Palette Cafe (201 E. Pascagoula St, Jackson) is the Viking-owned cafe inside the Mississippi Museum of Art. The menu seems thoughtful and has several interesting-sounding options; the cafe also offers a daily special which was Red Beans & Rice when we went. We ordered the two most intriguing menu items: The Plantation Sandwich and the White Palette Sandwich.

The menu described the Plantation Sandwich as “Southern cornbread split and layered with smoked turkey and asparagus, more cornbread and topped with hollandaise sauce and crumbled bacon.” It’s as good as it sounds. The cornbread was thick, moist and sweet. The hollandaise was tangier than most, which was a good thing in this sandwich as it countered the sweet cornbread very well. The bacon was thick and cut into good-sized chunks. I wished at first that the asparagus was less cooked, but its mushiness probably ended up making the whole thing easier to cut and eat, and it still had a good asparagus flavor that went well with the other ingredients. For $8, it comes with either chips, a salad, or a small cup of one of the soups of the day. I went with the tomato bisque, which was unexciting.

The White Palette is “grilled chicken topped with our piquant white barbeque sauce, tangy slaw and a smidgen of Alabama goat cheese.” I’ve had white, Alabama-style barbeque sauce once and loved it, so I was excited to try my coworker’s White Palette. Unfortunately, I can’t really speak to the taste of this sauce because as far as I could tell, there was none on the sandwich. None that I could taste or see, at any rate—the sandwich was actually fairly dry. The other ingredients weren’t bad, though, so I can only hope that this was a one-time execution mistake. Maybe next time I’ll ask for extra sauce. If it’s as good as the hollandaise on the Plantation Sandwich, it could be quite delicious.

Since the cafe is in an art museum, here is an “artistic” (or, “accidentally blurry”) photo of the interior. It is a pleasantly light and open space.

The Cafe is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10am-2pm.

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