DaDeO

(April 19, 2008)
http://www.dadeo.ca/

Two reviewers: ts and js

[ts]
To get ahead of ourselves, this was blah.

[js]
Dadeo is located on Cambie Street, right along the Canada Line construction. It used to be the Tomato Fresh Café, which has moved to a new location because of the diminished business from said construction.

Dadeo is fairly new (I think about a year old) and we have been meaning to try it since it opened. It is also just a stone's throw away from Pied-à-Terre.

Saturday lunch is our opportunity to try restaurants. I suggested Ajisai first, but in typical decision-making fashion, we drifted and drifted until we drove along Cambie Street and spotted Dadeo.

Upon entering, we were greeted and asked whether we wanted to have lunch or brunch. We asked if they could just get both menus to peruse and then decide after surveying our options.

I decided against the brunch options and opted for the lunch menu. Our server said that the only items available from the lunch menu are the po' boys. Which was fine with me, as I had a sort of a craving for fried oysters anyways. When I saw that they had a fried oyster po'boy on the menu, I was set.

[ts]
It took me longer to decide. I usually want something besides a sandwich. My choices were between the crab cake po' boy, the blackened catfish, and the andouille sausage. I finally decided on the crab cake. I had sweet potato fries as a side.

[js]
I had my fried oyster po' boy with a side of jambalaya rice (as opposed to hash browns or the sweet potato fries option).


foreground: crab cake po'boy w/ sweet potato fries
background: fried oyster po'boy w/ jambalaya rice

[js]
The fried oysters po' boy was merely okay. It was nicely fried and was not greasy at all, but I was missing some oysters. There seemed to be a lot of batter and filler for the oysters. (Take a look at it, to the left.)

The baguette was chewy and a tad stale, which was disappointing to me.

Of all, the jambalaya rice was -- well, I really did not like it at all.

It was not even warm, the rice grains were hard, and the "jambalaya stuff" on it was kind of eck.

[ts]
I tasted the "jambalaya rice" and I must say, it is not like jambalaya AT ALL. That's the thing, see.... I'll get back to this later. On to my food first.



[ts]
The sweet potato fries were not bad. They seemed to be battered, not just fried. The inside was really soft, like mashed sweet potato.

The crab cake po' boy was not bad as well. They looked pretty good. However, like the oysters, the batter seemed a little thick. That is, it overwhelmed the crab. The sauces (mayo and "scratch cocktail" sauce) also hid the taste of crab. I agree with JS about the bread.



[js]
Maybe we caught them on an off-day and I wouldn't be averse to trying this restaurant again. It would have to wait though as there are other restaurants in the queue.

I can't get past the stale bread though. I can forgive the lack of oysters and even that jambalaya-ish rice, but the stale bread is almost unforgivable. Think of the equivalent: if you got stale rice and/or hardened rice in a Chinese restaurant, would you be able to forgive it? Hardened rice becomes fried rice and the stale bread here should have been transformed into breadcrumbs already.

Perhaps the breadcrumbs that are the very filler of the oysters?

[ts]
This was a so-so meal for me.

The thing is, as I started to say above, as I was looking at the menu, nothing screamed "New Orleans" to me. The items just seemed like regular ol' dishes with perhaps some allegedly Cajun or Creole flavors. I doubt the authenticity is all.

[js]
All throughout our lunch, I kept thinking how I would make "my perfect fried oysters po' boy" à la Heston Blumenthal. Perhaps that's another post and another project sometimes in the near future. I am still craving some fried oysters.