Ojai Restaurant Review: Marché Gourmet
Gay Martin and Patricia Cluché are the owners of the Marché Gourmet café and deli in Ojai, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer. Serving an all-day European café menu as well as dinner on weekends, it’s home cooking par excellence.
Tucked between the Ojai Playhouse and a clothing boutique on Ojai Avenue, Marché Gourmet has quietly been doing its thing since 2012.
Ojai is having a bit of a foodie moment right now. After a flurry of new restaurant openings that lured both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times here in the past few weeks, there’s much excitement afoot about our little town’s reinvigorated dining scene. And with so much hype about the newbies, it’s easy to forget about the oldies. But there’s something to be said about the places that have loyally served their community for years, faithfully doing their thing come what may. Places like Marché Gourmet.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, this little joint, locked between the Ojai Playhouse and a clothing boutique on Ojai Avenue, has quietly been doing its thing since 2012 when owners chef Patricia Cluche and front of house matron Gay Martin decided to downsize closing their large catering operation at the Garden Terrace after almost 20 years. Squeezing a deli, café, bistro and gift shop all under one tiny roof, Marché Gourmet feels a bit like their pied-à-terre, homely and cozy.
It’s mainly a daytime operation, with breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea served six days a week and a catering menu of sandwich party platters. Dinner is available two nights only on Friday and Saturday, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. While this may seem like a missed opportunity – after all, plenty of people go out for dinner on days other than the weekend – Pat and Gay have been in the hospitality game so long, they play by their own rules. And if serving dinner every night isn’t something they feel like doing, they don’t do it. Good for them.
The two nights a week that dinner is available, the menu is a showcase of the plethora of recipes chef Pat has amassed over the past 40 years. It’s surprisingly long for such a small restaurant, with something for everyone, from spaghetti meatballs for the kids to BBQ pork ribs for the carnivores, and the whole thing rings like the best of chef Pat, with smash hit after smash hit coming out of the kitchen.
First off, it’s gazpacho. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me there simply is no greater culinary pleasure than a chilled bowl of gazpacho on a hot summer’s day. It’s so ridiculously light and refreshing it feels a bit like a dive in the pool, and chef Pat’s gazpacho at $5 per deliciously colorful bowl is something I could quite happily dive into every day for the rest of the summer. Next, it’s tomato and burrata bruschetta ($14), a crisp and crunchy, soft and succulent little treat that screams summer in Italian. Paired with a cold glass of rosé it takes me right back to Tuscany, where I spent the better part of June.
Rosemary roasted chicken ($28) with roasted spuds and a side of succotash is cooked to perfection: juicy, tender cuts of meat drowning in a gravy that is, quite simply, liquid comfort. Equally flavor-punching is the sesame seared melt in the mouth rare ahi ($30) with an umami-rich soy-ginger sauce and a gentle kick of spice from a generous splashing of wasabi aioli. Dessert is a fat slice of cherry pie ($7), with a thick layer of pastry and lashings of custard and cream.
Are these dishes delicate, artfully laid out on fancy ceramic plates ready to make a splash on Instagram? No, they’re not. But are they mouthwateringly delicious, with a depth of flavor so delightful and reassuring it makes your heart sing? Absolutely. This is home cooking on a level only a professional chef can pull off.
The tiny dining room showcases Pat’s award-winning oil paintings of the local area as well as a higgledy-piggledy assortment of pantry items and collectibles. Gay’s dry sense of humor serving customers and Pat’s laissez faire attitude – she nonchalantly advises us to avoid the strawberry rhubarb cobbler because she’s overbaked it – only add to the character and charm of the place.
If there’s one thing every small town needs, it’s a small local restaurant that is far beyond any hype or trend. A place you can return to time after time, where the owners recognize and warmly welcome you and where you’re served unpretentious food that doesn’t compromise on quality or flavor. Marché Gourmet is that place and then some. If you haven’t been, you haven’t truly lived in Ojai.
Marché Gourmet
133 E Ojai Ave, Ojai
(805) 646-1133
This restaurant review was first published by the Ojai Valley News.
