Fleur de Lolly: Dining Out Southeast: Hatter Cafe, Mentone, AL

As part of my Birthday Month, we traveled about an hour to the lovely little town of Mentone, Alabama to dine at The Hatter Cafe.

As you can imagine, this is an Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant and I was overwhelmed with wonder from the time we entered until we finished our meal. So much so that there will be a separate blog post just for the decor!

We were warmly greeted by Chloe as we entered and she immediately confirmed our reservation and escorted us to our table. The tables aren't numbered here, but named. We were seated at the Humpty Dumpty Table and you will definitely want to check out the next blog post to experience it as we did!

We started off with iced water as we looked over the menu. Look at these glasses!

Each place setting has its own unique doily placemat and napkin ring.

We began our dining experience with stuffed mushrooms.

There were five per order. The mushrooms were tender, but not soggy. The filling was a nice combination of breadcrumbs and (maybe) cream cheese. Minced parsley and shredded parmesan were available for topping your individual mushroom if you desired.

Chloe was almost a vision of Alice herself. She handled the dining areas solo and kept every table on track and drink orders refilled promptly.

Sweet Harold chose the pan-sauteed catfish (it's also available Cajun style) with baked potato salad (served cold) and honey balsamic glazed carrots.

We'll start with his catfish. In two words: loved it! Very lightly breaded with panko and sauteed just until done. Perfectly seasoned (more on that later) and not one bite had that greasy taste that can come from the deep fat fryer version. Added bonus: the tartar sauce was homemade and had a dill flavor that was the ideal accompaniment to the fish.

The baked potato salad was a nice contrast to the catfish.

It was topped with shredded sharp cheddar and crumbled bacon and very lightly dressed with mayo. He gave it two thumbs up as well.

And then there are the carrots. If there are carrots on the menu, SH will order them. I knew this was going to be a selection and hoped they would meet his approval. They did.

Now, my turn!

I always, without fail, want to order crab cakes. Now y'all know sometimes those crab cakes are "Bread Crumb" cakes with a little bit of crab. I trusted my instinct that these would be all that. Oh, they were!

The order had two large jumbo lump crab cakes served over Southern Hot Corn. This is my new favorite side dish. So much flavor. I had read where some diners thought it was too spicy. Well, as we all know, spiciness is in the mouth of the beholder. For me, it had a great balance of heat and flavor.

Look at those pieces of crab!

Back to the seasoning I mentioned above. Neither of us even thought of reaching for the salt or pepper shaker. Everything arrived at the table with the seasoning exactly right.

When Chloe came around to ask if we wanted dessert, we didn't hesitate for a moment. We had been saving up those Weight Watchers points for this!

Sweet Harold ordered the Cinnamon Raisin Bread Pudding with Custard Sauce (and yes, he added ice cream).

Another winner! I'm not a fan of raisins or bread pudding so I didn't ask for a taste, but even if I had, I'm not sure he would have given me one. Yes, he scraped the bowl clean.

I ordered the Ooey Gooey Chocolate Cake. I declined the offer for ice cream because I don't like the ice cream making my cake soggy as it melts.

Anyway, this delightful and beautiful cake was served in an individual tea cup. To me, it was more brownie than cake (which was perfectly fine with me!) and with hot fudge sauce in the middle with a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar on top.