The Wave Café

LOUSY LOUSY LOUSY. The employees are friendly yes but the food is lousy. I don’t understand how the Department of Health gave this place a «A» rating. The bathroom hasn’t been cleaned in months. It was gross. I should have walked out when I went into the bathroom. That is usually a sign — if the bathroom isn’t clean then you can almost always guarantee that the kitchen looks the same.
I ordered the Alaskan Cod Fish Sandwich with fries. Do Not Order This!!! In fact, don’t eat here.

I’ve been here several times. The breakfast is standard fare — pretty good. However, the service is not good. Need creamer? Ask the waitress, she always forgets. I have to ask the girl who busses the tables. Need a place setting? It’s a burden on the wait staff — i mean they’re talking amongst themselves and it would definitely be an interruption. I recommend standing up and getting your own.
Oh, a second cup of coffee? Forget about it. Serve yourself.
I really don’t like leaving bad tips, but they just are not good at all. I think they just don’t care.

April was my waitress and she was a doll. Get there before 9 during the week and get a breakfast meal for 5.99. Also found out that if you bring your own coffee mug you drink for free! Awesome little place. Just a bit tight for seating.

Came here last weekend for brunch by myself and was surprised by the portions I was given. I ordered an omelette with pancakes and hash browns and it was one of the best omelettes I’ve had since I’ve been in California. This place isn’t fancy but it’s a great local café and you won’t regret going.

The worst restaurant I ever ate in. Bad food test, bad service, and bad cooker atitude.
For sure, I will never go to it again.

This place was not that great. I don’t see myself recommending it to anyone I know. To be honest I thought the 25 minute wait would be worth it, but the food was terrible. My pancakes took forever to come out and the eggs tasted funny. my sister in law ordered eggs with veggies, her peppers and onions came back raw. We were seated right next to the bathroom which was horrible, people kept coming in and out. The service was great, I could tell our waitress was trying her very best to serve us as best as she could but the food was terrible.

What a great place to grab breakfast or lunch. One of my favorite places to eat in ib. Awesome friendly staff, pancakes are some of the best around. Eggs Benedict spot on. The philly Sammy with onion rings one of the best around super soft bread.

This might be the best place to have brunch in Imperial Beach. There aren’t very many places to have your lunch in Imperial Beach so the bar isn’t set too high but despite the low implied bar, they rise above it.
The place has great customer service and the food is just plain fantastic. My main gripe with the place is how tiny the place is. I know they can’t really do anything about it but it really makes the place inconvenient to dine in. So it’s not just the space either, I know I lied. Inherent with the tiny space and tons of customers is the noise level. It is loud in there! The only saving grace is the outdoor seating. Lastly is the tables, the place has such a high turnover rate of people dining in here that they hardly touch the tables in between patrons. The dining surfaces are oftentimes sticky or dirty.
So take my 3 stars with a grain of salt, the place is good. If you notice there’s a table outside come on over and have yourself one of these fantastic omelettes and enjoy that salty beach air as well as the exceptional food.

NPS = 4
A bit overpriced and the table felt sticky… but the people were really, really nice.
I came to this place at 6am and they still weren’t open. They were suppose to be open at 5am per their website. Whatever. I waited.
I got the Greek omelette with a fruit cup side.
The omelette had no taste. Felt like it was slapped together. The fruit cup: I didn’t touch it.
Whoever made it probably has never had fruit. The kiwi was in slices with the skin still on. Same goes for the blood orange (or whatever that was) and watermelon. Bite-​sized pieces without the skin on the fruit would have been preferable.
I wish the table wouldn’t have been so sticky. The menu’s, too.
Nothing against the people working there. They were VERY nice and great people. I just wish the atmosphere/​restaurant would’ve been a bit more enjoyable.

We went for breakfast this past Sunday morning. The best part of this restaurant are the friendly efficient employees. However the food and coffee not so good. The coffee tasted like a bad cup of Folgers and the tap water was awful, at least use a filter or something! The omelet was over cooked and brown on the outside.

