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The Cactus Club Cafe
October 30th, 2008 | caitlin | Categories: The Dish
Tagged: Cactus Club Cafe, Gluten Free Calgary, Gluten Free Calgary Restaurants, Gluten Free Restaurants, Restaurant Reviews, The Dish

Its nice.

Nice like grandma.

We recently made a trip to the Cactus Club Cafe and I couldn’t find anything to complain about, but I’m not raving about it either.

The event was: dinner with my brother and his wife. Its rare that Boyfriend and I get to see them so we wanted to make sure that we went to a “safe zone”. I pulled the restaurant from the Calgary Celiac Association website and we rolled the dice. I knew that the CCA wouldn’t lead me astray, but there is always the chance that some new hire will cross contaminate or mislead you on your choices. So I went in with caution.

They don’t have a separate gluten free menu but they do have a number of gluten free items available. I had the yam fries and a salad. The best part about the salad is that it didn’t taste like every other salad I have everyday. It had a great assortment of pecans, strawberry’s, avocado, mixed greens and an amazing dressing. (there was may more to the salad but these are the items that stuck out to me) I chose to have it with chicken and my sister in-law had it with salmon. Either choice would be a great choice. The yam fries were nice, I think all yam fries are basically the same so it can’t be elevated above nice.

The portion size was MEGA (which is a step above huge for all you that need specifics!) and it should have been for a $14 salad. Neither my sister in-law nor myself could finish it. I wasn’t happy about the price tag, but that’s because I eat salad EVERYDAY OF MY LIFE, and its tough to pay that much for something I had for lunch! I had mentioned that to Boyfriend and he said my Ukrainian was showing. Yes we people are a bit on the cheap side so don’t let my rant on price deter you.

All in all it was a nice meal in a nice restaurant and it was nice not to be poisoned. I would recommend the Cactus Club to people who want a night out with friends at a place that is less likely then others to poison you. It was NICE.

Warning:

The staff is knowledgeable yes, but they are human and they do make mistakes. The server told me that ALL the salads are gluten free, which is not the case since one of them contains Chow Mein noodles. I obviously knew this but felt it was necessary to let the server know that I had an allergy and the cross contamination was an issue. She was great and they took their time and I didn’t get poisoned. So hey, she is human and made a mistake, one I could catch, I won’t hold it against her. Just a warning to read the ingredients.

The verdict: The Cactus Club Cafe is Nice.

The Cactus Club Cafe
7010 MacLeod Trail S
Calgary, Alberta

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