Cakes & Ale

Last night, J and I went to Cakes & Ale (Decatur, cakesandalerestaurant.com. I'd read a lot of good things about it, and we were heading out late (8:30ish) and weren't sure where to go.

For those of us who are a little dim, getting used to the setup took a little while. We received a choice of house purified water or tap (mmm,purified) and then the starters menu, white chalk-like paint on a small chalkboard. Like the table next to us, we had no idea that the main menu was on the back of the chalkboard, though I listened in to learn it for ourselves. And although the little chalkboard is cute, the big chalkboards in the restaurant hold all the details about the dishes' side components or details. I wish I had known about that part earlier.

To start, J ordered an 07 Domaine Faury syrah from VDP Descollines Rhodaniennes, Chavanay, France. Nice and smooth. J said it was a little young but a very easy to drink wine. C&A does carafes which is nice for us because we didn't want to get a whole bottle. On the whole, I think the wine list was very reasonably priced, though I also don't really know anything about wine; that's J's area.

I want to mention that I liked the butter that came with the two slices of bread. Tasty.

For a starter, we got the ham gougeres. Now I have to mention that the C&A menu is pretty simple in concept overall. Without really knowing, I want to say that they concentrate on getting high quality product and treat it really the right way and that's what makes this place great. So as I looked over the starters, I saw Fra'Mani salumi (which we love, but that we can get from Star so I didn't want to pay $12 for), housemade charcuterie plate (which confounded me because why would they have both Paul Bertolli and their own housemade stuff? I saw a table get this next to us, I think, which included rilettes and an assortment of pickles. They didn't eat much of it.), a couple salads... So I settled on the ham gougeres. I imagined the gougeres would be warm and cheesy, filled with gruyere with a nice ham in between. As a Southern touch, I imagined it would be country ham, a little too salty, the kind that you can't stop eating.

Sadly, for me, I didn't see that the big board proclaimed this dish as "ham salad gougeres". I found the dish to be rather odd actually. The gougeres seemed stale; they cracked when you bit into them. The salad was a little weird. Was that tarragon in there? And they were inconsistent. I had two of the three. The second one had a nice twinge of mustard. J got no mustard at all and said the red onion was a bit overpowered. Red onion? I didn't get any of that at all.

For a main, I got halibut which was served with manilla clams in a saffron/tomato broth. The broth had a nice strong seafoody flavor, high on salt, to balance the halibut. Also, there were great northern beans, yum. It seemed a bit weird though (to me) that as I moved through the broth, flaking my halibut and dousing it in the broth, suddenly there was an intensely concentrated and thickened part of the broth. A pureed portion of white beans perhaps? I'm not sure. Definitely some butter in there. It was good, but I came out of the dish feeling overly salted. The two slices of toasted bread had that nice butter on it, but they were stale. I couldn't bite into them really.

J had the burger, medium rare. It came with cheddar on it, as well as whole grain mustard and grilled red onion. I took a bite, and it was okay, but I have to say that I like my burgers better. And I like toasted buns (this wasn't) and I thought there was too much dense bun for it. Tasty, salty shoestring fries balanced it out. J said it was pretty good.

For dessert, we had the Mexican coffee (the only one that is decaf) which was strong and delicious. We also had the excellent strawberry pie. We saw that phatty cakes are on the menu (which I had known from previous research), but I was sad that they didn't have our favorite (chocolate). Next time if we plan to come here in advance, I will call to see if we can get the chocolate phatty cakes. They are SO GOOD.

So Cakes & Ale was a good experience. We had fabulous service from Adam, who seemed to be covering at least the whole front part of the restaurant. For me though, if I'm dropping $85 (before tip), I can't help but think that I would have preferred to go to Floataway. A lot of it depends on menu for me. I bet this is a great place to go in the height of spring.