Outpost Kitchen at South Coast — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

I visited this restaurant last Saturday for brunch with a friend and had an unexpectedly uncomfortable experience with our waitress. Right from the start, she offered mimosas despite me being visibly pregnant, and after we politely declined, she kept asking intrusive questions about my pregnancy, including my due date and even the zodiac sign of my baby. She also repeatedly asked for my own birthdate, which felt totally inappropriate and irrelevant to our meal.

When we asked for the check, she asked us again if we wanted mimosas, making the situation even more awkward. Throughout our visit, she shared personal stories about her and her mother, stories we didn’t ask to hear and frankly weren’t interested in, as we were trying to enjoy a relaxing brunch.

Finally, when we were leaving, she pointed at my belly and said “Good luck” and then added “because you’ll need it.” This felt like a very strange and unnecessary comment, unprofessional and unsettling, especially for a customer who’s already been made to feel uncomfortable by repeated personal questions.

I understand that some servers like to be friendly, but this was way beyond normal conversation. I hope the management can remind their staff to respect guests’ boundaries and avoid overly personal remarks. We left a 20% tip because it was automatically selected, but this experience really wasn’t pleasant.

The food was...

Came here for brunch on a weekend and ordered two dishes and a coffee. The combination of flavor in the dishes was really well planned and each ingredient added to the overall flavor. However, the chorizo was barely there in red rock eggs, and was barely sprinkled in the Aussie scramble (it’s only on the outside) so it was missing the richness of flavor that I expected given that it’s featured in a lot of dishes. The toast slices were also heavy in butter which I understand it gets the nice buttery browning, but it didn’t add to the dish. The avocado was really well prepared with sea salt, pepper and olive oil- one of the best I’ve had.

The portions were very good! Not gigantic but good for a meal. It is a hype spot in town and has a modern vibe, and the food was good, but the prices were high. This order of two dishes and a coffee was around $60 pre tip.

Service was amazing and the lady was really nice and attentive.

Ambience and other: we sat inside and it gets LOUD and you can barely talk between the music and the people. The restroom is limited and had a long line while we were there.

You don’t have to reserve here but it does gets full so I highly recommend...

We had a 10:30am reservation for Mother’s Day Brunch that was pre-paid. Since everyone had to be seated at 10:30am only, we had to wait in line be seated for a bit. After finally seated it took awhile for our server to come and attend to us. He took our drink order and our first course choice. The first course came and then our drinks after we had already finished the first course. We ordered our second course at 11:00am, at 11:45am we still had no food. We had made other plans for the afternoon that we had to get to so we asked for the rest of our pre paid meal to go. They brought our food 15 mins later and we left. It was to be a 3 course meal that we had already paid for, yet we didn’t get the third course also wrapped to go. So we didn’t get what we paid for. The timing of the brunch was not well organized trying to seat everyone at once and the food service was incredibly slow. I’m sad that my Mother’s Day brunch didn’t get to be enjoyed as I had hoped. I will never pre pay for a restaurant brunch again as it was not worth the price especially after not having received all the courses. Also having guests wait over 1 hour to get their food...