The Hangout Restaurant & Beach Bar — Attraction in Seal Beach

Our first time here. We love these little funky kind of places that have that cool vibe. This is one of the VERY few joints that's Beach front too. So upon entering, we were greeted promptly and we were told about a 15 min. wait. Okay, no problem the place was pretty jammin'. Once we received our text that the seats were ready, we were placed in a comfortable booth and got our menus. Our only small issue is that we did sit there for quite a while without so much as a "Hi" In fact we we're going to wait an additional couple of minutes and then walk out. It was pretty busy and our server had a huge section, but C'mon, acknowledgment is all we were looking for. The server got there just in time and everything from this point forward was pretty normal. My husband got the blt breakfast sandwich and I got the rancheros. Being on vacation I thought to treat myself to a mimosa flight that was offered: Orange, guava, cranberry, and pomegranate were on the flight. Both dishes came out quickly and smelled amazing. The food looked just as good as it smelled and tasted pretty freaking awesome for our first meal of the day. The total bill for this breakfast was pretty reasonable for where we ate and its location. This is a great place for a chill vibe and comfort eats, just realize it gets busy and there will be some kind of wait for a table and...

This is a gem. The waitress’ are usually excellent. The food never disappointed until today, hopefully just a bad day but still kinda expensive to have to be the fall for a bad day. I ordered the Shrimp Pot with Lobster Bisque Base to split with a friend. So to serve and eat we were given miniature utensils!! Seriously, our serving spoon and eating spoons were child size, like spoons for a sugar bowl and we were given a relish fork for the shrimp and potato, the relish fork was literally the size of a pinky finger. Thankfully we had big girl regular forks to get by. We were expected to serve from a pot of soup with a SUGAR SPOON ! I asked the waitress for a serving spoon and 2 soup spoons, her response was I gave you what we have, we don’t have larger spoons. The Hangout offers several hot pots and it is DELISH but it gets cold by the time you get to the end. The waitress’ are usually like family but today that was not the case. The waitress never came by to check on us I had to get up for the non existent soup spoon, napkins and a to go container so I could take my now cold pot home to heat and eat. Bring a soup spoon and order the hot pots, they are good! The waitress’ tip reflected her...

What a sad and disappointing experience!! The 1 star is for the food because it’s good but the service is deplorable to put it kindly! Our server Bri who finally surfaced after 12 minutes was I guess nice for the 2 mins total she made herself available to us. There was another server, helping guests who arrived after we did and misery oozes out of her being maybe because of her physical appearance which matches her demeanor. Not once did she even bother to acknowledge we were there waiting for our server even though I saw her helping other tables where Bri was also spending a lot more time shooting the breeze maybe in hopes of a larger tip from two older guys. Just very not cool!!! Not once did we get refills and even to pay there was a wait so I decided to change my form of payment and just cover the meal and handed cash to the hostess, just to get out!!! The poor service makes you lose your appetite! Please care enough about every customer you serve to do your best not just the bare minimum. My tips are always 20% or more but today I only left the few cents which weren’t even deserved just not to have to...