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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

83 Degrees Review (Carlsbad Restaurants)



Pricing:
Expensive for what you get.  All the starters are around $10 and the food $15+ per person.  We ordered the shrimp cocktail and got five pieces of shrimp.  For $9.  The cocktails are tasty but, again, expensive.  Expect to pay $10-12 per drink.

Distance:
Right off the Carlsbad Village Drive freeway exit.  Will take most Encinitas residents about 15-20 minutes  to drive there.

Thoughts:
Expensive but not obscene.  This is the kind of place that you would be willing to spend money on if the experience was right.  But it's not.  The service is terrible which makes you begrudge every cent.

We were seated fairly fast considering it was Friday night.  But the efficiency stopped there.  After staring at our minutes for about ten minutes a waitress finally showed up to take our drink order.  Took another fifteen minutes for our drinks to arrive and they came after our appetizer showed up.  After that our food was brought out by a series of lackeys.  We had to bother someone walking by to get waters since we were never asked if we'd like another cocktail.

The food itself was good but, again, this is the type of place where you want to be two cocktails in by the time your $15 burger arrives.  No such luck.  We ate our food... sat around for awhile... the waitress finally shows up to ask if we wanted anything else and we said no.  The check immediately arrives with the waitress all smiles and tries to start some friendly smalltalk with us about the Charger game.  Nice try.

So the concept of this restaurant is good for the location.  Like it serves the type of food and drinks that would be popular in Downtown Carlsbad.  But with the slow drink service, inattentive staff and obviously shoddy management I don't see this place lasting very long.