Snooze! Snooze (an A.M. Eatery) is a brunch restaurant located in Tustin. They sell traditional brunch dishes like pancakes and french toast, and they have a very family-like atmosphere. I can already tell that Snooze will always, always be a place dear to my heart. I’ve only been once, but the experience gets a solid 9.2/10 stars from me.
Location
Let me start with where it’s located. Snooze is on the Tustin side of the Marketplace in Orange County, next to Hopdoddy. To be completely honest, I think any restaurant in the Marketplace is at least average in terms of location and Snooze is included as well- a sense of spaciousness, easy parking (with large parking spaces!), and easy to find.
Food
Food! I came here with my family- my mom and dad, and I think really that between the three dishes that we ordered none of them flopped. I ordered blueberry danish pancakes, which you can see in the picture below.
These pancakes are truly divine. One of the things that I look for in pancakes are if they’re fluffy or not, and these blueberry danishes definitely passed the test- they’re really thick in size, giving the pancakes that kind of lightness that you can feel once it hits your mouth. The pancakes aren’t dense or dry but almost life-filled and moist. Each pancake is also extremely huge, which I thought was really nice considering the price and how the fluffiness was maintained. As you can see in the photo, I asked for the cream and the blueberry coulis on the side, because I personally just hate when bread (or really any food) gets soggy. I may be biased, but I think these pancakes taste so much better without the cream and fruit dripping and spread all over the pancake- the lightness and soft texture is preserved in this way, not to mention (fluffiness).
However, my favorite, favorite thing about these pancakes had to be the lemon cream cheese that filled the middle of each pancake. Oh. My. Goodness. I think this lemon filling was honestly the highlight of the pancake for me. The cream cheese is good on its own already, but combined with the light bread and the blueberry coulis… It enhances the flavor of the dish so much more. It was so good! Dipping a piece of the pancake with lemon cream cheese spread across into the blueberry coulis dish especially was a high point of eating this dish, and a recommended way of eating from me.
My mom ordered the French Toast Neat, which I think was also a deliciously made dish, in the standard of judging french toasts. To be completely honest, I only had about one bite of it, but from my one-bite experience (and my mom’s opinion afterwards), the french toast was very moist and the fruits surrounding it were fresh- a very good quality dish. What I do remember a lot, however, is the butter that came along with the french toast. This butter really caught my attention because of how different its flavor was from other butters. Its sweet taste was a lot deeper that most offered butters, and it just had a much heavier and dense flavor, and generally a more flavorful taste than usual butter types.
Its texture was very soft too, and you can honestly already see it in the more golden color of the butter that it’s different than most. I think this butter worked great with the french toast and I really, really liked this butter, so much so that I actually asked for an extra scoop in a separate dish to have with my own pancakes. The butter offered at Snooze is truly something to keep in mind while ordering and eating.
Service
The service at Snooze was also on the excellent side- I was personally very satisfied with it. Our server was very friendly and relatively attentive to our needs. She checked on us often and our experience with the service at Snooze was high quality. However, I do remember that once near the beginning of our time in the eatery our server did forget one detail (about my dad’s iced tea), but I know that it was a busy day and it was a minor mistake. Overall, I really appreciated the servers’ attitudes and the service we received here.
Interior + Atmosphere + Aesthetics
I wanted to group the interior, atmosphere, and aesthetics together because I thought that it all went together and interconnected nicely. Well, this eatery has a very nice family-restaurant environment and feeling to it, with very vibrant colors and decorations. We went near Christmas time, and there were a lot of adornments like the one at right. I think this place is a really nice place to bring kids since the menu is very kid-friendly, but it’s also very fitting for any brunch with friends, adult get-togethers (there’s cocktails), and more since the overall atmosphere is inclusive and amiable.
The interior of Snooze is also very neat and tidy, with no visible places unkept or dirty. The only thing that I really have against the interior is that it is a little tight (at least for indoor seating), and once you enter the space is most likely smaller than you’d expect. As a result of that, the indoors of the restaurant tends to be very loud and a little chaotic, but I think the seating was placed very strategically: a lot of them are either small circles or little booths separate from each other, so that each party can have a little space of their own and have a feeling of aloneness. The slightly chaotic aspect of the restaurant is not too bad because of this and the noise contributes to the very breakfast-y and family-like atmosphere of the eatery.
Price
Ooh, pricing was definitely an impressive aspect of my experience at Snooze. This is because the prices of the dishes were not expensive at all! I think our total (for three people) was maybe 40 dollars (maybe a little more)? Compared to the quality of the food and service that we got, I thought that this was a really good deal, especially considering the fact that brunch places tend to be on the pricier side. When I saw the check, I was really surprised, to say the least, on how reasonable the prices were.
Waitlist
Another very prominent feature of this restaurant is the wait. A restaurant like this obviously would have long lines and a massive amount of customers, but ugh the waitlist for this restaurant is huge! I’m extremely glad that there’s a Yelp waitlist offered for Snooze, or else I would’ve been standing in a snake line for over an hour. We joined the Yelp waitlist at home on a Saturday morning, and we got seated maybe an hour and a half later. The half-hour at the end was after we got checked in at the actual restaurant. This is definitely not the place to come if you’re looking for a quick bite or coming out of impulse. I didn’t factor the wait into the overall rating because I don’t think it’s fair to judge the restaurant on its popularity, but if you ever plan on coming here, be mindful of the long wait that’ll come with it.
Overall
So, in total, a great 9.2 rating out of 10 for stars. I took off a slight amount at the end because, well, I love this restaurant but I wouldn’t say it’s a “perfect, 10 out of 10.” It was, of course, an amazing restaurant, but in the big picture, it wasn’t that one flawless eatery. There were also the factors of the slightly overwhelming noise and my parents’ opinions that contributed to the total rating as well.
Have-to-Haves
My have-to-haves that I recommend for when you potentially visit is obviously the blueberry danish pancakes, and also the french toast (my mom had the french toast neat, but it seems that the OMG french toast is the more popular choice- just something to keep in mind). It also generally seems like any type of pancakes is the favorite here.
Snooze is definitely on my list of favorites, and it’s an eatery that I’d totally recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind a wait and is looking for a delicious brunch or breakfast.
