By George Morris, Retaurant Reviewer
For the life of me, I can't figure out what Café Americain has to do with Casablanca, the Humphrey Bogart movie from which the restaurant borrows its name.
There are no desperate characters seeking letters of transit, no casino in the back, no big band and no kindly pianist playing haunting melodies. There is nothing exotic in the new College Drive locale, a former pizza parlor that is just a sidewalk away from one of the city's busiest streets.
But so what? If there's nothing in the atmosphere that lives up to the name at Café Americain, the quality of food more than compensates for that.
Café Americain's menu relies on South Louisiana, not North Africa - plenty of seafood and a smattering of blackened items. Yet, this is not the same old stuff you find anywhere else. What we sampled during two recent visits usually had its own special twist, much to our delight.
Take the spinach salad ($7.50). It's one of those items from which little is expected, but Café Americain surprised us. A generous portion of fresh spinach leaves is tossed with chopped egg, black olives, bacon bits and chopped red onion. Nothing unusual about any of that. The dressing, however, is different. Hot apple cider dressing? It sounded strange, but it is both sweet and tangy and it's a perfect complement for the other ingredients. This dish is large enough to serve as a lunch entrée or as accompaniment for a sandwich or cup of soup.
This isn't the only neat spin Café Americain puts on salads. Their Marianne dressing is a honey mustard that uses yogurt instead of mayonnaise as a base to make it more heart healthy. It's one of those rare circumstances where the fat isn't missed. We also found the Caesar dressing in the grilled shrimp Caesar salad ($8.99) especially robust with garlic, lemon and Parmesan cheese. There are a dozen grilled shrimp in this excellent salad.
I'd heard great things about the shrimp po-boy ($6.99), and I was not disappointed. This is one great po-boy, beginning with the bread. It has a flaky crust and is extremely soft. If I had to choose any bread on any po-boy I remember eating, this would be it. The dressing of mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and pickles is minimalist; the shrimp is not. The po-boy was full of nice-sized tails fried in a light, peppery batter. Top rate.
The crab and broccoli soup ($3.99 cup, $7.50 bowl) is a great starter. It is thick, rich and full of mostly small chunks of crabmeat and chopped broccoli.
The chicken cordon bleu ($11.95) is another winner. The chicken fried and stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese. The crust came out crisp and delicious, especially with the white wine cream sauce covering it. (A bell pepper cream sauce is an option.)
The shrimp Orleans ($11.95) features two shrimp stuffed with crabmeat, wrapped in catfish strips, deep fried and covered with a brandy tarragon sauce. This is a remarkable mixture of flavors and textures. The crust was soft - perhaps because the sauce soaked in - but the shrimp firm. The overall result was magnificent, and it came with a bowl of peppery gumbo.
Café Americain has a "create your own pasta dish" feature that allows diners to try various combinations of five meats, three pastas and 10 vegetables. We tried the blackened chicken ($10.95) on bowtie pasta with scampi garlic butter sauce and tomatoes, mushrooms and zucchini. The garlic and butter gave a light but zippy touch to the rest of the meal.
The 8-ounce prime center cut filet ($19.99) was cooked perfectly tender. My only criticism was that the meat gvae no hint of having been marinated or otherwise seasoned. Now, I appreciate the unadulterated flavor of fine beef as well as the nexst person, and had I added the shrimp brandy tarragon ($4.99), red wine mushroom ($3.99) or lemon butter basil with crabmeat ($5.99) topping, this probably would have been exquisite. Still, a $20 steak ought to be able to stand alone better than this one did.
The desserts make up for that faux pas. The Hershey pie ($2.99) and the chocolate mousse cake ($3.50) are excellent - full of chocolate, yet not too sweet. Either is an excellent finish to a meal.
Service was first rate during both our visits.
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