California Dreaming — Restaurant in Spanish Fort

My husband and I had a suggestion that we go eat at California Dreaming. They described it as a steak & seafood place. It is a beautiful place. Not fine dining w/ white table cloth but this appeared to be a nice restaurant. Our server, Kate had a great personality and demonstrated she knew the menu well and gave us the time we needed to make our choices. We had a bowl of She-crab soup as an appetizer. It was wonderful! My husband and I often share our entrees. I ordered the Shrimp San Francisco (w/Caesar salad)and my husband ordered the steak(filet mignon) and shrimp(fried) w/ house salad and signature dressing (honey mustard and hot bacon) and steamed broccoli. The salads were both served with the most amazing croissants drizzled w/ honey. They were heavenly pillows of bread. A-mazing. I would describe them as crescent rolls not croissants because they were more like yeast rolls than flakey buttery layers like a croissant. The salads were great! Medium sized as a matter of fact. Very fresh, too! HOWEVER…our server brought our entrees. They were both flat in taste. The broccoli was delicious. The Shrimp San Francisco was a nice portion and the mix of ingredients seemed balanced but there was hardly any salt. It was the same for my husband’s steak. I did tell Kate and she did ask if there was anything else I might be interested in but honestly if the cooks/chefs are afraid to use salt I didn’t feel as if I would be pleased with anything else they tried. I hope that this was just an off day or something was wrong with the salt shaker in the kitchen. Kate did say she would let the kitchen staff know. I just asked her to ask them to taste something (not from our plates) like the sauce for the shrimp dish. We spent $75 including the tip but my husband ate his steak after adding a healthy amount of salt but said if he had tasted the meat blind-folded he would have had trouble distinguishing that it was steak at all. I didn’t eat any more of my dish but my husband added some salt and ate the shrimp which was really a shame. It looked like a dish I really would have enjoyed…if it had been salted as it should have been. I don’t like to leave poor reviews so I really hope this doesn’t keep anyone from visiting but I read other peoples reviews to find just this sort of information. One more point on customer service. It would have been nice if the manager had visited our table to show some concern. I think it was a missed opportunity in customer service. We were there for lunch at 11:15 on a Tuesday. It was slow front...

My family ate here yesterday 5/17 as a party of 11. The server was amazing and food was great! Everything was so great that we decided to come back today and I tell ya it was like night and day. The service was nothing compared to the night before. It stared off bad from the beginning. It took 24 minutes for us to get our drinks at the table (today we were a party of 6, 4 adults and 2 kids). Appetizers and alcoholic beverages came before them. It seems as if our waitress Laura F. has ADHD or something else was on her mind because. Our food came out and it was good. We were needing additional things like condiments and when we asked for those the kids finished their food before we received them. We never received a refill on our drinks. We decided to try the dessert and the waitress made the suggestion that the chocolate brownie was really really good so I decided to go with that. Not only did it take an unusual amount of time to come out but it was PIPING HOT ! The first bite burned my tongue and I was upset because what if it was a child eating it and no warning was given? The ice cream that comes with it was literally melting so fast you had to eat it fast. The brownie was so hot I asked the waitress did someone put it in the microwave for like 5 mins because it smelt burnt and you could taste the burnt. I wouldn’t have been able to eat the brownie if I wanted to because however they warmed it up to melt the chocolate made the brownie turn hard as it started cooling down to the point where I was actually able to put it in my mouth. There’s definitely some things that could be worked on here with the server and the cooks. The waitress did ask if I wanted the manager to come over, but I didn’t understand what that would have done so I said no thank you and we paid for the check and finally got the refill we should have gotten with our food to go. Not going to let this one time ruin my overall feelings about eating here. I’ll be back but definitely will not order the brownie again and if you do please be careful especially if your child is the one going to be eating it. Not to mention it was not...

Literally just had one of the best meals of my life tonight at California Dreaming. They were very busy as they just opened back to full capacity. The food was superb as always, shout out to the kitchen, holding it down, but what made it so wonderful was our service! Our server Britney L, is hands down the best server I have ever had and that’s including Michelin starred restaurants. She is a true master of her craft and made us feel like we were the only ones in the whole restaurant. She went above and beyond and blew us away with her warm personality, great humor and absolute impeccable hospitality. She checked on us more times than our previous servers at the past 5 restaurants we have visited combined. My girlfriend and I are already planning our next trip back next weekend! If you are planning on visiting the restaurant in the near future, do yourself a huge favor and ask for Britney, you will not be disappointed!

To the management: Y’all have a crown jewel on your hands in Britney. We came every few months in the past but now will be weekly guests without a doubt. I sincerely hope you give her a raise ASAP because she’s worth every last cent. One of our favorite places just became our favorite place thanks to her.

Kitchen staff: Y’all are amazing, I have worked BoH for the past 15 years and the quality and flavor and presentation is so on point. Y’all killed it tonight. We had the wings, a salad, the croissants, and a San Francisco pasta, plus a brownie and the bread pudding desserts and literally everything was mouth watering. I just want to say I respect each and every one of you from the chef to the dishwasher, thank you for your service.

Britney: You blew us away tonight, thank you for everything, you are truly amazing and we can’t wait to see you again.

5/5 stars for the meal 5/5 stars for the value 10/5 stars for the service

Thank you all so much, you were the perfect way to end my...