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| - At a loss for a new place to explore and write about, Kay and I journeyed to the chain restaurant stronghold of Robinson the other night for the dining choices in this suburban kingdom are multitudinous.
If I was to eat at a chain on this evening (and I do so often and somewhat willingly), it was going to be a place that offers the kind of food we don't get much of in Western PA.
The decor is as kitschy as a B-52's gig. Giant straw canopies hang from the ceiling. The pillars appear to be made from trees. None of the help looks or sounds as if they hail from the Carribean, but it is likely that some of them spent or will spend a Spring Break there. Billy Ocean didn't drop in. Ben Zephaniah probably wouldn't like the place. Jimmy Buffet might own stock in the franchise.
Authentic or not though (and I certainly have my doubts), Bahama Breeze lived up to its namesake in that the food was just easy to like.
Our opener was a serving of the Crab Claws St. Thomas. Blue crab is used, the generous amount of tiny claws swimming in a snappy "Island Citrus Butter". A loaf of pillowy "Cuban Bread" comes to the table in a bag (to keep it fresh) for the purposes of soaking up that wonderful butter. The crab claws were fun to eat and required no hardware or labor. You just put them in your mouth and pull that dainty meat off with your teeth. If there were 100 of them, we would have finished them all with extreme prejudice.
I so wanted to try Jerk Chicken, but at Bahama Breeze it's served with pasta, which seems so...touristy? Is that the right word?
Note #1-One really cool thing Bahama Breeze does is offer a "lighter portion" of many of their dishes, a godsend for those on a diet or on a budget as you get less food and pay a little less. That little perk almost made me order the Jerk Chicken Pasta as well as a few of their other entrees.
Being true to my blue-collar, sandwich-loving, Friday-state-of-mind self, I instead ordered a Cuban since I really wanted to try a good one, not a Panera-grade one (see my reviews archive).
Lo and behold, it's a dandy and flattened oven-baked Italian hoagie with Swiss cheese in lieu of Provolone, "Cuban" bread in lieu of Italian, pork, and more familiar components in tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise. No pickle or mustard was to be found, however. Not that I minded as this was one hearty yet tidy and planar hero, artfully sliced in half on a bias.
Note #2-Another cool thing about Bahama Breeze is their choice of sides. In the case of sandwiches, the choices include mere french fries, a tomato salad, yellow rice with black beans, and my pick; the brisk, fresh, palate-restoring fruit salad. Grapes danced with pineapple chunks in a ramekin as a small scoop of orange sherbet oversaw the affair.
Kay's Chicken with Cilantro Crema was good enough, but the mashed potatoes that accompanied it were a symphony of spud, roasted corn, and a trio of cheeses.
For dessert, we traded off on the Chocolate Island and the Bananas Supreme. Once again, cultural cred is in question, but the flavors were undeniable. I preferred the mousse/brownie silo that is the Island and the sea of chocolate sauce and vanilla bean anglaise that surrounded it. The Bananas Supreme is Bananas Foster collaborating with that school fundraiser classic, Banana Nutbread. It's warm, there's butterscoth, brandy, and vanilla ice cream involved; it's an effortless winner.
Being that this Bahama Breeze is the only one of its kind in this side of the state, it's easy to forget that you're dealing with a chain here. The quality food only helps to further that end.
And now...Bad Brains...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2KePzKdYO8&feature=related
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