AKA San Diego — Restaurant in San Diego

If I could give zero stars, I would. My experience at AKA Restaurant was an absolute disaster from the moment we arrived until the moment we finally walked out in frustration.

We arrived on time for our 7 PM reservation, only to find several other parties waiting outside. After checking in, we were told it would be a 5-10 minute wait and were invited to wait at the bar. That seemed reasonable—until we realized what was actually happening.

After about 10 minutes, we noticed other groups going up to the front again, some leaving in frustration and others returning to their tables to discuss something. It turned out that the restaurant was offering high-top tables near the bar to people who had reserved standard seating. Apparently, the restaurant had booked a private event, cutting down the number of standard tables available for people who had made confirmed reservations. Instead of being transparent about this from the start, they made everyone wait unnecessarily. Even worse, the high-top table we were eventually offered had been open the entire time we were waiting. Why not just let people know their options instead of creating chaos? If the restaurant had simply offered a complimentary appetizer or drink for the inconvenience, it would have shown at least some level of customer service. Instead, it was a disorganized mess with visibly frustrated diners.

Once we were finally seated, we placed an order for two appetizers: edamame and rock shrimp. The edamame arrived quickly, but the rock shrimp never showed up. After two follow-ups and 15 minutes, the restaurant finally managed to bring it out—though it was over-breaded and unimpressive.

Then came the real disaster: our entrees. We ordered Dan Dan noodles and miso cod. After finishing our appetizers, we waited 30 minutes—nothing. The only person checking on us was the assistant, who kept apologizing and seemed to be the only staff member even remotely aware of how dysfunctional the place was. Our actual server had disappeared completely.

By the 45-minute mark, we had enough and asked to cancel our entrees. A manager finally came by and asked if we wanted him to check on the food, but at that point, we had lost all patience. As we were waiting for our check, it became obvious that we weren’t the only ones having issues. Multiple tables were complaining to the manager at the same time—people were frustrated over long wait times, missing orders, and complete disorganization. The restaurant clearly couldn’t keep track of anything.

Then, as we were closing out the check, our server finally reappeared—after an hour of being gone—and asked if we wanted to wait for our desserts. Desserts?! Our entrées hadn’t even arrived. We never even ordered dessert. It was clear that the service was so overwhelmed and chaotic that they couldn’t even keep their tables straight.

The restaurant removed the entrées from our bill, but we still paid for everything else. No discount, no real apology—nothing beyond a reluctant comp for food that never arrived.

This place is an absolute joke. Between the poor reservation system, endless wait times, lost orders, and non-existent service, it’s clear that AKA Restaurant is in desperate need of a complete overhaul. Someone call Gordon Ramsay, because this place belongs on Kitchen Nightmares. Until then, save yourself the frustration and go literally...

Took my boyfriend here for his birthday expecting a nice dinner before going to a show afterwards at Balboa Theater. I should have known from the moment I called the restaurant to move our reservation back 30 minutes. Normally, when you call a restaurant, you hear some sort of greeting letting you know the place you’re calling. The girl on the other line just said “hello?” So I had to poke to see if I’m even calling the right place. Anyway, she moved it, no problem. We showed up, couldn’t find it so they sat us by the bar in a corner high top. Alright, no big deal, we’ll have fun anyway. Our server James was very nice but the actual service not so much. I had to get up and pour our own water because the soda waters we requested were nowhere to be found. He took our order and I accidentally asked for my steak to be prepared medium. Before he left the table I rectified my order to be medium rare instead, some jokes were thrown around about it and off he went. First course came and my rock shrimp was very bland, not good, not awful, just not a lot of flavor. My boyfriend claimed his yellowtail appetizer was delicious. We also asked for a Papaya salad that again, zero flavor. This is one of my favorite dishes elsewhere but here it was very underwhelming. We might have waited at least 20-30 minutes before the second course showed up and we kept having to ask the food runners for water refills because James was nowhere to be found. Boyfriend got nigiri and I had the steak. He claimed his fish was fine, rice was not sticky enough to hold on the way it’s supposed to. My steak came medium instead of medium rare and I made a comment in a silly tone to the server “all those jokes about medium or rare and it still came back medium?” He offered to change it but by this point I was annoyed of the bad service and waiting 20 minutes I didn’t want to wait anymore. “I said it’s fine, I’ll eat it.” I saw a table with some sparklers in the main dining room and said in a joking tone “it’s his birthday, can we do that too?” My bf embarrassed said “please don’t.” Letting him know it was his birthday. In one of his very rare rounds we asked for the dessert and the check because we had to go to the show, and we told him this. We paid, tipped 20% because that was the lowest option available on the system and he left. And that was the last time we ever saw him. We kept waiting around for a dessert that never came. I had to get up from my table to look for someone, anyone to help us because we had to go. I went around to the bar and asked for a bartender to help me, she was on well station and really busy but pointed me to the general manager. I tried to tell him the situation and took off for the dessert before I could finish with “we’re going to the theater, can’t take it with us, can we come back and pick it up afterwards? When we were ready to leave he caught up to us and tried to give it but I couldn’t take it. Went to the show, and came back to the restaurant, I tried to pick up my dessert but by then the place had turned into a club and I wasn’t going to go around trying to track down my food so we turned around and left. I’m not usually one to post reviews but we were so disappointed by the experience for his birthday that I felt like I...

I never really write reviews but I just can't believe this place. Came here for a birthday dinner and I have to say I should've listened to the other reviews when they complained about the terrible service. It was a million times worse than what I expected. It took 3 hours for us to get all of our food at the table, some of our food came, but then took another 30-40 minutes for the rest of our people to get their food. Some food never came at all and I had to ask to have it removed from our tab because we were all so over it we didn't want to wait for more food to come out. What made it worse is that our servers never checked on us and they'd run away so fast it was insanely impossible to get a hold of them. Spent over 1k just to make my guests annoyed, hungry, and irritated. All the servers were confused as they approached our table all throughout the night with wrong items for our table pretty much going around trying to guess what items are for what tables. Extremely annoying. By the end of the 3rd hour we all just wanted to leave after a terrible experience and it took forever to even get the tab because we had to chase them down for that too, since they left us sitting there forever. I'm extremely embarrassed for booking this place, it ruined everyone's night and it was such a waste of money. The fact that I have to apologize to all my people for taking them to this place makes me so mad. The food was whatever, definitely not worth waiting 3 hours for, there's other places in SD that can give you the same quality of food, or even better, and you'll have way better service, and you won't be stuck there for 3 hours looking around the whole time just wanting to get out of there.

To top it all off they force charged 20% onto our tab even though it was the worse service I have ever experienced in my life, no exaggeration.

This was a big dinner, celebrating a 30th birthday, I wanted it to be special and I was looking forward to sharing this place with my loved ones, just to have their night ruined and waste their time,...