I normally shrug off poor service at restaurants, but I recently had an experience that deserves a bad review.

On a recent camping trip to South Carlsbad State Beach, our group wanted to go out to eat a meal instead of cooking at our campsite. Melanie’s uncle Dale had a friend recommend Cabo Grill which is at the top of a hill overlooking the Ponto Lagoon in Encinitas, just south of Carlsbad. We got everyone together and headed down there.

The parking lot looked about half full, so it seemed to be a popular place. A gentleman greeted us and said the wait would be about 15 minutes for our party of 8 people. The host returned in 20 minutes to bring us to our table. He explained that he was waiting for a bigger table to clear out, but the current customers just ordered another round of drinks. I’m not sure why he wanted to wait for them to leave, because there were plenty of tables right next to this area that could have been pulled together for us. In fact, that just what we did… Rhonda asked if we could get a couple of tables pulled together… the waiter said “sure, go ahead”. That was our first real sign of the lack of concern for us as customers.

After 10 minutes of waiting at our table, our chips and salsa were gone, and no one came out to take our drink order. Now, from experiences at other Mexican restaurants, it’s not too much to expect the waiter to bring more chips and salsa to the table. Not here at Cabo Grill… we had to wait for the waiter to take our orders to ask him to bring more out for us. So, expecting more chips and salsa to arrive any second… we waited. And we continued to wait for at least another 10 minutes. This was the point of no return for us. The place was barely at 30% capacity, and it was taking this long for any kind of service.

At this point, Melanie got up to go find a supervisor or manager to speak to. The bartender said that she would inform the manager. Did a manager come out? Nope… and I’m sitting there thinking that any restaurant manager would be out there within 30 seconds if a customer were unhappy. Nothing. Dale took the waiter aside and asked him if he would be upset if he were at a restaurant and had to wait for a refill of salsa, after asking for it twice. The waiter agreed that he would not be happy. Shortly after this, we were brought some more salsa, in larger bowls even.

We were all pretty steaming right about now. Anything we asked for took forever, and anytime we wanted the waiter, he was nowhere to be found. The manager had still not shown up, and it had been a good 15 minutes since Melanie asked. This time I got up to talk to the bartender. She was the only employee there that we knew how to find. There was no one else around. I told her that we’d asked for the manager to come out and see us a while ago and no one has been out there. She replied and said “I did let her know, but she is really busy tonight.” Busy… “too busy for her customers?”, I responded. The bartender shrugged her shoulders and did not have an answer for that.

I went back to our table and said “let’s go”. We gathered everyone up and went down the street to another Mexican restaurant in downtown Encinitas called El Callejon. This other place was great. Promptly seated even though they were crowded. Drink order taken and served quickly. The food was very good, and the service was fantastic. And it wasn’t just because we left a place with sub-sub-par service.

So, if you’re near Encinitas and looking for a good Mexican meal… forget about the pathetic service at Cabo Grill and head a few miles south to El Callejon. You will not regret it.