"Sea Rocket Bistro serves a menu of truly local flavor, using ingredients sourced directly from farmers, fishermen, and ranchers in San Diego and focusing on sustainably harvested seafood"
Love the concept of this restaurant but it did not live of to the excitement I had about dining there. I first entered the place and got a hello from the bartender. After that the 2 servers passed me a hand full of times before I stopped one and asked if we could get a table. She told me it depended on if I have a reservation or not. I said yes I do and told her my name. She said to the other servers "oh yeah the reservation for Mr. extremely late is here." I had a 7:15 reservation which I had changed to 8:00 using Open Table. This rubbed me the wrong way after being in the restaurant business for the past 15 years. The attitude and the lack of knowing how to use Open Table and giving me attitude for daring to show up late to a restaurant that had plenty of open tables available made me think poorly about this spot from the start. I informed our server, thank god not the one with the attitude, that we had changed our reservation and she seemed to know what I was talking about, and she was thankful that I had clarified. They must have been discussing how rude it was to be so late. I can relate being in the business but if they took the time to take advantage and learn how the expensive piece of equipment, that prevents them for having to answer phones all night, they might have known about my reservation change. I got past that and ordered some drinks. I got a flight of beers and my girlfriend got a glass of wine. We started with some sea urchin soup served in the urchin and some pickled fresh beets. The soup was ok and the beets tasted just like dirt. I kind of liked that and and truly knew that they were local and organic. I ordered the burger topped with goat cheese and grilled onions with some wheat type grain in the form of a salad. It lacked a lot of taste and left me with more to be desired. The bread it came on was slightly stale. My girlfriend got the catch of the day and after a few seconds of the server trying to figure out what the catch was we finally came to the conclusion that it "may" be Halibut. This came over a squash puree that we later found out was mixed with some potato. I came to the conclusion that it was mostly potato. It was so good though that it didn't matter. The fish was extremely overcooked, dry and lacked flavor. This place, even with it's concept, could use some seasoning or some sort of flavor. Maybe a pinch of salt? The coconut cupcake I got for dessert was out of this world. I had purchased some Discover SD insider groupon type gift certificates. Two of them to be exact. It said buy more than one and bring your friends directly on the voucher. I had bought 2 and brought my girlfriend so we could enjoy a nice dinner. We buy these frequently and have never had a problem in the past. We eat out at new restaurants at least once a week. We then ordered dessert to go in order to use the whole voucher. Then came time to pay so I broke out the vouchers and a minute later was informed buy the bartender that they messed up in printing and we could only use one at a time. To add insult to injury, we could only use $25 worth of our voucher to a restaurant that I know I will never visit again, and now have a $55 balance to pay. I was so over the place at this time. I even left the poor server a $20 tip for the embarrassment she had to endure. I give every restaurant and every server the benefit of the doubt when dining out. I understand things can go wrong and people can be having a bad night. This was just wrong from start to finish. The decor is neat and our server was lovely but everything else was sub par. I wish this place the best of luck but will not be recommending this place to others when they ask about our visit. If anyone would like out $25 voucher just email me and you can have it for FREE.
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