Flat Rock Eats & Drinks

I ordered a drip coffee with almond milk. They came back and said they were out. So I did whole milk (can’t do much soy) the coffee is good!
I have an issue with digestion and asked if they had some apple cider vinegar… Thy brought me out a shot of it! So nice!!! :)
We ordered the salmon Benedict special with rosemary potatoes. Pretty good :) scale of 1 – 5, I would give them a 3.
Nice staff. Outside setting. Good view. Good company :)

Good place. I’ve been here probably ten times. Food is consistent. Always served hot and fresh. Nice menu. Burgers are good. Steak and Potato salad is really good. Nice beer and wine selection. Always had good service and never a problem getting a table. My kids like it as well. Recommended for a nice casual dinner.

The food here deserves a 2 star rating but because of their ridiculous $ 5/​bottle champagne with orange juice and $ 1 mimosas they got bumped up to 3 stars.
Breakfast are available during lunch/​late lunch. There are a good variety of menu items making it incredibly hard to make a final decision.
I got the prawns and mango salad and tried the pastrami sando.
The salad was decent, the prawns were very flavorful, probably the best thing out of everything we’ve tried in this restaurant.
The pastrami sandwich had potential but they’ve failed on a few levels. The bread seemed like it’s supposed to be pretzel but it turned out to be too dry and just not the best carb for the sandwich. The pastrami itself was also too dry, I’ve had much much better pastrami sandwich elsewhere. The sweet potato fries were cut waffle (criss-​cross) style, which sounds like it’d be excellent, but they somehow botched this up too. The fries weren’t fresh enough, lacking the fried crispiness and seasoning.
The Huevos Rancheros were supposed to be a favorite but it’s basically just drenched in sauce and very bleh.
Service is decent, tentative.
Price is decent for the portion as well.

Hit this place up for happy hour with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. The set-​up threw me off a little at first — quasi-​diner? is it a lunch counter or a bar? both? — but we settled in quickly. The waitstaff are super friendly and attentive without being overbearing. The beer is excellent and oh man the pork shanks are just killer. Queso and chips were decent — nothing to write home about but pretty good. The only minor bummer were the bathrooms, which seemed like they could use an update in keeping with the rest of the restaurant. The happy hour pricing is great, and I’m looking forward to coming back and eating more food! Definitely worth a trip up north for this OBecian.

Great deal and the food fantastic. Staff was so accommodating, will come here again. They are dog friendly! You are not on the water but you can see it. Parking is a little hard but well worth it to over come that small part. What was very cool was a bottle of $ 5.00 champagne and OJ. The food was bye far one of the best brunch I’ve had in a long time. It’s small so plane ahead ! Well worth the trip.

After eating at Flat Rock twice last weekend, I thought I should write a review.
–Happy Hour M-​F until 7pm 50% off most apps — what a deal!
–Sat/​Sun $ 1 mimosas and $ 5 bottles of champagne — what a deal!
Best items:
Pork Shanks — fall off the bone, melt in your mouth rib like meat with an interesting thick sauce that has a hint of peanut flavor. Dipping it in the cilantro sauce and adding side of Cole slaw is the way to go.
Cole Slaw — love me a perfect blended slaw, not too sour not too salty, just right.
Huevos Rancheros — I would say these are in the top five best huevos I’ve tried. Nailed it with the ranchero sauce.

The combination of delicious food, cheap alcohol and incredible service earns Flat Rock five stars from me!
I decided to visit Flat Rock for a birthday brunch with my friends after learning about their $ 1 mimosa weekend brunch specials. We’re all fans of great mimosa deals so I thought this would be the perfect fit! We learned that in addition to the $ 1 mimosas, they also offer $ 5 bottles of champagne with a carafe of orange juice.
There were a lot of great options on the menu, including several vegetarian choices. Since I have a sweet tooth in the mornings, I chose the French Toast. This is not your average French Toast but, thanks to the cinnamon bread, is one of the best French Toasts that I’ve ever eaten. In fact, it was so good that I ate the entire portion, which is very rare for me to do. I also ordered a side of the breakfast potatoes but thought they could use a bit more seasoning and maybe be cut into smaller pieces. I probably wouldn’t order them again.
As for the service, my friend asked our waitress if the restaurant did anything special for birthdays. Although she said that they didn’t usually, our waitress decided to make something special happen on her own. She went next door to the doughnut shop and surprised us with a sprinkle-​covered donut with a candle. Super sweet!
We were definitely impressed with our experience here and I’ll add this to my list of places to return!

