Mary's Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Oceanside

So I don't want to tank their rating but we just had a pretty bad experience there and my thought was give them a good rating but hope the management, if they care, or owner, if they care, reads this. It's time to remodel and fix up the place. It's run down. I could go into detail but the manager needs to take care of all details. The restaurant does decent business and should set aside something to fix things up little by little at least. They should care about details like cleanliness and safety. They leave their used cleaning stuff out charging for everyone to see. Why when they have utility areas? We had newbie servers (I would think) who seemed to never serve before. They didn't seem to care either. They were unfriendly, uncheerful, slow, and the food and drinks came out in a seriously delayed fashion. There were plenty of servers and cooks there. We have 3 little kids and we had to wait 45 minutes for some basic breakfast food in a not full restaurant. I won't go into the bathroom but that needs a full remodel with a city permit. The servers never checked on us so we had to chase them down for forks, syrup, coffee, half and half, etc. They never bothered to refill drinks. They decided to bring us the missing toast 20 minutes after the rest of the meal. Kind of weird. Also the last lovely touch was our server left our card out on the counter in the front and told us to go up and sign. Anyone could have grabbed it. I've never seen that before. I turned around and asked the patrons behind us if they come often and they said they did but it was never this bad so not sure why today was a problem. They went and grabbed coffee themselves. Only saving grace, the food was decent. Hope this helps. Care about your neighbors and put the money they gave you to good use and give the place...

My fiancée and I are new to Oceanside and we've just moved in town. We've driven past Mary's Family Restaurant many times and figured to give it a shot. When I looked at this establishment from the outside, I thought it was your typical American Diner experience. Upon entering, I could tell by the expressions of the other customers, the "Oceanside" decor, interior artwork and the quality of the food being served, that I would like it here.

Service was fast and friendly, regardless that it was a Sunday morning and it was jam-packed inside. I'd say we waited at the door for maybe 2 minutes and that's fine because I was evaluating their menu and how the crowd was reacting to their meals. We were then seated and given menus and from then on service was appropriately timed and we were given attentive inquiries frequently.

The food portions are huge! At least by our standards and we soon learned that we should 'split' our orders from now on. The food came within a reasonable time and our tea was still warm when we started eating. The menu is very organized with plenty of breakfast options that are served All-Day! It IS, however, still a diner menu and so one should expect that everything will be that of "diner quality". I've heard that they have a humongous Cinnamon Roll that can be ordered too, but I'll save that for another time.

Overall, we were pleased with the service, the food quality, the food portions and the pricing and we will be coming back to Mary's again. It's a great place for inexpensive group eatings.

Note: The ONLY reason why I didn't give it 5 stars is because the outdoor seating is dirty and noisy (because it's right by the road and that's understandable) and the bathroom was a little unkept on a...

Great little family restaurant in the heart of Oceanside with some very “high’s” but a couple of “lows”.

The highs - Fried chicken! Was crispy and delicious. Definitely worth a return trip. The huevos rancheros might be the best I’ve ever had. Perfectly cooked and full of flavor. Even the tortillas they were on was delicious. I usually don’t eat that part, but ate every bite. Side salad add on for a $1. Large side with great tasting blue cheese dressing for just a buck! Finally the service was attentive, friendly and quick. They have make shift tables outside due to Covid so the servers have to cover a lot of ground and they did great.

The lows - veggies on the chicken dinner was definitely canned. Should offer the side salad as a substitution and they may have gotten five stars from me. Carne asada that came with my huevos rancheros was a bit chewy and not flap meat. Should just say Mexican style steak and I would have been ok with it. But then again, I really wanted ranchero style carne asada. The huevos rancheros were a pleasant surprise, so I may have never gotten to try it otherwise. For $18, maybe offer a smaller piece of real carne asada?

Everything else was ok to good, like mashed potato’s and pancakes so not planning to go into detail, but will say it was worth the visit overall and will know what to avoid...