My two-star rating for Sam's Cafe is based on our experience there for happy hour in the bar. If we ever return for dinner, I will update, but for now, I'll just say this place is really unremarkable and disappointing and that there are *way* better places to go for happy hour. \n\nWe went for happy hour on Friday around 5:45 pm and sat in the bar at one of the high tables. There were only 3-4 other people in the bar area, (and maybe 6-8 in the rest of the restaurant) but it still took the bartender about 5 minutes to come over and take our drink order. I got the Grand Canyon Margarita (featuring cranberry and citrus juices), and my husband got the Cactus Margarita (basically the house margarita). Both were $3. We wanted to order some bar food as well, but again, it took him about 10 minutes to return with our drinks and take our food order, even though the bar was still quite empty. After already being irritable with the slow service (having both worked in restaurants, we are very understanding of how stressful it is to handle a lot of tables or drink orders, but the restaurant was so empty that there was just no excuse), the slow service was not the only bad part of our first experience at Sam's Cafe. \n\nThe next negative was that the margaritas were so sweet and weak, they might as well just have charged us $3 each for juice. Then, it took another 15-20 minutes for us to get our bar food (carnitas cheese crisp, jalapeno poppers, and southwestern bruschetta) and when it finally came, it was all cold! We noticed that no one else in the bar area had gotten food, but all of a sudden, the bartender emerged from the back with an enormous tray of food and served everyone who had been waiting for food at once. Having worked in many restaurants, I know that one of the main rules of good service is that someone should take food out as soon as it's ready so that it doesn't get cold, and that as a server, I was responsible for doing so even if the food wasn't for my table. Either the bartender should have been checking in the back more frequently for food that was ready or someone else (like the manager, who kept wandering around in a daze but never appeared to be doing much) should have done him a favor (if he was really that busy) and brought it out. \n\nThe third negative was that most of the food was not good at all. I know not to expect too much from bar food, especially when it was seriously discounted for happy hour, but two of the things we ordered were just bad. The carnitas cheese crisp was not light and crispy with gooey cheese; instead, it was a heavy and greasy flour tortillas covered in congealed cheese and dry shredded pork. Not good. The jalapeno poppers and boneless chicken wings were also terrible - Jack in the Box has better poppers and the chicken wings were straight out of a Tyson resealable bag. The Southwestern Bruschetta was fine, although it was very oily, and I have a hard time understanding how merely adding a ton of cilantro to a tomato mix makes something \"southwestern.\" None of the food items was more than $5, but I have been to *many* other happy hours where you can get solid, flavorful appetizers for between $2 - $5. Kincaid's and McCormick & Schmick's are two great examples. \n\nThe final kicker of our bad happy hour experience was when we asked the bartender for a check and he tried to pressure us to order more even though we said several times that we were finished. I believe the exact line was, \"Are you sure you don't want anything else? More drinks? More food? Some shots?\" Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think you should order more to *make* your experience somewhere better; rather, you should order more *because* you're having such a good time. As persuasive as his \"selling techniques\" were, we weren't (having a good time), so we didn't (order more).
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