Extraordinary Desserts — Restaurant in San Diego

A Crème Brûlée Crime Scene!

My fiancee and I stopped into Extraordinary Desserts for something simple. A crème brûlée, nothing more, nothing less. A small afternoon indulgence. What we got instead was a masterclass in how not to run a kitchen.

While we waited, a model and photographer were doing a food shoot inside the store. The model leaned over, touching and posing with a crème brûlée, breathing on it like it was a fashion accessory. No gloves. No care. Just hands and hair and humidity over a dish meant to be eaten.

Fourteen minutes passed. No other customers in store, no movement behind the counter. When a server finally appeared with our dessert, my fiancee stopped her mid step. We both recognized it immediately. The same crème brûlée from the photo shoot. The same one that had been touched, handled, and staged minutes earlier. Not to mention the photographer behind the counter.

When confronted, the server gave a flat “sorry.” No denial, no surprise, no plan to make it right. Only when we asked for a refund did she move to fix it. Then, with breathtaking indifference, she placed that same dessert right back on the counter, ready for the next poor soul.

I have worked in fine dining, the misses works in fine dining. When you do a photo shoot, the food used is a loss. That is the cost of presentation. You do not recycle it for service. You do not gamble with your guest’s trust.

If Karen is reading this, I urge you to retrain your staff from the ground up. Three of the four employees on duty, along with your photographer and model, were complicit in this embarrassing display. If this is standard practice, the health department needs to step in. Your background is too opulent to be harmed by these uneducated staff.

This was my first and last visit to Extraordinary Desserts. It was supposed to be a moment of sweetness. Instead, it felt like watching food safety standards rot in real time.

Bourdain once said, “Food is everything we are. It is history and family and culture.” If that’s true, then what I saw was none of those things. It was carelessness dressed up as class. And that’s worse than bad food. That’s betrayal.

Oh, and I had to ask for the tip to be...

I drove up from Orange County for my birthday to have the incredible desserts I've heard about at this establishment. My review is mixed and there’s a number of reasons why it wasn’t completely good and it wasn’t completely bad. As for the desserts everything that we had was really good and was really worth the price, the aesthetic and the atmosphere while a bit chaotic because they were busy was nice. When we first walked in, we weren’t greeted, and when it was our turn to order the person taking our order legitimately looked like they wanted to straight up quit and go home. We had questions about the drinks menu and they were completely unhelpful. They would just stay quiet and stare at us Whenever we asked a question and we kind of just had awkward silences. What was weird is they randomly asked why we were there and once they realized that we had gone there for my birthday their attitude completely changed, and they became really nice and really helpful and they even put candles on my dessert without us asking which I thought was really nice. They also mentioned that they were sorry for any delay in service because they were down a few people and as somebody that has worked in the service industry, I know how devastating that can be to a shift, so it completely made me understand that this person was probably just tired. And again, I think it says a lot that even though they were busy, they took the extra time to get me candles on all my desserts and light the candles so I could make a birthday wish.The desserts came out pretty fast so we didn’t have to wait But if you’re waiting in line to order, it is a really long wait. It also took us a while to find a table that was clean. Most of the tables were dirty and obviously, I attribute that to them being down a few people, but you know it’s never fun to sit down and get chocolate sauce on your hangs Because you didn’t see it on the table so…..Overall I would recommend but just be aware that maybe you might wanna go at a time when it’s not so busy because you might get better service and have a...

I am so disappointed in the experience we had here last week. I had reached out to the event coordinator to try to make sure our large party (14) could be accommodated on a saturday night. Though we were told the wait would be 45 minutes to an hour they did not say no but would not take a reservation past 6PM. We ended up waiting almost two hours to be seated and when they did seat us they did so at 3 very separate tables. It was not at all possible to socialise with my entire group and I told the manager how very not okay this arrangement was, how it wasnt the solution that had been discussed 20 minutes prior, and that this was not the level of customer service we had come to expect from their establishment. She seemed so annoyed, completely uninterested in resolving a difficult seating situation and as if she just wanted to be done with us and go about her night. About 20 minutes later they made us a table on the patio, 3 of my birthday guests had to leave because of the hour (we didn't get served food until 11pm), and we didn't see or hear from that manager (marissa) again.

When we got our drinks I was served a filthy cup, politely asked for a clean cup with fresh limes, it was taken away without comment or apology. The food was great, the poor server who helped us (nick) was kind and attentive and you could tell he really didn't want to get screwed out of a tip (he got a good tip). Our total ticket came just shy of $400, this place isnt cheap but it was never about the money it was about my birthday and they did not care. I later reached out to the event coordinator who couldn't care less, I emailed the executive chef and never received a reply. I had been coming here for a decade but maybe they've just gotten too big for their britches to care if they totally treated their guests like an inconvenience.

Never returning. Bad customer service. Dont go here for...