Portal Coffee — Restaurant in San Diego

I used to be a regular here a year or two ago. I was a fan of the chill music, the pastries (including the delicious kouign amann or anything with the slightly-spicy jelly), the drinks (it’s one of the few places in town to get a good hojicha latte), the friendly (?) staff, the closeness to the Blue Line, and the overall atmosphere. I would work there often on my own and sometimes with friends, and I would hype the place up to colleagues.

But one day, I got there and the music was country or something. I don’t know if Portal was/is undergoing an image change, but to me, it was a signal that it’s not my kind of space. That same day, there was a table near me with some patrons who seemed to know one of the staff members and they seemed to be talking about other patrons and saying way too much. I’m a bit hard of hearing but I got weird vibes and haven’t been back since. It’s probably still a good place if you aren’t unlucky enough to attract stalkers but I’ve got a list of other cafes to try that I’ll be directing...

3.5 for the overall experience. The coffee and the toasted matcha are both really good here. The service…. Kinda sucks. I’ve probably been 5-6 times now since my friend likes the coffee, but every time we get a bit more put-off by the service.

The baristas tends to stick to themselves, look at their phones, ignore customers when they walk in, and chat with each other instead of greeting people.

You can either order with a barista or from a few tablets they have set up. The tablets ask a million questions and you really lose the coffee house experience when you have to use one. However, when we order with a barista, they usually seems annoyed or bored, if they come over to check on the line at all.

Such a bummer because I want to like this place. I want to want to go there since it’s a cool place to sit and hang out, or work from, but it seems like they don’t even want...

Solid coffee shop (love the staff!) with some annoying operational issues. I’m a huge fan of their orange cardamom latte but sometimes run out of the necessary syrup to make it for long periods. I hope they get that supply chain issue down!

Also, Portal should simply remove food from its online ordering system as you can never order items online - why list them if they’re always listed out of stock on the site? I get that pastry availability changes day to day, but it would be a better customer experience to simply remove food from online ordering OR actually let customers order ahead based on what they’re getting that morning. The one I really want them to enable ordering online for is their breakfast sandwich. That seems to be the one thing that is consistent food-wise so I really hope they take this to heart and offer the sandwich for online order.

Keep serving...