Marmalade Cafe — Restaurant in El Segundo

Today, March 25th, a Sunday, my husband and I went here for brunch, a little after 10 a.m. Normally, this is a great place to go ! But today, we had some trouble with the service early on, because the food took a very long time. The coffee was probably the best thing about this meal!

Once we got the food, there were problems. Both of us like our steaks very rare, but both steaks showed up more towards medium. And his eggs, that he ordered over easy, showed up Beyond over medium...almost over hard. Worse than that, the sourdough toast we both ordered looked fine on one side, but upon taking a bite, and tasting a burnt flavor, we turned them over, only to see that they were very burnt on the underside! It is as if the restaurant tried to cover that up. Also, the amount of potatoes I received was smaller than usual, even though they were very good. Usually, we do better here; but somehow, today just wasn't one of those days. It was kind of crowded, since it was after 10 a.m. and that is very busy time for Sunday morning breakfast. But my husband seemed to think that maybe their grill was getting to the point where it should be cleaned, and it just hadn't been cleaned yet. He felt that most of his food tasted the same.

Actually, the worst thing was how the waitress, and the hostess, handled the issues with our food. Are the qualities of graciousness and humility all but lost? It often seems that way, like it did today." I mean, if I was a server and someone got burnt toast, and concealed at that, my first words would be, "I'm sorry about that! That shouldn't have happened - let me replace them for you right away." But no! It was actually the hostess whom we told about the toast, and all she could say was, "Do you want replacement orders, then?". She could not manage to apologize for the quality of the toast! Can you believe that?...

We waited quite a while for the waitress to come around with our bill, and when she finally did, I mentioned that we had been waiting for a while, and again, there was no apology, just here you go! Oh, and she did bring a takeout box for the steak my husband have left over, but there was just no warmth there, towards the customer.

For our $46 bill, I left a $7 cash tip, but that was kind. It was approximately 15%, and I guess I consider that a minimum. With good service, my husband and I always tip 20%. So that was that. Oh, no it wasn't! We both had tummy aches afterwards, so we had to get home rather quickly. Luckily, my tummy ache was after his somewhat, if you get my drift, since we live in a two-bedroom, one-bath place! I wouldn't write the Marmalade Cafe off, but it's just that we had bad luck here today. We won't be as likely to run back there as we used to be, before we had such issues as...

I will preface this by saying I’ve actually previously been to this location with my friend and had an overall great experience. I wish I could say the same for this time. From the moment we walked inside, the service was at best strange and at worst actively seemed antagonistic towards us.

When we first walked in there were two hosts at the counter and I told one of them that I had a reservation. As he was checking in our group, I stepped forward and my two other friends stood behind me and an older woman whom I assume was the manager came up and asked them if they needed a table for two, which they then stated that they were with me. Then after that happened, the hostess who was standing at the front as we walked in and watched all of this happened proceeded to ask my friends the same thing, which was extremely bizarre to me since she saw us walk in and had to have heard the manager ask the same thing only seconds before. We were also waiting for about 10-15 minutes after only ordering drinks and hadn’t yet had our orders taken when a server came to our table and attempted to give us the wrong order. When we informed them we hadn’t yet had our order taken the manager came up to us to take our order and seemed annoyed in doing so.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the fact that we were a different demographic than is typical at this establishment, but the manager repeatedly gave off very aggressive vibes towards us as she took our order. She placed her foot on the side of the empty chair as she took our order and it slid and hit my friend in the knee, which she did not acknowledge let alone apologize for. The food was good, but we all were so off-put by the behavior of that one staff member that it ruined the entire visit. We all felt collectively very uncomfortable with the vibe of the manager and will likely not be returning to this...

Only okay place I expected more from the website reviews. I was disappointed because they don't serve breakfast all day and it didn't say so on the menu nor the website. Be that as it may I ordered a hamburger for $12.50. It came with a salad however the lettuce on the salad was room temperature and was delivered on the same plate as the hamburger. Consequently my burger sat while I ate my salad. The hamburger patty was small and it actually was thinner than the slice of onion that came with it. The meat was dry and tasteless probably because I ordered it medium rare and it came in medium well and sat. I will not order a hamburger again. I am anxious to try the eggs benedict for breakfast

Okay, I returned a few days later for the eggs benedict and found it to be equally lacking. The service from Miguel was impeccable but the kitchen has absolutely no concern for the quality of the food they shovel out.

The potatoes were cold so I had them replaced. Then I got into the eggs benedict and found that the English muffins we're practically raw. I don't believe they own a toaster and they just lightly Grill them on the griddle so that all the edges were slightly brown and the middle totally was raw. Once again I ask for a replacement this time it was only a slight Improvement the muffins were still raw on the inside.

I strongly recommend that you just stay away...