Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant — Restaurant in San Diego

We REALLY wanted to love this hotel, but it did not meet our expectations. I will give you the honest pros and cons, but let me preface this by stating that I am a historic preservationist, interior designer, and I own a small historic hotel myself. Maybe my expectations were too high? First, on the plus side I love that it exists period- an historic hotel is an asset to any community. The quality of the restoration is great and clearly the architect and historians put in the time and energy to make this place shine. The staff is wonderful; we were greeted and checked in by Robin who clearly loves her job and loves helping folks- if I was rating her it would be 5 stars. The views are great and the convenience of the restaurant and bar are superb, although we couldn't use either due to Covid19 closures. The historic plumbing fixtures and lighting are exquisite and the wallcoverings in the rooms are some of the best I've seen. The historic furniture was nice, and could have been outstanding if it was taken care of. On the flip side, this hotel has some serious deferred maintenance. Its getting to the point of being run down, and this is not recent damage. It appears as if either the owner or the operator can't agree on who pays to fix anything, so they just fix nothing. The bathrooms are mismatched fixtures (bronze toilet piping, satin nickel faucet, polished nickel tub spout) and the shower has some pretty heavy mold and mildew growth in hard to clean areas. The shower pan is dirty and the shower arm is too big for the shower. The room was advertised as having a "large shower"- this is not the case. A large shower would fit two easily, you could barely fit in this one alone; its about 30x30. The shower head was never installed properly and is pulling out of the wall. There is a healthy build up of calcium on all the fixtures making the water spray everywhere but on you and the water pressure is WAY too high. The amount of water wasted here is insane and a simple and inexpensive pressure regulator would fix the issue- turn the tub spout on and you will see. The reproduction linoleum on the bath floor is cool, but it was installed so that the seams are right when you walk out of the shower so it has gotten wet and ruined over time- it needs to be replaced. The bath shelves are worn and gross looking at this point with a lot of water damage and exposed screws- there are few places to put anything although the bathroom itself is large. The bath lighting is way too bright- good luck taking a relaxing bath with 500 watts of light beaming through your eyelids. Plenty of towels, but they were all still slightly damp upon check in at 6pm. Nit-picky but the mirror looks like its out of an old holiday inn and the sconces are installed way too high. The historic repro toilet is cool, but the niche that was cut out for a pipe that never went through should have been filled. The room is sparse, in an uncomfortable way. There are severely worn hardwood floors and no rugs. The floor is dirty, especially in the corners and around the base moldings. The floor is stained and damaged from spills and/or roof leaks, as is the ceiling. There is only one nightstand and another super bright lamp that will blind you. The historic lamp is cool, but why the 200 watt bulb? The bed is very uncomfortable- its rock hard despite that it seemed to be a pillow top? Maybe it was just worn out, but hard to sleep on. The room is FREEZING cold (late July) as the air works too well and is not user friendly. Everything should be set to auto and you just set the temp you want, but this doesn't work like that- nor are you given those instructions. It seems like very large, sweaty people must have made the AC instructions and it basically tells you the different levels of cool/cold/colder you can have. The bedding is only a sheet and thin matelasse coverlet- its not enough. Yes there are noises, no there are not ghosts. You...

