Balboa Park holds a special place in the hearts of Jeff Motch and Clea Hantman (pictured below). The owners of Blind Lady Ale House (and its in-house nanobrewery BLAH Brewing) expanded their entrepreneurial empire, opening bar-and-restaurant Panama 66 in the San Diego Museum of Art’s sculpture garden on the park’s west end in 2014. Over a decade later, their ardor and enthusiasm for the park have only strengthened. The couple currently has a pair of near- and long-term projects going, one of which is a new restaurant that they are developing in collaboration with the City of San Diego.
In October of last year, the City made a call for proposals for the renovation, operation and lease of the former Village Grill, which is located near the center of the park, just west of the Spanish Village Art Center and north of Casa del Prado. Motch and Hantman’s proposal was selected based on their experience in the hospitality industry and the strength of their concept. While that concept is not yet ready for public consumption, it will be unique to San Diego. And like the couple’s other two businesses, the renovated indoor-outdoor venue will have a local beer bent.
“We are excited to work with Jeff and Clea to develop an eatery that best serves the park and its visitors,” says Economic Development Director Christina Bibler. “Creating a vibrant restaurant in Balboa Park can come with unique complexities, but given their successful background and excitement for the project, we’re confident it will become a beloved destination in the park.”
The Village Grill renovation is one of several City projects aimed at ensuring Balboa Park remains the vital, historic community hub it has been for decades. The Botanical Building reopened last December following a $26.45 million reconstruction, the Marston House is in the midst of a restoration and the City is working with Save Starlight to preserve Starlight Bowl in the park’s Palisades Plaza area.
“We love that this giant greenspace in the middle of the city is one of the first stops for tourists, and is also a literal playground for locals,” says Motch. He and Clea want both groups to have more food-and-beverage options when visiting Balboa Park and believe this will help visitors to more easily be able to experience the wealth of museums, art galleries, event spaces and attractions it has to offer.
“That end of the park can be dark at night, with little action after 5 p.m. Even during the day, the food choices are pretty limited,” says Motch. “So to be able to enliven, enrich and embrace that end of the park is exciting to us. More food and drink options are better for everyone. That’s especially true for Balboa Park’s institutions, which will benefit from people being able to take in more than just one attraction before having to leave to get food elsewhere.”
Panama 66 has not only kept visitors within Balboa Park’s friendly confines, but brought in clientele who may not have otherwise made the trip. The venue’s moniker is a nod to the Panama-California Exposition the park hosted from 1915 to 1917 combined with the year the its sculpture-garden home was built. The latter is also cited in the name of a hazy IPA called “Summer of 66”, which Motch developed in collaboration with Carlsbad-based Burgeon Beer Co. last year to celebrate Panama 66’s historic environs. From June to September, the venue served 4,200 pints of the beer, inspiring Motch to not only bring it back, but go even bigger.
“This summer, we decided to invite a few more beer friends to the summer jam and we’re beyond stoked on what we all came up with,” says Motch, who enlisted Miramar-based Fall Brewing and Kearny Mesa’s Societe Brewing for his 2025 Balboa Park tribute. “Burgeon, Societe and Fall have been on our menu for over 10 years, and are our three best-selling breweries. On top of being amazing breweries, they’re all amazing people we knew would totally understand what we were going for and be able to deliver on our dreams.”
In determining which beer styles to tackle via this project, Motch decided to play to each brewery’s proven strengths. For his collaboration with Fall, he sought to build on the success of their year-round Pilsner, Plenty for All, to produce a summery lager with character. With Societe, a company recognized for crafting quality hoppy beers for more than a dozen years, he aimed to develop a vibrant, punchy West Coast IPA.
The following is the trio of beers that was produced along with notes from Motch.
- Fall / BLAH Park Life Lager, 4.7%: This snappy lager is blooming with bright, floral, lemon hoppiness and a dry, thirst-quenching dryness. Imagine fresh citrus trees nestled in an endless field of flowers, courtesy of a kiss of Citra dry-hops layered on top of a classic blend of Noble hops.
- Societe / BLAH The Matriarch IPA, 7%: A harmonious blend of citrus and tropical fruit, zesty grapefruit and orange. This beer gets its name from the “Matriarch of Balboa Park”, Kate Sessions, who donated hundreds of trees to the park over a 10-year span beginning in 1892.
- Burgeon / BLAH Summer of 66 Hazy IPA, 6.6%: Summer of 66 is back, but this time it’s packed with malted and flaked grains for a luxurious body, with the addition of copious amounts of tropical, guava and passionfruit notes.
Park Life will hit Panama 66’s taps today and will soon be joined by The Matriarch, which will debut on Friday, May 16. Summer of 66 will be rereleased the following week on Friday, May 23.
“Our goal at Panama 66 has always been to represent San Diego the best way possible,” says Motch. “We’ve always taken what’s on tap very seriously, making sure what we serve is the best representation of the local brewing industry. This series of collabs is our way of taking that commitment one step further and creating beer specifically brewed to represent, and we’re stoked on the final products.”
Panama 66 inside is located within the San Diego Museum of Art’s Sculpture Garden at 1450 El Prado inside Balboa Park, and The Village Grill is located at 1660 Old Globe Way