on your horizon, L. Russell Gray offers a free home valuation for anyone ready to see what this market looks like from the inside.
