Farmer & The Seahorse

This was such an awesome spot! I came here for breakfast and was Not disappointed I had the Nutella stuffed pancakes! Service was perfect! We didn’t have to wait at all. This spot was superb! I love the interior! I’m definitely coming back!

My girlfriends and I came her for happy hour the other day, what a wonderful place! The food was out of this world and the ambiance was upbeat. I will definitely be back again. The manager Andi came by the table and was just sweet as can be. She really made the experience warm and welcoming!

I love the crab cake sandwich! Also the happy hour is so much fun! I loved the energy when the Happy Hour included the spin class & corn hole! So much fun! My friends and I had a great time and will definitely continue coming back! I love the environment and the décor. Also the staff is very pleasant!

I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere and prompt and friendly service I get here. I’ve dined a few times and The food is great and the drink specials are spot on. Highly recommend

This review is a little more encompassing than a single visit to try the latest Malarkey offering. This opened with much less noise than previous offerings partly because it’s not his usual stand alone venture. It’s within the Alexandria which honestly is a bit more of a compound than a campus, but the rest of that is for their own review.
Stepping away from the typical fabric nomenclature of typical Malarkey offering «The Farmer» part of the name probably is homage to «The Farmers Insurance Open» than the actual farmers they are sourcing from. This is just conjecture, but wouldn’t you grow on site with such an open air campus available to you? Then it would make sense to have Farmer in the name. Seahorse is obvious seeing so many of his restaurants are so heavily influenced with seafood. I mean we are after in Coastal San Diego now.
The grounds are beautiful, well manicured, it’s hidden away, yet not enclosed. The décor is eclectic. Somewhere between refined vision and a muddled theme. As if it’s plans were redone half way through construction by a new firm. It’s a nice change of pace to the über slate and contemporary café’s in the area. Service is slow, the best bet is sitting at the bar. It’s borderline annoyingly slow. Staff is friendly, but they know most people are in and out on a quick stop in for lunch. Indoor and outdoor seating is nice, love the seating inside more, outdoor is a little to Brunchy for my liking. Price is high for what you get.
It’s not that breakfast is bad, but it’s a little too a la carte that got thrown together. Breads are fresh. My breakfast burrito cost $ 9 with basic add ons which should have been in there already. (bacon, sausage and avo). Solid coffee offerings, but very rounded prices make things seem overpriced. Haven’t you learned the dollar sign makes things seem more expensive. House made cold pressed is $ 4.50 while basic black is $ 2. Green man is a great smooth. Avo, green tea syrup, kale, almond milk. It’s not a full smoothie bar, but decent. Soda’s are all overpriced as are the juice of the days. Salad’s are all expensive. My shrimp louie louie didn’t have correct louie dressing and is $ 14. I love green beans, but they have no business in a louie. Shrimp were good, but they went easy on them. Golden beats salad is a knock off of Whole foods version, they just replaced the onions with almonds. $ 22 lobster roll tasted old. I could buy a whole lobster for less and make it myself. I’d rather have local spiney’s. The best bet is fish & chips, all local, fresh bright, refreshing slaw. Not overly cooked or breaded local fish. Burger is a joke. $ 17.50 for a burger with bacon, avo and a fried egg. The meat was only ok and the bun completely fell apart. $ 4 for fries brought my lunch with tip that day to $ 25.80. Large wine list, small beer list and the tapas and small and not fulfilling for $ 8 mini salads. Bartenders are scripted with the bland menu, so ask them to play with something you like. They aren’t half bad, but you can tell someone really didn’t think about the drinks they way they did the wine list. I did like the short ribs itself in the poutine, but the pourtine was itself was bleh. Goat cheese, mushrooms, roasted potatoes, for real, come on man.
Seems to me that Brian has lost a lot of his creative control after some failures at Gingham, Gabardine, Burlap (though it has been repurposed as Seersucker North). I look at the menu and it’s as if a chef did breakfast with limited resources, another did lunch and is making up for breakfast with even more inflated prices and then a 3^rd chef did HH with entire dishes shrunk down. I love Seersucker and have been supporting Malarkey restaurants since the beginning, but I think this is one of his worst ventures. 5 visits and I’m hard pressed to come back for a 6^th.

