Crazy Cat Bakers (4500 I-55 N (Highland Village), Jackson) has a pretty intriguing sandwich menu, so I was excited to try it for lunch. Mostly, the ham + cheese + asparagus sandwich caught my eye. It sounded both borderline insane and yet totally obvious, somehow. I wondered just how crazy this place would be.

It certainly looks ordinary enough, except that it’s located deep in the bowels of the mildly creepy Highland Village. There are small tables both inside the bakery and outside in the courtyard (which is very pleasant except for the too-loud piped-in soft rock).

The ham + cheese + asparagus turned out not to be too crazy to work–in fact, it was such a pleasant combination of tastes that I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. The smoky ham and slightly pungent fontina went really well with the greenness of the asparagus (which was cooked, not raw). The bread, sourdough, was a good thickness and quite pleasant, but not quite as special as I would have hoped for at a bakery (I’m not sure if they make it there or not). The side salad was surprisingly good, with sliced almonds and sizable slivers of parmesan and, best of all, sweet vidalia onion dressing.

There were many things on the menu that I wanted to try (especially the Caramelized Onion BLT and the Meatloaf Panini), but my coworkers unhelpfully both got the Highland Club. I decided not to tell them what to order because I would like them to continue eating lunch with me. The club, in keeping with the theme of slight insanity, had Brie instead of a more traditional sandwich cheese. One coworker thought that made it a bit too heavy, which I could understand–it definitely was not as bright-tasting as you might expect a club to be. But in my one bite I quite enjoyed the richness of the cheese and the sweetness of the onion.

And since we were at a bakery, it seemed pretty important to get a baked good. Unfortunately they were down to only a couple of options–it seems that most of their baking is done to order (they ask for 48-hour notice). But they did have one “orange brownie” left, which attracted my attention because it was definitely not brown.

It didn’t taste any more like a brownie than it looked, but it was very good. It had a fluffy cake-like texture and the orange flavor was strong but not overwhelming.

Neither sandwich I tried was executed so amazingly that I felt I couldn’t make it at home, but I appreciated the creativeness of the options. I definitely plan to go back to try more of their interesting flavor combinations, and I also plan to start making myself ham and fontina and asparagus sandwiches all the time.

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