Wendi decided it would be good to head up to Brandywine Falls in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. While we were in the area, we also wanted to find a nice little restaurant we could not frequent in Wooster. The Courtyard Cafe in nearby Brecksville received a lot of positive reviews on Yelp, so we entered the address into the GPS.
We made our day trip on the first good day of spring, so Wendi wanted to eat our lunch in the courtyard. I figured since we were we were at the Courtyard Cafe, we might as well eat in the courtyard. Seemed to make perfect sense.
As we looked at the menu, Wendi noticed the pastrami sandwich was the special of the day. I grew up outside of Boston, and I really love the style of pastrami there. I was torn because I really love french dip sandwiches, and they had one on the menu. I really did not know which way to go and probably should have just flipped a coin. I ended up with the french dip, and it turned out to be serendipitous.
I say this because in the reviews people really loved the French onion soup. I wanted to order the soup, but I forgot. I remembered I wanted it when Joyce, our waitress, brought me the french dip with au jus. Lucky for me, the Courtyard Cafe uses its French onion soup as the au jus with the sandwich. So, I got the best of both worlds. I really enjoyed the sandwich, and the French onion soup.
The filet mignon croissant caught Wendi’s eye. She likes croissant sandwiches, but they are usually made with chicken salad that has onions in it or some other weird combination of ingredients. This one came with sauteed mushrooms and provolone cheese, which had Wendi’s name written all over it. She said the sandwich was very tasty, the filet was very tender and the cheese was nicely melted.
Both of the sandwiches came with a garnish of lettuce, tomato and pickle spear. I thought the lettuce and tomato with a French dip sandwich was kind of odd because who would put lettuce and tomato on a sandwich and dip it in a hot broth? I asked Joyce if she could put it on the side, and she said that is the way it comes. I ended up giving my lettuce and large slice of tomato to Wendi, and she cut it up along with hers and created a nice, unexpected, small side salad. Joyce brought us a side of ranch dressing to complete it.
While the sandwiches were very good, Wendi absolutely love the fresh-cut fries. They come overflowing in a large bowl. Wendi liked the fries because they were crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. We did not ask, but this might be due to a two-stage frying process. The first stage is to sort of blanch the potatoes in the hot oil, and when someone orders a side of fries, the potatoes go back in the oil and crisp up nicely.
Even though the sandwiches filled us up (Wendi y took half of her sandwich and half of her fries home), we had to try the Lucifer: a dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting and chocolate flakes all over it. We decided to get it with a side of vanilla ice cream, and Wendi said it was a devilish combination of chocolate on chocolate.
We enjoyed our lunch there; the food was tasty; and the sun on my back was warm, making me toasty. There are so many things on the menu we wanted to try, so we will have to go back sometime, probably when we visit Brecksville Reservation.