I am beyond impressed with this place. Over the weekend, my boyfriend and I took our friend out to celebrate her birthday here and it was the first time for all of us. When our friend told us she wanted to eat somewhere in Cardiff, I expected to have to fight for parking but I was pleased to see an actual parking lot for the restaurant as well as street parking.
My first impression was that it seemed pretty casual. When we walked in, we were told to take a seat wherever we wanted. We had already heard from the birthday girl that they had $ 1 mimosas so we immediately searched the menu for that. In the process, we found a better option, a $ 5 bottle of champagne and you get the first carafe of orange juice with it for free. For breakfast, my boyfriend and I shared two dishes, the Lobster Benedict and the Flat Rock Benedict. They were SO delicious. The Lobster Benedict was similar to the classic Eggs Benedict except with lobster instead of Canadian bacon. The lobster was really fresh! The Flat Rock Benedict was pretty unique with spicy hollandaise sauce, roasted peppers, caramelized onions, grilled ham, and of course the traditional poached eggs on an English muffin.
Besides the excellent drink prices and food, I have to point out how wonderful our waitress was. She went above and beyond my expectations. When I was getting ready to pay our bill, I stepped away from the table to ask her privately if they do anything exclusive for birthdays. She told me they don’t and apologized. I said it really wasn’t a big deal and that I was just curious. She suggested if we got a doughnut next door, she could put a candle in it or something but I turned down the option to avoid being any trouble. To my surprise, she said she would make something happen and not to worry about it. We went back and forth for a few seconds but she insisted that she would do something and it wouldn’t be a problem. So, I went back to my table and sure enough, she brought over a doughnut with a candle in the middle just a few minutes later. She even sang happy birthday with us. How cool is that? Just the extra effort made our day and I think our birthday girl felt really special. Now THAT is what I call service! She should get employee of the month.

3.5 stars right now. Great location with a peak of an ocean view in a nice bright environment and reasonable prices. Located next to VGs Bakery — not sure if they are related as they serve VGs bread and cinnamon rolls on their menu
This review is for breakfast. I will be back to try their dinner menu as it looks pretty good.
Breakfast choices should please anyone in your party with egg scrambles, pancakes, French toast, and basic 2 eggs + meat + toast choices. They seem to be famous for their Benedicts, but I didn’t try as I’m not a fan of hollandaise. The banana and bacon waffle was quite good and a great deal at only $ 4. The BST sandwich was pretty good too at a reasonable cost. Nothing wowed me so much that I must come back, but if in the area I may return. The tap menu looks okay as do the burgers for lunch /​dinner, so that could earn them more stars

