Marie Callender’s

Closed. Sign is down.

Called days in advance for an ealry breakfast meeting at 8am of party of 8.
Arrived at 740am and received a blank look of what reservation.
Not much service from the single waitress who is holding fort…

On the way back home to Vancouver we decided to stop here. I hear they have good pies, but I wanted breakfast.
Have you seen the calorie counts next to their menu items? NO wonder people are fat. Your daily calorie count is embedded into a breakfast plate.
So, being conscious of what I was going to order, I got the $ 5 breakfast plate that consisted of 2 small pancakes, eggs and 2 sausages.
Pancakes were good, eggs were good, sausages were way overcooked. And I’m sure the calories in that small plate were still way over my limit.
Alas, I don’t think I’d come here again. Too chain-​y for me and no one was in the restaurant.

This place is a huge rip off.
$ 12 gets you a turkey avocado croissant sandwich with no condiments and no flavor. $ 1 for a paper thin slice of cheddar. Avocado? Well, good luck finding it they did a great job at hiding mine.
The funny thing about the sandwich is I bought it since I didn’t have much time for dinner. I ended up taking it home and adding some actual mayo and slicing my own cheese.
I should have just made my own sandwich. It would have tasted 10 times better and also much cheaper!

I will start off by saying I only went in for pies.
That being said, the staff was extremely patient, attentive, and friendly.
The pie is… Honestly, the pie was kind of bleh to me and when it’s on sale for $ 7.99 + 0.80 cents for a pie tin I still feel like it’s bleh. I’d rather go get ice cream.

Cheap food, friendly service, tasty pies (though limited when fruit is off season) and a decent house wine. $ 2 happy hour is great featuring burgers, chicken tenders, quesadillas and more. Free parking out front.

Well, I have been a MC fan for years (I am from SoCal), and back in the day one could always get a good meal. It seems now they have brought the restaurant food DOWN to match their mediocre frozen food quality at the local supermarket instead of the other way around. I think MC as a whole needs a management, menu, and décor transplant. What the hell happened? They have dragged poor Marie though the mud…

I am kinda bummed. I really remembered the pies as being better. However the crust just had that same old processed store bought feel. I wasn’t allowed to eat dinner there since I don’t have dentures, but it looked like a pretty sad experience.

The food was barely edible and the only reason for the 2 rating is the staff was courteous. We are having the breakfast buffet and the only portion that we agreed was decent were the omletes. Stay away! Stay far far away!
Seriously though, you’d think that a company with a brand name such as Marie Callender’s known for comfort food and outstanding deserts would have good old fashiond comfort food that was actually edible. Not at all the case here. I feel really sorry for the staff… they should find a new place to work immediately so they can actually make some money from tips. Fire the management team, the cooking staff, and start over…

I was so grossed out by this place. There was some server in the service station that had a chronic cough. The bathrooms smelled like something died and average age is OLD.
Save yourself the trip and don’t go.

This place is so outrageously awful I’ve invented a new adjective: «Revetching».
The subdued mauve and aquamarine hued carpeting is nearly indescribably awful, but I’ll try: Imagine a mythical pink unicorn vomited on a faded smurf, and the said vomit was exposed to UV light for 26 years. Then dead carcasses were dragged through the high traffic areas by stew faeries
Yes stew faeries, because the entire menu is some version of awful mushy stuff. There is the cream chipped beef class, the over cooked mashed carrot class and the put-​peas-​in-​it-​for –color class.
Desserts? More viscous, gelatinous, quivering corn starch cruddies like fake lemon meringue and key lime jello-​like pie. Do the limes really come from the Keys? I think a pretty fair guess is they come from a lab that makes powdered versions of artiifcial lime-​flavored compounds called citriflavinoids.
I would literally rather eat the last call pot scrapings from the cafeteria at a state run home for the in-​firmed. Why, dear Lord of Culinary, is this place allowed to stay around?
May I kindly suggest you avoid this collision of beef bullion and paste?

Need a quiet place to break up with your boyfriend? This is it! That would bring some life drama to the place! It’s so serene!
And, when I go there, I feel so young! Or, the Council on Aging was meeting nearby when I’ve gone there. (Sorry, I guess that humour is a form of age discrimination; and, they definitely do have an older customer-​base.)
I’ve been in there for drinks and dinner and I noticed that everything costs more there this school year. But, the martinis are great! Rum n cokes are nice and strong.
The food is Americana. I love the soup-​n-​salad bar (though I said it’s spendy) and then have some sort of pie (their specialty) for dessert.
Not super-​great, but not bad. Not bad. I go there if I can’t think of any place else to go.

