Breakfast Nomination #9 - Marie Délices in Morningside

 Nomination #9 - Marie Délices in Morningside

Nominated by Kerr Henderson

Originally reviewed on March 20th, 2016

"Bonjour, bonjour!!!"

His score: 4.4/6
My score: omg, stop with the French already

He ate: le Marie Délices gourmand (basically a savoury gallette type thing with a choice of two ingredients and then a sweet crepe for after with one ingredient, and a choice of either a large coffee, tea or hot chocolate). Gary chose to have an egg and bacon galette, then a butter and sugar crepe, with a hot chocolate (£7.90)
I ate: the same option but instead having salmon and egg in my galette (£8.50)
Total cost: £16.40

Our pros: lovely interior; very bright, friendly service; tasty food; very peaceful and quiet, and reasonably good value for money
Our Cons: staff were friendly but dealt with us so quickly we had no chance to ask for anything extra; there was far too much French going on the whole time we were there (merci, merci! bonjour!! au revoir!!!!); the website for the place offers very little useful information; portions are a little stingy; and the place felt a little...not wanky, but that it specifically attracted wanky people.


Our experience: "Let's do a brunch this Sunday," I say to Gary every week. 
"Ok," he dutifully replies. 
"Actually, let's just have a lie-in on Sunday," I inevitably say every Saturday night. 
"Ok," Gary replies, relieved. 
But this week I finally had enough and said "Let's just get it over and done with!". 

Gary and I actually originally went to review this place in early January right before we went to London but the website for the place was next to useless as it has a section that says "our menu" that literally just says something along the lines of 'we sell crepes' but with no information on what kind of crepes, or if they even serve anything else. 
Also, there is 0 information on if they do brunch, and if so at what hours which is *extremely* unhelpful for us when we're trying to plan a review. 
So, Gary and I originally went around midday back in January and sat down, only to realise they stop serving brunch at 11:30am - information that was on the front of their menu, along with a list of everything they actually serve food-wise (perhaps useful information to put on your website, no?). 
We ate there that day but as it wasn't for breakfast, we didn't review it and decided we'd go back at a later date. 

Ok, so 11:30am in not particularly early, especially when the place you're reviewing is literally a 15 minute walk away from your front door but still as I've said in many reviews prior, I'm lazy and I like sleep so it took us over two months to return and today, mainly due to pure chance, we found ourselves strangely awake at 9:30am on this beautifully sunny first day of Spring so we just decided to go for it. 

The waitress who served us was incredibly bright and bubbly but spent most of our visit enthusiastically throwing French phrases at us at every opportunity, which felt more for the benefit of other patrons who may enjoy going here to practise their French and feel like they're in France for a bit. 
However, for me who did standard grade German and about two minutes of intermediate 2 Spanish, and Gary who hasn't done French since he was in high school in the late 1840s, we were a little out of our depth and uncomfortable. 

Service was polite but the waitress never stopped to breathe or ask us if we wanted/needed anything else. She simply cleared away old plates/put down new plates and garbled "merci merci!!" before scuttling off to the kitchen again. 


The food was very tasty but the portions were pretty minuscule even with having essentially two courses; savoury then sweet, we still left feeling a little empty after. 
Also, the hot chocolates were far from flavoursome so we probably should've just gone with our usual teas instead. 

We left to a lot of enthusiastic "AU REVOIR!! MERCI MERCI!!!!" as the door closed behind us and felt that this place was not really for us. Sure, if you want to pick up a tasty crepe and maybe practise some French while you're at it then on you go but ultimately this place smacked of the kind of location semi-snobby people might go to feel cultured and sophisticated and perhaps arrogantly show off their handling of the French language, but then again what else would you expect in South Morningside? 

Tasty food, small portions, way too much French so probably won't return. 

What’s next: (which at this rate we will get to in 6-8 months) in the Killer Restaurant nominated by Daniel (Fawcett). Though as this place doesn't actually seem to have breakfast on their menu (yet?), we may need to skip ahead to the next nomination after that which is TriBeCa in Morningside, again nominated by Kerr.