The Hen House — Restaurant in San Diego

Staff is great and the food is beautiful and tastes pretty decent. Best Monte Christo currently available in PB, though I was rather fond of Buddy's version before they closed. What's ironic to me is there seems to be a huge emphasis on presentation of the food to the expense of everything else. The portions are atypically small for most denizens of the US, though not uncommon for San Diego. The price is really steep for the quantity, though - I think it's more focused on people that like to post their food photos to Instagram. Still tasted pretty good. None of these points would move me to a review, though.

The concerning thing is how utterly dirty the whole place was. It looked like the floor hadn't been mopped all week, the menus were sticky, the table and decorations were stained, and there were flies everywhere. It's always a HUGE red flag to me when a place is that horribly neglected; if their public areas are so dirty how bad is the kitchen? The renovations they did since the ramen joint left also seemed very cheaply made - the brand new linoleum floorboards are already warped and bubbling. Also, the giant "think less" motto seemed a little offputting in a world where there is an abundance of people who intentionally avoid critical thought to the major detriment of societal...

I don't know why other brunch restaurants even try. From the moment you walk in and sit down you're greeted with menus, water glasses, and utensils. It truly feels like a lot higher end then places like Breakfast Republic and Broken Yolk. Tapas style brunch meant I could get a lot of items to try and share with friends and also left me feeling perfectly full, not overly full like most brunch spots. The chicken and waffles were amazing, my only complaint is that I wish they had a sauce for the waffles as the hot honey sauce didn't go very well with the waffles, it was fantastic with the chicken though. The French toast was delicious and somehow also very light, some of the best french toast I have ever had. The eggs were poached to perfection on both the pork belly and the benedicts. The drinks are very good and the punch bowls design is genius. It's sad we couldn't get anything stronger then 25% ABV but our server did a great job of informing us it was because of the liquor license they have. Our server knew the menu top and bottom and was able to make a bunch of suggestions that we took advantage of and really appreciated. Keep doing whatever you're doing because it's working. Really hope the best for this...

My wife and I waited for over an hour outside with our son who is on the spectrum. When we watched the manager seat his solo friend at a two top ahead of the entire waitlist - we left. This place doesn’t take reservations for groups less than 8 people, which would be fine if the front of house had any idea what they were doing. Between her selfie taking, we watched the panicked hostess haphazardly manage the invisible waitlist on the tablet while people sat themselves at the bar which we were told was not open seating. After checking in several times she called my wife on the phone who was standing directly in front of her only to offer us two seats at the bar for our party of three and suggested one of us stand until another seat opened up. We never got to try the food which looked and smelled delicious. There are several ways management could improve the front of house, including breaking up the huge tables that sat empty the entire time into smaller ones or putting time limits on tables without a reservation. We really wanted to try this place since it was my birthday but I don’t think we’ll be back unless they get...