Wow. Everything was so bad. Soggy pizza. Meatballs made last week. French fries with short ribs that were soggy undercooked and weird. Sweet potato tater tots were so greasy that we couldn’t even eat them.
Terrible management. They promised us a specific table and then gave it away. Took a reservation from us right at the time of last call. Which btw is 630. Then they cancelled the reservation without saying a word, just sent us an email on open table.
Stay away.

Thanks for reminding me of what pathetic service is as I’ve had way too many other good experiences of late that was taking for granted. Food good here with many unique, healthy options… and not minding 20 minute wait to sit indoors amidst rainy day. 40 min to get served sad. Manager here needs to teach kitchen some urgency then staff to multi task as tables went uncleared for 10 – 15 minutes. Barely a smile or apology from anyone either?! Will give it a second spin when weather is clear but I’ll shy away in meantime.

I give this place 2.5 stars, ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ for service & food. I really dislike writing a negative review but I can’t sugar coat my experience.
So, I heard this café was pretty good & decided to give it a try. The décor is nice, atmosphere & vibe was good. But the food… BARF! I ordered the Lobster roll with home fries ($ 22). I was hungry & couldn’t wait to devour my sandwich. As soon as my food came out, it looks Delish but it was DISGUSTING! First off, my salad had no dressing, fries were cold & the Lobster roll, nasty! The lobster mixture was just gross! It tasted like old, spoiled & extremely fishy lobster with little to nothing dressing.
I was super displeased with my lunch that I had to give it back and that’s very rare for me to do. The server offer to bring me another entrée but I declined because I was so disgusted, turned off & completely lost my appetite. Also, I just wanted to get out of that place before I puke! I’ve never tasted anything so disgusting.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back because I am traumatized. Heck, I don’t think I want another lobster roll for awhile!

This is my experience and might not be yours. Please try it out and make your own opinions, because the food is good, building is beautiful and the majority of the wait staff are professional.
My experience:
It would have more 4 stars if certain staff members were more customer service oriented and the food I ordered was more consistent.

Came here yesterday for a meeting, and was totally taken by surprise at how cool it is on the inside. Did not get a chance to dine here (yet), but will certainly do in the future, and will post impressions when i do.
With respect to the interior, an interesting highlight was the Airstream camper parked in the middle of the dining room (and you can eat in the camper if you wish, how cool is that?).

What I will give this restaurant is an A for design and décor. What I won’t do is give this restaurant great grades for anything else. I got lucky and made a reservation for lunch, but we came early (1130am), when there were very few people in the restaurant. The hostess initially said no problem, and said there would only be one party ahead of us. But 10 minutes later, after seating several other tables, we finally got seated after we nearly begged for our table. A small apology. We were seated at a table where we got nearly no service.
Our server took our order and brought our food, but that was about it. He was gone for nearly the rest of the meal until we could call someone over who wasn’t working our table. He never checked on how the food was. Never asked if we wanted more water or could more ice tea. He seemingly vanished into thin air. He finally came back to bring us two of a dessert we ordered one of.
Now for the food. I will admit it tasted better than the awful hotel food I had the day before, but there was absolutely nothing stellar about it. My colleague’s salad had no dressing. Our server didn’t even notice it had no dressing. She had to ask for dressing. My meal, which was the special of the day, was O.K. but the food itself, a roasted pork tenderloin on a bed of roasted root vegetables was lukewarm at best. I can’t comprehend why serving hot food at a restaurant is a hard thing. Dessert was meh. The brownie sundae, without ice cream, and with berries, was again, uninteresting. There was nothing great about it, any more than if I’d whipped up a batch of Betty Crocker brownie mix.
I may be back, but I don’t know. I think that they need to work on front of the house, service, and the food. I believe with all the other stellar reviews they might be wowed by the décor or something. I don’t get it.

