SAN DIEGO -- Inside the shiny pink building at Washington and Goldfinch, through a beautiful courtyard, an elevator takes you up eight floors to the rooftop to a restaurant with jaw-dropping views of San Diego.
"We get to see the islands we get the fish from," said Executive Chef Mike Moritz, as he looked out the windows with me. "Its pretty cool. You get to see basically all of San Diego."
The menu at Communion is global, inspired by countries all over the world. The dishes are meant to be shared.
The first dish I try, the local bluefin tuna over sliced avocado. It was my favorite.
"It's got our own poke sauce. It's really ginger forward, full of sesame oil, spicy aioli. It's topped with taro root, Viola flowers and purple radish," said Chef Mike.
The dish is bursting with flavor. It has just the right amount of heat.
The second dish I tried was the Baked Triple Cream made up of filo dough, berry coulis, seasonal fruits, and local sage flower honey. The sweet and savory together on one plate is delicious.
Though he's serious about his food, he also has a sense of humor about it.
"My food, I've always tried to push it beyond that typical B restaurant," he joked.
"One of my big interview questions is, 'How do you make aioli?' As soon as they say, 'I open the mayonnaise,' I know they're not ready for this," he laughed.
There are subtle nods to the restaurant's name in the decor. From the cathedral shapes behind the bar to the ethereal artwork above it. Sitting on the patio is like being up in the clouds.
I also try two of the most popular dishes on the menu, the Coconut Milk Poached Seabass and the Maine Lobster Risotto. The fish was tender and perfectly cooked. The risotto was so rich and flavorful with just a touch of heat on the back end.
"It's a little bit of chili flake, just to add that kind of heat. But it's just reinforced lobster from the lobster stock into the lobster when we bloom the risotto into the lobster itself," said Chef Mike.
His food is impressive, but so is his story.
Chef Mike grew up in Rolando and graduated from Patrick Henry High.
His childhood was rough.
"I mean, it was just a lot of, like, foster homes. My biological parents weren't really the most law abiding citizens. So, you know, I was in and out of, like, Polinsky and different group homes and things like that. So I definitely saw kind of like the rougher, rougher side of San Diego," he said.
But at the age of ten, his foster mom, Lisa Moritz, stepped in and adopted him, giving him a fresh start and a whole new extended family in Nebraska.
Through his mom, food became synonymous with family.
"Cooking in the house was always like, you know, something that we did, it wasn't like we were super well off, so can't eat out every night. So just the concept of like cooking and feeding your family definitely got from my mom," said Chef Mike.
"Thanksgiving cooking turkey, I never really had done that before, so it was kind of interesting," he said.
"When we would go and meet with the rest of her family, which is now my family, we would divvy up all the Thanksgiving tasks, and so it'd be like, 'You're on the stuffing, you're on this,' so you were kind of just like given a little bit of a task, and you would do it, and with our family, there was, you know, 20 people there."
He eventually moved from home kitchens to professional ones in Australia, Scottsdale and then eventually returned home. His resume includes Mister A's and Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe.
"When we opened [Communion], my name was in the running for Best Chef San Diego. So that was kind of crazy through San Diego magazine, so just to be next to the other names that were out here. And it was kind of cool," he said. "I had some of my, like, childhood friends reach out to me and go, 'Dude, you're doing crazy. Like, good job.' So it's kind of cool to get recognition from people that you grew up with," he said.
One of his biggest fans remains his mom.
"She comes in all the time. I think she's actually in tomorrow with like, two of her friends," he smiled.
I asked him, "What would you tell 10-year-old Mike if you could?"
"Just enjoy the trip, I guess, as long as you are focused and actually have some drive, then you're going to do well," he smiled.