Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe: On-Line Fresh
10406 Emerald Coast Pkwy, Silver Sands Factory Stores, 650-2920
By Bruce Collier July 13, 2006 Issue
3/4

Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe (Camille’s hereinafter) is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, seven days a week. Those hours may change with the seasons. The menu, available for study at the door, offers hot and cold wraps, grilled panini, miscellaneous sandwiches, salads, soups, smoothies, and a breakfast menu of egg-based wraps, featuring “low-cholesterol” eggs. A number of desserts, mostly cakes and cookies, are also on offer.

The staff seems to be well trained, taking orders, making food, and serving it up on the “take a number” system. A separate team handles the smoothie making. The sight of a line out the door when we arrived was daunting. Still, we did not have to wait long. I expect that Camille’s gets a good deal of business from the employees of the surrounding shopping center, most of whom are probably on the clock. Calling ahead is a good way to avoid the line.

Camille’s calls itself a cafe, but the volume of business we saw probably gets most people in and out pretty swiftly. The diner profile that day was heavy on the multi-generational family, with strollers and assorted infant transport vehicles (ITVs) parked in the narrow aisles. Seating is maximized, and any trips to the fountain or restroom required a preliminary mental MapQuest, to avoid stumbling over Their Majesties, the Babies.

Both my friend and I were a little under the weather; me with allergies and she with an ear infection, so eating loads of greens and fresh fruit seemed like just the right thing to do. We each ordered a hot sandwich, and shared a house salad. We drank smoothies and split a wedge of carrot cake.

The house salad was large, with romaine, black olives, carrots, tomatoes, sprouts and sunflower seeds. Pepperjack cheese was also advertised, but it was mostly just a few flecks here and there, visible against the red of the tomatoes. The sesame oriental dressing was tasty, but for five bucks we would have liked a little more cheese.

The sandwiches, which also came with a salad, were hot and satisfying. My friend had the Club Med grilled hot wrap. An herb-garlic tortilla is stuffed with grilled chicken breast, onions, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, spinach, and basil, and dressed with dried tomato pesto. My Michelangelo grilled hot wrap, served in the same kind of tortilla, had chicken and mozzarella, seasoned with thyme, rosemary, roasted peppers, and a balsamic glaze. The wrap bread was well seasoned, with just enough oil to keep it moist and hold it together around the hot and gooey filling.

Among the other menu choices are wraps of chicken Caesar, Bangkok Thai, chicken California, Tex Mex club, poblano chicken, and quesadillas, a Paris bistro wrap with Brie and apples, Italian roast beef and turkey habanero panini, ham and Swiss and apple/walnut/ tuna sandwiches, tuna salad, a soup of the day, and the house special soup, a creamy Tuscan tomato. The menu has more than 43 items, many with ingredients in common — chicken gets heavy play here — or you can mix and match sandwiches or wraps with soup or a salad.

The smoothie menu offers seven choices, of which we picked the strawberry coconut and peach paradise (with honey). Both were good, the kind you sip, and not overly sweet. Other choices are strawberry breeze with banana, blueberries Cozumel with peaches, banana split swirl, banana berry, and banana and pineapple. Camille’s also offers fountain drinks, tea, and bottled water.

The desserts that day were carrot cake, chocolate and chocolate mousse cake, and assorted plain and flavored cheesecakes, including key lime. These may change. The carrot cake was moist and flavorful, a good example of the style, right down to the orange and green icing “carrot” on the top.

Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe does indeed front a sidewalk. The restaurant is tucked away in a corner of Silver Sands Factory Stores, and that sidewalk is a well-traveled one. We ate lunch there on a weekday, and the aforementioned line was still out the door when we left. That said, the service makes the line move quickly. This is good, given that even here in Paradise, we have yet to air-condition the outside.

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