Nine years. That's how long the corner at 1404 Camino Del Mar has been tangled up in one version or another of a Hillstone Restaurant Group project. The site went dark in late 2017 when Bully's North closed after nearly five decades as a Del Mar institution. And it's sat there since, cycling through three different restaurant concepts, a pandemic, pushback from the city's Design Review Board, and enough construction delays to become a running joke among Del Mar dining regulars.
As of mid-2026, the building is up and the concept has a name: Honor Bar. But the doors still aren't open.
Hillstone's own website lists just four Honor Bar locations right now: Beverly Hills, Dallas, Montecito, and Palm Beach. Del Mar isn't on the map yet. The original target was the first half of 2026. Before that, a Hillstone rep told San Diego Magazine the opening would happen in early 2025. Neither timeline held. The Del Mar Sandpiper, the village's community newspaper, summed it up in its April 2026 edition with a line that could double as the project's unofficial motto: "Sooner or later, maybe in 2026."
What Bully's North Meant to This Corner
Before there was a construction fence at 1404 Camino Del Mar, there was a bar stool. Bully's North opened on May 25, 1969. George Bullington and Lester Holt, two Del Mar Racetrack regulars who couldn't find a restaurant that matched the energy of racing season, built it themselves. They'd already opened the original Bully's in La Jolla two years earlier, but the Del Mar version became the one people remembered.
The building goes back further than most locals realize. In the 1930s, before St. Peter's church was built nearby in 1940, the site was a makeshift chapel where about 40 parishioners gathered on Sundays. Baptisms and funerals happened in that room decades before anyone poured a pint there. Bullington and Holt turned it into an English pub-themed restaurant that pulled a crowd from week one. Desi Arnaz came through. Lucille Ball. Wilt Chamberlain. Betty Grable. Burt Bacharach. Bullington invented a cocktail called the Keoke Coffee (Keoke is George in Hawaiian) that became a house signature people still talk about. He died of a heart attack in 1984. Holt passed in 1995. Holt's daughter Beverly Yuhause-Becker ran the place through its final years until the doors closed for good in late 2017. The La Jolla location had already shut down in 2008.
For a lot of people in the 92014 ZIP code, Bully's wasn't just a restaurant. It was the living room of Del Mar.
Three Concepts, One Address, Nine Years
Hillstone Restaurant Group moved on the property quickly. The LA-based company, which runs dozens of restaurants nationally under names like Houston's, R+D Kitchen, Bandera, and South Beverly Grill, brought its first designs to Del Mar's Design Review Board in 2017. The pitch was R+D Kitchen, a polished-casual concept known for burgers and salads. The original footprint called for a roughly 5,200-square-foot restaurant on top of a three-level parking structure. Full demolition of the old Bully's building.
The city had concerns. Neighbors had concerns. Parking, traffic, building height, design character. This is Del Mar. A village of about 4,000 people where a new stop sign generates public comment. And this wasn't a stop sign. It was downtown Del Mar's first new commercial construction in over three decades. That single fact explains why every version of the project drew intense scrutiny.
By 2023, after the pandemic had further stalled everything, Hillstone swapped concepts entirely. R+D Kitchen was gone. Gulfstream, the company's seafood brand that launched in Newport Beach in 1999, was in. Gulfstream signage showed up in planning documents. Local food writers started calling it the Gulfstream project. Then Hillstone changed course again. In December 2025, SanDiegoVille reported that 1404 Camino Del Mar would open as Honor Bar instead. That made three concepts for the same corner in under a decade.
What Honor Bar Actually Serves
Honor Bar isn't a full-service dinner house. It's a bar with serious food. The format runs smaller than a typical Hillstone restaurant, built around a central bar with booth seating, dark wood paneling, leather banquettes, and the kind of low, warm lighting that makes everyone look better at 8pm. No tablecloths. No white-glove formality. Cocktail bar energy with a kitchen that takes itself seriously.
If you've eaten at the Beverly Hills or Montecito locations, you already know the menu. If you haven't, here's what to expect. Starters lean shareable. Deviled eggs with Ding's pickle relish and scallions ($8) are the default order. Guacamole with tortilla chips ($10). Hand-cut Kennebec potato fries served in a silver julep cup with aioli ($8). And then there's the food that made the concept famous. Ding's Crispy Chicken Sandwich, a buttermilk-fried chicken sandwich with sliced tomato, baby Swiss, and dressed kale, shows up on every best-of list in Beverly Hills. The Honor Burger is fresh ground chuck with cheddar, tomato, and coleslaw ($21 at the Dallas location). Ahi Tuna Tartare, hand-chopped with toasted ciabatta and avocado, runs $28. The Shrimp Louie comes with jumbo gulf shrimp, an iceberg wedge, avocado, and Thousand Island for $26. And the Emerald Kale & Rotisserie Chicken salad ($22) is the kind of dish people order at every single visit.
