Paul's Place — Restaurant in Oceanside

I got yelled at by the owner for having too many iced tea refills!!!! Yikes!

My family has been coming to Paul's Place for more than 20 years. The food is consistently good, their gyro sandwich is probably the best in North County and we love their Greek Style chicken! We decided to meet at Paul's Place for an important family meeting. We ordered our food and for the four of us the total was more than $50 and with the tip we left at the jar by the cashier over $60. Not an unreasonable price for three sandwich combos and a Greek chicken. Our combination plates include a ridiculously small soft drink cup of maybe 12? ounces. My wife and I do not drink soda or soft drinks because of health reasons - we enjoy fresh brewed iced tea. The iced tea is behind the counter and not accessible by diners so you have to ask for a refill. Our family meeting dragged on for more than an hour as family meetings sometimes do, and I went back to the counter four or five times for iced tea refills. On the fourth trip I was getting nasty looks from the female owner. On the final trip the large iced tea container was now near empty and she yelled at me for getting too many refills! Never mind the fact that they would fill up the small cup with ice all the way to the top maybe allowing for five or six ounces of tea; never mind the fact that we have coming to this eatery for years; never mind the fact that we just spent over half a Benjamin on our food; and never mind the fact that the iced tea container was probably less than half full when we arrived and that it cost maybe $2 or $3 for the tea bag and a few cents for the water to fill their 5 gallon dispenser! Yes, there was a worn out sign on the soda machine asking patrons to limit their self serve refills to 2 times and I suppose that's understandable for a small business. But tea is even probably less expensive per cup than the soda machine with all of its many syrups and the carbonated water! Hopefully she was just having a bad day or maybe she was upset about the recent raise of the minimum wage? I really don't know. But to be subject to this kind of treatment in this old converted Del Taco restaurant is uncalled for! Will I return? Probably, only because the food is so good. But maybe next time I might have water instead...

First time at Paul's Place and it was excellent. We kept skipping past it opting for more convenient or well known places such as Pit Stop or McDonald's but I'm glad we finally stopped by. The bacon avocado cheeseburger was delicious and big. The avocado on it was fresh and the meat quality was good. The steak sandwich was delicious as well with the meat having just enough fatty to make it taste good but not so much that it was overwhelming. It was cooked perfectly; the meat was tender. I ordered it with avocado which was fresh as well, and zucchini instead of fries, which turned out to be an excellent choice. The ranch they gave me to go with it was delicious and creamy. The only complaint I have about the food is that the burger fell apart a bit. The staff was very friendly and even when the crowd died down, everyone was still working. The lady at the register was knowledgeable about the food and was able to suggest good meals to us (both were suggested by her) and when asked about other food was honest about what she hadn't tried instead of just trying to make money. Definitely will visit again.

Edit: Visited again. Bacon avocado cheeseburger was once again delicious but had a little too much onion for my liking. The zucchini this time was well cooked but felt stiff or stale. The pancakes look and taste strange (but smell really good, weird) and the syrup they give is watery. Also, the eggs were cooked over hard instead of over medium, which is disappointing. Five stars before, three now so I'll leave it at four. Not sure if we'll be back anymore considering prices are about the same as Pit Stop but Pit Stop is more consistent and side...

This is the only place my family goes to for burgers and fries. Never disappointed! Our favorite is the bacon cheese burger, and the chili cheese fries are amazing!

!!!Edit!!! After years of being faithful customers we are not coming back! We came in at least once a week! Today we got our usual order through the drive thru. We get home and realized my husband's burger wasn't in the bag .Not a big deal. We drive back to get his food and when he goes in to get it the woman (pretty sure she's the owner) blamed us!! She was like "we tried to give it to you but you took off." Um no that's a lie. When the woman at the window gave us our food she said "ok have a nice day" and I had to tell her "oh wait, we didn't get our drinks." She went to get them handed them to me and said again "have a nice day." The owner tried to tell us the lady never told us to have a nice day, that we just took off. Uhh excuse me she said it TWICE! This could've been a 5 second exchange where she gave my husband his food and simply said "sorry about that." Instead she spent minutes trying to blame us and tell us what happened in the drive thru didn't happen. We are really bummed because this was or absolute favorite place to grab a burger. But trying to assign blame to your customer and calling them a liar when they tell you about the exchange that happened in your drive thru is completely unacceptable and...