Always like a good local spot, but this isn’t one of them. Menus were slightly sticky, most of the food was not good except for the toast. Eggs had a gray hue, my daughters comment was that her pancake tasted like dish soap. I had to agree. Prices were high.

Uhg… what a terrible meal! The server was so inept and rude. There were children fighting over the bathroom and making a ton of noise… going in and out of the bathroom and creating a line… turns out it was one of the servers kids and her friends… TERRIBLE! She was even bussing tables and just smearing cooked egg when she wiped the tables, DISGUSTING! My eggs benny easy SO bland… man was I disappointed. As a local I was bummed about this… and with the IHOP going in near VONS you’d think they would be a little more on the ball. But I guess they just rely on that hotel…
SMFH…NEVER AGAIN!
FYI…when you charge up to 16 bux for a BREAKFAST you should maybe get chairs that do NOT feel like the ones you’d expect in a prison

Nicely located across the street from Pier South Resort, the Wave Café is a nice greasy spoon breakfast spot. The service was quick and the staff was friendly.
Nothing particularly stood out, but I did enjoy my Eggs Benedict.
It’s not particularly large, so you might find yourself feeling a bit cramped, but they kept the door open and it was a nice day so it never felt stuffy.
I’d absolutely stop back in if I was staying at Pier South again.

We were in Imperial Beach for a long weekend and quickly decided that it is one of the coolest, most laidback towns we have ever been to. We wanted to try all of the local joints and enjoy the small beach town charm for every second. And so we set our eyes on Wave Café one Sunday morn.
Boyfriend was pretty excited at the offering of biscuits and gravy. Mostly because it didn’t have acai and we are pretty basic breakfast eaters.
We were cool with the atmosphere. It has a real local vibe. I truly felt like I had walked into a west coast version of Luke’s Diner. The waitress knew everyone. Everyone knew the staff. A patron even noticed that the waitress had her hair cut. This was all pretty amazing to me. I reveled in this experience.
But then came the food…
I had a simple order of pancakes. Now if you are a cook at a breakfast joint, one thing you must be able to do is cook a pancake. This is obviously a prerequisite. Nope. Not here. Here, they keep the griddle too hot. If you are like me and have messed up far too many pancakes then you know what this means: brown on the outside; dough inside. That is what I got. I give the waitress credit for offering to have them remade. Once you get that pancake dough taste in your mouth, it is next to impossible to get out and you really lose your appetite. In the end, she took it off the bill though.
Moral of the story: NEVER eat at a breakfast place that doesn’t even know how to make a pancake — the simplest of breakfast treats next to toast.

Excellent breakfast. Super friendly staff. Sausage, pancakes and home fries are delicious!

Loved the great customer service and the quickness of getting the meal right to the table right after ordering! The staff are really down to earth and friendly, and add that to the great food and you have all the elements of a great dining experience!

UPDATE! Went in for lunch today at noon, walked in and the owner said were closed. I said «your hours say your open till 2…» She said ya we ran out of food… How does a restaurant run out of food?!! She didn’t even ask what we wanted, on the off chance that they had it. Seems a little odd that a restaurant is out of ALL there food? Very disappointed, the fact that I’ve read other people’s reviews that say the same thing you’d think they would fix the problem. Nope guess not!
pros. The food is delicious! We usually get the big and little kahuna and it’s a ton of food. There jumbo sausage is amazing! We also like the fact that it’s a little mom and pop place. We always bring our dogs and sit outside so I’m not sure what the insides like, it does look a bit run down and a little under cleaned, but being outside we don’t see it and it’s in a great location across from the beach so it’s really nice sitting outside.
Cons. If you eat here, make sure you’re not in a hurry. Boy does this place take a long time! Fortunately for us when we go its on the weekend when we don’t have anywhere to be so we don’t mind it much, but it does get a little ridiculous sometimes when you ask for something as simple as a glass of water or napkin and it takes 15 minutes (literally 15 minutes!) I’ve only seen 3 staff total at a time, and although it is a small place, clearly they need additional servers. I understand that as a mom and pop you have to cut costs more than large chains, but if your service is suffering because of it, it’s time to hire more people. And lastly the cost, although you do get large portions, the prices for a mom and pop breakfast joint are way to high. For 2 breakfast entrees and coffees you’re looking at 30 – 35. Way too much for a breakfast place.
Overall we really like this place and will continue to go back, but there is room for improvement. I would like to see the owners make some changes.