I got flak recently for eating out despite supposedly living on a budget. My girlfriend was hurt by this, and understandably so, professing how little we spend each month on food. But, when all you see are the Unilocal Check-In’s, not knowing how often you go with family that picks up the check, use a 2-​for-​1 coupon out of the Entertainment Guide, or when you just plain eat at a cheap place and fill up on whatever carbs they put on the table, it’s kind of easy to get that impression. Stewing on that for a week or two, going back and reading some of my past reviews and ones that I still wanted to write, I got an idea for a new list that can help address that … and we start with Flat Rock.
Came here a few months ago, holding off on the review until we came back for the Brunch. But, it’s an excellent way to start the new Happy Hour List, so. First off, the overall review; and know that this is for their dinner menu, as most of their brilliant reviews are for their brunch.
Flat Rocks is pretty good, but it had some problems that keep it from being the really fantastic place it should be. The main one is their service. Slow and inattentive, we often found ourselves having to flag someone down just for refills on our drinks, let alone ordering our food. This was a glaring problem at first, as the restaurant itself was rather empty. Later on, as more patrons came in, we found other tables getting excellent attention and it really felt we were being overlooked for the simple fact that other groups seemed to have more money than we did.
This was especially insulting when the group sitting next to us was a wine drinking couple, where the husband mocked the wife for looking at the happy hour menu and berated the waitress for being slow on their drinks and again on their food. Watching a 60 year old man having his arms and legs crossed almost the entire time, while complaining how our toddler son is noisily happy, and then leaving less than $ 3.00 tip on a $ 40.00 tab, get more attentive service than us kind of sucked. Especially when we went out of our way to leave a bit more even after sticking only to the cheaper fare.
As for the food, we started with the Queso Verde, which consisted of White American Cheese melted into a sourdough bread bowl with a small cup of green chiles on the side. American cheese is a very sad choice, but it melts well; I just wish they had had the stones to mix in the chiles before serving to give it the kick it desperately needed installing of leaving it up to us.
Next were the Duck Flautas, which were very tasty. The meat was lightly crisped, making good use of the fat, and fried well without being greasy. All of this was served atop a delicious slaw that all of us at the table enjoyed.
My son had the GromFingers, chicken strips and fries. This wasn’t bad. It felt like the meat was fresh, breaded and cooked to order, which is a definite plus. Though it wasn’t fantastic or seasoned exceptionally well, it was adequate.
Last on our table was the Short Rib plate which consisted of what looked and tasted like a braised chuck steak; there was no richness of flavor coming from slow cooked fat or tendon whatsoever. Sure, it was tender, but … IT WASN’T SHORT RIBS! Yet, the potatoes were good, rosemary mixed in and a nice fluff that soaked up the sauce. And, I have to say, the Kale was pretty delicious, though a bit on the saltier side.
So, to sum up, alright food, but selective and slow service that taints the overall experience. I would still like to comeback for the Brunch … I read good things. Still, in light of all of that, as a whole I can only give them 3 Stars.
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The Happy Hour List!
When you’re on a tight budget and still wanna get out to eat, San Diego can be unforgiving. You want to find a place where you can eat good food, be reasonable full, yet only spend $ 5-​$ 10 so you can do it again. With that in mind…
Cost: Half off of starters and cheaper drinks, this can mean as low as $ 4.00 a plate for a good amount of food.
Selection: Duck Flautas, Fish Tacos, Queso Dip, Hummus, Soup, among others … there’s a good amount of choices and something for everyone.
Taste: As noted above, the flavor isn’t bad, though it may lack in some places, it’s the service that will get you … and Happy Hour may bring a higher lack of service as they attend to others not there to partake of that cheaper menu.
Altogether, a good selection of good tasting food at a great price leaves us with the Happy Hour here at…
Flat Rocks Eats & Drinks — Getting 4 out of 5 Stars!

Came here Sunday morning for brunch with a girlfriend. We stood at the front not knowing if someone was going to seat us, or if we were to seat ourselves. I asked a server and he looked around and pointed to an empty table. Then we weren’t sure if anyone was going to bring us menus, in which I stood up to look and right then a waiter brought 2 menus to me. So that was slightly confusing. Service wasn’t the greatest, but because of their food and prices it can be looked past.
We ordered:
— Veggie Scramble with potatoes
— Short Rib Hash
— Mango Bellini
Again, it took a while for the food to be served. But it was definitely good food! And their brunch drink specials are really good deals $ 1 mimosas, $ 2 Bellini, and you can get a bottle of champagne for $ 5 with a thing of free OJ.
Their toast came with some kind of jam/​fruit purée, we couldn’t put a finger on in because it tasted different. We think it might be apricot but it was really tasty too. Good food and drinks, service could be a lil better. Don’t forget to read their specials on the wall!

atmosphere is relaxing, price is ok. food quality is also ok. An average brunch place.
we had lobster Benedict which is ok, the short rib hash is mah~ wouldn’t order again.
by all means this is not a bad place. just average.

Came in minutes before happy hour ended and they were still cool with us getting our drinks and appetizer order in. The duck flautas were very good… fried crispy and served on a coleslaw that was exceptional… not your normal bland plate dressing.
For the main course I ordered the steak and potato salad on arugala… you know, since I felt guilty all week from not eating enough veggies… turns out it was very tasty as well. I would definitely get it again to ease my bad food guilt. Not sure that it counts but bottom line, this little joint is a solid place.