Farmer & The Seahorse has been on my ‘WTF is that’ list for some time now. So I was excited when someone suggested to eat here for lunch.
The patio seating is beautiful and quaint. Unfortunately, it was supposed to be 93 degrees that day (maybe a bit cooler since it was Torrey Pines). There’s not enough shading for these patio tables to shield the patrons from scorching heat.
So you have to walk inside and check in with the hostess. The restaurant was pretty empty and I asked if we needed to use our OpenTable reservation. She kinda scoffed at me and said that yes, as the restaurant will be packed for lunch that day. Of course she placed us outside under a no shade table. I must say that the waiters, absolutely, were AMAZING. They were much more understanding and empathetic than the hostess as the guys moved our table under a shaded area.
We tried:
Tomato-​Tarragon Soup
This is their daily soup. Arturo said they had a beer cheese soup that day as well (but the thought of a heavy beer soup didn’t appeal to us that particular afternoon). The tomato soup was pretty light and didn’t taste much of any cream. It tasted almost like runny tomato soup if that makes sense. Not a bad thing. It was a bit underseasoned and could have been served hotter.
Local Cod N’ Garden Chips
This was my choice and it came out with three medium-​small pieces of fried cod. The slaw was purple cabbage with a light lemon tasting dressing. The 3 pieces of cod had a nice tempura like batter to each piece. I would say that only 1 out of the 3 pieces were fried right (the middle piece of the 3 you see in the pic). The other two were smaller cod pieces so they probably were fried too long with the bigger piece. The larger piece tasted nicely of white flakey cod and I liked the sea salt flakes that seasoned the fried batter.
Slow Braised Short Ribs
Don’t you hate it when someone orders a better dish than you. The braised short ribs are served atop potatoes and carrots. The short ribs were fork tender, melt-​in-​your mouth delicious. The rich brown gravy (wine sauce?) tasted smooth and luscious with each bite.
Service was a bit slow but attentive once we caught his attention. The restaurant did fill out gradually but I’m not sure if reservations are required. MANY patrons who were being sat in the patio asked immediately to be seated indoors or under a shaded area.
I heard they have happy hour now Thur-​Fri from 4p-​7p. So I can see myself calling a few friends to congregate here to try out a few items on their menu. I definitely enjoyed Farmers & The Seahorse much more than Green Acres and would recommend this Malarkey restaurant if you’re in the area.

It’s always interesting finding these places in odd location. For instance, this location is on the same building that housed the Biocom and several other businesses. The restaurant itself is quite lovely and sports a very nice outside patio and bar.
I stopped in for lunch, and ordered the Tomato and Tarragon Soup with Three Grilled Cheese served on Grilled Sourdough Bread for $ 9.00. I also added a side of Rapini made with garlic, herbs, lemon and Pecorino for $ 4.
I was very fond of the grilled cheese. First of all, they executed the grill and crust of the sour dough bread to perfection. It had a great brown to golden brown crust and the crunchy texture complimented the gooey melted three cheeses very well. The cheeses included in this sandwich were aged cheddar, Gouda, and I believe Swiss. All the cheeses were well melted and tasted great together, but what gave the grilled cheese that X-​Factor was the terrific grilled sourdough bread.
The Tomato and Tarragon soup was very nice. It had nice balance between the acidity of the tomatoes and the herbs included in the soup. The previous roasting of the tomatoes was quite evident in the flavor of the soup. The viscosity of the soup was between creamy and rustic with a hint of graininess. The olive herb infused drizzle a top the soup was a nice touch. No doubt the grilled cheese was perfect for dipping in this soup.
Unfortunately, I was not a big fan of the rapini because in my opinion it was over done in pieces that not only gave the rapini that dark unappealing color, but also through off the flavor profile of the whole dish. It was over cooked because the rapini was soft throughout and offered not feeling to the tooth. I like my al dente. It was to bad too, because it was well seasoned, I liked the generous amount of Pecorino, and the gentle amount of garlic and lemon juice. In the end, I sent it back, and they did not charge me for it.
I can’t remember my waiter’s name, but he was nice and quite competent at his job. They offer happy hour on Thursdays and Fridays from 4 pm to 7 pm.

Like all Brian Malarkey restaurants, the food, décor and overall vibe shine here. And for those of us who work in the area, Farmer & The Seahorse provides a welcomed dash of flavor in an otherwise corporate-cafeteria’d array of business parks. There’s even corn hole!
But after about 10 or so lunch trips here I cannot get over how baaaaad the service is. About half the time it’s fine, but the other half it’s been so slow that I’ve actually been tempted to dine and dash because shit man I legitimately have to get back to the office. I wouldn’t normally Unilocal about slow service because it’s usually a one off. Here, though, it almost seems like they have a hiring requirement along the lines of: «Describe your ability to take a really long time to do things. Bonus if you can completely forget those things.»
Anyway, great eats if you can carve out 90 minutes for a quick lunch.

