Gladstone's Long Beach — Restaurant in Long Beach

This place is a nightmare. I have NEVER felt the inclination to offer a poor review of a restaurant. After having worked in one when I was younger, I quite understand that any establishment can have any number of difficulties, but our experience at this Gladstone’s went so far beyond being considered excusable in any way. After waiting almost an hour outside, we were shown to a table in a 1/3rd full dining area. No! We didn’t have reservations but the wait for a table was not the issue. After sitting at the table for a half hour, we finally met our waitress who took our order. So far so good. Then our waitress disappeared for an hour and a half. We had a small party that included 4 adults, my 5 year old granddaughter and my 5 month old grandson. Half way through waiting for our food, we noticed that 2 of the other small parties in the dining room (there were only about a half dozen other small groups in a dining room that held about 60 tables) had the apparent manager to their tables for some reason. It became obvious that they were complaining about being abandoned by our waitress. As we had 2 starving children with us we also contacted the manager. She was very apologetic and within 10 minutes we all had our meals rather unceremoniously dumped on our table by a busboy followed up by our waitress trying to explain that an issue had arose that caused the problem. She was slurring her words and never made eye contact with any of us and that was the last we saw of her. Unfortunately, it was obvious that for most of the time our waitress was AWOL, our food had been plated and just allowed to sit out for over an hour. One of us had ordered a spicy tuna roll. Who would want raw fish that had been sitting in a warming area for more than an hour? DISGUSTING. The manager offered to replace our meals but our grandkids were hungry and we had already wasted well over 2 hours just trying to get them fed, so we declined that, returned over $200 worth of comped meals to the kitchen and drove home 15 minutes ordering pizza on the way. We are local part of the year but we will never patronize...

Despite ordering from the lunch menu, entrees were all over $25, though the quality of the ingredients and the portion sizes were generally well suited to the price.

That said, the sweet potato fries were somehow both soggy and burned, giving them an extremely disappointing texture and flavor for an upgraded side.

Similarly, the Ahi Tuna sandwich was very poorly prepared, with the cut off tuna completely oversized for the bun and the stack of toppings - onions, slaw, and tomatoes - giving it an extremely messy bite as everything slipped out of the buns. The slaw and condiments were tasty, but they heavily overpowered the ahi tuna, which should've been the star of the show with its fantastic ruby sear.

The real highlight of the meal was the complimentary sourdough bread - freshly baked, crispy/chewy crust, and soft/spongey crumb - which perfectly complimented a bowl of their Clam Chowder. The chowder itself was a massive bowl, tons of large clam chunks, and a perfectly balanced set of flavors: creamy, a perfect amount of salt, and a nice garlic undertone.

Service was attentive throughout, though they wouldn't have to come by so often if they used less ice in their soft drinks - I regularly got 3-4 sips out of a full glass of diet coke because it was 80% ice.

Despite being quite empty when I went (late lunch, ~2pm), it was still quite noisy due to some boisterous families letting their kids run around and the adults seemingly deciding they wanted to sing along to the music. There was also an odd person seemingly taking photos of patrons (based on the DSLR camera and shutter/flashes) who, based on their attire and the how they moved around, seemed to be an employee? Overall quite odd.

While I'll likely go here again with family or friends on a special occasion, the prices are way too high - especially for a lunch menu - for me to consider going here on a random...

Took the family on vacation to California had to check out Long Beach and for dinner saw Gladstone beautiful location food looked great on Menu. This was a Monday afternoon we were seated immediately which was great restaurant was fairly empty but there was a group event you could see going on. Took our order quickly but then we sat server never returned we ran out of beverages twice and I had to ask another server for refills. We as a family have never waited so long to get our food and of course never had waitress after taking order. Once we finally got our food waitress returned 15 minutes after asked what happened she said they sent her on break once she took our order and apparently failed to replace us with another server. Waitress apologized and offered desert which was nice but only brought out one slice of cheese cake for a party of 5 (3 adults and 2 15 year old's). We had planned to get the kids some additional clothing at the outlet across the street but it took so long to get our food just under hour it only gave us 30 minutes for the kids to shop. Beautiful location, terrible service obviously they were focused on their group ignoring walk-in patrons. Very disappointing last day of our vacation would not recommend over priced, terrible service, some of the food (lobster macaroni) kids thought was great but other food average certainly not worth 25-35 a plate with...