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Sunny Day Cafe
The Sunny Day Cafe is a family-owned restaurant located in the heart of downtown Bel Air on Main St. Priding themselves on excellent service and fresh ingredients, the line out the door on any given day should speak for itself. They're only open for breakfast and lunch, though. So if you turn up after 3pm, you'll be mighty disappointed. We were lucky enough to grab a table outside on one of these last summer afternoons to sit down and try their specialty -- crab cakes! Read on to see what we thought!
Crab cakes at the Sunny Day cafe are available as an entree, sandwich, or a hot sub. The entree pairs a broiled crab cake with french fries; the sandwich is a 6oz crab cake on your choice of bread/as a wrap/on a ciabatta roll/stuffed into a pita, served with chips; the hot sub we presume is just a crab cake on a sub roll, also with chips. For our review, we went with the entree.
The crab cake consists of jumbo lumps of crab, held together with a saucy mixture of bread and mayonnaise, and some spices. The binder itself, while saucy, is also thick like a roux. While there were some large lumps of crab, most of the crab meat is pretty broken up. Spicing is very light, almost non-existent.
Of the few large lumps of crab meat, the flavor was fairly average. Nothing overly sweet, but still had some crab flavor to it. If they were on the outside of the cake, then they got a bit dried out. Spicing, as noted, is very light to the point of not being there. Binder flavor is generally monotone without enhancing the overall flavor profile itself.
All in all, a pretty bland experience. Even if fresher, more flavorful crab was used, it still wouldn't negate the fact that the spicing was too light, and the result is a crab cake that gives off one note. The roux binder was also a bit too creamy and wasn't mixed evenly with the crab meat. Some bites were a nice mixture of crab and binder, others were mostly binder and little crab. The unevenness of the mixture leads to some texture issues (at least for us).
The other menu items are pretty tasty and worth a visit, so if you can make your way through the crowds, be sure to give a few of them a try!
Additional Info
- Restaurant Name: Sunny Day Cafe
- Address: 101 S. Main St Bel Air, MD 21014
- Neighborhood: Bel Air
- Restaurant Type: Local
- Website: http://sunnydaycafebelair.com/
- Review Date: 09/20/2015 1:22pm
- Atmosphere: Busy
- Item(s) Ordered: Crab Cake Entree
- Cooking Style: Broiled
- Other Styles Available: Yes
- Available by mail order?: No
- Price: 11.50
- Order Type: Single Platter
- Crab Content: Jumbo Lump
- Filler: Average
- Spice: Minimal
- Overall Impression: Mediocre
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Rating (out of 5 crabs):
