Fish Market Restaurants Downtown On The Water

User Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

We ate here twice on our recent visit to San Diego and while the Friday experience was delightful with little wait, great service, and wonderful food, the experience on Saturday was a great disappointment. We arrived and were told there was a 1 hour wait which we agreed to because of the experience the previous evening. 2 hours later we were given a table and it was another hour before our order was taken and our food served. The overall quality of the food was fine but the steamed vegetables were overcooked on Saturday. The waiter was non-existent and drink refills were not to be had. The fish was fresh and tasty but I did question why so much of their fish was non-local. Not very green to fly in fish from other areas of the country that are available locally.

The view was beautiful and we enjoyed looking across the harbor at the USS Ronald Reagan with it's red/white/blue number 76 shining brightly. The atmosphere is casual and on Saturday very noisy. There were a large group of highly intoxicated customers next to our table that were very loud and made conversation at our table impossible. Of course if we wanted a more intimate dining experience we could have gone upstairs to the Top of the Market.

If you want good seafood I recommend this place but I would suggest avoiding Saturday night after 6 pm.

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User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

I would not recommend anyone waste their time here. They thrive on their upscale image to explain their prices and to repudiate the need for good service.

The appetizers were fine. My meal was a "special" and I think everyone should avoid ordering specials ANYWHERE. They are always a mistake. We were there with a large group, and everyone else's food was brought out except mine. 5 minutes later mine came out incomplete. The waiter informed me that the kitchen ran out of the sauce for this dish, but the chef was making more at that moment so it would be even better because it would be "fresh and made special" for me, and the waiter brought the plate out incomplete because he "didn't want to leave me without a plate while everyone else was eating" and that the sauce "would be out here any moment." Of course I was supposed to wait for the sauce to enjoy the dish, so it made matters worse to have "a plate while everyone else was eating" because I was told to wait until the dish was completed before eating it anyways. I should have taken this to mean that I was not going to have a pleasurable experience, but I stayed optimistic and fully expected that the sauce would come out in a couple minutes and would be delicious. The waiter came back twice to bring water to our table and ran away both times very quickly without answering the question about the sauce he said would be right out.

It had been 15 minutes by this point, and I had already eaten the side dishes (the gratin was good, but homemade is still better), and the giant piece of cashew crusted rainbow trout before me was cold. After another 10 minutes had passed, our waiter finally came back again, and one of our party actually had to grab his arm to keep him there while we asked AGAIN what had happened to the sauce. He said he would check with the chef and let us know. This was not a busy night, the dining room was barely a 1/3rd full with a more than adequate staff standing around chatting most of the time. Finally the waiter returns, and by this point I had been waiting half an hour and my party was finished eating their dinner. The verdict: the chef apologizes but the sauce takes too long to make and wouldn't be finished in time for me to eat the dish as it was meant to be this evening. Apparently the chef had never even begun to make the sauce for me at all for this reason. No one who worked there could explain to me why I was told that the chef WAS making this sauce and that it would be out shortly, and to wait to eat my entree, when the exact opposite was true. It wasn't until NOW when everyone was finished eating that the waiter offered to get me another entree "on the house." Of course this was a useless suggestion because dinner was now over for everyone but me who had spent the entire meal watching other people eat and watching my own plate turn cold as ice in the meantime. If I had been told the truth 30 minutes earlier, it might have been okay. As it was, to accept his offer would have meant waiting another 20 minutes, (and forcing my party to wait another 20 minutes), for my food to arrive, and then force them to wait for me to finish my food. The waiter then offered me a free dessert. I was starving so I said yes, forcing everyone to order dessert, (adding another $40 to our bill), just so they weren't wasting time watching me eat some apple crumble garbage with ice cream. This was the worst possible way to handle the situation; totally unprofessional and at worst it completely ruined the dining experience. Good service should have saved the day, but instead ridiculously poor service irreparably exacerbated an already bad situation. I am never going back.

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User Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Definetly not what we expected. When we walked in and took a look at the menu, the prices seemed outrageous. We ordered anyway and the service ended up being incredibly poor. The food took too long to come out and when we ate our selections, they had little taste. The calimari was bland and the sauces tasted like they were straight out of a bottle. The melted butter (a necessity for any real seafood lover) tasted like pure vegetable oil. We were not impressed and will not go back.

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