Located in the heart of East Village in downtown San Diego, hART Lounge is a cultural hub that embraces all forms of creative expression. You may have seen its colorful mural facing G Street right before the east entrance to state Route 94 while driving back to campus from downtown.
The coffeehouse, hookah lounge, art gallery and community space has been around for two years and continues to develop and improve by absorbing the artistic community around it.
“The community has shown us what’s out there and we want to pull it all in here,” hART Lounge owner Arturo Gonzalez Jr. said. “We’re learning from the community and applying it. We just want to be revolving around it.”
Brother and sister owners Arturo and Minerva Gonzalez have recently opened up a kitchen at hART Lounge to express their love for the culinary arts. They now offer a healthy, student budget-friendly menu. All menu items were designed and are cooked by Minerva. She and her brother wanted to serve food with organic, farm-to-table ingredients.
Currently, the menu includes a variety of sourdough bread paninis: breakfast, spicy chicken, and “Greek revival.” Other options include the Modernist tuna sandwich, a vegan Pura Vida wrap, chipotle chicken quesadilla, a build-your-own burrito, and a “hART-y” soup.
It also offers shareable items such as a homemade hummus platter, New School nachos (named after neighboring NewSchool of Architecture and Design) and B. Nuggets, which is a plate full of pan-fried Brussels sprouts with balsamic dip that the menu boasts is worth the wait. Nothing on the menu exceeds $6.
The shareable order of nachos is indeed shareable; a giant serving of organic tortilla chips, nacho cheese, black beans, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos and sour cream proved to be impossible to finish even for a group of three people. Despite being full from the massive plate of nachos, my friends and I ordered lunch entrees.
Even though I consider myself a carnivore, I ventured to try out the vegan Pura Vida wrap. Hummus, tomatoes, onion sprouts and red sauce came wrapped inside a wheat tortilla and a flavorful explosion ensued in my mouth. Perhaps, this stems from the fact that I am a die-hard hummus lover.
I accompanied my “hART-y” lunch with a michelada, a popular Mexican alcoholic drink consisting of beer, lemon and chile, which came served in a salt-rimmed Mason jar. The lounge offers a beer and wine menu that also does not exceed $6.
As a coffee lover, I also appreciated the expansive coffee menu of delicious beverages made from organic coffee beans.
Eating and drinking are not the only activities that Arturo and Minerva encourage. The lounge was born from the love of art, after all. The place even houses an exterior mural by three local urban artists: Gloria Muriel, Dave Persue, and Michael Amorillo. The siblings also showcase other friends’ works of art inside the lounge and plan to collaborate with other artists to continually change the art the lounge displays.
“I’ve always liked promoting arts and culture,” Arturo said. “I think our main theme is promoting art.”
Arturo does a lot to promote the arts. It currently hosts weekly open-mic nights on Fridays that feature musicians, poets and stand-up comics. Open mic has proven to be very popular for hART Lounge and Arturo has taken it upon himself to share his community’s talents with the online community.
Every open-mic night is live streamed through the website Ustream and can be accessed via hART Lounge’s Facebook page. Arturo says folks from out of town have expressed that they really like the online streaming. Because of this success, Arturo plans to invite even more artists from around the city to showcase their talents.
“I want to gather the best talent from around San Diego and show them here and online,” Arturo said.
Down the line, Arturo said he wants to add more activities on different nights. Game nights and beer pong nights have come up during brainstorming for weeknight activities. As a multipurpose student lounge, hART Lounge has also been used as a venue for conferences and meetings and will continue to serve as a community space when needed.
As hART Lounge continues to grow and develop, the community can enjoy everything the place has to offer. The kitchen is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. but will extend its hours in October. As for nightlife, hART Lounge plans to be open later than the rest of downtown where most places close at 2 a.m. San Diegans can enjoy the different atmosphere at hART Lounge once the sun goes down by enjoying a glass of wine, hookah, and most importantly, art.
Photos by Carla Romero
