Angelina Cafe

 

Located at 220 Huffman Mill Road in Burlington, Angelina Café offers European-influenced diner food for lunch and dinner. It is open from 8-9 Monday-Saturday and 9-2 on Sunday. Specials change daily, and online ordering is available.

At first glance, Angelina Café does not seem all that different from the multitude of Greek-owned Southern diners in the area. It’s situated in a large building that has seen better days, and its menu is huge. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find a few things that set this Burlington spot apart. There’s a selection of sweet and savory crepes, they do cocktails and coffee drinks, and there are a bunch of tasty-looking cakes on display up front.

The café was bustling when our group of three arrived, but neither the ten-minute wait for our table nor the kitchen’s turnaround time was unreasonable in light of how busy the establishment was. That our server was courteous and attentive throughout the meal added to the sense that Angelina can handle the volume it likely receives on a daily basis.

A nightmare for the indecisive, the menu offers lots and lots of choices. Breakfast is served until 2, and options include benedicts, sandwiches, waffles, pancakes, omelets, skillets, combos, and more. The lunch/dinner selections add salads, burgers, Italian dishes, house specialties, a few steaks, and the aforementioned crepes. Everything from a fried tenderloin biscuit to lobster ravioli is for the taking here.

Our group opted to do breakfast for lunch, and I went with a smoked sausage breakfast sandwich, eggs scrambled, with potatoes on the side. It made for a very satisfying bite. Avocado and tomato balanced the saltiness of the meat nicely, and the brioche bun held everything together. The potatoes didn’t lack flavor, but they were crisp to the point of nearly burned. Even in that state, they may have been a safer bet than the grits (yellow, gloppy, and decidedly unappealing) that one of our group ordered. At least the pricing ($10 for a sandwich and a side, $9 apiece for breakfast specials with eggs/meat/side/bread) left no room for complaint.

The sign out front proclaims “Scratch Kitchen & Bar,” and between that and the menu’s Euro touches, you can be forgiven for thinking Angelina is striving to be something more than a diner. By that metric, the execution lags behind the ambition. But come here with more modest expectations, and you can appreciate the variety, value (and food, when they get it right) on their own terms.

Kalm Bistro

 

Located at 3557 S. Church Street in the Westbrook Shopping Center in Burlington, Kalm Bistro offers Vietnamese cuisine. It is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Online ordering is available.

I was on the way home from the Triangle, in need of lunch, and in possession of a banh mi craving, so geographic convenience more than anything led me to Kalm’s door. Tucked inside a plaza shared with a Food Lion, it isn’t much to look at inside or out. However, some of the best Vietnamese and Thai places are these too-easily ignored hole-in-the-wall joints, and Kalm proved to be no exception.

In addition to a few banh mi options, Kalm’s menu includes rice and noodle dishes, apps, boba tea, poke, and pho. There are several vegetarian selections as well as a kid’s menu. If I didn’t have a specific craving, I might have had a hard time choosing as several other dishes looked good.

I went with a classic Banh Mi Dac Biet (roast pork, sausage, and veggies on a baguette). Kalm’s preparation was different than I’ve had elsewhere: they serve the sandwich deconstructed with cilantro, cucumbers, carrot, daikon, and jalapeños on the side. This preempts patrons from picking out any toppings they don’t like. At any rate, the banh mi definitely hit the spot. The bread was very warm and flaky, and the meats were flavorful. The cucumbers, daikon, and carrots offered a refreshing balance to their saltiness.

Service here is also great. I got a greeting when I walked in, my order was taken and prepared quickly, and everyone was pleasant and polite throughout the meal.

For those despairing about Burlington’s food options, you needn’t have to drive far to find some welcome variety. Support local, keep Kalm, and carry on.

Umami

Located at 3123 Garden Road in Burlington, Umami offers Japanese cuisine for lunch and dinner seven days a week. There are happy hour specials from 4:30-7:30 Monday-Wednesday as well as rotating food specials. Beer, wine, and sake are available.

Teppanyaki-style Japanese steakhouses, at least in this area of North Carolina, imply a tradeoff: you will pay a bit more than you think you should and eat shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in exchange for watching food get diced before your eyes and set on fire. Even with this give-and-take firmly in mind, Umami walks a very thin line between delicious and disaster.

Some restaurants of this ilk aim for bright lighting, soothing music, and classy décor, but Umami has opted for a more accessible downmarket approach. The dark red walls are not unsightly, but the low lighting and the hip hop playing in the background run counter to expectations. The restaurant is divided into a sushi side and a teppanyaki side. Should you opt for the latter, you’ll find several tables each arranged around grills, each with its own wisecracking cook. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but a firmly “family friendly” approach.

While Umami’s pricing (hibachi dinners starting in the mid-teens on up) is in line with competitors, it’s likely a better value: you get a lot of food for your money. My chicken, steak, and shrimp special ran $20 while my wife’s steak and chicken was slightly less. Both meals came with salad, soup, vegetables, rice, noodles, and sauce in plentiful portions.

The food offered more hits than misses. Though the salad was simple and its accompanying ginger dressing paste-like, it tasted better than it looked. The chicken-flavored broth is no substitute for miso but not bad in its own right. Our cook proved to be as good a culinary hand as he was a corny joke-teller: the vegetables were nicely cut, the chicken coated in a tasty teriyaki sauce, and the cooked-to-order steak was thankfully tender.

Our server/hostess was polite and left us with no room for complaint. Not so the couple beside us, however, whose hibachi order was forgotten (a problem quickly remedied) and whose request to add cream cheese to a sushi order resulted in dollops of the stuff placed atop (rather than inside of) a roll.  

All told, Umami offered a lot (definite leftovers) of fairly tasty food for the money charged, but its various quirks call a return into question.

7.25/10