UPDATE - - - Just got a call from the General Manager of the Restaurant apologizing for how everything was handled. I am moving the review from 1 Star to 4 Stars based on the previous good lunch experience AND the GM's quick actions on behalf of his restaurant manager's lack of customer service acumen. I would originally have given a 5, but with the aggravation of the tea reservations, I have to dock 1 point because it did happen. The GM is ensuring that we can be seated at 11am for tea on our original date after all, so I can have a nice early Mother's Day, can show our guests a nice time in Old Town as planned. I appreciate his timely sincere apology and do believe it is not how he wants to run his establishment. He said they will address it with the manager that kept calling me. He said he will stop by our table when we are there.This is how customer service should be. I am hoping this was an anomaly and am willing to give them this chance to fix it (we all make mistakes and hopefully this is a big learning experience and it won't happen to anyone else again). Therefore, a sincere increase in the stars, and I expect we should have as lovely a tea, as we had with our first lunch there.  Thank you, Brandon, for your assistance. (If I don't post anything else, then the tea went well.)- - - - - - - -Had a nice lunch when we moved here last Fall. Was excited to try their tea and now that we are all moved in and finally have free time - and have our first overnight guests coming from our old home area of Seattle who also love tea, I went to make reservations yesterday. Originally I wanted Mothers Day, but they are only offering a buffet. So then, I rearranged our whole itinerary with our friends and my daughter (party of six) to do it the day before. I was excited when they took my reservation for 1pm. Then 15-20min later I get a call from the manager that apologized that his bartender took the rez but they had a large group coming in and they couldn't take us at 1pm, could we come earlier or later? So I offered 11am when they opened and he said he could do 11:30 and I said that would be great. Now today, after I have confirmed with the other four people and moved our plans around, the manager calls me back AGAIN and says the large group have doubled their size and now can't accommodate us......it's a "kitchen issue." I am sooooo upset!!!!First of all, if they added to their group, then I was there before they ADDED people. We would have been GONE by the time they arrived. You really couldn't make a few more sandwiches and items???? For 6 people who had the reservation????? It's TEA for goodness sake!!!! Small bites.The manager apologizes and says if we want to come another time he could "make it right." What the heck does that mean??!!!! THAT WAS NOT AN APPROPRIATE EXCUSE, RESPONSE, CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! We were celebrating an early Mother's Day and our friends are only in town for three days. Thanks for nothing!!!I plan lots of outings, have lots of guests, and people always ask me what to do since I research everything and even though new to the area, do more than most longer term residents. So guess what place WON'T be on my recommendation list????? There are plenty of other restaurants in the area, the Coral Tree Teahouse in Old Town is awesome (and I've been there at least 6 times over the past few years, even though I have only lived here full time for half a year). So, I don't need to go here!!! And we were hoping to do a fun little romantic overnight at the hotel sometime to "vacation in our own backyard." BUT NOT NOW.So, with how this was handled - the Cosmopolitan has lost much, much more than just tea for six. Think twice about making advanced plans...

I stayed here with my husband on January 1st and had the best time! Dee checked us in and had great stories to tell and was just a very knowledgeable person. He clearly is very excited to share the history and experience of the hotel, and was just a very positive and happy person to be around.

If you believe in ghosts, you’ll definitely experience some things here. We stayed in Room 11 so we got a lot. I had my laptop plugged into the wall and recording all night long. Before we went to bed we walked around Old Town and got some food, left the computer recording for 3 hours with no issues. When I recorded overnight however, the video corrupted and is just not playable. The video was around 7 hours long. I have used that same laptop to record 10+ hours of continuous video with absolutely no issues before. And even though it was plugged in all night, it was at 60% battery in the morning, which again, has never happened before, even with continuous recording. We’re local to SD so I started a new video when I took my husband to work the next morning and ran a few errands. I returned 2 hours later and again, corrupted video. The only video that wasn’t corrupted was the first one I took. I have some of those cat toy balls that light up when they’re bumped, so when we left for dinner we scattered them throughout the room, within view of the camera. At different points, 3 of the 4 balls lit up, even though there was no noises or anything at the time they lit up. 1 of them was on the bed and another was on the chair in the corner, while the last one that lit up was in the bathroom doorway. There was also some lights flickering in our room and in the hallway at various points, and the light fixture in the room appeared to have been gently pushed multiple times, as we noticed it was swinging when we were just sitting down and talking.

I was most bummed about the overnight video being corrupted, because I was hearing the floor INSIDE the room creaking all night, as well as tapping on the wall, the chair next to the bed creaking, and noises in the bathroom. The wall I heard noises from, was the wall behind the bed which is connected to the bathroom within the room. There’s just 0 explanation for that. I believe the hotel was empty except for 1 other room on the other side of the hotel, so there’s no way it was them I was hearing.

When I returned to grab my laptop and drop off the keys at checkout, I heard footsteps down the hallway and stop outside the door. Room 11 is at the end of the hall, so I would have heard if they walked away, and there’s no way they were walking past the room. I thought it was housekeeping, but when I didn’t hear a knock I opened the door and there was no one there. Due to the age of the building and how the floor creaked in that hallway, I would have heard those footsteps going back down the hall, if it was a person.

I have 0 logical explanation for the things we experienced, other than the hotel being haunted and still very active. Definitely recommend staying here if you’re interested in that sort of thing, or just enjoy the history...