Dog Haus Biergarten — Restaurant in Vista

Updated 10-06-20: Came by again for lunch and tried the Das Brat sandwich. It's bratwurst with sauerkraut, caramelized onions and brown mustard on King's Hawaiian rolls. Also got a side of onion rings, which were perfectly cooked and totally satisfied my craving. The brat was good too but the sandwich had a few engineering problems. The rolls are so light and airy they literally disintegrated as I ate the brat, which was heavy and substantial. They also put a ridiculous amount of mustard on the sandwich. Fortunately, I'm a mustard lover but I could see a lot of people having problems with this amount. Beyond that, the outdoor seating area was very clean and staff were helpful and courteous like last time.

Original Review: Had the Cheeseburger with Onion Rings on the side today. Although you can customize a sandwich here any way you want their special Cheeseburger comes with American cheese, meaty pickle slices, lettuce, tomatoes and their 1001 Island Dressing. Which is like 1000 Island Dressing but with some chili heat added. Not too much heat for me but definitely there. The burger is of the smashed variety and it came pretty close to the medium rare I asked for. With Hawaiian rolls to enclose the whole concoction it was very delicious. The battered onion rings were good, but maybe slightly overcooked (a bit hard). You pay extra for sides like fries, tots, slaw and onion rings but nothing seemed overpriced here and the order of rings was generous.

The food came pretty quickly. The place is attractive and the staff friendly. I took a star away because I ate outdoors and the tables were filthy. I mean when I wiped my area off with napkins the napkins were literally black. I assume they clean at some point during the day but they shouldn't open up with dirty tables. Also the retro-rock muzak was loud for my taste, especially before noon, but others may think it's fine.

I will come back and try a dog or sausage. On a trivial note, they have an amazing hot air hand dryer in the men's room. The air blast is so strong my hands were completely dry in 5 seconds. Didn't miss paper towels at all. It's called the Xlerator Eco and every restaurant...

Went to meet up with some friends, from back home, and while there we all had a round of beers we started 2 different tabs. Going for our next round we all decided to order food (on separate tabs), and the bartender said that she would bring it out to us whenever it came out. We went back outside and enjoyed our beers and conversation. Not sure how much time had gone by, but we all happened to look at each other and where like it sure has been a long time since we ordered our food. When we went to the counter the cashier told us that the kitchen had accidentally bagged it up to go which was strange to me since the orders were on separate tabs. It was no worries because I know mistakes happen. They told us that they would bring it straight out to us. Unfortunately the food must of sat there for awhile in the bag because when they brought it to us ALL of it was cold. We told the staff and they promptly got us all new food. The owner came and apologized to us. Again it was no worries as mistakes happen. Having worked in the service industry and know every table doesn’t go smoothly, but had this happened to any place I’ve worked the manager on duty (which seemed to be the owner in this case) they would have compensated the table with taking the meal off the ticket. We didn’t ask for anything, but it would have been nice to of had that offered to us. The owner was super nice and very apologetic that this happened and made sure if we needed anything else.

Having said all this, I hope that if this happens to another table that they will be just as nice as we were to the staff. I have been that server when a table wasn’t so nice and it isn’t fun, but we still compensated the table.

Just some food for thought next time...

Went to Dog Haus last night, we were really looking forward to enjoying a German Biergarten themed location, and we were a bit disappointed that it was more like a snack bar type operation. First it started with a very slow moving line to order that went out the door and half way into the patio. This might be typical of a new restaurant or one that has really great food… but here I think it was because they only had one of their two cash registers open, while there were about 2-4 employees at the small bar. Okay, the reason for the one star is because of the really poor service and attention to customer service. Once we finally got our order in, we sat down to wait for our food and drinks. The drinks came out quickly. The seating is comfortable and the atmosphere was upbeat and enjoyable. The restaurant is in a great location of Vista. Oh, we are still waiting for our food. Over 25 minutes passed and then we noticed that people who were in line after us, were being served. Before we could say anything, one of the servers came by and saw we were waiting, she quickly said, your order is coming… so we waited another 10 minutes or so…. Again, she came by and apologized and said the order was coming… another 5-10 minutes passed and she came out to ask us what we ordered??? Really? “We ordered hot dogs”. So she did us a favor of putting our order back in the system…. and yes, we were put in at the end of the order line, at least another 10-15 minutes. NOBODY thought about just telling the kitchen that the next 2 hotdogs were going to our table. So we waited more…. Finally our food arrives… food was okay, not sure it was worth over an hour wait for hot dogs… Can’t wait to give them...