The Pelican Cafe, Lake Park, Palm Beach County, Florida: An Update

This is an update from my original post on the Pelican Cafe, which. you can read here.

As you can tell from my initial report, I was very impressed with the restaurant. The Pelican Cafe sits right on US 1 at 612 Federal Highway in Lake Park, right across from Kelsey Park. It’s a welcoming space set in a former house and has on-site parking. They serve breakfast and lunch every day except Monday, and dinner every night offers options at a wide range of price points, from pizza to very fine dining. Nancy and I had another wonderful dinner more at the Pelican Cafe with Scott and Julie Hammons on our latest trip.

The Pelican Cafe’s food and service continue to deserve to be heaped with praise. This update is mainly to address the weird problem with the extreme blue tint to all the photos in my first post —

The blue was as faint as can be in person, but dominated the photographs. As I wrote –You’ve noticed the blue lighting. It’s very pronounced in the photographs, as you can see. There may be a way to fix that, but there aren’t any 10-year-olds around to teach me how. The effect actually was very subdued in person, and hardly noticeable.

Here, for example is the bread service with hummus in our first trip —

The second trip lighting in the restaurant was identical to that on our first trip, but see the difference in the photograph.

It’s amazing. It looks much more appealing now, doesn’t it? I’d like to blame Apple or internet gremlins, but it’s more likely that I had somehow messed up my camera settings. Or something.

To give you a better feel for the restaurant’s food, let’s look at some other dishes from our recent trip, all of which were prepared with the same skill and fresh ingredients as those in the initial post. Here you see a nice parmesan crusted sole,

a pretty Milanese with arugula,

a shrimp special with gnocchi,

and an alluring puttanesca.

It all looks delicious, doesn’t it? I want to go back right now.

One additional point. In my initial review I swooned the robust flavor of a fra diavola sauce —

The sauce was sensational, a huge mouthful of flavor.  One thing I noted was that the garlic slices still had texture. They hadn’t been cooked through, as I’d been doing. The result was not an overpowering garlic flavor but rather a depth of flavor from the various well-balanced seasonings.

Well, it seems some people have a special sensitivity to garlic. If you are among that number, you might just want to let the server know. The Pelican Cafe’s kitchen is as accommodating as it is accomplished. Whatever your needs — light on the garlic or whatever — they’ll make you happy. Do give the Pelican Cafe a try. This is a restaurant worth a visit.

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