Experience: Café Circa

Full bar. Cigars. Atmosphere. Jack Daniels and Apple juice. Wings. Good service.
These are just a few of my favorite things and they reside at Café Circa. One of the gems in the historic Edgewood avenue side of Atlanta, CC is an interesting and pleasantly underwhelming restaurant that combines Caribbean and Latin infused cuisine. Underwhelming because it has décor and ambiance that is sexy and quiet, not a screamingly overdone design, which many establishments have. The interior gives the feel of a very sultry living room, inviting and comfortable. The seating layout is functional and relatively open. Tables are spaced in a manner that allows for quiet private conversation. Did I mention a full bar? One of the few establishments that actually has apple juice at the bar. If you haven’t tried apple juice and Jack Daniels, you are missing out on and losing at/in life. Period. I digress. Prices at CC, were comparable to quality. The most expensive item is about twenty four bucks. So for two people, you will spend about fifty bones with tax. Now let’s get to the reason why you are reading this in the first place, the food.
An appetizer of guava jerk wings kicked off the experience. Yeah, it sounds random and leaves you asking who in the world would combine guava and jerk. Granted, jerk is good enough but guava came out of left field. Believe me, it works!! Very tasty, savory, and flavorful. If you want to be fancy and need to serve something at a football party, these wings are sure to please and wow. They are the kind of wings that taste really good cold or even room temperature. The next course was the red fish with rice and green beans under red tomato sauce. This is where my experience takes a bit of a nose dive. The fish was a little over cooked, not flakey. Keeping in mind that the white meat of a fish should be tender and break at the touch, but this fish was firm and chunky. The green beans were delicious. The rice was not very well represented. The chunky tomato sauce overpowered the rice, creating a soupy mixture on my plate. With the rice buried under the over cooked fish that was under the tomato sauce and green beans, it was difficult to not to favor this dish to a deconstructed fish soup. No bueno. I saw what they attempted to do with the plating, but I didn’t enjoy how it turned out.

Ok, class, here’s what we’ve learned today. Would I go back? Yes, I will go back. Will I order the red fish? No ma’am/sir. Will I order the wings? Certainly. Café Circa is a great place to take a date that doesn’t know what good eating is and you want to impress them with fancy plating in a progressive urban part of town. Do not take a foodie to Café Circa, it is hit or miss. My experience was mostly positive thanks to Jack. Café Circa is a great place to meet for drinks, appetizers, and cigars, but unfortunately, it lacks that “wow” factor that I hope for when writing reviews.