Phonobar — Restaurant in San Francisco

I wish I had listened to the other Yelp reviews complaining of terrible service. However, I was in the area for a performance and was dining with a friend who eats vegan, so I gave it a try—huge mistake.

Let’s get this out of the way: The food is fine, even very good. But it does not make up for the horrible service, which is the worst I have experienced anywhere. It was a busy night, so we were initially sat at a ledge near the door. This was okay, though chilly and people kept mistaking us for hosts. We also had to flag someone down to order. When a table opened up, we asked if we could move and the servers helped us. I had to ask for a spoon for my soup, but that was fine. This is—really, truly—all no big deal and I wouldn’t mention it all, except it’s relevant to the rest of this saga.

Now the new table, our service basically slides to a halt. We had to ask twice for the rest of our items to arrive. The first time we had to ask was understandable—we’d moved tables and it was a busy night. The server asked what we’d ordered and we told her. Then we had to ask again—and, again, she asked what we’d ordered. By the time the last of our items hit the table, we were way behind schedule and asked for the check. The server presented us with the bill, which my friend quickly glanced at, paid, and signed. We finished our food and left in a rush to make our event.

We were a block down the road when someone runs up behind us. It was the host, who waved his iPad in our faces and said, “Hi, yeah, you didn’t pay your bill.” My friend and I assumed this was a misunderstanding and told him that we did. “No, you didn’t,” he said angrily, again gesturing at the iPad. At this point, other people nearby are staring. He’s making a scene. We keep telling him that we paid—he keeps saying “no” and rolling his eyes, getting more and more indignant. We explained to him again that we had paid the server when our food hit the table. “Which server did you pay?” His tone was FULL of accusation. We described the server. He demanded that we go back to the restaurant to sort this out.

At this point, my friend and I are frustrated. The performance’s doors close at 7:30 and we aren’t sure if we’ll make it now. On our way back, my friend explained this and said that, honestly, we hadn’t been happy with the service. Instead of asking us why, he said aggressively, “I know you weren’t happy with your first table, but it was a busy night.” The initial table wasn’t the problem, and it was so weird for him to assume that. I said that the table was fine, but that the food took a very long time, we’d had to ask for our items twice, and that now we were being chased down for a bill we’d already paid.

Back at the restaurant, I encouraged my friend to pull up her bank statement. There was a charge from the restaurant. This was the bill we’d paid, which was about $20 less than the bill he’d claimed we skipped out on. Clearly, his server had made a mistake with the transaction. My friend showed him this charge. Instead of taking it off the bill, he told her that he would charge her for the second bill and then cancel that first charge. We got no apology, despite this being THEIR mistake—though he did say, “Hey, if you want to come back after the show, you can each have a drink on me.” Uhhh, there is no way I’m going to come back after that! Also why not offer to take some drinks off of the tab he insisted on us paying? Or why not just let the $20 difference between bills go and admit a mistake?

Aaaand we should have asked him to deduct the original payment from our tab—because, reader, are you surprised to learn that, a week later, both charges remain on my friend’s card?

If I could give negative stars, I would. Do yourself a favor: Trust the reviews and...

Strange experience overall, the food & drinks were not good enough to excuse the weird attitude of the server.

We needed an extra chair for our group. We asked a nice table nearby for their unused chair, and when my friend sat down the server came in and said “you can’t just take that without asking!” And basically grabbed the chair from under him. Ok, but we DID ask, and other tables had obviously done the same thing so im not sure why we’re the only ones they enforced that rule on. FWIW, our group was the only non-white table in that room, we were sober & weren’t being loud. Other reviewers have reported biased treatment, idk if that happened here too.

I could tell the server after that was actually trying to be nicer, but was still being short with us most of the time. The food was pretty solid for veg, but the drinks were just ok.

Now here’s where I messed up - I’m new to bar culture and i brought in an outside (alcoholic) drink. I had no idea that was against the rules, so that was actually my bad. The server saw it, confiscated it, and then cut us off in a really belittling way. We understood we disrespected them by doing this so we didn’t fight it. But while I was signing the check he was hovering around us and staring, kinda like he was making sure I was still gonna tip. It was overall very uncomfortable.

The reason I’m leaving this review is when we got up to leave, I went to him to say sorry and he straight-up mocked it back to me. Super weird when I feel like we didn’t do enough to warrant that response and had been compliant with them all night.

The vibes are off & there are better vegetarian spots. And I’ll make sure to never bring outside drinks to...

We visited on 7/28 with a party of 18. The food was outstanding, easily a 10/10. However, the service was absolutely abysmal, earning a 0/10.

A week prior, we spoke to the manager, Sam, who was very sweet and helpful. He confirmed our reservation for a party of 15 (+/- 5) and even showed us the tables we would be using. However, on the day of the reservation, we were met by two women at the restaurant—one extremely sweet and the other shockingly unprofessional and rude. They claimed they had no record of our reservation and insisted they didn’t take reservations at all. The rude woman went so far as to accuse us of lying.

They eventually agreed to seat us but crammed 18 of us into a table meant for 8. The unpleasant woman repeatedly returned to our table with more rude remarks, clearly looking for a confrontation. We requested to avoid any further interactions with her. We were told to take any available seats as the night progressed. Our last order was taken at 8:30 and served at 8:47. The polite waitress assured us we could stay for another hour undisturbed.

Unfortunately, the rude woman returned, accusing us once more of lying about the reservation and moving furniture (we had adjusted two loose tables). She then brusquely informed us that they close at 9 and essentially told us to leave. Given the appalling service, we refused to pay the gratuity, which she clearly did not appreciate and charged us regardless.

I wonder if the attitudes would’ve been the same had it not been a group of Indians. What was supposed to be a joyous birthday celebration was soured by this abysmal service. If you want to ensure a memorable evening, steer clear...