Maybe the grandchildren haven’t gone quite back to school yet and are spending the last few days of the summer holidays here. And even if the kids are back in school already, they’ll be back some day and we never have enough suggestions on places to eat with the whole family spanning several generations.
The adults refuse to go to McDonald’s or eat pizza all the time, but the kids are sometimes not too adventurous and won’t eat exotic food of the Thai or Asian fusion variety that’s increasingly popular with the adult set.
Kata in Downtown may be a good compromise. It actually offers a children’s menu and seems to have a good idea what children will actually eat and enjoy. On a recent week night when my partner Christine and I decided to drop in with her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Ava, a second grader, we saw at least two other families with children. With one of the children, the outing didn’t seem to be too successful – he was practically lying on the table, head on his hands, totally bored. But the other family’s child was alert and participating.
And our own Ava was very good. She was brave enough to try most of the exotic dishes of the adults – and quick to give her snap judgments (“like it” or “don’t like it”), but she absolutely raved about her own choice off the children’s menu, the steak with rice and teriyaki sauce ($7.99), and gave it several “yum-yums.”
Sure, she couldn’t sit still during the entire meal, but she enjoyed an occasional quick trip to the huge curved sushi bar in the corner of the restaurant to see how the chef prepared the various fish dishes.
Despite my best efforts at teaching Ava how to eat with chopsticks, I’m afraid she’ll need a few more lessons before she masters that art, but at least she tried, and she listened attentively to the tales of some of my travels through the Far East.
All in all, the three generations enjoyed their outing to Kata – it’s a Japanese word meaning “store,” and don’t worry too much about how to pronounce it, whether it should sound like KA-ta, or ka-TA. In Japanese, no one syllable of any word really gets the emphasis.
The owner of Kata is actually from Thailand, and also runs the Sake Vero Beach restaurant at 42 Royal Palm Pointe, and the Sake Too in Port St. Lucie, but Kata in Downtown has the most extensive offerings with the children’s menu and a whole additional Vietnamese section.
My son-in-law Jeff and I started with Chang beers from Thailand at $5. He’d never sipped a Thai brew before but found it delightfully refreshing – and Ava loved the pictures of the elephants on the label.
We made a special effort to order appetizers from different cuisines, which left me with a Japanese seafood miso soup ($5.99), and my daughter-in law with shumai Japanese pork-filled steamed dumplings ($5.99) served with soy sauce – so light and tasty that Ava ate some of them, too. Christine opted for the chicken satay ($7.99), five small skewers of chicken grilled and served with a slightly spicy peanut sauce or a Thai cucumber sauce, which was a nice sweet contrast.
However, we all agreed that the winner in the appetizer derby was Jeff, who had the Japanese lobster roll ($12.95) special, which has nothing in common with a New England lobster roll sandwich. It turned out to be a beautifully presented plate of two large rolls each with six pieces of sushi containing cooked lobster and asparagus with a crispy tempura coating.
For a main dish I went with the Bon Vietnamese noodle bowl combination ($13.99) with chicken, pork, beef, shrimp and a Vietnamese crispy roll, served with bean sprouts, peppers and cucumbers over rice noodles – I was very satisfied with my choice.
Jeff had no complaints, either, about his Thai jumbo shrimp mango entree ($17.99), once he realized that the mango was in the sauce – not as slices of fruit on the plate. He also got a choice of miso soup or salad and found the soup much more flavorful than he expected.
My daughter-in-law’s Pad Woon Sen entrée with chicken ($9.99 plus $1 extra for salad) consisted of mixed oriental vegetables sautéed with bean thread egg noodles in a light soy sauce served with a bowl of rice.
Christine had the adult version of the Japanese steak teriyaki ($17.99) that came with carrots, broccoli, cabbage and rice – and the portions were so generous, no one could finish them.
For desserts, we shared on order of fried cheesecake, four pieces in batter with vanilla ice cream, and a bowl of green tea ice cream. The jury is still out on that, except that it can definitely be said that it tastes of green tea, something you don’t usually associate with ice cream.
The 32963 restaurant columnist, Tina Rondeau, is spending a couple of weeks checking out dining establishments in Northern Europe. Her reviews will resume in our Aug. 27 edition.