Jac’s mum’s birthday dinner, Caddy’s
Still catching up on posts! On Friday night last week, Jac and I, her brother J and her mum (known affectionately as Pattycakes) went out to dinner to celebrate Pattycake’s birthday.
We went to Caddy’s, full name Jack Caddy’s Bistro and Ale Bar, located at 280 Bannister Road in Canning Vale. Pattycakes had been there before and enjoyed a fantastic T-Bone steak. The rest of us had never eaten there before. Jac and I have passed by Caddy’s on numerous occasions when we’ve been to the Canning Vale Markets on weekends, but we’d never ventured in.
Pattycakes is a big calamari fan and had trouble deciding between calamari and pork ribs for her main course. J suggested we order a main-sized portion of the crumbed calamari as a shared entree so she could have both. The calamari was ok – I’ve tasted much nicer, fresher tasting and more tender calamari. The crumbed coating was a little too thick, I thought, and the calamari within was a little dry, a little hard. The flavour wasn’t bad, but not great either. The texture was definitely not impressive. So obviously a pre-made frozen product, recognisable from all those factors I’ve described.
Pattycakes had the Tennessee Ribs – pork ribs marinated in a sauce with bourbon in it (sorry, I was really tired and struggled to take decent photos – I didn’t manage to write down details or prices of the dishes). The ribs were huge and had a lot of meat on them. Pattycakes insisted we each try a bit.
Here’s the rib I munched on. It was quite a sweet marinade, really tasty and finger-sucking good. I really liked it. This was the dish I probably should have chosen.
I ordered the Nor West Snapper (yeah, “Nor”, not “North”). I’ve eaten nicer fish – this was so obviously frozen rather than fresh fish – the flesh wasn’t moist; it was quite rubbery. The chips were very nice though – the chips on the calamari dish were really tasty too. Not impressed with the seafood but loved the chips!
Jac chose the Reef and Beef. She said the steak was very tender, but she left behind a lot of fat (I thought about taking a photo so you could see how much, but eeeew, I didn’t think it was something I wanted to photograph!) She said the creamy garlic prawns were lovely though.
J had the Chicken Supreme – stuffed chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto and baked in the oven, served with potato and parsnip mash, and a creamy tomato sauce. I think he found the dish ok, nothing to get excited about.
All the main meals came with salad bar too – but only Jac had the salad. I grabbed a couple of slices of seedless watermelon and a couple of strawberries as we were leaving. The meals were more than enough for us – we couldn’t even fit dessert in. Overall, it was OK – nothing spectacular I would return in a hurry for – though I did enjoy the pork ribs. The most important thing about the evening though, was that Pattycakes had a good time. What can I say, it must’ve been the superb company! Hahahaa.
Just a note: I suppose it’s not the frozen-ness of food items that bothered me as much as the fact that I could tell it had been frozen – for all the wrong reasons e.g. the lack of elasticity and the hardness of calamari, over-thickness of crumbed coating, the rubberiness and dryness of the fish.