Be sure to come here HUNGRY!!! The portions are big.
Very friendly family run place. Obviously where the locals go as they were greeted by name.
I highly recommend coming here.

Out for some early morning Christmas returns so we stopped in for some breakfast. We were looking for a place that had table service so we could kill some time before the stores opened.
Unfortunately, we didn’t look too hard and ended up here. Lesson learned, sometimes 3 ½ stars means the glass is half empty.
At first sight, we should have turned around just inside the door. Place looks like it hasn’t been cleaned or updated since the late 80’s with wall paint on the seats that is pealing off and a heater on a table that they could only keep one party warm at a time.
I ordered the hang 10 omelette which was basically a Denver omelette with Swiss and cheddar with a request for avocado as well. When arrived I saw no peppers, no onions, no ham, and definitely no avocado! So I hoped I would cut it in half to find a little treasure of tasty inside… nope! The server saw me taking pictures and heard me say something about avocado so she ran over and said, «maybe it’s on the inside!». Nope… so she ran and got it and yelled at the cook for forgetting it!
So we start eating, my eggs were cooked well but just an egg and cheese omelette. The hash browns, burnt. The toast, even more burned. My girlfriends bacon and pancakes completely burnt, my nieces french fries, completely burnt. Wth?! The food came out extremely fast so I can only assume that they cook at a very high temp! No good!
So we barely ate any of our food due to it being over cooked and inedible! My niece might be tasting pepper for the next few weeks from the amount that was in the potato salad.
While completely annoyed at the food and the grossness of the establishment, I just wanted the check! I ran to the bathroom real quick which was located almost between a family waiting for their food at their table. A sign on the door said «be ware»… No freaking joke, I have never hovered so high on my life! So gross! Had I gone in there before eating, we would have walked right back out that door!
Getting back to the family on the other side of the bathroom door… I could hear them discussing in detail what they were thinking of ordering… I can only assume that they get to hear the lovely sounds of customers relieving themselves as well. Nice!
So, to sum up this experience; filthy restaurant, charred food, very wonderful server who should not be working here, porta potty like restroom in the dining area, a $ 50 breakfast for 3 that was $ 40 over charged!
Return? Nope!

I’m a fan of the wave café! You can tell the moment you walk in that it is a total mom and pop shop. Not a ton of design on the inside besides one funny sign saying to never trust a skinny cook. Didn’t see the cook at Wave Café but I can imagine.
I believe it was the owner that sat us and was taking our drink orders. She had so much energy and was so friendly that you can tell she really loves her restaurant and her customers. There was a new employee in there and still not familiar with the menu. She was friendly and I hope she can keep up with the high energy of the owner.
Cool place, well built breakfast menu, and hugeee portions. All being said, I’ll be back!

This place was literally right across the street from our hotel so we had to dip in here for breakfast. We always ordered to go so we could take it up to our room to eat but they always had the food ready pretty quickly and their portions were huge. The first time we ate there I ordered the Little Kahuna and the 2 eggs were at least 4 scrambled eggs, the pancakes were thick but light and fluffy and the sausages were bigger than any breakfast sausage I had seen in my life!
The next time we weren’t there I had the french toast with strawberries and there were 4 thick slices of french toast. My husband had the eggs with bacon and hash browns. Everything was cooked perfectly. He got a side of cole slaw which was basically given in a coffee cup so a lot larger than he had expected. It also was so very lightly dressed it felt like it was just shredded cabbage.
The restaurant itself isn’t that big so it fills up quickly, but they seem to cycle through tables quickly as the food comes out at a quick pace.