pokez is a filthy restaurant with rude servers.

The irony. Pokez is the SLOWEST restaurant in North America and the waitress losses her patience. I love the food, but in the time it takes you to order, you could take classes in authentic Mexican cooking, graduate and cook your own meal.

MAS you crack me up! Agree they are slow! And downright disdainful of all who enter, like its some sort of inconvenience (hello? would they be better off if we all stopped going?) I’ve only eaten there once. The food was pretty good, although their extra large portions are enough to feed a small central american country. A lot of hype IMHO.

Ah, Pokez servers. They give even the haughtiest barista a run for their money. This takes the cake though.

You won’t catch me eating there. That is totally unacceptable. Good for that dad to draw attention to their soup nazi behavior.

Hope to learn how it all turns out. It’s just plain wrong.

Goodness! That is terrible. I hadn’t heard of this before, and being new to SD, I haven’t been to Pokez yet either. Now that I know, I think I’ll skip it…
-Alison of http://www.mables.com/blog

This comes as little surprise. Pokez is, without a doubt, the worst restaurant in San Diego. The food is mediocre at best, and the service is exceptionally rude and slow. They operate under the delusion that wearing tattoos and slapping a couple of local band stickers on the wall makes them “cool.” In truth, they’re nothing but pseudo-hipsters, cuz here’s a newsflash: cool people don’t treat other people rude, and they sure as hell don’t beat up disabled kids. Avoid this place at all costs. There’s many a great restaurant in San Diego that serves excellent veggie Mexican. Ranchos and El Zarape are two great examples.

While I am hesitant to comment on the situation or jump on the “I hate Pokez” bandwagon their service is slow.

However, the wait staff have always been very nice to us (older folks with babies) and accomodating (when they come to our table), so I find this incident to be surprising.

My review of them is here:
http://www.sandiegofoodblog.com/mexican/pokez.html

I’ve been treated better here than at most corporate chains with un-tattooed and un-cool wait staff, so again, I’m surprised and wouldn’t be surprised if this was a random incident.

Raijer —
I took your suggestion and tried
El Zarape today for a late lunch. It was great.

An autistic kid gets assaulted and I end up with a tasty lobster burrito. Kind of like the butterfly causing an earthquake.

I think the complaining blogger has a credibility problem. First off, according to their account, the waitress reached over, grabbed the kid and screamed in his ear while shaking him. Pardon me, but do you know ANYONE who would, even on a really bad day, do this to a kid in front of his own parents?

Second, there is the parent’s unbelievably reasonable response: “politely explained that I had an autistic son, that sometimes he needed a bit of extra time or patence”

Is that how you would address the manager after an employee “assaulted” your son? I doubt it, and I don’t buy it.

Not a Pokez fan myself and I generally agree with the sentiments above, but this seems like an exaggeration, to say the least.
_justin

I posted this on the son’s father’s blog, but I doubt that he will unscreen it:

What total BS. Pokez is always packed so if the waitress did shake your son, there would be a million witnesses. Since you can’t produce one single witness, this is a one-sided story. This is exactly why you could only manage to get an “incident report” to the police rather than an actual assault report.

I was there when this happened. Your son kept yelling and screaming “I want an omelet!” It was quit annoying. I felt sorry for the waitress since it was really busy at the time and neither you or your wife (I assume) helped with your son’s order. In fact, I saw all of you giggling while your son is throwing a fit.

I can’t believe that there are actually people like you that exist in this world.

The plot thickens.

Found this link to the SanDiego CityBeat version of the story.

“She snapped,” Glass said. “She put down her menus, reached over with her right hand, took his arm, leaned over, put her hand on his shoulder, put her mouth an inch or so from his right ear, started screaming at the top of her voice, ‘You can’t have an omelet, I’m not going to take anything from this table anymore!’”

However on his Live Journal page, the father writes:

She grabbed his shoulder, shook him, and leaned over and started mocking him, yelling his words back directly in his ear.

Why did the father fail to mention the shaking in the City Beat interview?

Maybe it didn’t happen.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Though they don’t look it, the majority of the staff who works at Pokez are actually quite sweet. I’ve heard a thing or two about the female waitress who allegedly “snapped”, but I don’t think she would go so far as to physically and verbally assault a child [and an autistic one at that].

I went there today, and though it was busy and no one at my table was particularly nice, she remained calm and simply went about doing her job. From what I’ve seen, a lot of customers develop personal relationships with the employees at Pokez, and as a result of this, one may misconstrue a completely professional attitude as offensive.

The lack of consistency in this story is evident therefore rendering it untrue.

I believe that the foundation is there [the notion of a family with an autistic child coming in, the son throwing a fit of some sort, and the server becoming upset], but this situation seems to have definitely been blown out of proportion and reverted to accommodate and glorify one side of the story.

