The Daily Dose Sports Lounge

I've  been coming to the DD ever since I returned to Irvine.  I really like this place, I visit almost every day and feel very comfortable. The bartenders are great and provided it isn't super busy, the service is good. Not only do they serve the tables they also make the cocktails and pour the beer. So when its busy the girls have to work really hard. They are good at what they do.
I really like the newly updated decor and the new wine selection and I for one was happy to see the referee outfits go.  The red evening vests are classy.
An added bonus is that they are the only place open til 2AM, something Irvine was missing.

Terrible service. Came for a ufc fight. None of the service staff have uniforms or anything to designate that they work got the establishment. Can't tell who even works here.
Waited over 45 minutes for food before finally having to go to the bar to get someone's attention. After telling them we never got our food they had the gall to tell us they did.
Had then take it off our check. Will not be coming back.

Crowd & Ambiance: The seemingly 'regulars' of this place reminded me of people you would find in Newport. Ya know, the kind that goes to Pierce Street Annex - Single, over-the-hill, loud, obnoxious, and plastic. You can tell a man decorated the place. It's filled with over-sized black pleather chairs that are better suited for a seedy Vegas casino lounge and are obviously way too big for the space (wait staff could barely get around). They had a small wall towards the front painted with chalkboard paint and labeled "Coming Soon..." and had a mock-up of what their new menu was supposed to be like. Don't tell me what I COULD possibly have in the future. It doesn't make me want to come back, it makes me more critical of what SHOULD BE NOW. I could barely tell it was a SPORTS lounge if it weren't for the numerous TV screens playing sports all around. The largest TV was probably a 47-inch at best, but at a sports lounge, I had expected at least one massive screen with maybe a projector. A member of my group asked a staff member if one of the TVs could be tuned into a baseball game, he was happy to oblige until we found out that the SPORTS lounge didn't subscribe to the SPORTS channel that aired the game. I would not call myself a sports fanatic, but I would think that a place that advertises itself as a SPORTS lounge would have all those premium sports packages on their DirectTV subscription. So instead we were stuck watching Bull Durham.

Drinks: The specialty cocktails menu was a bit pretentious, including items that had fruit muddled with herbs. I ordered the Strawberry Basil Cooler (or something similarly named), which was supposed to have strawberries muddled with basil and vodka. It was refreshing and light on the alcohol content as I anticipated, but I hoped to have some strawberries mixed with basil at the bottom of my glass to nibble on after I finished my drink. Sadly, there was barely any fruit to be seen. The beers on tap left me unimpressed, and their glasses mismatched the beers. Example: Dos Equis glass - no Dos Equis on tap, just in the bottle and they don't pour it in the glass? The mismatched bar-ware doesn't make the place at all charming or eclectic. It makes it look cheap.

Food: The menu can also be described as pretentious, serving up a meat and cheese platter, prosciutto and fig flat bread, and ahi tuna just to name a few of their food items. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I like prosciutto and ahi tuna. My group and I ordered the meat and cheese platter and the potato skins to start. Both dishes met our expectations. (It would be pretty sad to mess up on putting sliced deli meat and cheese on a plate as well as the bar-food standard of potato skins, right?) Later that evening, we ordered a prosciutto flat bread and spinach and artichoke dip, which we never got. This brings me to the service portion of this review...

Service: EXTREMELY poor. The bar was terribly understaffed for the event - UFC fight night and they were showing it for free (technically a 2 drink minimum, but they didn't really keep track), so the place was packed. Having been open for a few years now, the amount of people they had on staff for this kind of event is unacceptable. I was there for 4 hours, and at any given point in the evening, I could count about 3 people at the front of the house. Within the 4 hours we were there, we were checked on by a staff member less than once per hour. Other tables and groups seemed to have the same issue as I observed a few tables having to walk up to the bar to get what they wanted because they waited for so long for a waitress. So about that flat bread and artichoke dip - we waited around 45 minutes for it before we gave up and I walked myself over to the bar to close our tab. I overheard the bartender and a redheaded waitress discussing my tab only to find out that the flat bread and dip were made, but delivered to the wrong table! Not only did THEY figure this out, but they tried to charge my group and I for the two items! When I asked the bartender to make the correction, he tried to insist that my table received the food. The waitress then intervened and gave me two options: to void out the items or they could make them for us. I told her we had already been waiting for 45 minutes for those items and never got them and we don't want to wait any more. All I got was a half-assed "sorry 'bout that" from the bartender; not even one from the redheaded waitress who made the mistake of giving our order to the wrong table.

Additional Info: Smokers would like this place since all you have to do is step outside the front doors and light up even though California law states that smoking is prohibited in and within 20-feet of public buildings (Senate bill AB846). This wouldn't have bothered me so much if they hadn't kept the doors wide open and let in all the secondhand smoke. FYI: the place could be fined up to $500 each time for this offense.

Summary: Don't go. Ever.