Harney Oceanside & Lounge — Restaurant in Oceanside

Update 20 July 2024: Have not returned and it is clear from the outside that this place is still garbage. Go to Hooked On Sushi in Carlsbad, the absolute BEST sushi in north county!!

On a recommendation my wife and I had high hopes for this place. HUGE LETDOWN. We will NEVER return. We had a reservation and upon arriving on time at 9:18pm had to wait for seating. We were sat at 9:25, not a big deal. We waited for drink service for a considerable amount of time and eventually received drinks around 9:40pm. We ordered cold sake and a Bacardi and coke with a lemon wedge. The sake was very weak, basically just rice water. The Bacardi was lacking, all ice and coke with a lime. Attentiveness… We then had to wait even longer to order food. Our waitress seemed more concerned with bussing tables and preparing things to shut down. We had to flag her down for several things. Meanwhile, the music goes from a pleasant reggae to hip hop and club beats. Love to party, but we came to chill and eat sushi. Finally get the food order at around 10:00 pm. Food comes around 10:20, but the appetizers come after the sushi rolls. I waived down the waitress for another shot of Bacardi to add to my coke on the rocks. Many many rocks. We then had to waive someone down to ask for soy sauce and again to ask for wasabe. Over the music we hear singing and squealing. Not a part of the music. It seemed to be coming from the back room. Employees are now shutting the place down and partying in the back. One of the chefs gets a modelo and downs the entire drink, still cleaning the kitchen. The manager has been behind us at an attendant stand the entire time and seems more interested in chatting with the waitresses than managing. The wasabe was dry and crunchy… weird I know. A first for us. The ginger was very salty. Also weird. But the soy sauce… the soy sauce was insanely salty!! We again played the ‘waive someone down’ game and finally my wife asked the manager for reduced sodium soy sauce. He brings about a half an ounce, which will not work for two entire sushi rolls. At this point we are happy to just have food. Nearly done eating and I get a hair in my mouth. A very long hair. Disgusted. I get this this platinum blonde hair out of my mouth with food dangling on it and place it on my dish. My wife has black hair. A waitress (not ours) immediately comes over and says, “oh my God what is that? I am so sorry.” She takes it and shows it to the manager. He doesn’t care. Our waitress finally shows up, we ask for the check and wait to see what the manager or staff do about the hair. The manager makes no attempt to come apologize on behalf of the restaurant, his staff, himself, or the owner. Great representation! We get the check, nothing, full bill. I want to leave no tip, but my wife and I leave an 8% tip and I write, “Thank you for the long, blonde hair and doing nothing about it.” We exit. The back room is in full party mode at this point. We aim to support local businesses in Oceanside since we are residents. We are huge on local support. Do not waste your time or money on this hole. The sushi is crap. With any luck, enough people will listen and they will no longer be...

QUICK SCOOP: Average sushi, masked as awesome sushi by special dipping sauces. Restaurant is nice, service is slow, but friendly. Bottomline though, look elsewhere; $19-$20 specialty rolls are on par w/ $9-$10 specialty rolls in other sushi joints. If you really want the sauce, buy your own and get more sushi for your money elsewhere.

The SERVICE: First time at Harney Sushi, no plans to go back. Since this place was listed #1 in Oceanside, we decided to check it out. I ordered ahead to-go based on reviews that service was slow. We were told 25 minutes until the order was ready; arrived after about 35 minutes, after struggling to find parking over a busy Labor Day weekend crowd. Order was ready after about an hour, and it spent another 20 minutes sitting on a counter while someone got around to letting us know the order was ready and then processing payment, but that was fine, we were excited about the hyped up sushi.

The FOOD: We used reviews to pick out the most popular rolls. Surprisingly, many of the popular rolls have IMITATION CRAB (that should have been the first clue); we prefer to have legit sushi, especially at $19-$20/roll (most we've ever paid for sushi anywhere in the world we've had sushi)...I figured these rolls must be great! We also ordered the Monkey Brains (that sounded fun) based on some reviews. Many reviews kept mentioning pairing sauces (that was another clue) for each specialty roll; I love a good tasty sauce. It's only a 5 minute drive home, but it was too late, the Monkey Brains appetizer was cold (cooked fish...cold; not so good), but no worries, we bought (6) specialty rolls, and every single one came with either (1) or (2) containers of sauce (clue w/ flashing lights), probably why the rolls cost so much. Surprisingly, with so many rolls, we only received about 1/4 tsp of wasabi and a few packets of soy sauce. The sushi looked pretty standard to what we've seen before in average sushi places, then it finally made sense why ratings were so high; folks rely on the special sauces like ponzu and goyza sauce to add flavor to the sushi. It made sense after recalling a reviewer who was excited to get their favorite roll (Orange Crush) after not having it for over a year, only to find no ponzu sauce, and a huge let-down on flavor...because she relied so heavily on the sauce to make the roll taste better. A good roll should taste well on its own; you shouldn't have to dip it in a sugary or spicy sauce to mask the flavor with something that tastes better. I thought it would be fun to try them in different sauces, but after comparing the taste of each roll in soy sauce vs these special sauces, it was apparent the sauce was doing most of the heavy lifting on flavor. It reminded me of spicing up not-so-tasty veggies with sauces to make them more edible. Lastly, the amount of rice used was on par w/ low-budget sushi places. For $20/roll, half the roll should not be rice and fillers; you pay more for fish, not rice.

The RESTAURANT: The restaurant did look nice inside from what I could see and the area outside was also nice, but ultimately, we just...

I wanted to love Harney sushi. We’re locals and it was poised to be a weekly walkable adventure. 🍣 We’ve been a few times and the food is consistently pretty good - ordering an assortment of nigiri and rolls as well as bento boxes.

Unfortunately, this last visit was pretty horrible.

We walked in and were greeted by the hostess who did a great job of getting us seated and ready for the server. The server came by and was pleasant, we asked for a couple extra minutes to take a look at the menu and then ordered the mixed tempura, the an assorted 9 piece nigiri, and a steak bento box, as well as a couple beers.

It took forever for the appetizer to come out and it felt like it had been sitting a bit before it made its way out to us.

I also asked for a cup of tea at this time because the dining room was a bit chilly. That took nearly 15 minutes to make it to me.

We finished our appetizer and waited almost another 20-30min before the nigiri came out. This was my entree so I picked at it for a bit because my husband’s bento hadn’t appeared. 30 minutes later my meal was eaten and finally the waitress comes by to ask if we wanted to order any more food.

My husband’s bento still hadn’t appeared. She went to check on it and brought out a stone cold steak bento. I had to flag her down to tell her it was cold. We didn’t want to wait another 30 minutes for his dinner so we asked for it to be taken off the bill.

Another serve came by in 5ish minutes to ask if we wanted to take it to go for half price. This felt like adding insult to injury. No real apology for not checking in on us or ensuring our meal was reasonable. We declined and left.

The section we were in wasn’t busy when we got there. It was a bit busy when we left, but there’s no excuse for poor service. I don’t know if the servers were just rolling the dice that we were tourists and it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have a good experience or if the service was just sub-par. We spent over 80$ on a meal where my husband didn’t get an entree. I’ll take my business elsewhere like Blue Ocean Robata. It’s a little bit of a drive but the quality, service, and atmosphere are all better than what we’ve experience at Harney....