Pablo Becker, the chef behind Barrio Logan’s celebrated taqueria Fish Guts, is doubling down on the neighborhood with two new restaurants slated to open this fall. One will be a taco-driven concept built around land animals instead of seafood, while the other will be a lunch-only sandwich shop serving up flavors pulled from Mexico, France, Italy, Chicago, and New York.
According to San Diego Magazine, Becker plans to open Concrete Cowboy in November 2026 at 2219 Logan Avenue, directly across the street from Fish Guts. The space will retain a cabin-like aesthetic but get an adobe-style exterior, western-themed wallpaper, and taxidermied animals throughout the dining room, according to the magazine. Becker based the concept’s inspiration on his father’s enthusiasm for western culture, per the same report, and the menu will lean into tacos made with duck confit, ribeye, pork belly, and skirt steak.
The Concrete Cowboy space has its own recent history. The storefront was previously home to Lia’s Lumpia, a local Filipino restaurant that closed its physical shop in late 2025 to return to catering and pop-up operations, as SanDiegoVille reported at the time. Hoodline covered that lumpia shop's shift to pop-ups back in January.
A Sandwich Shop Named After Anthony Bourdain
Becker’s second new venture, Santo Poco, is set to open at 2222 Logan Avenue in October 2026, per the same San Diego Magazine report. Unlike Fish Guts and Concrete Cowboy, Santo Poco will operate as a lunch-only sandwich shop offering takeout and delivery without a dine-in option. The menu will draw on Cuban-style sandwiches with Mexican touches and Italian cold cuts, Becker told the magazine, and will include a sandwich called the Antonio Bourdain.
Both new spaces are being designed by Dane Danner, who is handling menu layouts, logos, and packaging for the projects, the magazine reports. Concrete Cowboy will operate Tuesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner once it opens, and Becker plans to shift the bar layout from fast-casual to full service.
From El Vitral to Fish Guts
Becker’s path to Barrio Logan wasn’t a straight line. He opened the upscale Mexican restaurant El Vitral Restaurant & Tequileria in San Diego’s East Village in 2009, but the business closed in 2013 amid the fallout of the Great Recession, according to San Diego Magazine. That closure sent Becker to Chicago, where he spent five years working as a line cook under chef Richard Sandoval, his cousin, an internationally recognized figure in Mexican cuisine. Earlier in his career, Becker had also worked on the opening team for Isla inside Treasure Island in Las Vegas alongside Sandoval, who now operates dozens of Mexican dining concepts around the world.
Becker opened Fish Guts in 2023, and the taqueria has built a devoted following by sourcing roughly 90% of its seafood directly from local San Diego boats and fishmongers, cooking everything to order out of a compact 500-square-foot kitchen at Logan Avenue and Sampson Street. The restaurant has racked up accolades since, including being named one of San Diego’s best new restaurants in 2023, a readers’ top pick for the city’s best fish tacos in 2024, and a critic’s pick for best fish tacos in both 2025 and 2026. With Concrete Cowboy opening across the street, Becker said another Fish Guts location elsewhere in San Diego is unlikely — instead, Fish Guts itself will temporarily close for a remodel once Concrete Cowboy opens, swapping its current white palette for a warmer design and introducing a refreshed menu with new tacos and other items.
A Corridor in Transition
Becker’s expansion lands at a pivotal moment for Logan Avenue’s restaurant scene. Barrio Logan saw a landmark turnover when 92-year-old Mexican institution Las Cuatro Milpas announced it would close its Logan Avenue location at the end of December 2025 following a $2.2 million property sale, according to CBS 8. That restaurant had operated on Logan Avenue since 1933. Just over a year before that, Acapulco-style eatery Todo Pa’ La Cruda moved into the former ¡Salud! Tacos space on Logan Avenue in July 2024, another high-profile swap along the strip that Hoodline reported on at the time.
The churn is unfolding within a heavily regulated framework. In December 2023, the California Coastal Commission gave final approval to an updated Barrio Logan Community Plan establishing a 65-acre buffer zone between industrial port operations and the neighborhood’s residential and commercial corridors, while encouraging transit-oriented mixed-use development, according to the City of San Diego. Barrio Logan also carries official State-Designated Cultural District status from the California Arts Council, granted in 2017 and centered on the National Historic Landmark Chicano Park and its 79 historic outdoor murals — one of just 14 such districts statewide. The Logan Avenue corridor itself operates within a Maintenance Assessment District managed by the nonprofit Barrio Logan Association alongside the city, and the neighborhood’s 133-acre Redevelopment Project Area and Enterprise Zone framework offers commercial storefront improvement rebates and micro-loan programs aimed at retaining small businesses, per the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Against that backdrop, Becker’s bet on two new concepts within steps of his original taqueria reflects real confidence in Barrio Logan’s commercial future, even as some of the neighborhood’s oldest family-run businesses give way to newer, chef-driven ventures.
