And I can tell you… it was amazing!

After visiting the Mercy Center yesterday, we decided to find somewhere for lunch and then head to IKEA. We went over a number of options and settled on The 66 Cottage:

It isn’t very deep in the soi, and it does have a parking lot. (Those of you that prefer options that are “car friendly”… this place fits the bill.)

The environment was exactly the way we like it. You can sit out and eat in a gorgeous garden.

It is more of a cafe than a restaurant, but they do have one dish of “real” food. The actual item changes from day to day, but they had a pork panang the day we went. What they lack in quantity of options, they made up for in quality. The panang was really really good. Possibly one of the best ones I’ve had.

For a drink order, my eye was drawn to the banana caramel smoothie. I’ve never seen a banana caramel smoothie on a drink menu before, but I sure am glad I tried it. If you like banana and you like caramel, then I would say that this drink is a “must try”. I’m craving another one right now as I write this.

The truth is that the smoothie was so good and so satisfying, I was very tempted to skip the cake. But I won’t likely be back to that part of town for a while, and they had a walnut carrot cake that looked moist and delicious.

I’ve tried a few carrot cakes over the past 10-15 years, and none of them ever lived up to my expectations. But this cake was the one I wished I’d been ordering all those other times. It is a rich cake that is moist and has all of the spices that a good carrot cake should have. The frosting, in particular, was just right. I’ve found that most carrot cake frosting is usually either too creamy (like cream cheese straight out of the package), or else it is too fluffy (like whipped cream). There is a balancing point which is what you want in a good carrot cake, and this one had it.

If you are reading this and thinking “wow, this description sounds almost too good to be true”, that is pretty much how I experienced it. In fact, I am a little afraid to go back there. The experience of that one lunch and dessert was so amazingly good, I feel like it couldn’t possibly be as good as I remember it if I go back again.

But with that said, there was one very small black mark on the experience. Sitting in the garden involves eating outside. There is plenty of tree cover so it is cool and pleasant, but the trees are not so dense that the direct sunlight is blocked. After about half an hour of sitting with the rays of sun shining between the leaves of the tree overhead, I began to feel like I might be getting a sunburn on my neck. Next time I will go with either a hat, sun block, or both.