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Kitchen manager and head chef Rick Pachay and server Lisa Martin hold wraps and a quesadilla for customers at Cabanas Island Restaurant in Mentor.
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Been there done that? That’s what you might think about the Mentor restaurant at 8500 Station St., but you’d be wrong. In fact, you may not recognize the place in its transformation from staid steakhouse to island hang-out.
More than the décor has changed since the Blue Tip became Cabanas Island Restaurant & Party Bar. I could find no trace of any of the menu items from before, including my favorite pasta dish with wasabi accents.
However, much has remained the same. Owners Michael and Kelly Good are still there. So are the good service, innovative dishes and clean, comfortable atmosphere.
Salads, books and leadership
I had lunch several times over the past few weeks at Cabana, first with Ellen Cantor of Leadership Lake County. We discussed favorite books, recipes and the LLC class of 2007 over salads.
Hers was the Chinese chicken salad - Napa cabbage and mixed greens topped with chicken, mandarin oranges and fried wontons, served with sweet soy vinaigrette dressing for $8. Ellen enjoyed it, saying she’d definitely come back to have it again.
Grouper and reverse raffles
Mine was the buffalo bleu salad ($8) - chicken nuggets tossed in hot wing sauce on top of fresh, crispy greens with crumbled bleu cheese, onions and tomatoes. It’s usually served with creamy bleu cheese dressing, but I chose the island vinaigrette instead at our server’s suggestion.
I returned just a couple days later for lunch with my friend Jim McBride, chief of Lakeland’s campus police department. He ordered his usual, the grouper sandwich ($8), which he says he likes so much he can’t bring himself to order anything else. I can see why. He let me taste the piece he cut off to make it fit on the bun – it’s far too large for the toasted hoagie roll – and it was delicious. The mild fish was lightly breaded and not at all greasy.
With the freshness of the buffalo bleu salad still on my mind, I ordered another salad from the list of eight. The Caribbean salad is mixed greens and chilled penne pasta tossed with black beans, mandarin oranges, peppers and onions with a choice of Caribbean spiced chicken or shrimp, also $8. I again got the island vinaigrette. The greens were just as fresh, the chicken tender, but there was a bit too much penne – it was more like I was eating a pasta dish with lettuce than a salad with pasta.
The poet/bagpipe player and I talked about the upcoming Shannon McBride/ Emerald Society Scholarship Reverse Raffle Nov. 9 at the Patrician Party Center in Eastlake. He founded the scholarship in memory of his daughter Shannon, who passed away about four years ago from complications following a tonsillectomy. Tickets are available by calling Brian Reardon at 440-622-2808.
Web sites, videos and tsunami rolls
And then, my friend and coworker Jerie Green (of LCBJ and Lakenetwork) and I had lunch with Brett and Dick Fraser of Fraser Video Productions in Mentor.
Our conversation touched on everything from the upcoming Lake Communicators Apex Awards being held Nov. 8 in conjunction with the Lake County Business Expo to the latest projects the Frasers and Lakenetwork have been working on.
Dick and Brett just finished a project for the 2007 North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries conference held in Louisville, Ky. They also recently completed the United Way Campaign video “Super Heroes” that will be used to inform the public about this year’s campaign.
Jerie’s Web site development company is working on several Web sites, including one for Norman Mitchell of Willoughby, who will be selling poetry-for-hire online. Jerie also is editing a book for Robert Campellone of ABC Piping Co. in Brooklyn Heights. Campellone is publishing a history about the flow of immigrants from his hometown in Italy to Cleveland and to Hamilton, Ontario, over the last 100 years.
We didn’t have any problem fitting in bites of tsunami rolls between the conversation. The crispy-flaky spring rolls filled with pepperoni, sausage, chicken, cabbage, black beans, onions and cheese, are seasoned with Caribbean spices. They come with a side of sweet chili ranch for dipping ($7).
The Cajun shrimp ($8) also fit nicely into our chat and encouraged us to talk with our mouths full. Sautéed and tossed in a creamy Cajun Alfredo sauce, the healthy number of medium-sized shrimp are served with enough toast points to sop up the remaining tasty sauce.
Jerie wanted to stick with the island theme, so carefully perused the menu for something that seemed islandish. She oscillated between tilapia and grouper, finally settling on the margarita grouper with rice and broccoli.
She enjoyed the large piece of mild fish. The menu said it was broiled and dusted with Caribbean seasoning and served with a margarita cream sauce. “The grouper was sweet and tender and tasted fresh,” she said. “The sauce was almost nonexistent, however.”
Dick ordered light - soup and half a sandwich - to make up for indulging in two donuts for breakfast. He pronounced his sandwich of sliced, grilled turkey and pepper jack cheese good. He enjoyed the creamy soup with good-sized pieces of clam and was surprised to find corn kernels in it. He said he was glad it wasn’t chock full of potato though also said it could have been warmer.
Brett had the special wrap, chicken and bacon with Caesar-dressed lettuce in a warm flour tortilla. A culinary school graduate, Brett said the wrap was good, but not amazing, adding that the bacon was a nice touch and it left him full, quite a feat as Brett is not a little man.
I had some of both apps and a cup of French onion soup (OK, but not spectacular) so I opted again for a salad, this time the calypso ($8). More fresh mixed greens topped with blackened chicken (a little too salty), black beans, mixed cheeses, corn, bell peppers, tomatoes and red onions. Small piles of each were arranged around the bowl, creating a rainbow of bright colors almost too pretty to eat. I again had it with the island vinaigrette, now officially my favorite dressing.
Since it was Dick’s birthday, he got dessert whether he wanted it or not. And while our server, Josh, was quite attentive and we never had to remind him to refill our glasses, he refused to sing happy birthday. We were all secretly relieved. Dick was nice enough to share his brownie sundae – a warm brownie topped with scoops of vanilla ice cream, drizzled with chocolate and caramel sauces and squirted with whipped cream ($5).
We also tried the bananas Foster ($4.75). Though the bananas sautéed in butter with sugar, cinnamon and banana rum and poured over vanilla ice cream were not prepared tableside for the fiery effect, they still were delicious. Apple crisp and Key lime and pumpkin cheesecakes (neither cheesecakes are made in-house), are other sweet choices.
Take my word for it or choose from 16 other appetizers and an entire array of sandwiches, burgers, wraps, pizzas, seafood, chicken, steak and pastas. In keeping with its island theme, the restaurant features many tilapia and grouper entrees.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are all-you-can-eat grouper fish fry nights from 4 p.m. on. Cabanas is closed Sundays and Mondays. If you forget and show up in the area on one of those days like I’ve done before, you can always try out Deeker’s, which recently opened just down the street in the former Gatsby’s space.
Cabanas has space for meetings, with two banquet rooms that accommodate from 30 to 100 guests with no room charge. For reservations or info on the banquet rooms, call 440-255-0697.
Laura Freeman is editor of the Lake County Business Journal.
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