Dining in San Diego is more compelling and wide-ranging than ever before.

I say that trusting I didn’t miss a culinary heyday in the city’s way-back history. But over the last decade, during my five years at The Times and before that as Eater’s national critic, I’ve been visiting San Diego regularly, forgoing beaches and Balboa Park for taquerias and omakase counters. Excellent cooking has always been at hand: mariscos trucks and alta cocina Mexicana restaurants in close dialogue with the cooking of Baja just across the border; ambitious chefs mapping their own definitions of “California cuisine”; Japanese, Chinese and Filipino communities bringing their vital influences.

Now, buoyed by a palpable confidence in the city’s civic identity as a food destination, the options are greater in number and quality.

Like any major city, particularly in California, the more you delve into a dining scene, the more you understand the cultural layers — and the more you see it will never be possible to know it all. Two recent trips gave me plenty of delicious insight, though. These nearly two dozen recommendations include sky’s-the-limit fine dining, heady Syrian and Iraqi flavors, Cal-Med expressions of the local harvests, cocktails, coffee and my two favorites for fish tacos.

The guide runs geographically, beginning at the top of San Diego County in Oceanside, so you can eat straight down the coast.