Review: City Cafe

There may be no more appealing entertainment combination than dinner and a movie. Silver-screen fans from 8 to 80 enjoy this pastime. The only catch can be finding a restaurant where you can be sure to be served and have time to enjoy dinner and still make it to the show on time.

The opening of Louisville's fourth City Cafe next to Baxter Avenue Theatres in the Mid City Mall fills the bill beautifully. It follows the successful City Cafe formula of counter service. And while that makes the wait for a meal short, this is by no means "fast food," even though you will spend only a bit more for a meal that you would at a burger or chicken chain.

The daily sandwich selections, served on sourdough, rye or honey-wheat bread, are made with such ingredients as spicy cappicola ham and smoked turkey breast, medium-rare roast beef with blue cheese crumbles and basil-roasted chicken breast with Gouda and shallot-mustard mayonnaise.

City Cafe is a vegetarian-friendly place, too, offering a grain-based garden burger, a portobello mushroom and roasted eggplant sandwich and a vegetarian club sandwich. (Cheese can be left off if you are the vegan version of vegetarian.)

With the exception of a monthly sandwich special, the main menu doesn't change much. But City Cafe offers daily meat, vegetarian and pasta specials from a rotating list. This varies from location to location.

The Highlands location is the only one open for dinner. It even stays open pretty late on weekends, so that patrons can stop in after a movie for a dessert, a coffee drink or a glass of wine. (This is also the only location to offer wine by the glass and bottled beers.)

A friend and I stopped by before showtime the other evening and found that the food, the setting and the price added up to make this a fine place for a quick bite.

The decor is bright and contemporary, with walls painted different solid colors, formica-topped tables and a wall devoted to a changing art show. If you want to watch the crowd come and go, head to a table in the upstairs loft overlooking the rest of the cafe. The music playing softly in the background during our visit was an Ella Fitzgerald CD. (Ella does a lot sexier rendition of "Ding-Dong the Witch Is Dead" than the Munchkin chorus ever did, by the way.) We bypassed the sandwiches in favor of a pair of the day's specials.

One of these was a chicken quesadilla topped with a fresh salsa ($5.95). A pair of flour tortillas had been filled with large, tender pieces of grilled white meat bound together with just a little white cheese and seasoned with onions and mild green chilies. The dish was quartered for easy eating. The special included a house green salad, and my friend chose an aromatic ginger miso dressing to go on it. A bottle of Fuller's ESB ale from England ($3) was the beverage of choice for this dinner. A staffer very correctly asked my friend if she wanted a glass for it (which she did.)

I had the pasta salad special of the night ($4.25), which was a bowl of penne tossed with shredded carrots, slices of black olive, diced tomato and an herbed oil. The pasta was al dente, and the ingredients blended nicely in the dish. I didn't choose this option, but City Cafe will add roasted chicken to any of its salads for an extra $1.95.

A glass of Rex Goliath merlot from California ($3) made a smooth, fruit-filled accompaniment to the savory pasta.

The counter display case was filled with several desserts offering enough selection to satisfy a variety of sweet teeth. When we asked about the origin of the desserts, we were told that they were mostly locally made and purchased for the cafe. They certainly looked fresh. And a slice of grandmother's lemon cake ($4) provided a light, citrusy coda to dinner.