MarieBette Café and Bakery

This is one of my favorite places in Charlottesville. All of their pastries are amazing! My girlfriend and I get a baguette every weekend and eat it with a variety of spreads. Their breakfast is good, but kind of uppity and not personally my thing. I like diner food better. I think the bakery is really what makes this place outstanding though. They also have what I consider the best coffee in town. Would highly recommend for any local or someone visiting town.

I usually am at Marie Bette for breakfast - love their pastries and breakfast menu! But recently had the chance to go for lunch and I tried (and ate every bite!) of their wonderful Niçoise Salad. It was super filling and the ingredients they use here are always super fresh! Can’t wait to have it again!

We found this by looking for brunch options in Charlottesville. We visited on a Saturday (the day the UVa basketball team ceremonies occurred) so it was busy, but we expected that. We had a 20 minute wait. This restaurant/bakery is small but we didn't feel we were on top of other guests or crowded. We initially were going to order from the bakery to go but decided to sit and eat. I am glad we did so we could try more lunch style options. My husband had the croque madame and I had the local salad with buttermilk dressing (I loved this!). Ee shared the bakery basket, too. Next time we may just grab a baguette and pastries to go but we enjoyed the food. The place is pricey, though, but it is traditionally French with local flair so we will return.

LOVE this place! I wish there was a location on the North end of town....I would definitely visit more if there was! It's still worth the drive to come into town. The staff is friendly and their pastries are absolutely delicious!

Amazing bakery! My favorites are the pain au chocolat, the chocolate chip cookies, and the flourless chocolate cake (you can tell I love chocolate); but the baguettes and tartes are also wonderful. The London fogs and decaf lattes are usually very good as well!

Order: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes, Quiche , Atlantic Salmon Baked Egg (we also ordered a bunch of bread but that isn’t included in the price)
Price: $38
Positives: The bread and pastries were absolutely phenomenal.
Negatives: Lots of waiting, took time to get our seat, then took a really long time to get our food
tldr: Amazing food and pastries that are well worth the pretty long wait.

Thoughts: When we pulled up there was already a line of people out the door, which in my experience normally indicates a place is worth waiting for. We grabbed some nearby parking and piled out of the car to get in line. It only took about 5 minutes to get inside and then we realized that there were two lines happening; one for the pastry counter, and another for the very small restaurant attached. At first we thought we would have to stand in line to order our bread and pastries and then go get in line for the restaurant but after asking a few questions they told us we could get in line to be seated, and then order our bread and pastries at the table. This is super helpful because the line to get bread and pastries was long, and the seating area only has room for maybe 30 people so the wait for that was about 20 minutes too. Its wan’t absurd but if you had to wait in both lines it would have felt maddening.

While waiting to be seated we took a glance at the pastries on offer and picked a few that we would order once we got to the table. We also grabbed a menu so we could decide what we wanted before we sat down. Eventually we were seated and placed our orders and waited for our food. And waited, and waited, and waited. I think it genuinely took over 45 minutes to make our orders, and get them to the table. I can’t be sure of the exact time, but I know that it was long enough enough of a wait that I flagged down our server and asked if she had placed our orders, or if there had been a mixup. She said no but there were people that had been seated after us who had already received their food, had finished eating, and were now working on leaving before we ever got our food.

While it’s definitely something that I would keep in the mind in the future, the size of the restaurant and the excessive wait times were really the only negative. This could also easily have been a one off too, maybe we just got unlucky and ended up the exception to the rule. Regardless, the food, pastries, and bread were all exceptionally outstanding. The pastries all had that light, buttery, flaky consistency that you look for in a good pastry. They weren’t overly sweet, and they were filled with just the most wonderful fruit and chocolate.

Both the quiche and the pancakes were amazing. The eggs in the quiche was light and fluffy, had a ton of flavor packed into them, and the fillings weren’t such large pieces that it overwhelmed the quiche. The lemon ricotta pancakes were everything you could possible want from lemon ricotta pancakes. Fluffy, a little sweet, that light tartness from the lemon. Absolutely outstanding.

The baked egg was a very unique dish I’ve never had before. They bake an egg in the small clay dish with other ingredients, but they only bake it for a short time. The egg is still very runny and comes with pieces of bread so that you end up eating it almost like a dip. It was unique and fantastic but a bit on the small side. It would make an amazing appetizer or small plate, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a full meal.

Overall this place was a little slow and very packed, but if you have the time I definitely think it’s worth the wait. Even when we weren’t planning on stopping to eat food I could absolutely see my wife and I swinging by this place from time to time just to get bread and pastries, assuming we lived in the area, which we unfortunately don’t. So I guess for now I’ll just have to be super happy that I got to experience such an awesome restaurant and bakery. But if you live in the area you definitely need to make this a regular stop.

Best chocolate almond croissants in Virginia. Whenever I'm in Charlottesville I pick up a 1/2 dozen of them and a 1/2 dozen of their croissants. The salted pretzel croissants are fantastic as are the palmiers l.

We have been looking for place like this - fresh pastry, out of ordinary food.
It is an excellent way to start your day A little hard to find - directly across from the Farmer's market downtown, but once you find it, you don't want to leave.

Beautiful French style bakery with amazing creations and tasty treats. I was introduced to this bakery over 3 years ago and I finally made it back to enjoy the cretzel along with a few other French favorites 😋

This place is a really good spot to get breakfast and eat some delicious pastries. I had the Atlantic and my boyfriend got the quiche and both were absolutely delightful. The Atlantic was basically caramelized onion, salmon, and two eggs baked on top with a lovely spring of dill to tie it all together. It was served with two slices of bread and both me and my boyfriend absolutely loved it! My boyfriends quiche was also equally delicious. It was very warm and the eggs were light and fluffy. It was served with a salad. Overall, the meals were just splendid. Afterwards, we got three pastries —all of which I’ve forgotten the names of, but basically it was an apple pastry, an almond croissant, and a bell-shaped custard pastry. All of them were Delicious and I think my boyfriend and I would certainly come back —if not for the breakfast then definitely for the pastries.

The waiters and waitresses were also very kind and worked hard. MarieBette gets incredibly busy so I know they have to work hard. Regardless, good food and good service.