I’m not sure how their regular food is; I’m a vegetarian. so my review is based on the variety of options for vegetarians.
Or lack thereof. I am no vegan Nazi; I hate anyone making any special effort on my behalf. I can go anywhere generally and find something to eat. And it literally pains the living hell out of me to even have it brought up. Just let me glide by…
I would say that most restaurants do something – even a small thing – for the 10 percent of their potential customers that are vegetarians. And given that most people will go to a restaurant in a group of about three on average, it means that there is probably a 30 percent chance that a Party has a vegetarian in it; it just makes economic sense to throw a couple of veggie dishes that aren’t an afterthought.
This is a message that Marie Callender’s has clearly not heard. In their entire 12 page menu the only meal options for us lesser humans is the refuge of the lazy chef that is «steamed vegetables» and of course a salad bar. That’s it.
Out of what appears to be like 100 items, this is it for us pathetic souls. Gee thanks.
And unlike other restaurants that offer a boca substitute for their burgers, apparrently these would take up too much space in their freezers.
I could understand it if meat was their «thing»… But this isn’t Ruth’s Chris Steak House for F’s sake… So c’mon! (obligatory Gob Bluth reference).
So here I sit with my family, typing this missive, staring at my vegetable soup and contemplating my trip to the salad bar while my family enjoys their filling meal.
Dummies.

Here’s the thing… you see these pictures on the menu and online… and pretty much everything tastes just like it looks: not good.
Everything is just so «prepared»… or pre-​prepared probably. Things kind of have that glisten like they have been sitting out for a while, or have just been awoken out of a deep freeze from being pre-​prepared and frozen. Food with thick salty sauce, not very fresh veggies… I don’t know… it wasn’t the worst place I’ve eaten but it really wasn’t all that good.
(Not to mention, the atmosphere was more like a nursing home than a ‘happening’ place to hang out and get a nice meal… perhaps that is to be expected at a place like this?)

I had the grossest experience at this Marie Callenders.
My friend and I went here for her birthday lunch. We both LOVE their potato cheese soup and we hadn’t had it in forever.
We walked in and were sat at a table where no one greeted us for over 5 minutes. We saw the hostess bringing a table who came in after us some drinks and so we asked if our server knew our table was hers. She said she would let her know…
Enter– The server… Crotchety woman walks up to us and says, «I knew you guys were here. I was busy. The plummer came in and now our water is brown. What do you want?»
BROWN WATER!!!
We didn’t want soda because they have pepsi, and the server told us they had some iced tea made in the morning without the brown water. So we ordered the tea.
Our food was mediocre at best… and neither one of us drank the tea because we were too disturbed. We paid like 2.25 a piece for tea we didn’t touch.
No thank you to this Marie Callenders. Yuck.

First: I don’t ever eat in the dining room here. I treat Marie Callender’s as just another place on my happy hour trail, which is probably why I like it so much.
If you’re looking for cheap drinks and cheap, filling food, Marie Callender’s has one of the best happy hours in Seattle. Their entire happy hour food menu is $ 2 items, and includes a cheeseburger & fries, chili & chips, spinach dip, chicken tenders & chips, loaded fries, etc. If you’re looking for well-​crafted taste sensations, you’re in the wrong place: this is booze-​soakin’ food.
All drinks are $ 2 off during happy hour, making most of their draft beers about $ 2. The draft selection is pretty limited, but again: this is not the place for a connoisseur. Their bartenders vary in quality: keep an eye out for Jared, who has the sort of quick, friendly, unobtrusive service that I wish all bartenders had.
Seating is limited, but in the off hours you’ll never have problems finding a table.
Where else can you get a cheeseburger, fries and a Widmer Hef for $ 4?

We were over at Northgate one night and were having a hard time deciding on a place to eat. The husband suggested the new Romano’s Macaroni Grill. But, the last time we went to a Macaroni Grill (in Portland), the waiter came over and wrote his name on our table cloth in crayon, and that was just too weird. Plus, I figured it would just be mediocre, overpriced mall food.
So, then he suggested Marie Callender’s and I agreed. It was not my first choice, but we’d been before and have always had reasonably decent meals. Boy, have they changed.
They completely messed up my order. I ordered a basic burger with a chicken patty subbing for the beef, which the menu clearly states you can do. The waitress put the order in correctly. BUT, the kitchen, upon seeing the words «chicken» and «sandwich» apparently decided I’d ordered a chicken club, the only actual chicken sandwich on the menu. And, so I was brought this absolutely disgusting plate-​o-​fat that include about half a jar of mayonnaise, some incredibly greasy bacon and this oleaginous slice of food product that was supposed to be cheese.
Unfortunately, someone other than our original waitress brought out our meals, so the it was not immediately noticed that the sandwich I was brought was not the one I had ordered.
My starter salad and the Caesar salad my husband had as his entrée were both fine. AND, more importantly, when the mistake was pointed out to the restaurant staff, they took the sandwich off the bill. (By this time, I had picked at and ate what I could of it, and did not want a replacement sandwich.)
For that reason, they are getting two stars instead of one. That sandwich was really gross. Even my much less picky husband agrees there is something to be said for presentation and they should have been embarrassed to serve up the mess o’ lettuce and lard they placed before me.
Needless to say, we won’t be returning any time soon…

