Loft Bar & Bistro — Restaurant in San Jose

Great Ambiance Poor Food Poor Drinks

We went here for Dine Downtown, the week in San Jose where restaurants give fixed price menus for discounted rate. Unfortunately, this place provided all lack luster food fare.

We ordered old fashions at the table, we received a glass of whisky with water and a maraschino cherry at the bottom. It was not an old fashion, it was just bad.

Three of us ordered off the fixed menu, one ordered off the standard menu. The fixed menu items were poor. Soup was bland, having no flavor and served warm. The tomato mozzarella salad, was just sliced roma tomatoes with slices of mozzarella and strips of basil. It was a disappointment with under ripe tomatoes.

The entrees continued in the train of the meal. The pasta with chicken and shrimp, was bland, lacking any flavor to an overly buttered and oiled dish. Luckily, the table did come with salt. The mashed potatoes had an odd sticky texture, but missed one of the great joys of mashed potatoes, the flavor of a potato mixed with creamy butter. They were just sticky bland mash.

But, maybe there was hope with desserts. Yet, there was none. The berries with grand marnier cream, was a little cup of berries with non sugared whip cream. The berries weren't macerated, they weren't even ripe! If you went to the grocery store, bought some berries, threw them in a glass, whipped up some heavy cream and gave it to your significant other, they'd wonder why you decided to put them on a bland diet. Maybe you did something wrong to offend them, or maybe you just decided that taking a page from the chef at the Loft was a good idea.

The creme brulee was curdled, making it and oddly textured sweet caramel covered scrambled egg.

Why not 1 star you ask? Why give them two stars? Well, the service was nice and attentive. The roof top porch was open and perfect for a summer night. The experience is fun, you keep eating bland bad food, but then you look at the people you are around, laugh and say, "there's great ambiance." So, the saving grace of this place is the location.

If you want good food, go somewhere else If you want good drinks, go somewhere else If you want good desserts, go somewhere else If you want to enjoy the company of friends on a summer evening, try somewhere else, if you can't find anywhere else to go, go...

CAUTION: Be very careful before booking here.

We had a deeply disappointing experience at The Loft by Capers. They engaged in bait-and-switch tactics when we called Capers to book a month in advance and, without warning much less asking for our approval, they set us up at The Loft which understaffed the event, and kept a portion of our food.

Initially, we agreed on a price for a group of 60, with the corkage fee waived since we were considering other venues. When our group size dropped to 40 (due to issues with the east coast hurricane in early Oct 2024) they refused a price adjustment, which we accepted, but requested the food for the remaining 20 people to be packed for us. They agreed without issue.

On the day of the event, we are expecting to go to Capers East & Drink, that's where we called on day one, and they moved us to a completely different, rundown location in downtown San Jose (The Loft) without asking for approval. The venue was nothing like what we had seen on the pictures, it was dirty, scary location, with paid parking. Despite these frustrations, we decided to proceed as we had guests from all over the country.

Upon arrival we dropped off wine for dinner, requesting that the white be chilled and the red kept cool. This simple task took over 30 minutes, and the red wine was left sitting out. The service was disorganized and inattentive throughout.

When it came time to settle the bill, I asked for the leftover food as promised. They told me it was already given out, which was absolutely not the arrangement. The manager was not present but over the phone, Kan, was dismissive and rude, even accusing me of being drunk when I questioned where the rest of the food had gone. I insisted he could check with his staff to confirm I was not drunk, it did not matter. He threatened to call the police if I didn’t pay the full bill.

It was a terrible experience—poor communication, unprofessionalism, and broken promises. Be careful if you’re considering this place, especially if you’re from...

Terrible Service! Inexplicably Long Wait times!

When we walked in they told us the kitchen was backed up and that we would have to wait 10 minutes longer than usual. That 10 minutes was a wild underestimate, since we left 1.5 hours after arriving without seeing our entree.

After waiting 10 minutes just to see a waitress and get our order in, we had to wait half an hour to get soup, and another 20 minutes to be offered bread. By this point we noticed that other people who had arrived and ordered after we did started getting their food. 20 minutes later we still didn't have our food. People at other tables were complaining to the wait staff about the wait times. After a final 10 minutes we payed for the soup and went to In'n'Out.

If they had told us that they were going to be unreasonably slow, we would have happily come back another day. Now we're missing an hour of our lives and hate the place. Their...