Scratch Bakery Cafe — Restaurant in Laguna Hills

I loved this bakery/cafe, which I visited for the first time, on 8/19/25. They have quite an imaginative variety of fresh-baked pastries, & all of them look so pretty in their lengthy glass patisserie cases. Of the 3 pastries we tried, I liked the Cinnamon Apple Cruffin best. It was like having Grandma's apple pie, placed in the center of a light & flaky croissant.

My next favorite was their Coconut Passion Fruit Cake-a delicate multi-layered cake, topped with a creamy frosting, with tart & tangy passion fruit jelly in between layers, plus a bit resting on top of the frosting.

Scratch Bakery Cafe has a decent menu of food choices, including breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos, & the like, plus a fairly impressive list of lunch sandwiches, cradled in their delicious fresh-baked bread. Speaking of bread, cello-wrapped loaves of different varieties of breads are available for purchase here, as are wrapped packs of multiple cookies types, as well.

I had a Turkey Avocado Sandwich, on sourdough. This sandwich was tasty, & it came with choice of potato chips, or potato salad. I got the potato salad, & really enjoyed how creamy it was, plus I loved the dill & herb nuances. Overall, the sandwich was really good, with lettuce, tomato, avocado, red onion, cheese, plus 3 thin slices of turkey. For $15.95, I felt they could've added a bit more turkey, on this one, if I'm honest. The sourdough toast it was served on, was amazing.

Scratch Bakery Cafe serves a full selection of coffee drinks, & I chose a medium Americano, which I really enjoyed, with a Chocolate Bomb mousse goodie. The coffee complimented this delicate chocolate treat, so nicely!

They have a large wrap-around outdoor patio, with lots of tables & chairs. I found this to be a relaxing place, to enjoy delicious fresh-made food & treats.

It was hard to find fault with this bakery/cafe, hence my 5...

Maybe I ordered on a bad day or something, but this was really disappointing.

Food was ok, mediocre quality bacon and ham in an English muffin sandwich that was lukewarm and under toasted even after I opted for "well toasted" in their order options.

Coffee was ok, got a mocha and it had a mild and not-bitter flavor indicating the espresso shots were pulled well and they use decent beans, but it also tasted watered down and sad indicating that they mix the mocha flavor with water instead of dairy to incorporate it in and they used way too much, such that there was little room left in the cup for dairy. Also just not enough mocha flavor to begin with, skimped out on whatever sauce/powder they use.

Mostly I'm upset about the price of what I paid versus what I got. Y'all, if you're charging THIRTEEN DOLLARS for a breakfast sandwich, it needs to actually have a good amount of the things it's advertised as having. You charged me FOUR DOLLARS for additional ham that ended up being a piece that maybe weighs thirty grams (picture attached), that's embarrassing. That cost you what, 10 cents?

I'm a Chef, have run several successful restaurants, and I have done a lot of food costing and budget balancing. Usually you expect food cost to be about 20-25% of sale price- this is a good ratio that leaves you enough room to cover labor and other operating costs while still producing food that is worth eating and pulling in 10%ish as profit. What I got today, by my estimation, probably had a food cost more like 7-8%, about a third of what you'd normally shoot for to be delivering a worthwhile product. And it certainly shows.

What a rip off,...

While out running errands for work, we thought we would pop by a cute local place we had seen a number of times before but had never tried. The staff were amazing, the bakery and deli cases were well stocked and clean, and the outdoor patio seating were quite comfortable with padded chairs. Unfortunately, the breakfasts were barely more than passable.

I ordered the breakfast platter with eggs over medium (they were properly cooked) with hashed browns (like McDonalds, but not crisp) and bacon (like the precooked bacon you microwave from Costco) with their signature English muffin (more like a breakfast hamburger bun).

We also ordered the vegetarian breakfast burrito sans onion. The first notable difference was the use of guacamole instead of avocado slices. Additionally, the size was just perfect for a quick breakfast without dealing with leftovers. We strongly encourage eating the burrito with the homemade salsa to give it some real flavor.

Lastly, we ordered an iced coffee (medium roast, very mild and flavorful-not over-bearing), a warm caramel macchiato (whose flavor was judged to be better than Starbucks), and a larger-than-life cinnamon roll (excellent cream cheese frosting, very fluffy roll).

Overall very passable and we look forward to a return to try the...