The Sunset Restaurant — Restaurant in Malibu

We were visiting Malibu for the first time and chose this restaurant solely because we were interested in the happy hour. Upon arriving, we were told by the hostess that the happy hour only applied to the bar, despite this not being communicated anywhere on the website. The hostess informed us that we can pay for drinks at the bar and bring them back to our table, but if we order food, we must eat it at the bar. This was inconvenient, but not a problem, and we proceeded to pay for our drinks at the bar and come back to our table to order our food.

Our waitress later came to tell us that we were only allowed to consume the happy hour drinks at the bar. We informed her that the hostess communicated that drinking the bar drinks at the table was okay as long as we paid for them at the bar. Shortly after, a large and sizable man in business attire, who I'm assuming was the manager, came to our table and repeated the misinformation, telling us that we were required to sit at the bar to consume our drinks. We proceeded to state once again that the hostess told us that this was okay. The man continued to insist that we must sit at the bar, and when asked multiple times to speak to the hostess directly about what was communicated to us, the man simply shook his head and said that we were not allowed to speak to the hostess.

We then proceeded to seek out the hostess ourselves, since apparently we were not allowed to ask the man to find the woman who told us what we were allowed to do. The man and the hostess had a brief exchange and the man scolded her and ended up letting us stay at our table. For the remainder of the night, we waited upwards of 20 minutes for our waitress to come back to our table so we could order our non-happy-hour food during happy hour, but we were never helped. We politely told a different waiter that we were ready to order, waited another 20 minutes without being helped, and then realized that the staff were no longer interested in our business. After 40 minutes of not being helped, we finished our paid drinks and proceeded to leave. As we were walking out, the waiter looked in our direction and shook his head, then immediately seated another party and took their order.

The customer should not be shunned from the restaurant due to the mistake of a staff member. After observing the manner of which the staff hold themselves to at this establishment, I wouldn't be surprised if the hostess was punished or even fired for communicating to us wrong information...information that was taught to her by the management themselves. We were fully willing to pay for regular priced meals, but we weren't going to be forced to sit at a crammed bar just to drink a glass of wine after being told that we could sit at our table. Regardless, if the restaurant's website simply communicated that happy hour was for the bar only, and if the management did a more adequate job of training their employees, this whole situation wouldn't have happened in the first place.

I'm giving two stars because the atmosphere was nice and the valet parking was $9. Be aware that the valet is cash only and if you don't have cash on hand you'll have to use their ATM to withdraw a minimum of $20 and pay a $4 surcharge. It is a bit ridiculous that such a nice restaurant can't afford the resources to provide the valet team a handheld card reader, but I'm grateful that my bank offers a surcharge rebate.

The treatment we experienced during our stay was completely unacceptable. If we were told from the start that we needed to sit at the bar to consume the happy hour drinks, which was unable to accommodate our party of four, we would've gladly chosen to order regular priced drinks and sit at the table without any issues. We have never been treated so poorly at an establishment and will not be recommending this place for anyone nor coming back in the future. We look forward to finding an alternative that can properly communicate their policies and treat their customers with the same level of respect and dignity that...

Sunset Restaurant Made a reservation as we drove. Reminiscing of times with our late Mother who passed away July 23,2022 Gave name as Connie Reception, Connie 6:30 Oh Connie Jones? No they never asked my last name.

Sat down , busboy brought water No wait person for. At least 20 min Asked busboy and he alerted several waiters,after 5-10 min Waitress, long black hair says, Are you ready to order, Doesn’t ask if we want drinks, after we order,Says is that all?, Busboy comes back ,we ask for bread, Bread comes warm with butter, Brussels sprouts come by busboy, only bread plates on table. They are good. Entrees. Come, scallops not fully cooked on cold salad, Sea bass is mediocre! Done eating for some time, finally waitress comes by. , asks how are we doing? Kathleen says the scallops are cold and her service is bad. Waitress gets defensive and says you can’t. talk to me like that. K says she’s been nasty to us. Waitress hastily starts clearing plates , i say I’m taking mine to cook at home. She leaves , I see her give busboy togo boxes and check, he delivered to us. Waitress comes back to collect payment and Kathleen asks for manager, she’s says he’s busy and we say we’ll wait. He, Jason comes over and says Do you have a problem ? Did you ask the waitress if she is Mexican? We both said no way , we would never ask a question like that. We said she was nasty and not interested in serving us. In the mean time we had tipped the busboy $5.00 because we knew we were not tipping her. That is the first time I ever did not tip a wait person and since Covid I tip at least 22%! I wanted to give the busboy more but the manager made sure everyone around us heard “we asked if she was Mexican “ I just wanted to pay the bill and leave but he comped us! Not what we were seeking! Just acknowledge our complaint! And apologize for the service, maybe she was having a bad day! But no, as we got up to leave , the couple next to us said we should be ashamed!!! Everyone was looking at us!! How horrible! My children are half Salvadoran! I am not racist and would never ask any wait person where they’re from unless it was a friendly conversation! This was the worst service I ever had and was not even going to mention I would cook my scallops at home. She got so defensive instead of apologizing and saying something like she was off her game. Then to go to get manager and lie that we asked if she was Mexican !!! What a waste of a perfect location! The menu sucks , the room way too noisy. Eat outside if you want quiet! Btw, we weren’t asked where we want to sit. The table for 2 was a postage stamp! No place to put a purse and barely enough room for drinks and plates! So sad we cross this favorite...

I love this restaurant, I love the casual vibe and food, been here many many times. Although our last experience was really odd. We (party of 3) made a reservation, in advance, for an ocean view table, they say "will do our best" however while waiting for our table customers with out reservation got ocean view table but not us., we were taken to the 2nd floor where an ocean-view table was getting ready for a different party. Then a male waitress took our drinks order, 10 minutes passed and we were ready to order, but he wasn't around. I asked to one of the helpers to let our waitress know that we were ready to order, 10 minutes after a female waitress started to take orders from 4 tables seated after us. I let her know that we were ready to order, she said "your waiters will come soon", 10 minutes after a different -female-waitress came to ask us "are you ready to order?", my husband said we are ready waiting 30 minutes, then she said with some kind of an attitude "let me tell you that your waitress had to leave to an emergency, I'll take your order". During the dinner the lights were acting up and my husband asked for the manager, who never showed up. We are not sure if the manager was ever told that we called him/her. Unusually we reflected our discomfort on the tip and who knows my husband knows he is very generous -kind-of-outrageous when tipping. We headed to the restrooms and before claiming our car at the valet the waitress call me from the door of restaurant It seems that the waitress took it too personal and instead of asking what was wrong she told me: "I don't need your tip, you are rude, I was very nice with you, I even did not charge you for the bottle of water that you drink", she was agitated and did not let me talk, I was able to say that we didn't ask anything for free, then the WORST she told us "do not come again". Luckily my husband was still at the restroom and did not hear her saying that, but my sister and I were appalled of her behavior. Overall she was nice, but started with the wrong foot, and finished worst. It would've been different if she introduce herself by saying she was replacing our first waitress due to an emergency, sorry for the delay the water is on the house". The guys at the valet, very nice asked how was our experience, I mentioned it wasn't the best, they recommended us to leave a comment to help them to improve. I hesitated to write this review to avoid remembering the bad time however I consider it is important to know if a waitress has the right to tell a customer "do no come again", and I hope the management reach up back to me. This happened on...