Tableau Kitchen and Bar

Although we’re big fans and multiple-time customers of Toast Kitchen and Bakery – first in Costa Mesa, then Tustin – we weren’t as excited by its South Coast Plaza sister restaurant Tableau Kitchen and Bar, despite making multiple attempts to visit for breakfast and lunch.

While Toast hooked us with beautiful brunch-ready items including french toast, acai bowls, chicken and waffles, coffees, and teas, Tableau’s largely American breakfast-lunch menu includes similar items plus pastries, salads, sandwiches, and a few other entrees, plus a large collection of cocktails, wines, and beers. At dinner, the menu focuses on chicken, salmon, and steak entrees, burger and sandwich options, three appetizers, several more salads, plus desserts.

On each occasion we’ve stopped in, we’ve never made it through much of the menu. We arrived the first morning legitimately excited to try the beautiful drinks and pastries shown on the restaurant’s Instagram page, but our server informed us that selections would be very limited as the pastry team had quit the night before. So we ordered and loved the matcha latte, Thai tea latte, and sakura latte, each served in distinctive stoneware cups that we absolutely loved. We ate pastry items that were available – a brookie and a chocolate croissant – each of which was unremarkable.