Golden Spoons Review: Full of Beans
(CNS Foodie): I found myself running errands in “town” this week and had a few minutes to meet up with a friend for an early lunch. Busy as we were, we decided the place needed to be quick and easy to get to, so we decided on Full of Beans Café. Strolling in around 11:30am to a relatively quiet restaurant, tucked away in the far back corner of Pasadora Place, we quickly found an empty table for two.
It wasn’t quiet for long, though. The close proximity to the busy town area and quick turnaround of orders make for a popular lunchtime spot.
This café always has such a great vibe. Maybe it’s the local art displayed all around mixed with a charming brick wall and quaint decor, or the feeling that you know almost every other person walking in that does it for me. Whatever the reason, I like it.
Our server greeted us with menus shortly after we sat down and quickly took our drink orders. Fresh orange juice ($5) sounded like a decent idea but, unluckily, this was not the day for it. The oranges must have been picked too early which made for a rather tart drink. I opted for a glass of lemonade ($4) upon the server’s return to take our food orders while my friend decided he could handle both our glasses of OJ. The lemonade was a better choice — the perfect sweet and tart combo; I just couldn’t get enough of. I always feel like fresh juices never come in a big enough glass.
Tomato and basil soup
To start, I chose the tomato and basil soup ($6) off the “Specials” menu card on the table. As it was delivered, the enticing smell of the soup immediately got my attention, almost tempting me to dive in before allowing the scalding heat to dissipate a bit. The soup was sweet but savoury and almost perfectly creamy. In addition to preferring it to have been blended a bit more, I would have appreciated crostini served on the side, but I still enjoyed it.
To go hand in hand with my soup I decided to try their Santa Fe chicken salad ($11). I love Mexican and Tex-Mex food so seasoned chicken and chipotle were right up my alley. I hadn’t yet finished my soup before my salad came but as that was a cold dish anyway, the timing didn’t really matter.
Accompanying my greens and chicken were ripe cherry tomatoes, avocado, black beans, corn, sour cream and cheddar cheese. They didn’t forget to give me a little crunch as well by way of tortilla chips, which were more like authentic totopos than the “normal” Tostitos-type chip I was expecting. The little squares were lighter and crispier than commercial tortilla chips and may have been my favourite part of the salad.
Santa Fe chicken salad
The chicken was cooked well but was rather plain and lacked seasoning. The “vinaigrette” was more reminiscent of Cholula hot sauce than a smoky, spicy chipotle. I found the amount of cheese to be too heavy for the plate and I love cheese. A balsamic reduction was also drizzled all over the salad. Tasting of a perfect fruity-tart mix the contrasting colour looked nice atop the tortillas but didn’t really add anything to the salad, and was a surprise as it wasn’t listed in the menu description.
I can’t say I loved this salad as the flavour profile didn’t quite match what I was expecting but with all that being said, I might order it again as it wasn’t a bad dish.
My friend decided to skip the starters and keep things light with an arugula wrap ($9.75), which was served with a small bit of salad on the plate. In my usual fashion, I had a bite to see what it was like.
Arugula wrap
It was a simple dish with roasted chicken, parmesan, tomatoes, arugula and pesto mayo. Surprisingly, the pesto was served on the side. This was probably done because sometimes pesto proves too much for people and this way you could dip or spread at your own discretion.
The arugula was as expected and provided an appealing peppery taste to the wrap with the parmesan adding a nice touch of salt. It seemed to me that the chicken used in this wrap was just like what I had in my salad, so the same critique about lacking flavour applies. However, it worked better in this dish as it didn’t compete very much with the pesto mayo, which really pulled this wrap together; without it the dish would have been rather plain.
Although our lunch wasn’t spectacular it certainly wasn’t too bad. The ingredients all tasted fresh and we were served quickly, which is exactly what we were looking for. Our server was attentive and polite, leaving my only critique that she didn’t pitch us on the specials and didn’t seem to care that I didn’t like my OJ, though that didn’t really bother me. Full of Beans still makes for a great quick lunch or short meeting, enhanced by a relaxed atmosphere.
The total bill for two was $46.86, which included 15% gratuity.
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Category: Golden Spoons Review, Lunch
I don’t understand how you came up with 2 spoons for Ambience given this paragraph:
This café always has such a great vibe. Maybe it’s the local art displayed all around mixed with a charming brick wall and quaint decor, or the feeling that you know almost every other person walking in that does it for me. Whatever the reason, I like it.
That confused me right of the back too.
Maybe the noise of talking, coffee machines, the kitchen, people collecting take-out. Maybe the chairs that scrape the tiled floor. Maybe the closeness of the tables. There are things to nitpick about the place that add up.
None of which were mentioned in the writeup
Guess I’ll have to make the next review super detailed for ya… Although it’s a nice spot to run in and grab something it’s not a great spot for a sitdown. I did mention it being popular and busy. Like someone else mentioned and I’m sure the rest of you commenting know, FOB is rather small and with the constant stream of ppl buzzing around during lunch it’s hard to have a convo w/o saying hi to someone else after every other sentence.
Thought you’d put it together for yourself that it wasn’t great for talking and having a relaxing lunch break. My bad.
– FOB reviewer
$46 for lunch with one starter and 3 star value. Bonkers!
3 stars is average and that price is fairly standard in Cayman *shoulder shrug* Portion sizes were decent for the $$, it was the prices of the drinks that were the issue.
There is better quality out there than this place. I have eaten there twice and it “okay”. The manager was rude too.
Awesome food. One spoon.