A few years back, Accursio Lota—2017 World Pasta Champion and chef-owner of Cori Pastificio and the new Dora Ristorante which was named for his nonna—told us he raised snails under his family's staircase as a child in Sicily. Fattened them up on raw spaghetti and fresh herbs, eventually ending their journey on this planet with some butter and garlic.

Turns out this was an entire neighborhood kid thing. Some kids ride bikes. Some puree their brains playing video games. Kids in Lota's neighborhood waited for the rain to come, then went around collecting a very Sicilian version of escargot.

"There would be all of us kids out there with our grocery bags," he tells us on this week's episode of Happy Half Hour. "We'd all have bags full of snails."

Lota was just awarded the Tre Forchette from Gambero Rosso (essentially the Michelin Guide of Italy). It's the very highest honor you can get as an Italian chef, equivalent to three Michelin stars. Lota's the only San Diego chef to receive the honor, and one of only 11 chefs outside of Italy.

He brings some focaccia into SDM. We eat, we laugh, we talk about snails, art, the history of food, and why we should give a damn.

It is now time, when hot dogs become communion wafers once again. The weather is Joe Musgrove's elbow. The Fernando Tatis baseball dance-swagger reenters. He is the most exciting right fielder in the history of the game, almost appearing on every play as if he has no idea to execute the task in front of him—until he defies gravity and pulls a baseball out of the the beginning of space, then throws a 600 mile per hour strike to catch someone trying to steal.

And for this episode of Happy Half Hour, we take the "Bebemos Golden Hour" tour into a Padres pregame classic—Bub's at the Ballpark. It started with Todd Brown moving to San Diego in a Winnebago, selling his wings at a gas station in Oceanside. Eventually he opened Bub's Dive Bar in Pacific Beach. Most of us leave PB when we're 28—when we look around at all the new ab muscles and feel like a senior citizen—but Todd and his wife stayed for 25 years and still own Waterbar in the 'hood. They opened this second offshoot in the historic Simon Levy building next to Petco Park in 2011.

And every game day, it is a scene. The Animal House of baseball joy. They've got tots and they've got kale. They have Steakums on the menu. Steakums, bless. It's like a bald eagle with a heart of a Ford F150. Every reasonably American ballpark has a place like this… a big, durable playground lacquered within an inch of its life to protect us from our excitable spillage. Its soul is Budweiser, but they've got everything on tap except pretension.

On March 25, Tony Gwynn Jr. will come to Bub's to hang with the Padres people, and kick off his new partnership with San Diego's upstart tequila people, Bebemos. Tony's sharing his family's recipe for a pineapple margarita that doesn't taste like a glass of insulin. Nearly an agua fresca.

Co-hosts Troy Johnson and Jackie Bryant, Bebemos co-founder Preston, and Todd debate the greatest baseball food from restaurants across the city. That is to say, the best hot dogs—from Doggos Gus to Lefty's to Nason's Beer Hall to some random, open-all-night place Jackie found in downtown—plus some nachos and ice cream.

Play ball.

All due respect to their highly sustainable role in the ecosystem and feeding the world, but sardines served as a dish on their own can be a significant challenge to your ability to enjoy eating as a concept. They are the seafoodiest seafood—as if the ocean itself was poured into a pot, reduced into a deeply intense stock, and served in tiny-fish form.

But at The Fishery in Pacific Beach, chef-partner Mike Reidy—who cooked under two-star Michelin chef Josiah Citrin at Melisse, then was chef de cuisine at Callie for a spell—is serving one of the best versions I've tasted in a long while. Two of them served whole, blistered, glistening with olive oil and salsa verde, served with sourdough from Wayfarer Bakery.

The restaurant is the offshoot of local seafood supplier, Pacific Shellfish, started by fifth-generation San Diego fisherman Judd Brown and his wife, Maryanne. Their idea was to connect local boats to local restaurants. They originally set up shop in Barrio Logan in 1978. The city imminent-domained his shop with the construction of the I-5. Full of 1960s protest spirit, he nearly chained himself to his space to save his dream.

But the city let him set up in this prime location in north PB. Maryanne then got swept up in the soft moonlight of Alice Waters' local-food movement, and did Judd one better by opening a real farm-to-table restaurant next door. Now their daughter Annemarie runs the legacy and has put modern oomph into it (her husband Nick runs the seafood).

So, every morn, Pacific Shellfish gets the best catch from local boats (plus imports off planes at Lindbergh). All Reidy has to do is walk through the double doors, grab the best looking fish he sees, and treat it well. At the bar, Zach Sheldon (who spent years at the city's cocktail shangri-la, Youngblood) is turning zero-waste impulse into creative drinks like the Sea & Spice. He takes lobster shells cracked for dinner and creates an upcycled lobster oil (blending them, so that the friction heat of the blades cooks the shells and imparts flavor to the oil). The finished concoction has curry leaf cachaca (Brazil's cousin-of-rum spirit), coconut palm, green curry coconut milk, peppercorn mélange, lime leaf, acid, and crimson droplets of that lobster oil.

On this episode of Happy Half Hour, I talk about those sardines and that drink. I also discuss Accursio Lota, the Sicilian chef-owner of Cori Pastificio and Dora, who just got Italy's highest honor—the equivalent of a couple Michelin stars. I give a minor hit list of the best dishes I've eaten around town (the tomino cheese at Cucina Urbana, the kouign amann at Little While), plus news about San Diego's first electric food truck serving Middle Eastern food, Copper Kings burger heroes expanding into Oceanside, and the new sushi spot headed to Liberty Station (Ponzu).

For the interview, we run it back with one of my favorite people in San Diego's food scene, Jon Sloan—culinary director of Juniper & Ivy and co-creator of the restaurant that won the fried chicken sandwich wars, Crack Shack. A hilarious, highly intelligent food mind.