Martinelli's Market - Bakery & Deli — Restaurant in Champaign

We stopped in today for lunch for the 1st time. Walking in we were very impressed with the cleanliness, and had trouble choosing what to eat on the menu because everything sounded so good. We decided on the Rueben and the Tuna Melt. The sandwiches are pricey $18+ for the Rueben and $12+ for the Tuna Melt. You get a pickle spear with your sandwich. They have complimentary water you can get but the cups are so absolutely small we had to get a couple to have with our meal. The sandwiches came out and they LOOKED amazing! Bread was perfectly toasted. We had high hope. The Rueben was impossible to bite through. The cornbeef was so dry and tough! We had to use a fork and knife to cut bite size pieces to eat. After struggling to chew the tough meat, we gave up and finished less than half the sandwich. The tuna melt also came out looking delicious. The bread was toasted perfectly and the cheese was melted. However the tuna itself was Ice cold! Never heard of a tuna melt made by toasting the bread and putting a scoop of cold tuna inside. The tuna salad also was VERY wet. It made such a mess trying to eat it. There wasn’t much flavor to the tuna salad so I added some pepper to help it be less bland. We also got a bag of mozzarella bites (garlic and dill flavored) the flavor was nice but the cheese was not very fresh and it too was pretty dry. Overall the food was disappointing and not worth the price we paid. We will continue checking out other lunch spots. We do not recommend Martinellis Market...

Recently visited Martinelli's Market, browsed their retail/grocery side picked up a few interesting condiments and had lunch at the deli. I hate to give this place only three stars, as I liked the design and vibe of the place and the quality of the sandwich I had was very good. Its just so darn expensive, and yes they are using high quality ingredients and you get large portions but I can think of four places off the top of my head in C-U that offer the same or better. Balderotta's, Art Mart, Cheese & Crackers, and Pekara have great food and similar items to Martinelli's but their sandwich's are around $5 less on average. Cheese & Crackers and Art Mart also have hard to find deli items and a cool kitchen retail section. I really want Martinelli's to succeed, I love having more choices and a local business, but will I return, probably not. I think once the shiny wears off people are going to question if they really want to drop $20...

I stopped in and ordered their signature Reuben sandwich. The menu board didn’t list prices, but I figured—how much could a Reuben really cost? To my surprise, it rang up at $18. In fairness, it was large enough to feed two people.

My total came to $24 for the sandwich, one side (coleslaw), and no drink. The coleslaw was mediocre at best, and overall that price felt pretty steep for a casual lunch in Champaign, Illinois.

The wait time was another letdown—it took about 20 minutes to get my order, despite there being no one ahead of me. The sandwich itself was decent, but in my opinion, not worth $18.

On the positive side, the store looked great and had an impressive selection of breads and pastries. I plan to return soon to try a loaf of fresh bread and a pastry, and I’ll update with another...