This review is based on only one breakfast and a birthday pie. The eggs were scrambled, the bread toasted, the bacon crisp, the water cold, and the staff fast and friendly. The menu was standard, full of familiar comfort food. I didn’t order fancy; would I expect eggs benedict to be exceptional here?
Sure there were stroked-​out gasbags AND pimple-​faced peckerheads eating here, but when the food served is of a reasonable quantity, is reasonably good, and is reasonably priced, it’s reasonable to find variety in the clientele.
But what of the birthday pie? My son said it was delicious.
Three stars = A-​OK, and that’s just what Marie’s is. It’s not fantabulous and it’s not sucktacular.

I wanted to like Marie Callender’s, I really, really did. It’s sort of like the hot quarterback of the football team that you worshipped for from afar in high school then 7 years later got the opportunity to date him, so you dated him for months and months and just kept hoping you’d get some sort of attachment to the guy, but never could. Sure, it’s nice enough, friendly, a little sweet, and it definitely looks good, but it’s just not there, and you can’t make yourself find «it.» What, I’m the only one that happened to? ;) It’s like you think it’s going to be so great once you get it, because the name and the stories, but it ends up being just not really so great, but it satisfies for the time being.
As I have proclaimed elsewhere, I detest chain places, mom and pops are more my bag. So after a «cupcake trip!» to Trophy my roommate proclaimed his hunger and after a pathetic attempt at finding parking at Azteca (his choice) in Northgate I casually mentioned pie and off to Marie Callender’s we went. We got there, and I can relate to the other reviewers who likened the joint to a retirement home, we were easily the youngest people there, by probably 40 years. The two old couples behind us were talking about Seahawks football and at one point of the men mentioned that they looked like «a bunch of bums out there!» I giggled. We were definitely a lot younger than everyone else there, but at least you don’t have to worry about loud obnoxious groups, in fact we were the loud obnoxious group.
I digress, our server was friendly, relatively attentive, although apparently forgetful as she forgot to refill my lemonade for quite a while, and her hearing may have been off because when my roommate asked to add soup and salad to his meal for $ 2.99, and he said he DID want soup, she reminded him about 20 minutes later that if he changed his mind on that soup to let her know… uh, we’re still waiting for you to bring it to us sister! Overall I think she was just overwhelmed, as if the restaurant was understaffed tonight or something. Who knows. It wasn’t bad service, it just wasn’t great, and I want great.
I got some sort of spicy chicken wrap thing, the lettuce was sort of mushy, it came with fries, the fries were cold, I didn’t eat them. The roommate got ribs, he said they were good, but this is a guy that will eat a stick if he got hungry enough.
I think in the future our only experience with the restaurant will be to pick up a pie and bring it home. I wasn’t that impressed with their food, but the pie we brought home is deeeeeeelish!

So this is what it comes to. I am stuck with going here to sate my salad bar jones.
They do have a pretty ass kicking salad bar. I just hate that my tab was $ 11.27 (before tip, obviously) for the fucking thing. No, I don’t want soup too, and you can KEEP the giant, cakelike, sweet cornbread mothership on a plate. I JUST want the salad.
Ok, well, maybe just a little bit of potato cheese soup.
BUT NO FUCKING CORNBREAD, OKAY???
I’ve tasted several other things here over the years and only have comments on a few. The potpie is pretty good. It’ll kill you, though no worse than gin and smokes which are my downfall.
The turkey dinner… can you conceive of a dinner meant for ONE DINER that could feed two easily plus leftovers? A friend got one and had food for the rest of the week. I’m not kidding. It should be on a platter in the MIDDLE of the table, not in front of one person.
This place has a LOT of old people. The music is a little hipper than your standard nursing home (more Santana than Sinatra) thank God, and there is a little less chance of smelling urine and hearing old ladies cry forgotten in a corner room (although this can happen as the service is a tad slow), but basically it’s an overeater’s dream of what God’s waiting room is like.
Don’t eat the cornbread, save it to rest your weary head on when you collapse, drooling and bloated, on the table.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot… the pie’s good. Get the pie. I’ll take a lemon meringue.
Thanks.