California Pizza Kitchen at King of Prussia — Restaurant in Upper Merion Township

Let's start by renaming CPK, California BUG Kitchen! Why you ask? On July 12th my coworkers and I went to lunch at the restaurant in King of Prussia where a BIG BUG was found in one of the salads we ordered! The restaurant was under staffed with only 2 servers working ours came right over and took the salad away, offering to replace it but WITH ANOTHER OF THE SAME SALAD. Unfortunately, my coworker was put off and the whole table lost it's appetite and we picked at the rest of our food. At some point before we asked for the check, someone from the back kitchen came out. At least, we think he was from the kitchen, he had on a black chef coat with the company logo on it but since he did not introduce himself we don't know who he was. When he approached the table, he did not greet us, just said "I heard there was a problem with your food?" We said yeah there was a BUG in the salad!! He said, "Oh. Sorry." And walked off. Once we got the check, the BUG salad was removed BUT there were items on the check that we did not receive. So we had to ask the server to remove those items. At no point did anyone from CBK offer anything other than taking the one BUG salad off the bill nor did they offer anything else and no manager visited the table. We paid the corrected bill (which was still over $80) and left feeling queazy for the rest of the afternoon.

After thinking about the lack of service, the expensive price and how gross it was to find a BUG in the salad, I called the corporate telephone number where I spoke with someone who profusely apologized and promised someone would call me back. A week went by, no call, so I called the same number again and left a message on the corporate line. Days later, someone named Sandy called me back and said she was a manager at the King of Prussia location but was out of the store for the past few weeks. She apologized for the BUG in the salad and said she would work on getting me a refund and offered a gift certificate. A week passed and no refund. Sandy called and said they were having problems finding the charge card used to pay the bill and asked for more details. It's been more than another week, so I called again, leaving a message with Sandy, but have yet to receive a call back.

At this point, it has been over a month since we were at California BUG Kitchen, we have received nothing but hassle and the original BUG in our salad. We certainly haven't received a refund! So unless you like poor customer, being overcharged and eating BUGS, stay...

Server was friendly but not very attentive. Didn’t clear table at all during dinner. We were piling up appetizer plates and other plate ware and none of it was cleared. Had to “flag” down for drink refills. I hate having to flag down a server. I feel it’s rude but we were sitting near the server station and barely saw server. Appetizer came out and nobody had silverware. Waited about 5 minutes plus to see server to flag her down for silverware. Keep in mind we had been seated for close to half hour at this point. Restaurant was out of avocado and bread. So wife couldn’t order several of the things she wanted. So she settled on something, fair enough. Placed our order, about 20 minutes or more went by and manager came over to say they were out of three additional ingredients that were in the bowl she ordered. So after that long of a wait they just realized this—- so she ordered a bbq chicken pizza. Waited another 20 minutes and they come with her food first—- a salad was placed in front of her. So, now the salad needed to be taken away and a pizza needed to be made. All in all, they were out of several food ingredients that were essential to many of their meals at 7:00pm on a Saturday. Restaurant was not super packed. We spent too much time here for a very subpar meal and experience. They were not short staffed either. Staffing was not the issue. I would guess if they were out of the types of ingredients they were out of that it was poor management and inventory controls. The bar area was filthy—- and there wasn’t a single person there. The spray bottle and cleaning rag sat on bar for over an hour while the two employees at the empty bar hung out on their phones and having a video call with someone they knew. This exemplifies the general experience at CPK. Half-a$$ attitude as though...

When we first entered, there was a musty smell to the place. Anyway, we were seated and it took a while for someone to come to our table. It took a while as well from when we got our drinks to when the waitress came back to take our order. The place was very slow so not sure what the holdup was. Our waitress forgot to bring us the complimentary bread and olive oil. We only asked because we were starving as our food literally took an hour from when we ordered it to arrive at our table. We were told the pizza oven was backed up when there were only 4 other tables seated. And 3 of the 4 tables were seated after us. Something tells me that she might have forgotten to put the order in, but that’s neither here nor there.

The highlight of the meal was the food. The pizza that I got was the Carne Asada pizza. It was a cilantro pesto base with Carne Asada (marinated steak) on top with cheese and onions and cilantro. I asked for the salsa verde to be on the side as I was skeptical about that. I was right - the salsa verde was way too sweet and would have overpowered the pizza. I thought the flavors all worked well together and it was a very flavorful, cilantro-y pizza. Which I absolutely love! I definitely recommend trying this over a traditional pie. My boyfriend and sister got the Margherita and the burrata pizza. They both enjoyed it and we had leftovers the next day. The prices were also pretty reasonable and would get take out, but dining in was not that great. This place used to be packed on the weekends and would have a long wait back in the day - it’s surprising that there are so many open tables and I’m shocked at how dead this place is. The food is amazing, service sucks, but def...