Review: Iz Too Slow but Good

2518 Rocky Ridge Road
979-7570
www.birminghammenus.com/iztoo

1/2

By Deborah Lockridge 

We stopped by Iz Too for lunch after a morning of shopping. The café is located at the end of a strip mall, two doors down from Cafe Iz. As you walk in, there's a refrigerated case on the left filled with desserts and other ready-to-take-home foods, such as chicken salad. To the right is a small seating area with metal tables and chairs, including a long bar and stool area against the wall. Toward the back is the order counter. Also crammed in are shelves with coffee, tea, vinegars, olive oils and other gourmet goodies. A basket of huge macadamia nut and white chocolate blondies beckoned.

On the wall, one chalkboard listed breakfast foods and specialty coffees. We got a chuckle from the listing for an "Americano" – espresso thinned out with hot water for the traditional American palate. In the back, another chalkboard listed that day's take-home dinner special, the soup of the day and other lunch options.

There was a short line in front of us, so we perused a paper menu as we waited. It looked like a popular option was the Trio Salad, where you could choose three of seven main dish and side salads, including chicken salad, pimiento cheese, fruit salad, pasta salad and Caesar salad. The chicken, pimiento cheese and egg salads also appear on sandwiches. You also can get a Caesar salad or an Iz Too salad (mixed baby greens, mandarin oranges, goat cheese and tasted almond) topped with grilled chicken.

We chose to order from the sandwich menu. We ordered a turkey club ($6), but requested it on a croissant instead of the standard whole wheat bread. Our other choice was a Thai chicken wrap ($6), one of three warm wrap sandwiches on the menu. Other options include a BLT, a crab cake sandwich, a turkey Reuben, and grilled beef tenderloin sandwich (at $10, the most expensive choice on the menu.)

We paid for our order and received a small number in a stand to place on our table. The chairs looked cool, but were not terribly comfortable if you're not Hollywood-thin. And despite the fact that the small restaurant was only about half full, it seemed to take an inordinately long time to fix two sandwiches. When they did arrive, there was a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant instead of the turkey club. We were glad it only took a couple of minutes to fix that problem, since we had to be somewhere at 1 p.m.

The sandwiches, once we got them, were good. The turkey club had a generous portion of turkey on a large croissant, with fresh romaine lettuce and tomato. The apple-smoked bacon was a little overcooked for our taste, but otherwise it was a good sandwich.

The Thai chicken wrap was a delicious change of pace. Grilled chicken with sautéed carrots, red cabbage and green onions were wrapped up with a mildly spicy peanut sauce, served hot in a flour tortilla. It was flavorful, fresh, and not at all greasy. The homemade sweet potato chips that came with both sandwiches were the best we've had. Other sides you can order extra include fruit, Miss Vickie's chips in a bag, pumpkin or banana bread.

We reluctantly skipped dessert, but choices included huge oatmeal cookies, the aforementioned blondies, lemon squares, four-layer carrot cake and chocolate mousse bomb.

We would eat at Iz Too again, but would make sure we weren't in a hurry to be anywhere else.

Iz Too has been so successful, the owner is opening a second location in Altadena Square, in the building on the corner where Deep South Cafe (and at least two other previous restaurants we know of) used to be located. Ironically, Iz Too and the catering business have been so successful, Cafe Iz, the original restaurant, is now only open for private events and occasional dinner service to the public on selected dates.

Published October 2005