Johnny B's you disappointed me last time I visited you. The only reason I'm not giving you lower marks is because my previous experience was much better.
So, I was visiting Johnny B's on a recent Friday night and when I got there with my friend noticed it was decently crowded. All the tables were full so we sat at the bar, which I figured would be all right anyways, since the service would most likely be quicker. We even sat next to the opening at the bar so all the servers would have to walk by us and would be easy to flag down. Wow, was I wrong!!! I must give props to the waitresses though, they definitely have perfected the art of customer avoidance. They know all the moves: from avoiding eye contact when they pass by so they can avoid my questions and requests, to ignoring as I wave or try to ask for their attention so I can place my order or get my check, as they pretend that I'm invisible. The servers even seem to walk faster as they pass by me trying to avoid serving me.
So after finally ordering our food, my beer went empty. Neither of the servers cared to notice, or ask me if I would like another beer, which of course I wanted another beer!! How would it benefit them to not serve me more beer? The quicker they get me drinking, the more generous I'm going to be with my money, it's basic economics.
So after waiting 30 minutes for our food, plus an additional 15 minutes for my second beer, I was finally set to enjoy my meal. Th burger was decent, not the best burger ever, but it had good size and tasted pretty fresh. The big disappointment was in the onion rings. Probably because for some odd reason they have the kitchen in the middle of the bar area and so you can watch them make the food, and the onion rings were grabbed out of a Costco style bag of frozen rings and placed in the deep fryer, it kind of killed the magic for me. If you are going to serve me frozen food that I could microwave on my own, at least have the courtesy to do so out of my line of sight so you can at least fool me into believing they are fresh.
After our meal, it took about another 30 minutes to get our check (no one checked on us during our meal, and I was never offered more beer). After receiving our check, it was about 15 more minutes before they took my money. Basically we got there at the beginning of a basketball game, and we were not able to get out of there until after the game was over (OK so it was only a college basketball game, and not as long as an NBA game, but still).
Even though the service was lame, I don't entirely blame the wait staff, because there was only two waitresses, one busser, and one cook for the entire bar. Johnny b's you need to have enough sense to have more people working on a Friday. You guys don't even have an actual bartender?
On the plus side, there are plenty of high quality tv's for watching sporting events, and about 15 different beers on tap. So this seems like a pretty cool place to hang out with a group. The prices seem reasonable for a decent quality hamburger.
Oh, one last thing I forgot to mention, they have a frequent buyer card they give you, where if you buy six burgers, the seventh is free, or something like that. Sounds pretty cool in theory. However, when they give you the card at the end of the meal each person gets one card with one stamp even when it is all on the same bill. So if you have six people in your group you get six cards each with one stamp, when in reality you should be getting a free burger. You guys do a good job of avoiding giving out freebies; lame.
Sorry, I forgot one other thing: to the fool that gave this place a bad rating because you couldn't come in because you are too young, what the Hell did you expect? This is a bar. So do you give every bar in San Diego a bad rating just because you haven't turned 21 yet? Don't be a lame-ass, wait until you are old enough to go into a place before you talk trash about it. read more