I just ran across this news today! I know exactly which waitress they are referring to, and yes, she is a raging bitch sometimes. But you have to take the service with a grain of salt. I’ll still eat there. But I don’t have kids, and I especially don’t have an autistic kid. Not every restaurant is appropriate for all kinds of needs. If you don’t mind being mildly insulted, waiting a long time for service, and sometimes getting a drunk server, Pokez is for you. On the other hand, if you are a vegetarian who loves Mexican food and a funky atmosphere, it’s perfect. Keep in mind that they are connected to a bar that plays loud punk music! Not the first place I would choose to bring an autistic child.

Pokez is my favorite Restaurant in San Diego . . . Iv’e never had a better shrimp burrito, and to top it off a $3 Bohemia. Fair prices, huge entrees, chill atmosphere, and beautiful vibes.

I’m down for Che Guevara, Haile Selassie I, and The Locust.

I can see the “soup-nazi” resemblance. But hey they are the best in San Diego!!! Deal With It.

pokez is amazing. i don’t have piercings or tatts and i get stellar service. the bean and cheese burrito and the veggie burrito are so tasty. i kinda get the “if your an ass to me I’ll be a dick to you” vibe but why would you be mean to someone? anyways its amazing and i take everyone i know there and get awesome service keep it up doodes!

I’ve been a long time customer based on the food alone. Always pretty rude and slow, and treated like an outsider because I don’t have tattoos. Recently ordered to go though with plenty of time before a show, told 20 minutes not more not less. Byt the time I got there and waited, it had been more than 20 minutes, and told it might be another 40 and my order hadn’t been started. The drugged out lo9oking cashier was rude from the start, and when I said sorry but I’m going to need to cancel my order in order to make a show, she basically threw my money at me ( I had to remind her of the drinks I paid for to get my refund for those too) and she said here and don’t ever come back. I said what did I ever do to you, she said you are lame, lame for canceling an order when they’re so busy. Again, if we were told at least 20 minutes, maybe up to an hour or something, I wouldn’t have ordered. If it were 30 minutes or so that would be one thing, but it looked like it was going to be a lot longer, our order hadn’t been started and I’m lame because they don’t give a correct guesstimate, and I don’t want to miss a show? I wouldn’t have ordered if I had been given the correct or at least more accurate time, and it’s not like she was doing much with her eyes half closed. I didn’t even complain to her, a nice server asked if I was being helped and that’s when I asked for a time update. I didn’t even know she was talking to me cause her eyes were half closed and she wasn’t really close for me to hear her in the loud place. I think they advertise that they make their food with love. Well maybe they need to look up what the word love means. I’d take decency respect, nice. She didn’t and doesn’t care how she treats others because she’s an owner? Tatoos or not your customers make who you are, and obviously I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the good food isn’t worth the crap.

I’ve been eating at pokez a couple times a month for at least 10 years and I can tell you this.. The girl, “Lupie” comes off as a hard nose but if you actually talk to her, she is really nice. Pokez does get busy but with any busy food spot your waiting, just look at bronx pizza. Anyone complaining here prob. Deserved what they got. Just because they don’t take crap from stupid white girls doesn’t mean its a bad place.

As a former waiter I know the service there is horrible. As someone with tastebuds and a sense of vision I know my food was burnt. You order. get your food, maybe a refill and that’s it. I had to go with them with my complaint to which they replied that’s how it’s made. Burnt nachos that looked more like 3am Dennys fare, yum. They’ve lost a customer and gained a negative review to everyone possible.

Totally agree with these comments.
We sat for 15 minutes+ trying to get a servers attention (they sat us, brought us menus and water, then ignored us). Meanwhile other patrons that had the same asthetic as the servers were served and attended to in a somewhat timely fashion.

Reminded me of some weird clique in high school.
Can’t hang with the cool kids.

What a joke.

yeah this place sucks! It’s really a shame that the servers are such jerks. My husband and I sat and walked out obviously not cool enough for those kids. Poke who I am assuming is the owner obviously is doing well to lead the rudeness.But let’s face it…people that are jerks spend time being that way and I suspect they lead miserable lives so be happy that you will live a longer life without that joint! Oh and by the way the food isn’t the best in SD so really no loss if you can get served.

Keep in mind a lot of people who enter and are not regulars usually are annoying and rude to everyone in the service industry, especially when they have to wait a little longer than usual to get their food. Just because you people have expectations on how to be served and believe you rule the service industry world and all who dwell in it because you might leave a somewhat decent tip does not mean you must be served any special way.
I do realize pokez has a very “locals only” vibe but to be honest I don’t mind it one bit. I like eating in a restaurant without sweaty tourists (that San Diego is notorious for, especially during the summer) and morons.

Pokez is actually a great restraunt. It’s NOT fast food guys, it’s a restraunt, why would you expect your food within the first couple minutes of ordering? They are extremely kind there, they even let me use their employee restroom. The waitors are way cute and extremely friendly. I don’t understand why everyone is dissing their restraunt. I highly recommend it.