State of the Shelanman

While I was not reminded of good old fashioned home cooking, I did enjoy my meal (and the few bites of everybody else's meal that I tasted).

So... My meal consisted of:

• Seafood Gumbo: A delicious cajun-style seafood soup. This was surprisingly flavorful and delicious, especially given that it was very much not spicy
• Broccoli Cheese Soup: This tasted more like Cream of Broccoli than anything else. I have to say that this was the low point of the meal. It was so-so, everything else was really good.
• Cajun Rib Eye: Sensing a pattern here? I told you I was a steak person. To be fair, I did consider the Bacon and Hazelnut Crusted Halibut too, but they ran out of that (price I pay for going there Sunday night). This was very tasty, and only slightly spicy. It was served with a very thin dark brown sauce that was slightly sweet and slightly salty. The sauce was good, but I borrowed a bit of the barbecue sauce that came with somebody else's ribs. The barbecue sauce was seriously good... I really want a big bottle of it.
• Apply Fritters: Every meal at Shenandoah includes these delicious little fried treats. They come around carrying a basket full of them every 15 minutes or so, and you get two of them each time (if you want). They remind me of nothing so much as apple cinnamon donut holes -- but they are very tasty. Alas, but they are also artery-cloggers -- I can just tell by the way they taste.
• Shenandoah Rolls: Also included with every dish are these rolls. They are roughly the shape of muffins, and they taste... different... I can't really describe it except that they were slightly sweet and pretty good. The do have the unfortunate tendency to continue rising in your stomach long after you consume them -- making it hard to eat the rest of your food.
• Country Rice: My steak was served with something called Country Rice -- which is essentially a sort of wild rice dish. It was fairly good. It didn't get finished, but that's mostly because there was so much other stuff to eat, and because it didn't taste good mixed with the barbecue sauce (can't you tell, I loved that barbecue sauce).

Overall, it was more food than I could eat, and it was very tasty. I also borrowed a quick taste of the Artichoke Hearts appetizer which was quite nice. I'm told the Fried Green Tomatoes were good, but they were all gone before they made it to my end of the table...

Unfortunately, Shenandoah is a fairly expensive place. I don't recall exactly what my meal cost, but here's what I can tell you...

Dinner for 6, including 3 appetizers shared, a dinner apiece, no dessert and no alcohol cost somewhere around the $200 mark.

The seafood gumbo was probably about $10, everything else in my personal menu list above was included with the Cajun Steak, and I'd bet that it was either $19.95, $22.95, or $24.95... so definitely not a place to go every day... (or every week or month even, at least not on my budget). Not that I'm suggesting it is overpriced, mind... just that it is expensive. It was worth the price, neither a bargain nor overpriced.

Oh, one other thing... the inside of the restaurant looks very much like I would expect a traditional southern home to look like. Having never been to the South, my opinion of a southern home is probably wildly inaccurate, but it looked pretty southern to me -- quilt on the wall and everything.

Also, Shenandoah is open only in the evenings -- they open at 5:00pm, and they are closed Mondays. And apparently they are pretty quiet on Sundays -- a good time to go, except that they may be out of the more popular items.

One last thing -- for real this time. Meals come with soup or salad. I had soup, but if you have the salad, they make it in front of you. They bring a plate with the lettuce mix on it, and then a basket with radishes, onions, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, and (I think) cucumber. You pick out what you want, and they build you a salad. It was neat, and looked good. I'm not a salad person, so I didn't have any, and thus won't tell you if it was good.

Recommended
3.25 out of 5 stars
Want to try it?

ShenandoahCafe.com

Shenandoah Cafe
4722 E. 2nd St.
Belmot Shore, CA 90803

Phone: (562) 434-3469

P.S. The lower rating of only 3.25 stars has more to do with them being out of several items and being out of my personal price range than a reflection of actual food quality or quantity. I rated Shenandoah down heavily for being out of several items -- especially because they didn't tell us until we ordered them.