There's also a sushi program. The Crunchy Shrimp Roll with spicy remoulade and macadamia ($19), a Hiramasa Roll with caviar ($22), and a Rainbow Roll with salmon, tuna, shrimp, and hiramasa ($22) round out the raw side of the menu. Cocktails lean old-school: strong martinis, Old Fashioneds, Negronis, and a wine-by-the-glass list that goes deep. In Beverly Hills and Palm Beach, there are no reservations. First come, first served at the bar. Whether Del Mar follows the same policy remains to be seen, but Hillstone tends to keep its format consistent across locations.
For comparison, Boto Sushi already handles Japanese and sushi in the village, and Shimbashi Izakaya covers izakaya-style dining. Honor Bar's sushi program won't be the draw. The draw is the full package: cocktails, sandwiches, salads, and sushi all under one roof in a space built for two-hour Tuesday nights, not just special occasions.
The Del Mar Dining Scene Didn't Wait
While Honor Bar's construction timeline crawled past the nine-year mark, the rest of Camino Del Mar kept moving. Queenstown Del Mar opened on May 21, 2026, at 1435 Camino Del Mar, barely a block from the Honor Bar site. The New Zealand-inspired spot, from the same team behind Bare Back Grill in Pacific Beach and Raglan Public House in Ocean Beach, brought grass-fed burgers, craft cocktails, and a glass pavilion dining room with retractable windows to the village. Coral Del Mar has settled into the former Zel's space at 1247 Camino Del Mar with Baja-Hawaiian fusion. And the long-standing anchors haven't gone anywhere.
Jake's Del Mar is probably the most recognized restaurant name on the San Diego coast, and it's earned that. Poseidon on the Beach and Pacifica Del Mar sit on the same short stretch of Coast Boulevard, and on any given weekend all three have a wait. Sbicca serves American bistro from a rooftop terrace with ocean views. Brigantine Seafood & Oyster Bar has anchored Camino Del Mar for decades. Il Fornaio handles Italian. Beeside Balcony does Mediterranean from the corner of Camino Del Mar and 12th Street. MARKET Restaurant + Bar is one of the highest-rated restaurants in the village. Board & Brew has been building sandwiches on Camino Del Mar for over 25 years. Broken Yolk Cafe and Harry's Coffee Shop anchor the breakfast scene. For visitors staying at L'Auberge Del Mar or the Del Mar Beach Hotel, the village already offers more walkable dinner options than most beach towns in California.
Addison, the Michelin-starred restaurant at the Grand Del Mar resort, is the kind of place people fly into San Diego specifically to eat at. Between Addison at the high end and Board & Brew and En Fuego Cantina & Grill at the casual end, Del Mar already covers a lot of ground. Honor Bar slots into the space between the two: too polished for flip-flops, too relaxed for a tie.
Why Hillstone Picked Del Mar
Hillstone doesn't compete the way other restaurant groups do. The company is famously private. No advertising. No press dinners. No influencer partnerships. George Biel, who founded the group in 1977 with the first Houston's in Nashville, has given maybe a handful of interviews in nearly 50 years. The company's strategy is consistency: the same chicken sandwich tastes the same whether you're eating it on South Beverly Drive or in Highland Park Village in Dallas. Food writers have called Hillstone everything from "America's favorite restaurant" to "smooth brain food," and the company doesn't seem to respond to either label. They just keep opening in wealthy, walkable neighborhoods where people want a reliable dinner without fuss.
Del Mar fits that description perfectly. Camino Del Mar is the village's main commercial spine, the same way Orange Avenue runs through Coronado and Prospect Street anchors La Jolla. The foot traffic is real, especially during racing season at the nearby Del Mar Racetrack (mid-July through September) and the San Diego County Fair in June and early July. Del Mar Plaza, which sits steps from the Honor Bar site, anchors the village with ocean-view shopping and restaurants like Sbicca and Monarch Ocean Pub. And the demographics match exactly the profile Hillstone chases in Beverly Hills and Montecito: high household income, walkable commercial core, strong tourist traffic layered on top of a loyal local base.
When It Opens
When Honor Bar does finally open at 1404 Camino Del Mar, it'll be Hillstone Restaurant Group's first property anywhere in San Diego County. The new building includes underground parking, which matters in a village where street parking during racing season can turn a ten-minute dinner arrival into a half-hour crawl. It'll also be the newest addition to a Camino Del Mar corridor that's added Queenstown, Coral Del Mar, and Steak 48 in recent years while holding onto the names that made the street worth walking in the first place.
Hillstone hasn't announced a date and didn't respond to inquiries. They probably won't say anything until the week they're ready. That's how the company does things. But the building at 1404 Camino Del Mar is further along than it's ever been, and Del Mar is paying attention. People come to this village specifically to eat, and Honor Bar is about to give them one more reason to walk Camino Del Mar.
The corner at 1404 Camino Del Mar has been empty long enough that some people stopped believing anything would actually go there. It looks like they were wrong.
