A couple of weekend ago I finally made it to a restaurant that I have wanted to try, Dilly Café. I actually stopped by earlier that week to pick up a bottle of hard to find Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout. I remembered there being a patio and suggested it to my wife on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon. We arrived to find the restaurant fairly crowded and were told it would be a fifteen or twenty-minute wait for a table on the patio. We grabbed the paging device and headed to the back of the restaurant where there is a bar. We found an open bar table and before we could even decide on beers our pager had alerted us that our table was already ready. I like when that happens.

We soon realized why the wait for an outside table could be unpredictable as we found that there was only one server taking care of the many tables on the patio. We often had to flag him down to place a drink or food order. Though that made the pace of the meal quite slow, we didn’t mind, and other than the server being overworked he was friendly and very courteous. We actually ended up staying on the patio for the majority of the afternoon, as did a number of other tables. The weather was perfect and their beer selection is quite good.

Grape Pecan Chicken Salad Sandwich

As far as the food goes, I was really impressed. I am a big lover of chicken salad and I especially love it when there are various fruits and nuts (besides almonds) in the fresh mix. Their grape pecan chicken salad had two great additions to the white meat chicken breast and celery. I really loved the chicken salad as well as the multi-grain bread, and the lettuce and tomato were top quality. The only thing I should have done was ordered something other than ruffled potato chips on the side.

Mariemont Gobbler

My wife went with the Mariemont Gobbler sandwich, which features turkey, imported Brie, cranberry chutney, and lettuce on a baguette. Again this sandwich was very good! A large slice of Brie was included on the sandwich and went perfectly with the cranberry flavor. She also substituted sweet potato fries instead of the chips, which I should have done. I don’t think there was an extra charge and they were much better than the standard chips. Lesson learned and I will be sure to change it up on future visits. We will definitely be back soon, especially since we both bought a recent LivingSocial coupon.