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.