The Caribou Cafe provides diners with great atmosphere

By Carrie Caine
Collegian Staff
April 26, 2006

The Caribou Café on Walnut Street in downtown Philadelphia offers delicious cuisine at a fairly reasonable price. The restaurant is conveniently located near the Avenue of the Arts and other Center City attractions, as well as some really interesting live entertainment.

When we entered the restaurant for a Sunday afternoon brunch, we immediately encountered a gentleman playing guitar accompanied by a woman with an impressive set of harmonicas. One of their adoring fans was knitting a lovely blue scarf while watching, which added to the atmosphere.

The restaurant was not crowded, but a loft area provided ample seating. The dark wood décor and the warm orange walls lent a feeling of coziness to the room, as did the snug booths lining the wall of the first floor across from an impressive bar.

The brunch menu was fairly limited, but provided a taste of the French cuisine that dominates the Caribou Café. Several different impressive-looking salads were offered. One standout salad had a cut of smoked salmon on top of an exotic mixture of greens and inventive dressings.

Though there were no appetizers listed on the brunch menu, an onion soup was available with croutons and Swiss cheese, and made a delicious start to the meal. There was also a tomato-basil soup on the specials list that looked lovely.

The entrees mainly consisted of brunch foods such as quiche and other egg combinations. Many of these included seafood and cheeses in the fine French tradition of small portions of rich dishes.

I enjoyed a crepe with shrimp, mussels and crab drenched in a rich lobster sauce with a petite salad on the side. While some of the shrimp seemed overcooked, the crepe was as thin as paper and as light as air, with the rich and flavorful lobster sauce rounding out the delectable dish.

The dessert menu was about as long as the dinner menu and included a fantastic-looking cheese plate with fresh fruits. Although it was tempting, I abstained from the cheese trap and instead enjoyed a warm apple tart with a nutty filling, a caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. The pastry was light, and the apple was thinly sliced so that each bite could be a perfect combination of apple, pastry, filling and caramel.

The only drawback to the excellent food was the heavy foot traffic. Our table was unfortunately placed. Though the upstairs loft was nearly empty, the hostess placed us at an awkward table that the servers passed every time they went to the kitchen. I would have preferred a less-traveled area for my Sunday brunch, but consequently, we had the best-served table in Philadelphia. Our meal took only about 45 minutes altogether, and the dishes were cleared the moment we finished a course.

The Caribou Café has fair prices for its lunch menu and brunch wasn’t too bad, but the dinner menu can get pretty expensive if each diner enjoys multiple courses, since the portions are not quite large enough for sharing.

The restaurant has its own joie de vivre, with personable servers, live entertainment on a regular basis and a standard theater crowd that brings life to the happy hours between four and seven each day. The wine list is attractive to connoisseurs of that kind, and the cuisine is delicious enough to satisfy any palate.

cainec1@lasalle.edu