Something people may not realize is that my fiance actually used to live in Florida for many many years. I say people may not realize it because some of the advice I get from people about Florida are things that I have known about for years because I live with somebody who has already lived here before. Things like hurricanes are obvious. Missouri has tornados though and I’ll take a hurricane that I can evacuate for over a tornado any day. Things like the love bugs though, aren’t so obvious. I wouldn’t have known about those if it weren’t for him. People also warn me about mosquitoes a lot too. Which makes me think that most American’s aren’t super familiar with the geography in their own country because Missouri also has a lot of mosquitoes. A lot of people also just haven’t traveled a lot either so they literally just don’t know. But it’s all in good fun and I realize that people just love to share their knowledge so I usually just nod my head and take whatever advice they are giving me even if I’m already well aware of it.
One thing that I have heard about for years from James is about this Grecian pizza at the Cane Garden Country Club where he worked before moving to MO. A few Mondays ago another couple wanted to have lunch with us so we all drove to The Villages. We originally were going to eat at a New York style pizza place but they were closed on Mondays. I’ve never understood how restaurants can make any money being closed one to two full days a week, but hey, not my circus.
Since the pizza place was closed, we decided to go to the Cane Garden Country Club where James used to work all those years ago. My first impressions of it were that it gives off a tiki bar kind of vibe. A lot of bamboo and wicker. The staff seemed friendly and were all wearing masks and the restaurant was observing social distancing procedures.
They still had their Grecian pizza on the menu so James ordered that, I ordered a lobster salad BLT, and the other couple ordered a chicken avocado wrap and a grilled Italian sausage sandwich.
The Grecian pizza is a white pizza with Olive oil, herbs, ricotta cream sauce, mozzarella, feta, spinach, artichoke hearts, black olives, roasted tomatoes and basil. I don’t like white pizzas. I did try it but I didn’t like it. That is my opinion only on that because James liked it. I thought it was rather bland, like most white pizzas. Again though, those are just my thoughts on that particular dish and I already knew going in I more than likely wasn’t going to like it based on the ingredients alone.
Our server did kind of leave me hanging on my side. When they brought our food I was told my ‘buffalo chips’ (which were house made potato chips) were going to take a few minutes which I found weird because everyone else was being served theirs. Our meals were seconds away from being finished before we finally caught the servers attention and asked about my side. They shortly brought me a basket of french fries, which were not what I asked for but okay mistakes happen. I did eventually get my chips though and the world went on.
The chicken avocado wrap just kind of looked like your basic chicken wrap and going by what I was told, since I didn’t eat it, it kind of just tasted like your basic chicken wrap. It was really big and I believe only about half of it was consumed. The Italian sausage sandwich looked amazing. It was topped with sauteed peppers and onions and smelled delicious. The other couple shared a cole slaw because that is apparently their thing and something they really like and both said it was just kind of “eh”. To me, all cole slaw is kind of “eh” though, so you’ll never catch me ordering it.
Now to my dish. The dish that I have even been hesitant to write about. The dish that sealed the deal that this place won’t be a place we return to or recommend…the lobster salad BLT.
It looked good. You can tell by the photo, that it absolutely looks delicious. I mean….look at that bacon. It was so underwhelming though once you bit into it. If it weren’t for the bacon it wouldn’t have had any flavor at all and the bacon was pretty flavorless too. The whole sandwich just needed something. Some flavor, some crunch, a different bun would have been better. Really just some flavor injected into that lobster salad would have made all the difference in the world, but it just wasn’t a good sandwich. There. I said it. I hate to be negative I really do. James thought it was really bland as well and he is a lot more forgiving than me so it wasn’t just my opinion. In theory the idea of a lobster salad BLT is good, but they just executed the idea poorly.
I am currently working on a new page that will have all our recommendations for places to eat or things to do or services we have tried and this place will not make the cut. Sorry Cane Garden! The staff was nice but not observant (besides my buffalo chip incident one person’s glass at our table remained empty the entire meal), the food wasn’t delicious, and it is a pain in the butt to get to like most places in The Villages. We all wished that the pizza place had been open.
Speaking of pizza…we recently found a New York style pizza place we like even better than Angelo’s in Inverness.. You’ll have to keep reading though if you want to find out where!
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