la jolla brew house / la jolla – san diego, ca

I don’t usually document negative experiences but:

A) I’m tired
B) I decided I don’t care
C) I’m doing a service for you guys, right?
D) I’m too tired to think of a D.

Anyway. Bear (bare? no, definitely bear. I’m definitely tired if I’m leaving these inane comments in) with me for a few minutes.

I had a Groupon for the La Jolla Brew House and I dragged Jake along with me since the coupon was about to expire. It seemed like a really good deal – two burgers, plus desserts and two beers or sodas for $18.

There was a little bit of a wait so I put my name down on the list and we wandered over to a couch to sit for awhile. It was a nice evening and we were out on a patio. The garage doors were up and people were enjoying the evening. I got a kick out of seeing puppies on the patio. Dog friendly! I love it. We kind of bugged out for awhile waiting for our table. We were told the wait would be about 20-30 minutes. No problem.

[playing the waiting game on the patio]

I kept peeking over to the hostess stand and noticed there were less and less people over there, but still, we were never called. It was over 30 minutes later when I poked Jake and asked him to go check. A few minutes later he came back and sat down.

“She said we’re next. She skipped us.”
“What?”
“When I asked, she said my name was already called. Then I told her the name put down was Mary and she kind of freaked out a little.”
“She got caught lying, that’s why!”
“Yeah, that was obvious. She just skipped us.”
“Lame.”

Not an impressive start if you ask me.

[page two of stapled together menus]

We were given these stapled together menu’s to look over though since I had the Groupon, there wasn’t much choice. We could have a classic cheeseburger, a mushroom swiss burger or a BH burger. Both came with either fries or sweet potato fries and either 2 pints of beer or 2 16-ounce sodas (+ dessert).

[sunset trivia]

They were doing trivia that night, hosted by Sunset Trivia. The guy came over and quickly explained the rules to us. They were over halfway through the trivia, but we did it anyway. It was totally fun! They have three different categories each round and you put down the amount of points you want to bet for each round. You write your answer down plus the points you’re betting. The guy calling out the questions also keeps score for you.

I didn’t even have to suggest a something for our team name. I just looked at Jake and he wrote down the above. Jake knows me so well!

[mushroom swiss burger / regular fries]

I got the mushroom swiss burger. You can see that my cheese is just slightly melted on my burger. The burger was only warm to the touch. It tasted okay, nothing special really. Standard button mushrooms that were slightly sauteed, mild seasoning on the burger. It was cooked to medium rare per my specifications. The burger was just really lacking… something. Flavor. Oomph. Heat. Something! The fries were not very hot, not very crisp and not very good. The best I can say about my meal was that it was “meh”.

[classic cheeseburger / regular fries]

Jake got the Classic Cheeseburger, also with regular fries. He refused to say what he thought about the food until we left, which really means that he doesn’t want to badmouth a place until we’re out of earshot. His burger was not cooked to medium rare – closer to medium well – and his burger was cold. Again, you can see the unmelted cheese above. He doused his fries in ketchup, which is a sign he doesn’t like something very much.

I suppose we could have asked to have the burgers heated up. I suppose we could have raised our concerns. But we just weren’t in the mood.

[hot fudge brownie sundae]

When I think of hot fudge brownie sundaes… this is not what comes to mind. Nothing was hot. The brownie was cold. The “fudge sauce” was also not hot and just sort of drizzled on. And the ice cream was on the side? I don’t know what was going on here. The brownie didn’t taste that great since it was a bit stale and tasted day old. It had a cake-like consistency. The ice cream was okay, but it could have used more sauce. Sad and unsatisfying.

Also… I had to pay a few dollars even though I had a Groupon. My Groupon didn’t quite cover the whole meal. I really don’t understand why that was. It annoyed me.

The trivia was the only exciting thing about the night. Jake and I came in last place, but that was to be expected. We hope we can visit Sunset Trivia at another location since I don’t think we’ll be coming back to La Jolla Brew House any time soon. There was nothing impressive about the food or the service to entice us back for another visit.

La Jolla Brew House
7536 Fay Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
858-456-6279