Anthony Wells

Anthony Wells is executive chef of Lana in Solana Beach. His path to the role moved through West Virginia, New York, Atlanta, San Diego, and coastal California, and the constant through-line has been kitchen discipline: technical schooling, exacting restaurant work, opening experience, and long service in a high-volume Southern California dining room. Each stage added pressure-tested habits around product, timing, and restraint. His technical formation came through California Culinary Academy, where he built the base for work in demanding kitchens. Oran Mor, Per Se, and Lincoln added the daily grammar of precision: repetition, clean execution, controlled seasoning, and plates edited enough to hold their line. Helping launch The Spence in Atlanta required a different kind of focus, moving from inherited systems into building systems and helping translate an idea into prep, service, staffing rhythm, and a functioning dining room. Southern California sharpened the ingredient side of the work. At Juniper & Ivy in San Diego, Wells served as Chef de cuisine from 2014 to 2015 before becoming executive chef from 2015 to 2023. The kitchen’s pace and the region’s produce rewarded control without heaviness, with freshness and timing carrying more weight than excess construction. His next chapter was at Hotel La Jolla, Curio Collection by Hilton in La Jolla, where he served as executive chef from 2023 to 2024 and headed the new restaurant Sea & Sky during the same period. That work kept seafood, market product, and coastal context close to the center of the plate. At Lana, Wells brings fine-dining polish to coastal cooking built from proximity: seafood, seasonal vegetables, and a Southern California pantry treated as primary material. The emphasis stays on product condition, sourcing, and the amount of technique needed to make the ingredient clear. Sourcing is part of the technique, with relationships with local wild-capture fisheries, environmentally responsible marine aquaculture, and small-acreage growers of heirloom, ethnic, and specialty crops shaping the menu before the first cut is made. Those supply lines determine cadence, texture, color, and freshness, and Wells’s job is to give that material enough structure to read clearly without covering its origin. The continuity from earlier kitchens remains discipline, with technique kept in service of flavor and attention to the people who grow, catch, and raise what the restaurant serves. Wells has received Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand recognition for Juniper & Ivy and was a Best Chef: California semifinalist in 2022. His career combines ambitious kitchens, opening work, long executive leadership, and a current coastal restaurant shaped by sourcing and restraint.