Juiced for Breakfast at Orange Cafe

Orange Cafe

1608 E. Mayfair Ave. 

Orange, CA 92867

For the most part, Katie and I are pretty similar. Since we have moved in together and gotten engaged, I've noticed some small things that we have had to work out. She likes to squeeze the toothpaste from middle, and that drives me nuts. For a long time she would refuse to put the toilet paper on the roll, leaving it just inches away on the counter. I'm sure there's lots of things that have irked her about me, but she's kept pretty quiet about them.

One of our biggest differences is that she loves to sleep. You probably think that you love to sleep, but Katie loveeeee's to sleep. She can easily sleep soundly for 12 hours at a time, while I like to get the day going, and am out of bed after 7 hours on most days. With all of this slumbering by Katie, it really is rare that we make it out for breakfast. I got her up early, (9am) on a recent Sunday though, and we met our good friends Chris and Adrienne at Orange Cafe.

Not surprisingly, Orange Cafe is located in the city of Orange, right near the corner of Mayfair and Tustin Avenue. If you blink you might miss this place. Not crazy large, it has about twenty or so tables, and we got a seat right away, but they were going quick, and there was a wait when we left an hour later.

A real locals place, Orange Cafe had a real comfortable vibe. Not overly decorated, they have a ring of old license plates near the ceiling, and a board on the wall displaying their specials of the day. Their menu is of course breakfast driven, but they also have lunch items for people that do not like breakfast, or maybe for people like Katie, who like to sleep through breakfast. Make note, they are only open until 2pm, and closed on Tuesdays. Let's see what we thought of the food here.

We'll start things off with Chris's breakfast, the Spinach, Mushroom, Bacon and Swiss Cheese Omelette ($9.95). No need to tell you what's in this one, as all the ingredients are in the name of the dish. Chris took his time savoring this very good omelette. From across the table this looked very buttery, and full of spinach and bacon. This came with a breakfast side, and your choice of toast. Chris had the white toast and the home fries. No complaints from the birthday boy about any of the food he consumed on this morning.

Chris's much better half, Adrienne, is pretty vanilla when it comes to breakfast. Not liking onions, mushrooms, and a long list of other foods really limits what she will order. After much debate she settled on the Two Eggs Combo Breakfast ($7.55). This basic breakfast also included hash browns and three strips of bacon. Even with her pickiness, she enjoyed this very generic breakfast.

A lot of the on-line reviews for Orange Cafe talked about the Denver Potato Pancake Combo ($9.95). We're happy to report that all of those glowing reviews are warranted. Not to ruin the rest of this post for you, but this was the best thing we tried all morning. The potato pancakes came with bell pepper, ham, cheddar cheese, onion, and a dollop of sour cream. The potato was definitely the star here. I did not really notice the cheese or the ham, but these were still great potato pancakes. Unfortunately this is what Katie ordered, and I was trying to be respectful of her food, but I tried to swipe as many bites of this as possible. So good. The combo also came with eggs and bacon. A must get when coming to Orange Cafe.

I had also been advised to check out their blackboard specials that are posted everyday. The Creme Brulee French Toast ($9.95) came highly recommended, so I gave it a shot. It was good but not great. The sauce resembled the inside portion of a creme brulee, but it needed to be a little sweeter. The french toast portion of this was pretty average, and could not carry the dish. Again, not awful, but I'd probably try something else on my next visit here.

I'm glad I also ordered something besides the french toast. Orange Cafe has three Benedict's on their menu, each one sounded promising, but I selected the Country Benedict ($9.95) on this morning. Two biscuits are topped with sausage patties and poached eggs, then covered in country gravy. As you can probably imagine this was a very filling breakfast, but a little lighter than I had imagined. The biscuits were good, and went perfectly with the sausage patty. The poached egg got a little lost here, while the gravy had the texture on point, but I needed a bit more flavor from it. Still a solid breakfast plate, which was rounded out by the very well made home fries.

When we invited Chris and Adrienne out to breakfast, they suggested that we try another breakfast spot in Orange that we have already been to, and we ended up convincing them to come here instead. We made the right choice. Orange Cafe is a very solid breakfast spot that kind of gets overlooked because of their location, and because there are some better known breakfast spots in the city. Orange Cafe is definitely worth a try though. We experienced some pretty solid service on this day. Even though every table was filled, the food came out quick, and our waitress made sure we were doing alright. We're looking forward to coming back here again, if I can get Katie out of bed.

Out of five Cadbury eggs, (because this famous Easter treat was made by the Cadbury company, which used to be headquartered in the Mayfair section of London), five being best to zero being worst, Orange Cafe gets 3 Cadbury eggs.

Orange Cafe does not have a website, but you can check out their info and other reviews here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/orange-cafe-orange