Guava Beach Bar & Grill — Restaurant in San Diego

A very mixed experience here. This was actually my brother and mom's second visit to this restaurant in 4 days. It was so good the first time, they recommended we go back.

The Food: Was 5 star. We ordered wings, cobb salad, ol' smokey burger, seared ahi wrap, and a side of waffle fries plus 2 margaritas. Everything was genuinely fantastic and cooked to order.

The Service: Was, honestly, terrible. We interacted with 2 of the 3 servers on entering. They were both incredibly friendly, welcoming, and asked us to sit down at "any table" since the restaurant was not crowded at all. We, unfortunately, had the 3rd server come to our table. Her name was Melanie (at least that's what it said on the receipt as she never introduced herself). She was not even remotely friendly. When my brother asked for "less ice" in the $19 double margarita he ordered, she was very patronizing and explained he could either have the glass less filled with less ice, or he could have more mix. He was genuinely confused by her response. She then proceeded to bring him a $19 margarita that was literally an inch short of the top of the glass. Then when he ordered the seared ahi wrap (which comes with slaw on the side), he asked to substitute waffle fries. She did not explain that this was not an option with this sandwich and instead just charged him for a full second side of waffle fries (my mom had already ordered a full side). So we ended up with 2 gigantic baskets of waffle fries.

It was all-in-all a very bizarre, adversarial experience and just felt like we were being up charged. In the grand scheme of things, $6.50 is not a big deal. But as a prior waiter, it's common courtesy to explain if people will be upcharged for substitutions. It's also normal to ask for less ice.

This is just really unfortunate as everyone else in the establishment was very friendly and the food was amazing. My brother literally lives a 4 min drive away and we would have come back a lot. After this experience, I doubt we...

I went on the night of the 4th and it was busy but it was not by any means insane. When I walked into the bar, the first thing I was order a drink. They had a $10 minimum for debit/credit cards so I told the female bartender working that night to leave it open. I was with a group of people, so we were taking turns buying the Bionic Beavers that we were sharing. About an hour after I initially opened my tab, I went to go order another drink but when I told the male bartender to put it on my tab, he informed that there was no tab or debit card for my last name. Next thing I know, the female bartender is coming up to me and saying I closed out my tab already, which was IMPOSSIBLE because this was only my second time at the bar. She proceeded to show me the receipt and someone else had signed it! She allowed somebody else to close out my tab and take off with my debit card! Upon telling both bartenders that I had not come up and closed out my tab, they both treated me like I was just some drunk that was too plastered to realize that I closed out my tab, but I had actually only had two drinks at that point. No apologies, no "we will figure this out," nothing. At one point, the male bartender told me, "I don't know what to tell you." ARE YOU SERIOUS!? You gave my debit card to someone else! I went outside to tell my friends what happened and the security guard told me that not that long before, another girl came out screaming about the EXACT SAME THING. The female bartender let someone else close her tab and take her credit card. This is not the first terrible customer service experience that I have had here. Needless to say, I am still debit cardless and I will never be going back there. I understand that people make mistakes but the way I was treated after the fact is completely unacceptable. If you go here, bring cash but don't expect service...

The food here is actually pretty good but unfortunately I had to eat it cold. The problem here is the service. I've been in the resteraunt business for 17 years so I'm usually pretty easy-going and understanding when it comes to a rush or even a few mistakes. However our server Chelsea was probably the worst server I've ever had. We went there for a quick bite to eat to have a burger. We were on a time limit and had to be somewhere in an hour but we figured hey we're only having Burgers it shouldn't be too long. Well we were wrong. We sat there for over an hour and never got our food, the server never checked on us, two people out of eight and never got their Waters, the bartender brought out cocktails for the server and he also ended up bringing out our box food as we had to get our food to go since we were late for an appointment that we had across the street at the Aquatic Center for 7:30 pm. She put wrong items on wrong checks and told the guests in my party to just figure it out. Really the customer service was incredibly disappointing. Our server never checked on our table once in over an hour and I had to get up twice to track her down and ask if our food was coming. By the time we got to eat our food was cold but hey it was still decent and really we were all starving so in all honesty anything at that point would have probably tasted good. The manager ended up apologizing to us but we never even got a an explanation or any type of apology from our unattentive, unaware, and below mediocre server. Just a bit of advice... being apologetic goes a long way and it's a big part of customer service especially if you're in the wrong. Like I said I'm usually pretty understanding and sympathetic to the craziness of the restaurant business as I am extremely familiar with it however the experience I had here was just flat-out...