Finch Wildomar — Restaurant in Wildomar

Finch in Wildomar is a cute, chic, quaint restaurant with satisfying healthy food. I am giving 3 stars because our server was attentive, but unprofessional. I believe this could have been prevented with adequate training from management. -Our server had long pointy acrylic nails. I can't imagine how they could keep bacteria/viruses from under their nails at all times. FDA Food code has these laws set in place to prevent food borne illnesses. "FDA Food Code (2022) states that fingernails of food employees should be trimmed, filed, and maintained; unless that food employee is wearing intact gloves. And that food employees should NOT wear acrylic nails or polish." -The hickey on their neck was not covered. I don't mind what people do on their own time... but just thought that was unprofessional too. And my mind went back to the long nails and hoping our server made every effort to sanitize under their nails before coming to work and handling people's food. -Lastly, our server didn't notify us that we would be charged with 18% Service Charge; was this gratuity? I tipped 20% gratuity, not knowing I already paid 18%. I wanted to leave after I saw our server had long nails and knew it wasn't sanitary or safe or legal for our server to handle our food with long acrylics. We had a party of 8 and everyone was hungry and we already waited for 20 minutes to be seated, so we stayed.

It is the responsibility of food employers to educate and train their employees properly to protect the health of their customers. I can't help but wonder, what other FDA food codes are being...

I had a Vanilla Crème Ale and Chicken and Waffles.

The food was made pretty well. This is one of the more upscale restaurants in the area, so do expect to pay a bit more.

The food selection is a bit lacking. Only one half paper sized menu, but sometimes that’s better than more options.

The vanilla crème ale was a very good beer. Had a heavy vanilla flavor to it and was in a decent serving size.

The chicken and waffles was okay. Thing I didn’t like was that it was smothered in a spicy gravy sauce. I’m not a fan of gravy and the name of this was a bit misleading as I wasn’t expecting the gravy. I really wish they had said “chicken and waffles in gravy” or something to that effect to let me know they had gravy, or at the very least, had the gravy in a container on the side. Also didn’t like that it was a bit spicy. I wasn’t really looking for a spicy dish this morning. It wasn’t overly spicy, but there was a noticeable kick to it.

The food was still good, nonetheless, prepared well.

The wait is a bit longer than expected, there was no hostess available when we came so we stood around for a few minutes waiting to be served. The server didn’t come around too much and I’m glad we made up our minds as she was getting drinks because I think we would have been waiting a little longer had we not done that. After eating, we waited about 10 minutes before...

Very warm environment upon entering, but had to wait 5 min to be seated with hardly anyone else there. Had to ask bartender if we could just seat ourselves, and he said sure, sit anywhere you want. All the tables were set, so we started to sit at one by the window when the waitress came and said don’t sit at that table, we’ve had problems with it. OK, we chose another. We started with an app order of cheese curd bites, which were excellent. Then we ordered salads…my friend chose the burrata /strawberries, which she liked, I ordered the fried artichoke/quinoa salad with a protein add-on of shrimp. There was literally not more than one teaspoon of quinoa in my salad, the ‘grilled’ shrimp was obviously microwaved (not a single bit of grill marks) and had little flavor. The ‘vinaigrette’ was nothing more than lemon squeezed on top with no herbs or really any flavor other than lemon. What a shame, the salad description on the menu promised way more than the actual salad. A nice addition would have been bread on the side, to offset the tartness of the salad. So…the disappointment of the food was serious…but we wound up loving our server, who was friendly and efficient without interrupting us. A perfect balance for a server. I would probably not recommend this place…a &72 bill for two (with only iced tea to drink) was too pricey for the quality of food. I...