Thursday, April 22, 2010

Cafe Racer

Trailers, trailers everywhere! One of the newest is just a few blocks from my house -- Cafe Racer at South 1st & Live Oak..... I saw it's "installation" one morning when I was out for a walk, and it opened in mid-March. There's a motorcycle theme to it, from the bike parked out front (the side you can't see in the pic) to the pics on their website.Headed home around 7:30 pm on Wed, I was hungry, and knew I wasn't going to feel like cooking. These are the times when I really miss the Baby Greens salad drive through spot that was at S. 1st & Oltorf until it's unfortunate demise last fall. Popeye's fried chicken is always tempting, but I was hoping Cafe Racer was open for dinner (I remembered it was open for B & L, but didn't know about D). To my happiness, it was open! Walking up, I was immediately greeted by Russ, who's the owner. I ordered the Cooper, a grilled cheese with bacon & pears and a potato salad to go. We chatted for a minute, and I went to sit amongst the colorful picnic tables & adirondack chairs while I waited. I had noticed a new trailer was on his corner, which was closed, but advertising snow cones. Russ said it's apparently going to be Cuban food, so we'll wait and see on that one!Fairly quickly, he brought a brown bag out to me, and I toddled on home. Unwrapping the sandwich on my kitchen counter, I snapped the picture. Then picking it up to take a bite, I found out that the entire bottom side was burned. Like not uneatable ('cause I DID eat it), but fairly dark and unappealing looking. Fortunately, there was not a burned toast taste to it, because then we would have had problems! And while it was tasty & a good combo of flavors (sweet from the pear, salty from the bacon & I guess savory from the cheddar), what I quickly realized was, these are canned pears. And while it didn't say "fresh pears" on the menu, that's what I expected, fresh. As for the potato salad, to me it had a commercial-made taste about it; a certain twang to it that makes me think it wasn't homemade (trailer-made), though I could be wrong.So maybe my expectations were too high. I checked Yelp for other reviews, and they were all 5-star and glowing, so I felt compelled to write a 3-star one, stating my feelings/opinions as above. Would love to know what others (whose food opinions I know and trust) think of the place. I really want to like it, especially because the owner was totally nice.