I have been to Marston's in Valencia only twice. My first experience a few years ago was a good one. The food was tasty and the service was excellent. I don't know what has changed since then, but I have to say that my experience today was the complete opposite of the first time I was there. I met my friend for a late breakfast today. Breakfast is one of the things Marston's is best known for. First of all, $3.25 for coffee? Really? I can get a bigger, better cup of coffee at Starbucks for less than that, with free refills since I am a Gold Card Member. We were only offered one refill during the entire time we were there today which exceeded an hour. With the size of their coffee mugs, it's not hard to down a cup of coffee in a short amount of time, so we were hoping for more than two cups. Now on to the food ... my friend and I were not super hungry and didn't want to have any leftovers, so we decided to split the Vegetarian Omelet and added avocado for $1.95 additional. While I do appreciate the kitchen staff splitting our meal onto two separate plates, there was absolutely no presentation on the plate and it looked like something you would get from an inexperienced home cook. The omelet was overcooked and rubbery, and in general was not a tasty dish. My portion of the omelet had an older, overripe avocado on it, so one bite in particular tasted pretty nasty. The omelet was much smaller than the ones I get at Mimi's Cafe or another local non-chain restaurant. The potatoes were not cut uniformly, so obviously not cooked uniformly and were pretty "greasy". Both the omelet and the potatoes were not very hot, so the plates must have sat around for a while before making it to our table. I just can't believe that a restaurant KNOWN for their outstanding breakfast would serve such an amateurish dish. So if the food wasn't bad enough, the service was horrible. We were greeted by a very friendly man. I believe he was part of the bus staff, and he sat us at a booth per my request and immediately asked if we wanted something to drink. We opted to start with water. That's where the good service ended. Our original server came to take our order, but we hadn't decided what we wanted yet. She said she would be back, but didn't offer us coffee while we were browsing the menu. She didn't come back for a while, so I had to flag her down in order to get a couple of cups of very expensive coffee and to let her know we were ready to order. When we placed our order, she was pleasant enough, but our food took an extremely long time to come out. I have two daughters, who in the past have been servers at a very popular and busy chain restaurant, so comparatively the wait time for the food was absolutely unacceptable, but there was nobody to complain to or ask about it. Other than our food finally being delivered by a different server, no one ever came back to check on us the rest of the time we were there. That is unfortunate because at that point I wanted to give some feedback! We had to ask for ketchup and Tabasco since none was offered when our meal came. No one ever asked how the food was or if there was anything else we needed. You would think at least when the check was delivered the server might have asked "how was everything?". I have now had two experiences at Marston's; one good, one terrible, and the experience I had today has convinced me that this will be my last visit.
UPDATE: The same day I wrote this review, I also contacted Marston's via their website to tell them about my experience. To date, I have not been contacted in any way. This tells me that Management does not care that there are unhappy customers out there! read more