Cafe 1217

I have heard so much about this café (mostly raving reviews) so I was looking forward to trying it out. I went for lunch with a friend. I ordered the Brown Derby Cobb Salad and she got the Firecracker Chicken Salad. I love a good Cobb and noticed that the menu listed the dressing for this salad as Buttermilk dressing. Be aware when ordering that they have two Cobb Salads; one is the Southwest Cobb and the other is the one I wanted. The salads are all expertly prepared and presented nicely on square plates. The first salad I got was actually the Southwest Cobb which I returned due to the mix up. The staff handled the situation very well and I soon had my Brown Derby Cobb. The buttermilk dressing was thin, brown, and watery. I sampled it before putting it on my salad and it tasted like a buttermilk vinaigrette. I don’t care for vinaigrette dressings and requested a creamy one (I like to see a blue cheese dressing on a Cobb). They offered ranch dressing and I was happy with that. My Cobb had pretty much the right ingredients (chicken, tomatoes, boiled egg, blue cheese, bacon, avocado. and greens) but was not a great Cobb by any means as it was light on some of the ingredients that make a Cobb great (perhaps the buttermilk vinaigrette was supposed to add tang that usually comes from the combination of ingredients). So it was just OK. My friend enjoyed her Firecracker Chicken Salad which was unique with pineapples, mango, carrots, red cabbage, chow mein noodles, and a sesame wasabi dressing. Both salads were lovely to look at and came with two rock hard slices of bread (each) as “pushers”. As good as my friend’s salad was she felt it was pretty pricey for a salad ($9.75).

We did check out the dairy case where they had some very interesting looking prepared salads including a broccoli salad that looked yummy. They have some different ways you can sample some of the offerings in the case and if I go again I will probably try that. They had other things in the case including some pot pies which they would heat up for you if you ordered them ( so they aren’t made fresh if you order them, they are simply reheated). There were also some enchiladas that could be reheated for you and some other things that might have been ok. The "reheatable " food might be good but seemed a bit odd to me. It reminded me of leftovers and I am not that fond of left overs. The menu changes every month. The café does a brisk business and everyone was nice but it didn’t live up to the hype I heard.