Green Dragon Tavern & Museum — Attraction in Carlsbad

I've heard about the Green Dragon Tavern, from Google Maps posts, & driven by it many times, while going back & forth, on the I-5. Today, my wife & I were in the area, & decided to stop in. This is modeled after the original Green Dragon Tavern, in Boston, where Paul Revere rode out from, to warn the Colonial militia, the British were coming.

Happy Hour pricing for drinks, begins at 3pm. My wife & I got here shortly after this. When we arrived, there were only 4 guests inside the restaurant/tavern part, of this extremely large building, however part of it, is dedicated to the museum.

The main tavern hall, where we were seated, is a 2 story-tall large rectangular space, with seating along the periphery up above, perhaps for private parties, or when this place is really full. You'll notice a separate dining room, off to your right, as you make your way past the foyer. Revolutionary War Flags & artwork decorate the walls inside.

The manager greeted us cheerily, & escorted us to our table. In a short while, our server arrived to the table, to take drink orders. We went ahead & ordered food then, as well.

I asked for a 16oz. Societe Pupil IPA, $6 Happy Hour Price, with my wife ordering water. My beer was a light, smooth-drinking IPA, just right- not overly hoppy.

We each picked something from the menu, with my wife ordering a bowl of their clam chowder. We agreed to share the chowder, as well as my pick, Braised Short Rib, the beef dish timed to come out, after we'd finished the soup.

Their New-England-Style Clam Chowder was amazing, with ample tasty whole clams, bacon, nice-sized potato chunks, all swimming in a thick, creamy & flavorful base. It came out hot, & we loved it!

We had to wait a bit, after our empty chowder bowl was taken away, for the Braised Short Rib dish to appear, which arrived with an extra plate.

Initially, the plate appearance looked good, with a huge slab of short rib, bathed in a shiny brown gravy, resting on a bed of mashed potatoes. The beef was supposed to be braised in red wine, & along with the mashed potatoes, broccolini & mini carrots were listed, on the menu for this.

There were many disappointments re: this dish, but the 2 largest, being this meal came out lukewarm, at best, both the meat & mashed potatoes. Considering we waited a while to get it, that's just not good. While attempting to portion the beef up, my wife had trouble cutting through it, & it even took effort forking it apart. Beef Short Rib cooked right, should be nearly fall-apart tender. I tasted no red wine nuances in the beef, which according to the menu, it was braised in. The 2 mini carrots, sliced in halves on the plate, were blanched, & hard to cut through, plus unseasoned. Broccolini, was absent from the plate entirely.

The mashed potatoes were serviceable, albeit far from hot, however there weren't close to enough potatoes, to compliment the beef, bite for bite.

Because our $27.95 Braised Short Rib dish fell so far short of our expectations, in so many ways, I've given Green Dragon 3 ⭐. When it got busier, they only had 2 people working, with one solely bartending. When a group of twelve arrived, both the server & manager concentrated on getting their drinks out, & we were left to watch this, as we waited 10 minutes, for our carrot cake dessert to be delivered to our table, after we had already paid the bill.

Don't count on fast service here, if it gets busy. Also, I'd skip ordering the Braised Short Rib...

We visited Green Dragon Tavern while on vacation down in Oceanside looking for a departure from our regular fare, and in that regard we were not disappointed. Entering the establishment, you feel like you've suddenly been transported to the east coast. From the colonial architecture on the outside to the charming museum of revolutionary war artifacts held within, Green Dragon does an excellent job of transporting you to a different place.

We were seated after a brief wait and this is where things fell apart a bit for me. We waited almost 20 minutes before our server came to check on us so that we could put in our order. We then waited an additional 30 minutes to get our food.

I had a fried chicken special, which was quite good, but a bit small for my liking. Two people at our table got the bacon wrapped scallops and risotto, which again were tasty, but at $23 we expected more than two scallops and three shrimp per person. The last person at our table ordered the Lobster Mac n' cheese which absolutely stole the show. It was served in a gigantic cast-iron skillet and was filled to the brim with chunks of lobster and perfectly braised pork belly, which he was kind enough to share with the table. All in all, the food was tasty, but portions were a bit too small for me.

After dinner we ordered the flourless chocolate cake, and patiently waited for our confections to appear. And we waited. And then we waited. After another half hour, we came to the conclusion that they must bake the cakes from scratch and we were in for a real treat. This made the subsequent presentation of small, refrigerated slices of cake all the more disappointing. The caramel ice cream was tasty and the cake was fine, but nothing to write home about.

I would go back to visit Green Dragon again for the food, but with our total visit clocking at at 2 and a half hours, I would only go if I had a lot of time to kill and really wanted to soak in the...

Had reservations for the Thanksgiving feast this Thanksgiving 2024, all was nice and exciting our young waiter took us over to be seated gave us a wonderful spot, we sat down getting ourselves situated and ready to get their Thanksgiving Buffet, then Bamm a waitress wanted our table that we were already situated at to give to her guests to be seated at table that was already assigned to us, she had told us with a very aggressive arrogant tone in her voice "What are you doing sitting there, did you drag yourself over from the other table, this is not your assigned table your not supposed to be here, get up and move", her exact words. She even asked the young man who had escorted us to the table if we were lying. We got up, which we shouldn't have, and we went to the Manager he was somewhat apologetic and tried to seat us elsewhere, but the whole entire moment of our first time experiencing the Green Dragon had been tainted and we would not have enjoyed our time here. It was invasive moment and disruptive of what had been an anticipated dining event and it ruined our Thanksgiving. We left feeling very unwelcome and would not return. My feeling is we were given this Table and we shouldn't gotten up as was our moment to enjoy the Green Dragon Thanksgiving for the first time and the Manager Jon should of intervened and allowed to have this table back. The waitress was just not nice and rude toward us as we would only give our money to where we are welcome and here we were definitely not welcomed. Gold...