Restaurant Health Card: Cafe Ole'
By BreAnna Boyd | MicroMemphis reporter

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This week on BreAnna's Restaurant Health Card is Cafe Ole', a well-known, casual neighborhood restaurant at 959 South Cooper. The restaurant is open seven days a week beginning at 11 a.m.

The menu consists of a huge array of Mexican dishes. One popular dish is the Burrito Mexicano. It's a large tortilla stuffed with pork, beans, and cheese served with rice and sour cream. This burrito stands out because of the spices that are used. It consists of a barbecue-flavored sauce that gives off a sweet taste. A typical burrito contains 617 calories according to LiveStrong, and contains 23 grams of fat, of which 10 grams is saturated. Typically, you want to see larger numbers in unsaturated fat and fewer numbers in saturated fat. So, one serving of a burrito is just fine.

Other popular dishes on the menu are the fajitas, quesadillas and salads. The salads that they offer can come with chicken, beef or guacamole.

Denise Johnson, the manager of Cafe Ole', said bacon-wrapped stuffed shrimp is the restaurant’s signature dish. The dish consists of jumbo shrimp stuffed with cheese and jalapenos wrapped in bacon. Determining calories in a signature dish is based on determining the calories per serving. The signature dish contains about 60 calories overall, with the most coming from the bacon with 22 calories. The dish is wrapped with bacon, so one serving is fine.

There are many things to choose from on their menu when sticking to a healthy eating plan, such as the vegetable burrito, vegetable fajita, Vera Cruz, vegetable taco, along with soups and salads.

"I love Cafe Ole' simply because I love their Mexican pizza,” said Anna Richards, a resident of the Cooper-Young area. “Sometimes I order pizza from there for the kids instead of calling a pizza chain,” said Richards.

Cafe Ole' has added new items to the menu that started this month. The new menu has a bit more American-style to it to give customers more options to choose from. They have also created a new drink menu as well to add to the margaritas. The drink specials are from 4 p.m.-7 p.m.