Oftentimes, a restaurant’s billing doesn’t live up its results, but that’s not the case with Crazy Cat Eat Up, a cozy, locally-owned spot in Jackson’s Canton Mart Square. It’s billed as “your favorite neighborhood café,” and once you visit, you’ll see that this particular advertising phrase is not just accurate, but really doesn’t do justice to this gem of a restaurant that serves up Southern-inspired food and desserts with an equal dose of Southern hospitality. And lastly, who can resist trying a restaurant with an ever-so creative and cute name like "Crazy Cat Eat Up?"
Crazy Cat serves seasonal, creatively-curated lunch and dinner meals in a welcoming atmosphere that hearkens back to an era of relaxed, enjoying dining out before to-go menus and drive-thrus replaced personal attention and service. The restaurant’s owners continually seek locally-grown vegetables, meats, cheeses, and other ingredients to insure the freshest quality and perhaps best of all, to support area growers and vendors.
Lunch is served Monday through Saturday and includes a variety of delicious paninis, quiches, salads, and daily specials that include meals and homemade desserts reminiscent of your grandmother’s Sunday dinner table.
Things get kicked up with options offerings like fresh seafood, steaks, and pork straight from the grill. Freshly-baked bakery items like fresh strawberry shortcake, brownies, cupcakes, macaroons, and a variety of cakes and pies are rotated daily, hearkening back to its origin at Crazy Cat Bakers, a catering and bakery company formerly located in Highland Village.
If you drop by for lunch, Crazy Cat offers a variety of “salads and stuff,” starting with pimento cheese “nabs,” ($7) better known as homemade pimento cheese and house crackers. If that doesn’t take you back in time, nothing will. There’s also Delta style shrimp tamale fritters ($9), curry apple pecan chicken salad plate ($10), chopped salad with salmon ($13), strawberry salad ($9) steak and spinach ($12), Greek ($10), and a soup of the day.
Gourmet sandwiches served with roasted potato salad or house salad include smoked ham and cheese ($11), meatloaf panini ($11), caramelized onion BLT ($9), Mediterranean vegetarian ($9), gulf oyster peace maker ($13), grilled cheese ($8), roasted chicken panini ($10), grilled turkey and brie ($11), and smoked gouda pimento cheese ($10).
Plate lunches are served with fresh vegetables and sides and include catfish sauce piquante ($12), shrimp and grits casserole ($13), highway 12 meatloaf ($13), Southern tomato pie ($11), and quiche of the day.
For dinner, the number of made-from scratch dishes increases to include appetizers like skillet cornbread ($7), gulf crab and artichoke dip ($12), cornmeal fried oysters ($15), Mississippi beer cheese and “nabs” ($8) and barbecue duck quesadilla ($12).
The real challenge comes when it’s time to choose an entrée. Each one sounds – and tastes – more tantalizing than the next. A selection of choices includes a grilled rib eye ($26) with cornbread dressing, apple chutney and barbecue demi-glaze; gulf shrimp and grits ($24) with spinach, roasted sweet peppers and andouille-cheddar grits; beef tenderloin ($36) with loaded mashed potatoes, baby turnips and red wine demi-glaze; red fish ($29) with butternut squash risotto, broccolini and crab butter and braised lamb shanks ($29) with sweet potato puree, smoky greens, and blackberry demi-glaze.
Crazy Cat is location at 1491 Canton Mart Road, Suite 12, in Jackson. Lunch hours are Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dinner is served Thursday through Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.