The Cellar — Restaurant in San Clemente

Oh man. It doesn’t really get much worse of an experience than this. And I was a server and a bartender for years so my leniency towards service workers is usually VERY generous.

We get there, the table only has two seats, so a server brings us two more, great! Seems nice.

We sit down, 10 minutes go by, I go inside and ask if we order inside, he goes “oh you guys are sitting down? I’ll be right there” like dude you literally brought us the chairs for us to sit down but okay.

Another 10 minutes go by, dude brings us waters. I kid you not EVERY glass has huge freaking lipstick stains on them. EVERY ONE! Impressive.

Another 15 minutes go by, the waiter finally returns to take our order, but only because I go “wait! I think we’re all ready to go.”

Another 15 minutes go by, I get the single glass of wine I ordered. We’ve now been here for almost an hour, and I’m just getting the one drink I’ve ordered.

Another 25 minutes and we finally get our food! Yay! We’re missing the starter we ordered but I guess it’s more of an ender now. Food is SO cold. Especially the eggs. Like, did they get this off of some other table? How did they achieve absolute zero?

5 more minutes and our starter comes. It was just fries by the way. An hour to get some fries.

Around this time the table next to us of 8 is frantically flagging down the server for the check, he looks directly at them, sits down next to this girl and takes her order, and turns around and goes inside. The whole table looks at me with exasperation, and I’m like “dude, same.”

Servers the whole time were super nonchalant and awkward by the way. Would’ve absolutely believed they were some random guys subbing in for the real servers. I DID see one server come and serve some ladies next to us who seemed like she actually knew what she was talking about, and I pointed her out to my friends like OH LOOK! They DO have real servers here!

Needless to say, they should have paid US to eat here, and honestly I’m not sure if the $120 that we paid would be worth it for me to be so miserable for an hour and a half. I would have paid money just to go anywhere else. Few times in my life have I so badly wanted a refund.

Highly highly highly recommend NOT coming to this location EVER. PLEASE dear God spend your money on a place that deserves your money and respects...

UPDATED: I'm updating my review due to how awesome the owner of this establishment is. Dawn contacted me after my initial review and talked through my frustrations. She was very understanding and personally invited us back to try the place out. I'll update again once we've gone but I will say I'm very impressed with her as an owner. She really went out of her way to try and make things right and that's something I really appreciate.

Thanks Dawn! 🙏🏻

Old Review We found this place online and were excited to try the menu. We showed up and I asked the lady behind the counter if they had room for 4 or how long the wait would be could I put my name down. She explained that they don’t take reservations or have a wait list that it’s first come first served. I was about to leave as the place looked pretty busy, but decided to make a check around the corner and sure enough there was a spot open for 4. The lady I spoke to even said “you could take that spot”. Just as I stated to take my coat off another server comes out of nowhere and says “that table is for this other group I told them they could have it”.

At this point I got confused I said “wait a min she just told me you don’t have a list or save tables it first come first serve. So which is it?” The sever asking us to leave agreed they do not save tables but said he told them they could have the table. I said “well your other sever just said the same thing to me. So if you are going to give the table I’m already at to someone else can I at least put my name down? Sense you clearly held a table for those people can you do the same for me.” He replied “We don’t hold tables I’m sorry” and then proceeded to kick me out and give them the table I’d found and...

OK, I've written a lot of reviews, most good as I'm always looking for the best places to dine. On occasion I'm forced to give a poor review as I was at the Cellar our last visit. I have to say I've never received a response as heart felt and genuine as I just did today from Christian (GM at The Cellar) making this right.

The feedback was welcomed, owned and I'm highly confident is being handled based on the response. They absolutely had a reason / excuse that could have been used for the poor experience (their kitchen is being completely remodeled) but they didn't. Their goal of an amazing dining experience was not lowered due to the less than perfect circumstances.

Reading their response, I have to say "WOW", what a perfect example of how to handle this perfectly. The hand written note should be used as a template for "The Perfect" response for restaurants that want to have a 5 star restaurant. I've updated my rating back to 5 stars now as I've been to The Cellar enough times to know that they have been a 5 star establishment with regards to their offerings. But the revelation today is that also have 5 star management!

We can not wait to go back after...