The Continental Bar Lounge & Patio — Restaurant in San Jose

HORRIBLE service here. I opened a tab, and they required not just to swipe my credit card, but to also hold onto my ID with it. At the end of the night, everyone was ushered out the door so abrubtly that i wasnt given a chance to close my tab. I was supposed to fly out of town the next day, and I could NOT, as the bar still had my only ID and my credit card. I tryed calling the bar, nobody answered and i left a message on the machine. I EVEN tried calling the bars booking agent and again...no answer but I left a message. I then took a taxi from my hotel in Milpitas to the bar to talk to someone...but when i got there the bar was closed. This happened every day for a whole week, during which I not only missed my non-refundable flight but i had to pay out of pocket to stay in the expensive hotel my company had put me up in because they were the only hotel that already had my ID and credit card on file. After hotel, food, and transportation all the way to and from San Jose attempting to recover my ID and Card for an entire week, I easily blew my last $1500, PLUS lost the money I had spent on purchasing my ticket, which brought my total losses to almost 2.5k. The establishment never updated any of their media to reflect their new hours of operation, nor did they change the voice-mail message to the bar to inform anyone of new hours, which in itself would have saved me ALOT of money. Drinks were overpriced and lacked quality. The entire staff lacked any sort of accountability for their blatant unprofessionalism, and unless your a native person of latin decent, you get treated like a dollar sign and a nuisance, instead of like a welcomed patron. I dont see this place staying open for too long if under the same management. SHAMEFUL , and unprofessional with a very unaccepting or accommodating atmosphere. I would NEVER go back, and I would not recommend even my worst enemies to patronize this...

Continental Bar doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's easily found its way to one of the spaces on my favorite bars list. From the random DJs playing decently good music, to the dark atmosphere, a couple of sofas for extra comfy lounging, some tables with wait service, lots of standing (or dancing) room, the open-wall window, to the friendly bartenders. This place is almost divey, but not quite. In fact, it's got a strangely perfect blend of a divey/modern feel that you don't usually find in the area. It's a bonus that this place is never really that crowded, busy, but not packed... Sort of a little secret bar of downtown. The owner of the bar also makes sure to hire enough employees to tackle its peak hours. It's NOTHING like walking into a poorly managed bar and having 2 bartenders trying to manage a crowd of 100 while they cleaned their own glasses. This earns major points, and gives the bar an automatic classy feel to it.

We've only started coming to Continental about a month ago, and we've been back 3 times. What brings us back other than the cool atmosphere, is really their drinks menu. They offer the classic drinks such as the Moscow Mule and the Old Fashioned but with different alcohol options as base. You can order Moscow Mule with scotch if that pleases you! Their cocktail list is also really simple (less complicated ingredients) and suit these taste-buds well. My favorite drink by far is the Bobby Burns with laphroaig, mmm burn, baby, burnnn, i love that smokey...

the service was terrible, the bartender with a dark beard and hair was also terrible. I waited at the bar for 15 minutes until he approached me and since they don’t give any menu, I didn’t know what cocktails they had, I asked him to make Two cocktails of his choice, where he looked at me menacingly and left to serve other guys, left me alone in an awkward position, I went up to my boyfriend and asked him to take me a cocktail. Since I didn’t want to go there anymore, the cocktail tasted terrible, I asked to buy another one - it was no better. we spent money on nothing. so guys don't buy any cocktails from them, they are terrible, the atmosphere itself was normal, the music was uninteresting and the same. the female board tender also never smiled and was very rude, the most important thing in business is service and if you serve guys like that, no one will come to you and you need to fire the Bartender because he doesn’t know how to behave with clients and it gives you such a feeling that you owe him something and you didn’t...