Cafe 615 - Brunch

Forget dining on that burrito close to midnight, instead dive into the true "fourth meal" once a week - Sunday brunch.  Served between breakfash and lunch - brunch is quintessentially Southern in my book complete with champagne or bloody marys.  There are many restaurants in Mobile that serve this elegant fare including Cafe 615 on Dauphin Street.



Bread Pudding

I have several complaints but very little has to do with the food.  So let's start with the positive.  All of the menu items comes with a bread pudding taster, breakfast potatoes, three cheese grits and a biscuit/english muffin unless otherwise specified. I have to admit the little scoop of bread pudding had to be the best I've ever tasted in a restaurant. There was a nice blend on cinnamon and sweet. 



Three Cheese Grits & Breakfast Potatoes

The breakfast potatoes are sliced really thin, almost to a chip size.  I thought the texture was a little mushy and it was a little greasy as well.  The three cheese grits were spectacular. I had to add a little more salt and pepper to suit my taste buds but otherwise it was good.  

Eggs Mauvila

Onto my main course, I had the egg mauvila, which the waitress said the cafe was known nationally for.  That's quite a claim but I can see why.  The dish starts with those wonderful grits made into two cakes.  The grits cakes are then topped with applewood smoke bacon, then two perfectly poached eggs,  a verifiable mound of colossal crab and then the entire thing is drizzled with Hollandaise sauce.  It was delicious.

The crab was wonderfully sweet while the bacon gave the dish a nice smoky flavor. I didn't get a whole lot of sauce but that was fine.  I broke open one of my poached eggs and the yolk was still liquidy and warm.  I loved dipping pieces of my biscuit in it. This was seriously a good dish.

Crab Cakes

Huong had the crab cakes and was kind enough to let me have a bite. It looked more two scoops instead of cake.  It's not as savory as I thought it would be.  There is a ton of crab in the cakes so it was a much sweeter tasting dish.  There was a creole sauce served with the crab cakes but there wasn't much of it.  It kinda got lost on the busy plate and didn't get used. Note: the dish also came with some eggs as well.



Duyen had the Frittata du jour.  I forgot exactly all the toppings but I believe there was some sort of seafood in the sauce.  Duyen also asked to add mushrooms as well and they didn't have a problem with that either. She said it was your standard omelet nothing seriously special about it.

Bottomless champagne for 5 bucks add to the merriment at Cafe 615.  One of the best ideas I've come across is the cafe's bloody mary bar.  For $3 a pop, you get a glass more than halfway full with vodka and you get to mix it yourself.  At the bar, you'll find the staples like tomato juice, celery salt, worcheshire along with pepper, scrichia, lemons and olives as well.  You can make it as spicy or mild as you like. 

Upon our arrival, we were seated in the main dining room.  It was very warm, so much so that I was breaking out in a sweat while sitting still.  Also, it took a good 5-10 minutes for someone to even acknowledge we were sitted.  Once we were actually acknowledge, the service was mediocre at best.  Now to be fair, we did ended up moving to the bar area which was much cooler and kept the same waitress.  She could have been busy in the main dining room and didn't get a chance to check on us.  I'm going to give her the benefit of a doubt. It also took about an hour to an hour and a half for our food to come out.  From what I overhear, the long wait seems to be the norm instead of the exception.  The entire menu is also fixed priced.  Whether it's prime ribs, steak, crab cakes or an omelette, everything is $20 regardless.  It's kinda high but depending on what you get, it could be worth it.

I would like to come back for lunch or dinner.  But for my fourth meal, there are better games in town. For a look at Cafe 615's menu click here.