By Cheramie Sonnier, Restaurant Reviewer
Restaurants
FUN/March 28, 1997/BATON ROUGE
Café Americain, tucked away in a corner of Jefferson Plaza Shopping Center at Jefferson Highway and Lobdell Avenue, has a reputation for being an excellent neighborhood restaurant that serves a variety of salads, daily specials, and pasta, seafood and chicken dishes at reasonable prices. Its reputation is well deserved.
Last year, one of the restaurant's signature dishes, crab and broccoli soup ($3.50 cup, $6.25 bowl) won executive chef Stephen Curry a gold medal in the soup category at the annual Acadiana Classic culinary competition in Lafayette.
The restaurant, which can seat 160, is divided into a bar area with dining tables to accommodate smokers and a much larger main dining area. The green painted walls are hung with old mirrors and other decorative items.
Recent additions to the restaurant's menu are bowtie pasta with Italian sausage, crawfish and spinach or shrimp and spinach for $12.99 and angel hair or bowtie pasta in tomato basil sauce with chicken ($9.99) or with shrimp ($11.99). Both dishes are served with French bread. On a dinner visit, we tried the angel hair dish with shrimp. It was tasty with a pleasant basil flavor and had lots of large shrimp. The restaurant offers sautéed shrimp over angel hair pasta as a Wednesday lunch special for $6.99.
We also sampled a special of the day, crawfish cakes with sweet peppercorn sauce ($6.99). This was an appetizer of generous proportion - that, with a small salad, would have made a filling meal for an average appetite. On another visit, we had crab cakes served with the same sauce. Both versions were scrumptious.
A grilled platter dinner special, described as drum with shrimp caper beurre blanc ($15.99), got good reviews even though we didn't find any capers in the dish.
The garlic salad for two ($6.50), which our lunch party of four shared as a side dish, was such a generous size that after everyone had served themselves as much as they wanted, we still had plenty left over. This salad, which had a kind of zingy taste that we all enjoyed, included lots of purple onion slices with most of the garlic flavor coming from the salad dressing.
Another off-the-menu special, trout almondine ($12.99), offered properly prepared, flaky fish with lots of steamed vegetables such as snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot slices and zucchini.
I've had the grilled shrimp salad ($7.99) on several visits to the restaurant and have enjoyed it every time. It includes a dozen grilled shrimp on a bed of iceberg and romaine lettuce with chopped green onions, mushrooms, sunflower seeds and wedges of tomato, egg and lemon. It is served with Marianne Dressing.
The grilled shrimp salad and the garlic salad are among the numerous items on the menu that are marked as "heart healthy."
Another "heart healthy" favorite with my guests was the grilled tuna salad.($7.99), which includes six ounces of grilled tuna served on a bed of iceberg and romaine lettuce with chopped green onions, egg, mushrooms, sunflower seeds and tomato and lemon wedges. It is served with a low-calorie ranch dressing.
We also enjoyed the spinach salad ($6.50), which includes bacon, egg, mushrooms and lots of black olives and sweet purple onion slices. It is served with a hot apple cider dressing.
Other favorites were the quesadillas ($6.99). On various visits we've tried all three varieties - chicken, crabmeat and crawfish - and liked them all. This is another of the restaurant's appetizers that is large enough to be an entrée for a small or average appetite if eaten with a small salad.
The restaurant's staff provides friendly, prompt and efficient service. The only miscue on our visits occurred with one of my lunch guests ordered a bowl of seafood gumbo ($3.25 cup; $5.99 bowl), but received what she thought was a rather small bowl. It wasn't until we got the bill that we realized she had been served a cup, not a bowl, of gumbo. The thick, dark, gumbo was quite good, with lots of shrimp and crabmeat.
Although the restaurant doesn't have a separate children's menu, there are items listed that should appeal to youngsters. On one of my family's recent visits, a 4-year-old niece enjoyed the fried chicken fingers ($5.50), an appetizer that consists of a half dozen strips of lightly breaded and succulent chicken breast.
The restaurant offers a number of homemade cheesecakes ($2.99) - we tried the creamy white chocolate cheesecake with raspberry topping. Yummy.
And, we can't forget the rich Hershey pie ($2.25), which features a filling made with melted Hershey almond bars and a chocolate cookie crumb crust.
The restaurant provides consistent quality, good service and convenient hours - ample reasons to return often.
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