OK boys and girls, and transgendered welcome too. I said I would do this little restaurant review so I guess it’s time to get to it.
Today I’m a gonna review a one meal from the “De Lite Café” in Maya Beach on the Placencia Peninsula here in Belize.
Maya Beach is roughly half way in the peninsula, and is largely a expat community. It’s a very eclectic place with all kinds of peeps, including the Expats, Belizeans, and a fair amount of Central American’s and some Chinny.
But this is about “De Lite Café” today, not the peeps. My assessment on a scale of 1 – 10 with 10 being perfecto:
Ambiance 8
Service 5
Food 2
Ambiance -- Nice location. A bit off the main road and surrounded in a very well kept property. Nice plants and a lil art gallery at the Spectarte complex. The Spectarte complex also has massage, haircuts, and other things there. But this, of course, is about De Lite, so I’ll give ya’ll my critique of the massage later…. But overall, a very nice, quite and clean place.
Service – The reason I give service an average is simply due to the fact I was told different prices by different people, had a different price on the menu, and then was charged a different price when I picked up the food. I don’t like that at all. It’s a pet peeve of mine to be told a price and then get a different price when the bill comes.
Which leads into the food.
FOOD --
I think that appearance of food is important. And I will give De Lite a high grade on appearance of the food as you can see here.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the quantity of food compared to the price, not the quality. In my opinion the price is too high for the quantity and quality.
By the menu, there should be two pieces each of Philadelphia Roll, Shrimp Tempura Roll. Maki Nori. Tobiko, Ebi, and Onigiri.
What was actually served was different than the menu. I have no problem with substitutions considering we are living in Belize, and many times it’s hard to get the right ingredients. But what I don’t like is that they didn’t even feel like they should tell me about the change of food. Nope, I don’t like that. A simple, “hey here’s what we got” would have shown a bit more concern about customer satisfaction.
So, now to the details…
First were their Philadelphia Rolls. This is normally one of my favorites. Very easy to make, and I’m a glutton for crème cheese anyway. Unfortunately, the best I can say about these were that they were average in my opinion.
Second on the menu was Shrimp Tempura Roll. It basically was seemed to be rice with poppy seed, some jalapeno, cilantro and maybe a tiny piece of shrimp. I liked the taste of the mix of ingredients, but where’s the shrimp? He must have swum away.
Third on the menu list is Maki-Nori. this is kind of a rabbit food anyway, but the use of more vinegar in the rice and some other spices could easily make this much better.
Next on the menu was supposed to be Tobiko. I like Tobiko. We didn’t get any. This is what I mentioned above; the chef should have told me if she was making a substitute. What we got was two pieces of something that I’m not sure what is was, but it did have a good taste.
The EBI was just a very small piece of shrimp on a ball of rice. Very disappointing. Don’t know what else to say on that.
The last item on the menu was Onigiri. This is also a favorite of mine. However, no one at De Lite seemed to think they should let me know they made a substitution. So I didn’t get any Onigiri. What we got was some kind of cooked white fish on rice with a sweet sauce taste. It was OK, but nothing to brag about.
So, to wrap it up (that’s a pun when talking about sushi), Overall I was disappointed. I haven’t tried to other food at De Lite, but I won’t buy the sushi from there again. I can do it better myself.
