L'acajou Bakery is a tiny corner shop located at 9th and Bryant just across the street from Bed, Bath and Beyond. We were out Christmas shopping and wanted to get a quick bite before diving in to the hectic mess and hitting up the Renegade Craft Fair. I'd seen this place every time I came to the area and had wanted to check it out so I convinced the partner to give it a shot. Having seen their menu in the window previously I knew they served sandwiches so I thought it would be a good place to pop in and get it to go. There were a handful of folks in line before us and the place is small. There are 3 tables and a couple of high round bar tables along with the kitchen area you see above and a think a small prep room somewhere in back. It took a few minutes to move the line to order so we had time to decide on the Moroccan lamb for my partner and the Southern spicy pork for me, since I'm always looking for good pork. From the time we ordered to the time we got the sandwiches I'm gonna say it took about 15-20 minutes which was odd considering there were 3 people working the kitchen plus a prep cook-for now I'm just going to chalk it up to catching them at a bad time but still--you shouldn't have to wait that long just for a sandwich. So here's a picture of what I got:
The sandwich comes with fennel, wilted greens and a spicy mustard. I'm gonna be upfront and tell you right off I didn't like it. The pork itself wasn't spicy and it was a little tough and dry to boot. The fennel and wilted greens did not add anything taste wise to the sandwich and a lot of that had to do with the spicy mustard which wasn't really spicy, tasted like Gulden's deli mustard and pretty much overwhelmed everything else---it was all you could taste. Which is somewhat surprising since fennel has a very distinct taste and here it was totally lost. As for the wilted greens they weren't so much wilted as they were over-microwaved making them stringy and chewy. I did like the bun they were served on though. When you are paying $9.95 for just a sandwich--and no that price does not include sides---I really expected more.
I did manage to snag a bite of my partners Moroccan lamb and the one bite I had was good, he really enjoyed it, so my bad for choosing poorly. I might go back and try the lamb just for myself, but not anytime soon as $9.95 for sandwiches without sides is a little cost prohibitive, especially when I can go down the street and get a good pulled pork sandwich, fresh kettle chips AND pickled carrots at Little Skillet for only five cents more.
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