TopSail — Restaurant in San Diego

Topsail is one of the newer additions to San Diego's waterfront eatery & bar scene. Nestled on top of the Brigantine restaurant with the same shared entrance, Topsail starts off with a spiral staircase up, encased in a glass dome. The host stand is right at the top of the stairs; hostesses have always been very welcoming and friendly.

There are lounge group seatings with fire pits all along the border of the place, but they go fast so make a reservation if you're going at peak times. There's also a full bar in the center with many seats, along with ample seating throughout. This is an outdoor place, so make sure you dress accordingly and bring a jacket if need. They have heaters and fire pits everywhere but the wind does flow freely through.

It was lunchtime on a Saturday, but we were lucky enough to score one of the perimeter couch seating areas. The views are perfect from just about anywhere here, but our spot gave us views of the bay and the Star of India ship. This was my third time here and service was good, as usual.

Topsail has a nice selection of beer & some signature cocktails, but the full bar is always ready to make your usual favorites. I always stick with my usual dirty Kettle martini when I go. We brought some visiting fiends this time and they got the Mai Tai & iced tea - the Mai Tai was tasty.

For lunch, we ordered: Spanish Grilled Octopus, Pork Belly Banh Mi Bao, Chimichurri Skirt Steak, Alaskan Halibut fish & Chips, Wagyu Burger, and the Grilled Salmon Salad. The grilled octopus was decorous and tender. The banh mi baos were pretty good, but lack the full banh mi flavors and needed more acidity that pickled carrots & daikon provides in an actual Vietnamese banh mi. The skirt steak was okay, but not the medium-rare specified and the chimichurri wasn't bad. Burger and fries were good. The grilled salmon salad was filling, but the fish wasn't seasoned much and the dressing was bland. The fish & chips are my favorite, well battered and fried, chips nice and crispy.

The food here is decent, but the drinks and views more than make up for it. Prices are a little on the higher side, but it's the ambiance and views that you're also paying for. All in all, a good waterfront place to lunch or lounge with drinks while catching up with friends. This was my third time here and there will be...

I have a few issues with this establishment. The food is overpriced, the drinks aren’t very good, and the service is hit or miss.

The front of house staff are very kind, but slow to respond to new customers waiting to be seated. The waiter we had the first time was kind and had us thinking we’d give it another chance, but the waitress we had the last time we went was extremely rude and dismissive. The way she acted when we indicated that we were thinking and needed more time was surprising and actually led to us leaving without ordering.

Now to the overpriced food. Many of the dishes look good, but are very expensive given that they are simply appetizers. The seafood tower/platter, which we had tried during our first visit, was $150. As of a few days ago, the same thing is $210. They didn’t add anything to it, and I was on the verge of thinking that $150 was too much for what you received. I’m surprised they can get away with this.

We ordered several drinks each during our first visit, but the drinks were either extremely weak or were very mediocre compared to drinks prepared at some really good restaurants in downtown nearby.

The one cool thing about this place is the ambiance. The seating is neat and the view is amazing.

That said, my wife and I won’t be back. Save your money and go somewhere else to save yourself a fair amount of money and...

I was greeted at the front was ask for my phone number was told it will be 15 minutes when I looked around a lot of tables were empty I sat at the bar had a drink and hour and half had passed by people coming in and out people getting sit down on tables but never did I get a text or a call or a courtesy from hostess your next or anything I think and felt like being discriminated and the host is being racist when I went to tell her what was going on. This is her reaction. Oh, the machine is having problems, but everybody else got their text to come in people who were behind me were seated before even us I don’t recommend this place at all to anyone. The hostess is very rude. Kind of sad because this was our second time going over there the first time we went. It was so wonderful being there today. It was the worst day going over, but that will be the last time I said foot on that place. We travel all away from Arizona to go over there and what a waste of time but good thing that in front of that place is a restaurant that only took seven minutes to get us a table and the staff was amazing. The hostess waitress were very amazing. I want to thank everybody at that restaurant, jumping Jack in front of this place better service better attitude and you don’t have to wait an hour and a half to find out that all the machine is not working a...