Profile - Terra Restaurant & Bar, San Diego

When you bite into the sesame-crusted salmon at San Diego’s Terra Restaurant & Bar, it likely will include a little mandarin orange zing. Rather than a sprig of parsley, orange segments are chef/owner Jeff Rossman’s garnish of choice for fish dishes. Besides plating the sesame-crusted salmon over tangerine segments, he serves it with a slaw made of napa cabbage, jicama, cilantro and radicchio tossed with a mandarin orange vinaigrette.

“Citrus and seafood go so well together. It’s a match made in heaven,” he says. Open since 1998, the restaurant makes the most of South, Central and North America flavors with an emphasis on local seasonal ingredients. The menu changes every quarter.

Other places to find citrus on Terra’s menu:

The base marinade for all chicken dishes is his own herb-citrus marinade, with fresh-squeezed orange juice, sage, mint, basil and a little garlic and oil.

Skirt steak is marinated in a mixture of chipotles and orange and lime juice.

“Salad dressings require some type acidity, why not a flavorful citrus like

has a natural sweetness and acidity rather than vinegar. The flavors of citrus add a whole different dimension,” he says.

Among citrus specialties, Rossman got turned onto oroblancos (a cross between a marsh white grapefruit and an acidless pummelo.) “I thought it had a really good flavor; not too tart or sweet. It’s well balanced,” he says. He uses it in a salad with simple rice wine vinegar, oroblanco segments and petite greens.

Rossman also builds citrus into the restaurant’s drink menu. “We take Meyer lemon zest and blood orange zest and infuse them in our own vodkas,” he says.

He says he likes to take blood orange zest, steep it with vodka for a week, then make a simple syrup with sugar water and marry the two. The result is sweetened blood orange vodka, “and with a little champagne, it’s fantastic,” he says.