The Marine Room — Restaurant in San Diego

I came to this restaurant with high expectations and unfortunately I left the place really disappointed. I reserved with a week in advance (there is a $25 dlls per person cancellation fee and you have to input your credit card number to reserve).

I received a call from the restaurant the morning of the appointment to verbally confirm my appointment. I asked if I could push it back by 15 minutes from 8:15 to 8:00. The person on the phone said that there was no problem and moved my appointment to 8:00.

We arrived at 7:55 pm. To our surprise there was a waiting line of more 20 people. We were told that they had an issue with the reservation system and had over booked the place.

We waited close to 30 minutes to be assigned a table. People that arrived there later than us were seated ahead of us. When I asked why the hostess apologized for being over booked, but since my original reservation was at 8:15 the seated first people that had 8:00 reservation. I explained that I had verbally moved my reservation to 8:00. Her response was that I could talk to the manager if I wanted to. I didn’t and just waited.

If they called everyone who reserved as they called me earlier that day, how did they overbooked the place?

After 30+ minutes waiting we finally were given a table. Even though they had 2 empty tables by the window, we were not offered those. Those tables remained empty for the rest of the night as they had more people leaving than arriving at that time of the night and people were assigned other tables.

My bill was $565 dlls for a table for 4 people including a wine bottle.

Our second disappointment came in the form that we were told they had ran out of most of the house specials and they had only the 2lbs lobster.

How can you come to this place and have them running out of food?

I was absolutely not impressed with the food we chose. It was nicely presented, but for the price of it I was expecting something much better.

My wife is vegetarian and they offered only one plate for vegetarians. She ordered a tofu plate.

Without asking her, they brought a completely different plate. She was told that they had also ran out of tofu and the chef prepared something different.

The plate was really good, but again, we were surprised that the plate was changed without even asking us about it.

If you take the view out of the equation and the bad service, for the price point of the food, San Diego offers several other gourmet options. I can think of at least 10 restaurants at that price point that offer better food choices and are served with excellent sides.

Once you take out the option of seating next to ocean, then you are comparing this restaurant with several other good options at the same price point and sadly this is a restaurant I am not coming back.

One pro, was that the server was really good in knowing the menu and explaining it. She was also good recommending wines from their list.

The wine list was one of the most complete lists I’ve seen. Really good selection of bottles ranging from $60 dlls to thousands of dlls.

What would have changed our experience? If the restaurant knows they had overbooked, they could have 1) called me to let me know ahead of time, 2) offer some sort of aperitif or drink on the house while they made us wait, 3) offered a table view to make up for their overbooking error.

They failed at what is known in the service industry the “moments of truth” which are those moments that if you fail at them, the client will not come back. For example, if an airline losses your baggage, most likely you don’t use that airline again.

My review may be very strict, but at $50-$80 dlls a plate, your expectations are not the same as going to a burger joint.

I have extensively traveled the world and have comparisons at every price point. Unfortunately this restaurant is not a match for other restaurants of...

Let me start off by saying that if it wasn't for the amazing service I got by the server Jennica and the busser Alan, I probably would have walked off and left.

We drove here three hours to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday and arrived 45min early to our reservation time. It was a special day so I mentioned that I pre-booked the chefs table experience since it said guaranteed "optimized view" on the platform I made my reservation on. The host said "oh yes that gives you priority if a window table opens up as we don't do reserved seating for specific tables."

Once our reservation time came up, we were seated at a table that was NOT by the window so l was a bit confused as to why. Immediately after we sat down a table cleared up in front of us that was by the window and so we quickly asked the waitress if we could move there. She said she would ask and so she went to grab her manager.

The assistant manager who was named Chris came over and was extremely rude. He showed no empathy what so ever and was disrespectful. He said that specific table was "already reserved" and I asked him how was that possible when the host said there isn't any reserved seating for specific tables. He started to get angry with me and WALKED AWAY!!!! The people who got the table came way after us which made me even more confused since we had "priority" according to the host.

We then asked if we could take another table in front of us because they were finishing up and the waitress said she was immediately shot down. She even asked us if we had put "chefs table" in our reservation notes and we stated we did and so she was also confused as to why management kept denying us tables.

After this kind of treatment, it's safe to say that management attends specifically to a certain type of people and disregards those who are not regardless of how much you're looking at spending here.

Besides the disrespectful treatment from Chris, we still gave the restaurant a try for the food and unfortunately were disappointed there too. For the price, the food was definitely not worth it. Not only were the portions extremely small but overall the food lacked great flavor. I've been to several Michelin star restaurants that cost way less with better quality food. I was not impressed one bit. I would say the one dish that was somewhat flavorful was the lobster, but that's about it. Even the desserts were very basic and felt like something you can purchase at a fast food restaurant (lava cake and plain cheesecake).

To top it all off all of the individuals who decided to get the chef's table experience in the restaurant were given a complimentary goodie bag, but management decided to give it to everyone and only skip us. We waited several minutes to see if they would come around, but never did and had to flag down the busser to get us one. He apologized that we had to wait and go out of our way to get the something that we should have gotten in the first place.

In conclusion, don't waste your time or money coming here. Yes, the views are nice but not as nice as Instagram makes them look. There are several other restaurants in San Diego that have better quality food, nicer views, and more...

We live in the area, so we go to the Marine room on a regular basis. This was the third time we were going there to enjoy our anniversary. My husband was upset with how the reservation process started, but went through the process anyways giving them his credit card info, and email in addition to name and phone. When we arrived, we were told our table wasn't ready, and we could order a drink at the bar, but couldn't sit there or stay downstairs because they did not have two seats available. We ordered the drinks, and by the time they came, two bar seats opened up, so they sat us there. About 20 minutes later, they said our table was ready, and took us to a bar table that had been sitting open the entire time. The bar table is really small...good if you are sharing one appetizer and a drink, but we were planning on having dinner there, which is why we made dinner reservations.

I called the manager over, and explained that we were there for dinner and asked him if he thought that table was appropriate for dinner guests. He said 'no...we will fix this right away'. Then he left and a waitress came by and said that the dinner room was unfortunately full, and we would need to eat there, but she could pull over a second table and pace the food appropriately. So we reluctantly agreed. We asked for the Sommelier and ordered two appetizers. The waitress assured us she would bring them out one at a time. While we were still talking to the Sommelier about wine with dinner, the first appetizer arrived, and we had to move everything (cocktail glasses, water glasses) to accommodate it. Then before the Sommelier left, the second appetizer arrived, which completely crowded the table. We asked if the second table could be brought over, but she said no, they had to leave it open for walk in guests. So before we finished the appetizers, they were standing there with our entrees, and no place to set them down because we were still eating the appetizers. They stood there with the food while we hurriedly ate the rest, then they crowded the table with the two entrees and wine glasses. There wasn't room for the wine bottle, so they put that behind the bar to serve us.

My husband and I were not pleased with the entire situation. The food was delicious as usual. And the wine very good. But they should not be forcing dinner patrons to eat on those small tables. Our bill came up to over $400. The two tables to the right of us and the table to the left of us remained vacant all night. Even two 4 top tables in the bar came available. The manager walked past us several times, after that, as we were there for hours, and never...