The most famous beer garden in San Diego County opens under a new name today. Quarry Escondido, the independent restaurant from Stone Brewing founders Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, opens its doors on November 14 at 1999 Citracado Parkway, one day after the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens served its final dinner under the Stone name.

The 57,000-square-foot bistro and gardens was one of the places that made Escondido a beer destination. Stone opened it in 2006, and it grew into a landmark, at one point the third-largest tourist attraction in the area behind Legoland and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. But the bistro was not part of the May sale of Stone Brewing locations from Sapporo, which has owned the brand since 2022, to Firestone Walker Brewing Company and Duvel Moortgat USA. In August, Stone announced it was exiting its three Escondido locations as the new parent company moved production to Paso Robles and Kansas City, and Sapporo planned to shutter the bistro in November.

That is when Koch and Wagner stepped in. The pair, who launched Stone in 1996 with their first keg of Stone Pale Ale, took the location back and rechristened it Quarry Escondido, a name that nods to the rugged landscape around it. The new restaurant will run independently of Stone Brewing, but it is keeping what made the place work: the gardens, the patio, and a beer program built around craft beer.

The beer program is the part to watch. Koch has described it as “a beer program celebrating the breadth and quality of the craft brewing community,” and he has said the restaurant will keep serving Stone’s signature beers even though the location no longer carries the Stone name. That makes Quarry something unusual in San Diego: a landmark beer garden run by the people who built it, pouring the beers that built it, without the brand attached.

For San Diego beer drinkers, today is a good day. The bistro that was supposed to close for good is open again, in the same gardens, with the same founders behind it. We will be watching what the tap list looks like in the first weeks, and whether Quarry becomes the showcase for the wider San Diego brewing scene that Koch has described.