Restaurant & Winery Reviews: Marie Callender's

Friday, April 24, 2009

Marie Callender's - San Ramon, CA

Marie Callender's
18070 San Ramon Valley Blvd.
San Ramon, CA 94583
(925) 355-0757
mcpies.com

I'm getting pretty good at finding ways to save money while supporting the local economy and feeding my family. For our four-legged kids, we buy 3 bags of dog food and get the 4th free. For hubby and I, we used a Valpak coupon for one free entree with the purchase of another entree and two beverages...and when we added on the soup and salad bar for $2.99 we actually got full from that and took the entrees home for dinner tomorrow night. Bottom line is that for $33.26 including tax and tip, we got a total of 4 meals! ;)

Marie Callender's cornbread is still as yummy as I remember from my first visits to the San Jose location years ago (I used to always get the chili and cornbread!) The creamy potato cheese soup from the salad bar was pretty good and I added some bacon bits and shredded cheese over the top because me like to haz sum extra cheeeeeese!

Although the salad bar in San Ramon is a lot smaller than the one in San Jose, it was decent and I liked having chilled salad plates filled with extra crisp lettuce and a variety of fresh ingredients (for the most part...but the croutons were disappointingly stale!) The chicken breast chunks were quite tasty and I always enjoy a couple of spoonfuls of cottage cheese in my salad, as well as mushrooms, peas and shredded cheese. I just wish they had sunflower seeds...

Braised and Slow-Roasted Pot Roast: "Tender chunks of chuck roast slow-simmered for full flavor and tenderness. Topped with a cabernet-beef reduction and served with caramelized vegetables and mashed potatoes." $13.99. I will have to update this review after tomorrow night's dinner because I took the entire pot roast entree "to go". :)

The service was good at first, but I just didn't appreciate the server delivering the bill right after the entrees were served. We just set the bill aside while we finished our salads and didn't plan on paying it until we finished, but the server came back and asked if he could close us out...so we did. Of course, we didn't get any further service after that, so it's a good thing we didn't need any drink refills.