This place looks great and appears to have great potential. Unfortunately on the day we choose to go there for lunch we were on a schedule and they were very busy. My lunch mate had to take his lunch to go and when he got back to work the soup bowl that they gave him was empty! Total bummer. I enjoyed the food and the waiter was very apologetic. I would probably give them another shot. Everyone can have a bad day once in awhile. Plus I have to like a place that has a genuine Airstream inside!

Green Acre’s campy little sister. From lofty lobby gallery space to screening room with mini golf greens lining the ceiling, thoughtful modern detail throughout. Can’t wait to hold an event here. When’s happy hour?

The architecture is just about as amazing as the food! I had the heirloom tomato sandwich and added avocado. (Do it!) so good. I’m not sure I ever need to try anything else… but I’m sure I will. I also had the butterscotch dessert. One bite was enough! It is so decadent and delightful that you can share with a few other people.
This place is off the beaten path but worth the trip. The outdoor patio seating is cute, and there’s even a lawn for corn hole & pseudo sunbathing. My only complaint is that the outdoor seating could use a bit more shade. My colleagues were getting too hot during our work lunch.

Part of our lunch time adventure – trying newly established restaurants. We enjoy Green Acre (GA) by the same chef, and therefore had high hopes for this place.
Ordered:
1. Aqua Fresca — Hibiscus with lime/​hint of mint (our favorite part of lunch)
2. Lobster Roll — upgraded ($ 2 + $ 21). The french fries that came with it was disappointing – soggy and temperature was low. It reminded me of cafeteria fries that were pre-​frozen and not fresh cut (unlike the delicious root fries at GA). For this caliber of restaurant, I expected better.
3. Roasted veggies and farro salad – flavors were good. I expected a little more variety of veggies aside from carrots, squash and one mushroom bunch. It was predominately carrots.
Grand total: $ 50 (including tip). I think we may go back to GA next time! I really wanted to enjoy this place, but unfortunately it didn’t deliver.
Our waitress was nice, but we «almost» got in trouble for not checking in with the front desk which was hidden if you parked your car in the back and walked in. We seated ourselves and were told twice that it was inappropriate. They were nice about it though so that was not a big deal. For future reference – DO NOT SEAT YOURSELF FOR LUNCH!!!
Décor was innovative, and the lawn games were a nice touch.
On a positive note, their happy hour menu looked great! The drinks seem delicious, so possibly we will try that.
Note: Dog friendly on the patio!

The Fish & Chips were awesome. Very flavorful and not overly greasy. Definitely recommend trying them out.
I was bummed the braised short ribs were not available when I stopped in for lunch — took the server too long to tell me they ran out.

Another new venture from Brian Malarkey conveniently located near all the biotech companies in La Jolla. A very smart move on his part, considering there are very few dining options in the mesa (except his other restaurants, Green Acres). It’s located across the street from BD in the blue building — Walk in through the Biocom building and upstairs.
The décor is pretty and modern, like if you crossed an Anthropolgie store with a psychedelic artist from Berkeley (birds in space mural!). There’s also a trailer/​bus/​train looking thing in the center, which you can actually dine in! Despite being casually in an office building, it’s surprisingly an actual sit-​down restaurant so you’ll have a dedicated server. However, service was still fast and we got our food and checks relatively quickly!
I split the salmon sandwich and the crab cake burger with my friend. The salmon sandwich was good and came with bacon and avocado but a little bland… probably needed some type of sauce. The crab cake sandwich was definitely my favorite! Brioche bun, crab, crispy onions, bacon, avocado .they took all my favorite things and stuffed it all into one sammich! The crab cake itself actually had a lot of crab meat instead of bread/​filler, tasted fresh, and was topped with a refreshing celery/​lemon aioli type spread. Absolutely delicious & I was pretty impressed. Sandwiches also come with a side salad and choice of chips or fries (definitely get fries!).
True fatass style, we also got dessert: brownie sundae! It was a brownie topped with roasted hazelnuts, whipped cream, and berries. It wasn’t as good as we expected, since we didn’t read the description carefully to realize that there was no ice cream, just whipped cream :(Next time we’ll get the pot de crème (comes with butterscotch topping, mmm).
Sandwich, side salad, fries — $ 14. Kinda pricey for everyday, but the quality of food is up to par. Will definitely be stopping by again.
Apparently they are working on getting a liquor license and will have happy hours as well during the summer!