Jamming at Marmalade Cafe? - CLOSED

Marmalade Cafe

2677 Park Ave.

Tustin, CA 92782

Saturday date night, but where to go? We were going to see a movie at the District in Tustin, so we were sure to find a good place to eat. We decided to try somewhere neither of us had been before Marmalade Cafe. A few blogs I read regularly visited here, but only for breakfast, and all of those were positive, so we decided to give their dinner a shot.

Marmalade Cafe has a Mimi's Cafe vibe. It opened in 1990 in Santa Monica as a catering business but soon opened a cafe in the same location. Marmalade Cafe has ten locations, and the Irvine restaurant is the first outside LA County. Let's see if this is the perfect way to start our date night.

We chose to sit outside, and the lighting made it easy to take pictures. The bread was good—a sourdough roll with some herbs inside. These came out really warm. I mainly just wanted to show off this picture.

For an appetizer, we got the Warm Artichoke-Spinach Cheese Dip. Unlike its name, this came out really hot. We let it cool off for a few moments and then dug in. This is served with their homemade potato chips. Their chips were thick and stood up to the dip with no problem. They were almost like a pita chip. The dip itself was okay. They make it with three cheeses plus feta cheese, but the dip was average. I did like that they were open to using a lot of spinach and artichokes in this.

Here is Katie's choice for dinner, the Artichoke Chicken. This is chicken breast, artichoke, basil, and mushrooms with a Dijon mustard sauce, served over a bed of spaghetti. I liked the first few bites of this I ate, but then the mustard sauce they put over it took over. It became too much. The chicken was cooked fine, but I could not get over the sauce. This was also accompanied by a baby arugula-onion salad. The salad was fair, but not my thing. Katie liked her entree but did not rave about it.

What you see above is the 18oz Bone-In Rib eye with bleu cheese butter on top. This is served with your choice of two sides. I went with the Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli Parmesan. I could not be more disappointed in this dish. The sides needed more flavor. The potatoes needed to be seasoned with something, anything. The broccoli was okay, but the parmesan still needs to add something. The bleu cheese butter had no bleu cheese in it. It tasted like regular butter, I even tried some on a roll, and could not tell the difference between it and the regular butter. The rib eye was cooked the way I liked it, medium rare, but there was way too much fat on this one.

I know rib eye steaks have the most fat, but this was way too much. It was supposed to be 18 ounces, and probably twelve of it was fat and bone. The meat worked well with the sides because it was not seasoned at all, just like the rest of the plate. It was not a good scene.

The service at Marmalade Cafe was excellent. Our server was amiable, and the bus staff were on top of everything. We might have got the wrong things here, but the food was not good. Nothing on the dinner menu jumped out at me as something I must try next time. I would like to give their breakfast a shot, though.

Of five canning jars, five being best to zero being worst, Marmalade Cafe gets 2 canning jars.

For more information on Marmalade Cafe, click here: http://www.marmaladecafe.com/home/