Breakfast review
If your looking for a easy going breakfast/​brunch place I can recommend Flat rocks Eat & Drink.
Stopping in on Friday morning, this business was easy to grab a table. Ordering some Sausage for my son, lobster Eggs Benedict for myself and the Veggie Scramble fort wife.
All came out very timely with great service from our server. Every food item that we ordered was fantastic. My wife raved about the Veggie Scramble and had a nice surprise of avocado sprinkled in.
All cooked well with great taste. As this is only a breakfast review I’ll say that it’s worth stopping by and checking it out!
I would give this place 5 stars but the coffee they serve is quite tart and not worth getting.
Overall
Food: 5 – 5
Drink: 2 – 5 (breakfast not alcohol)
Service: 5 – 5
Coming back: Yes

Delicious all around. The burger is legit and flame broiled. They have a nice diverse menu and some gluten free options for those interested. The wait staff is friendly and attentive. I would definitely recommend dollar mimosas which are served all the time! Decent beer and wine selection and a fun atmosphere.
Good for small groups but the place isn’t huge. Fun for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner.

This 4 star review is for Flat Rock’s happy hour! It’s between 3 – 7 PM daily and includes $ 3 wines, discounted beer, and half off appetizers! We got out of there for less than $ 20 for 2 drinks and 2 appetizers! We tried the fish tacos and lox appetizers… both were good! There is a small outdoor patio with partial ocean views! Minus 1 star for the service. We were seated in the back and they forgot about us for a good 20 minutes. Had to flag them down a few times before we were able to get our order in. Hopefully, they’ll get that figured out!
+1 Amazing happy hour prices on drinks and apps
+1 Great location in Cardiff with partial ocean view
+1 Next to VG’s if you want to get dessert! Ha!
+1 Good food, especially for the happy hour prices
–1 Service could be better

Flat Rock doesn’t look like much from the street, but the food is excellent. Next to VGs Donuts in that sketchy shopping center south of Seaside Market, where else could you grab your surprisingly tasty meal and get a tattoo on your way out.
I had read on Unilocal about the duck flautas, and our server confirmed they are his favorite dish on the menu as well.
We found the duck flautas to be surprisingly light and overwhelmingly delicious. They were our favorite bite of the meal. The buzz for this dish is well deserved.
For my entrée I had the Bratwurst sandwich, which was served on pretzel bread with caramelized onions, peppers and mustard. While I’d have preferred a spicier mustard, the sandwich was still great. I also enjoyed my side of kale & garlic. I generally like my kale cooked a little harder, but I’d still order this one again. Even my kids liked the kale, and they aren’t typically aficionados of green vegetables.
My wife liked her jerk chicken sandwich, and my Dad enjoyed his short rib entrée too. The kids loved the house-​made mac n cheese (no blue box mac n cheese at Flat Rock, thankfully).
Great place for hipsters and families alike.

Boyfriend & I were on our way back home from SD– needed breakfast and coffee so decided to stop here.
We came in around 1045, not busy and they seated us right away.
Our server, Kristen, attended to us right as we sat down.
(Mimosas are $ 1 and if you get a bottle of champagne plus their orange carafe, it’s $ 5!) we opted out because we had to drive.
I ordered the «kitchen sink» which was a scramble with sausage, bacon, caramelized onions, bell peppers, and cheese melted nicely on top. Alongside with their house rosemary potatoes and toast. They give you their homemade fruit jam, too. The scramble was well made, enough of everything I’m each bite.
My boyfriend got the huevos rancheros Benedict. Kind of salty but still good. This dish has no meat so great for vegetarians. He also got the granola and yogurt. They also make their granola in house, lots of crunch and coconut.
All in all, we enjoyed our meal and the atmosphere. All of the employees were very helpful and attentive. We will definitely be returning again!

Sunday brunch perfection! $ 1 mimosas, $ 2 mango bellinis, or $ 5 champagne bottle with your 1^st cask of OJ free?
The location is beautiful, and white walls are perfect for the sunlight that streams in, it is beach-​yet casually classy.
For food I ordered the lobster benedict and I was so so happy and I the rosemary potatoes were killer too! My friend got the huevos rancheros which was also amazing and the sauce for some reason was so special – thick, with a kick of tang, and just tasted so fresh. The portions are just right for those who don’t want to feel too full nor slam into a trance of food coma afterwards.
I eyeballed all the other plates that went past me, everything looked and smelled delicious.
Service is bright and sunny, I’m going to take all my friends here

Oh my goodness I am eating the Duck Flautas and its delicous. It’s full of flavor, sweet with a very minor heat behind it.
The staff is friendly and a relaxed beach style environment.
The presentation was much better than the picture; I dove right into it and then thought crap this is delicious let me take a pic for Unilocal.
Try this place!