Marbar struggles to compete in Decatur

Service: inexperienced

Best dishes: watermelon salad, queso fundido

Vegetarian selections: cheese and veggie quesadillas and burritos

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Price range: $$

Credit cards: all major credit cards

Hours: noon-9:30 p.m. Sundays, 4-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 4-11 p.m. Fridays, noon-11 p.m. Saturdays

Children: fine

Parking: street parking and some shared lot space

Reservations: no

Wheelchair access: yes

Smoking: no

Noise level: moderate

Patio: yes

Takeout: yes

Address, phone: 314 E. Howard Ave., Decatur. 404-373-2725.

Website: www.marcoastal.com

MARBAR

FAIR (0 of 5 stars)

314 E. Howard Ave., Decatur

What a great time to live in Atlanta.

Over the past few years, our thriving town has been hailed as the culinary epicenter of the Southeast. And it just keeps improving.

New restaurants continue to sprout at a rapid pace as our neighborhoods’ culinary personalities take shape. Decatur is one such hot spot that seems to have attracted some of the heavy hitters on the Atlanta food scene.

The bar has been set. Restaurants occupying the prime Decatur real estate must be on top of their game to stay competitive. It’s not just about the taste of the food. Customers seek transparency about sourcing and a reasonable correlation between portion sizes and pricing. We desire well-considered decor and an appropriate level of service for the concept.

It’s with this framework that I approached Marbar in Decatur, whose casual “beachside cantina” flair could be a home run with families. Seafood-heavy Mexican fare with good pricing on great drinks could carve a successful niche in most any neighborhood. With its beautifully relaxed decor and expansive selection of tequilas and mezcals, Marbar should be a place customers want to linger over margaritas and platters of carne asada tacos. Unfortunately, the “shoulds” and “coulds” here don’t translate into “dos.” Mediocre cocktails and unskilled execution in the kitchen prevent this Decatur spot from achieving its aim to become a neighborhood haunt.

Marbar originally opened as Mar Coastal in May 2013 in the brick building that once housed the beloved Decatur spot Feast. By December, it was decided a refresh was in order, and Mar Coastal closed its doors. According to restaurant management, customer complaints about the food, service, pricing and portion size prompted the decision to shutter and revamp. After a five-month hiatus, it reopened as Marbar with a more casual approach designed to appeal to the margarita-and-taco-seeking crowd.

The new watermelon salad ($6 half, $10 full) was a nice addition to the menu. Even though mine featured cubes of pale, nearly-rind melon, the chihuahua cheese and spinach salad with a peppy apple-cider-and-black-pepper vinaigrette made for a light summer starter.

If you want to go a little heavier to pair with tequila tasting, grab the fresh corn tortillas and dig into the queso fundido with chorizo ($7). There’s nothing elegant here, just a tasty slop of cheese and greasy sausage for buffer. Or maybe order those two items and call it a day.

I opted for the shrimp skewers ($12) to start and they really looked appealing, crisscrossed on the plate with a swipe of a brilliantly orange-hued escabeche sauce. But beauty is only skin deep. And it didn’t rescue the tiny rubbery shrimp layered with floppy bacon.

Similarly, the chile-seared tuna ($16) was a bit of a mystery, the texture of the tuna more like that of a fish left too long in an acidic ceviche marinade. Yet, even given the texture, the tuna was preferable to the octopus cocktail ($10). The medallions of octopus neatly served in a cocktail glass came without any of the fresh citrus-mango salsa the menu promised. Worse was the overriding fishy flavor emanating from the presented specimen.

After learning that the restaurant sources solely from a big-box food service supply company for everything including seafood, I looked longingly across the street at the restaurant that places prime importance on sourcing and maintains a large vegetable garden in an otherwise unusable narrow stretch of property.

And I’ll be honest here, after the shrimp, octopus and tuna debacles, I was less than enthusiastic about sampling additional seafood selections. But duty calls. And thankfully, the mahi-mahi tostada ($6.50) was one of the tastiest dishes I sampled on my three visits. Sure, the cold tostada was too thick, but it was just the neutral backdrop for the bright mixture of lime-cilantro marinated fish paired with sweet mango and creamy avocado.

I expected the tacos to be a saving grace, but lack of seasoning marred their success. Both the house-made corn tortillas filled with unseasoned beef and chihuahua cheese ($3.75) and the carnitas ($3.75) with bland guacamole fell flat. The best of the bunch was the slow-roasted pork ($3.75) with axiote salsa that oozed red grease.

The fajitas ($13) starred the same unseasoned beef, and the flank steak ($16) wasn’t much better, with only a rare bite of mouth-blasting dried chile powder. Not a grain of salt to be found. I might have been able to suck some salt from the accompanying fries. Alas, they arrived well after the steak, locked away in the freezer until the manager arrived with keys.

I hoped to be able to advise you to stop in for well-priced drinks, but if you’re like me, you don’t want to hunt for the lime in a margarita ($5), the red wine in a sangria ($6) or the grapefruit in a paloma ($7).

For parents, Mexican restaurants can be the perfect solution for those no-cook nights. Picky children can nibble on chips and scarf cheese quesadillas while the adults sip inexpensive margaritas. Every neighborhood needs one. Decatur has several. And Marbar will have to step up its game if it wants to compete.