California Pizza Kitchen — Restaurant in Plano

It’s sad when you come back to a once great establishment only to find it ran down by lower quality ingredients and an overall lack of professionalism with the staff.

We dined in today and were greeted by one of the least customer service oriented employees I have ever encountered. Flat out rude and put out by our presence. (She later shows up in the story and just for the sake of any potential management reading this - she is a somewhat more elder African American woman.)

We were lucky to be sat with the waitress who served us. She was the nicest part of the experience and was a delight to order from and be served by.

Food was average, but not bad. Seems like the days of walking out stunned by how great the food was are gone.

Here’s the fun part.

We were sat in a booth next to an unattended child of one of the kitchen staff employees. We only ascertained this as they all seemed to get off work at the same time as 4 employees walked out to their car with said child simultaneously when we departed. While we ate the child was standing in the booth, sitting playing on her phone at what seemed max volume, getting up every 5 minutes or so and running into the kitchen doors, coming back and dropping her phone / toys on the ground, picking that up, standing back up in the booth, singing to her phone etc. It was hard to ignore.

While all that happened basically the entire time we dined in, the hostess we previously mentioned was sitting two tables away folding silverware in napkins when she received a phone call and commenced yelling profanity at whomever was on the other end of the line. She then cussed at a co-worker about whose responsibility it was to bus a table. This was super exciting to watch.

At the same time there was an employee literally sitting on the bar on the employee’s side of the kitchen / bar area doing what looked like Snapchat on her phone for about 20 minutes of our time in the restaurant. We found that funny to be honest.

At this point my wife and I weee discussing all of this and chuckling to ourselves. I decided to snap a photo of the kid’s playground next to our table and of the hostess who was cussing people out and I’m fairly certain I was busted snapping photos. The reason I felt this way is the scene that played out afterwards. The employee who saw me proceeded to tell everyone in the store and then we received bad looks from everyone who worked there until we left as the word got around to each employee. At no point past this did I not have eyes on me staring as if I was the one who did something wrong here.

The sad part about all of this is that whomever was managing the restaurant knew all of this was happening and couldn’t care less. I saw them witness the cussing out by the hostess, the girl snap chatting, they even came out and hugged and kissed the kid whose playground was the adjoining booth.

They get 2 stars only because of our waitress who seemed to know all of this was happening around us but was trapped by the need to make money and inability to change anything. Maybe my read was off on that, but she seemed nice enough.

(By the way, the photo is just of the kids belongings left at the table in one of her numerous trips to the kitchen. Thought it would be weird to take a...

The ONLY CPK in DFW! We wanted CPK, the kind we've experienced in Chicago. We weren't hungry, but we wanted CPK. So we stepped in, the atmosphere was similar to what we felt in the mall, kind of sad and depressing. There was no one up front to greet. A few employees looked at us and went about their business, then someone came to us and sat us. I usually can recall the server's name, but I can't remember if he even gave his name. He seemed nice at the moment (but I'd think someone in his position, he would be extremely nice). As he asked for our drinks, we asked for the flavored tea that they ran out of. Then he asked if my mother-in-law would she like the flavored tea she asked for mixed with sweetened or unsweetened tea... (We've never been asked that before. Guess Texans really like really sweet tea!) My MIL responded, "Not too sweet." Well, I would suppose I would serve it with unsweetened tea and follow up to make sure the tea was to her liking. Let's move on; there's more to the drink convo, but let's get to when he served the drinks while carrying the glasses by the tops of the glasses, then disburses the drinks by grabbing the top of the glasses. Instead of complaining and possibly getting an extra ingredient in our order, I quickly asked for straws. We were served our avocado rolls with the 2 usual sauces and some bread with olive oil. Usually, it's a great appetizer, but the cook that cut the rolls should have inspected them before serving them. There was one roll that was half empty. I really don't like to complain. We had originally ordered a butter cake to be served after we had time to eat the rolls, but something came up, and we had to leave sooner than expected. My wife asked if we could please have the butter cake packed to go. We didn't stress it, but when someone asks for something to be packed to go, it hints to sooner than later. I was looking around for the server to try to ask him about the CPK rewards code I gave him earlier, BUT instead of coming to the table to talk to me, he stated, "It's coming." and kept walking. Well, my wife usually over tips because she feels for the server, even when the service sucks. She looks at me and says, "You're going to tip him right!" Well, I showed her the CPK app and the tip percentage. As our experience continued down its path, I lowered the percentage in kind. I also work in the restaurant industry, I love it when I see service providers that care and get it....

First off the food was dry, overcooked and just disgusting overall. The service was horrible the waiters had an attitude and keep looking at us nasty, and the workers weren’t even working and just standing there talking. Ive gone to much better California pizza kitchens. We ordered 3 strawberry lemonades waited 5 minutes just for the waiters to say the machine was broken. All of us ended up getting 3 waters and a coke. There was a sugar packet in one of the waters we ordered. Disgusting,We were wondering how did that get in there. After that we got 3 plates of kunpow spaghetti. The noodles were dry and flavorless, we had to ask for more sauce to be put on the noodles or else it would have been disgusting to eat. We also got buffalo cauliflower. It had barely any sauce and it was hard and it felt like you were chewing on a rock. I have braces, since the cauliflower was burnt, i broke 3 brackets. (Not including the dry and hard bread). It felt like they popped it in the microwave and not freshly cooked. The appetizer wasnt even any better. The bread was cold and dry. Absolutely disgusting. There wasnt even any people at the restaurant it was completely empty, we were the only ones in there. I honestly don’t have a single clue how they messed up all my food/drink. They didn’t even say “im sorry for __” it felt like they deal with this on a daily basis. Im severely disappointed and unsatisfied with the customer service and food. I have tried many other locations in Missouri. Nothing compared to them. What a waste or $80 Hopefully this location gets better. Because i know i have tried other california pizza kitchen locations and they are one thousand times better than this one . Hopefully this location gets as better as the other better locations of California Pizza...