Chef James Montejano moves to International Smoke Del Mar

James Montejano is the new executive chef at International Smoke Del Mar restaurant.

June 19, 2021 6:18 AM PT

James Montejano, who has served for the past year as executive chef at the year-old Huntress steakhouse in downtown San Diego, was appointed executive chef this week at International Smoke Del Mar.

Montejano has a long relationship with chef Michael Mina, whose MINA Group owns International Smoke. In the 1990s, Montejano spent five years as a sous chef at Michael Mina’s Aqua restaurant in San Francisco. He also served as sous chef in 2010 at Mina’s namesake restaurant in San Francisco. Locally, Montejano has cooked at the La Valencia Hotel and at Cardiff Seaside Market. Visit internationalsmoke.com/locations/del-mar/.

Kragen writes about restaurants for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.