bankcello's Profile
Lunch in Willow Grove
Even though it sounds nothing like the Giant in my area, which is just an ordinary supermarket, I think I will give it a try. What can I lose?
Lunch in Willow Grove
Do they actually serve lunch there, or is it all take out, which wouldn't work for me.
Lunch in Willow Grove
I find that I will be in Willow Grove at lunch time every two weeks. I am hoping to find somewhere to eat. I have tried Pho & Beyond which was not terrible, though the choice for pho was very limited. I also tried Mandarin Gardens, which was terrible.
When in Willow Grove I am near Mandarin Gardens and get there from the Turnpike. Any suggestions for that area?
Hello Cafe is gone!!!!
I liked almost everything. They had a very large menu and very good cooking. I loved the Shanghai noodles, the chow fun, the various hot pots, the rice dishes, etc. The wok hei of the chow fun was as good as it gets. There were dishes I had not encountered previously. An example being a hot pot of sole filets spiced with black pepper. It was a restaurant where any difficulty in ordering was because of the variety offered, rather than the paucity.
When visiting a Chinese friend in San Francisco I was struck by how much better Hello Cate's food than most of the SF places at which we ate/
Any comments on the New Golden Palace?
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Golden Palace
2623 S Delsea Dr, Vineland, NJ 08360
Hello Cafe is gone!!!!
The place is there (it can't go away), but new owners and new cuisine. I miss Hello very much!!!
Hello Cafe is gone!!!!
Every second Wednesday in the non-summer months I go into Philadelphia from Trenton to play chamber music on Queen Street. After playing I have lunch a the Hello Cafe on Washington Avenue, a wonderful Hong Kong restaurant. Yesterday I found that it was gone and will replaced by a Vietnamese place. I am shocked and stunned, since it was my favorite restaurant.
Does anyone have a suggestion of a similar place in the area. Chinatown is not a good choice for me because of the parking difficulty.
Any and all suggestions will be welcomed.
Under The Moon, New Menu Now In Place
Seeing the nice reviews the place received my wife and I decided to try it. The place is attractive in an odd sort of way. I was, however, underwhelmed by the food.
I ordered the "French Pork Chop". It was a large chop, but I found ti to be tough and not particularly tasty. The lentils that accompanied it were good. My wife ordered a roast pork dish that was similarly disappointing. Both pork cuts would have benefited from brining.
The toast served at the beginning of the meal with chimichuri was nice. Some nice bread to go along with the meal would have been very welcome.
I tried their chocolate mousse. Very intense flavor, which is good. The texture was not. It was much too firm. After all, a mousse if a foam. The was more like a very good chocolate pudding.
While it wasn't a terrible meal, I won't be returning there.
FUJIAN (FUKIEN) STYLE CHINESE RESTAURANT IN NEW JERSEY
Seeing this post reminded me of the many great meals I had a Foo Joy when I still worked within walking distance of Chinatown. Since it has been so long since then I don't remember most of the dishes, however I do recall a nice pig's ear dish, as well as bean curd with preserved eggs. I think that the years that I was able to eat lunch in Chinatown very often (1969-1976) had some of the best eating that I have every done. That was when Szechuan cooking seemed to first arrive, with Szechuan Taste opening. That was before Szechuan Taste became a chain and the quality declined.
El Mariachi Restaurant in Trenton
Not to be confused with Taqueria Mariachi in Trenton. This is a Mexican/Guatamalan restaurant in the Chambersberg area of Trenton, housed where formerly there was an Italian restaurant. They have retain all the old decor, including the mural of Italy.
I have found all of the food to be quite good, but what I have really enjoyed have been some of their soups. The first (whose Spanish name I can't quite recall) is made from trip and cow's feet. The broth is rich and spicy, the tripe wonderfully chewy and the connective tissue on the cow's feet is heaven for those who like gelatinous food. It is one of the best soups I have ever had. They make nice thick tortillas. The other soup (served only on weekends) is Sopa de Res, aka beef soup. A real country dish. Not spicy at all, full of vegetables, a broth that is unbelievably good (it compares favorably to good pho), along with pieces of oxtail and short ribs.
I haven't tried any of the other soups, but plan to sample them.
They don't have dessert, but make a great horchata which seems to very from time to time.
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El Mariachi Restaurant
318 Smith St, Perth Amboy, NJ 08861
Looking for best pho in Philadelphia
My wife and I tried it today. They serve an Americanized version of Vietnamese food. Admittedly we only order a few items, but we were disappointed.
An order of summer rolls contained a lot of iceberg lettuce and very few herbs. The rice paper was OK, but far too much lettuce. My feeling is that the right amount of lettuce in this dish is none.
Something called "Roman Salad" sounded as though it would be the nice dish of raw beef with a fish sauce dressing. It wasn't. Again, a lot of lettuce, some cooked beef and a pleasant sweet vinegarette, along with some pickled carrot and daikon.
A Bahn Mi had nice bread, but a not very Vietnamese taste.
If I didn't know how Vietnamese food can taste I might have found the food acceptable, but it was not what I was looking for.
Hello Cafe on Washington Avenue
This is by far my favorite restaurant in Philadelphia. It is a Hong Kong style restaurant in an Asian mall between 6th and 7th on Washington Avenue.
The menu is very large and everything has been very very good. The prices are reasonable. The only dish that disappointed was duck tongue and duck feet. My problem with that dish is that the tongues have a bone and they are therefore rather tedious to eat.
Everything else that I have tried is wonderful. I eat there just about every time I am in Philadelphia. I think that if this place were close to where I live (lovely Trenton) I would make an arrangement to eat there all the time, taking what ever they chose to serve.
It is just about impossible to single out anything as the best. All the dishes are. They make wonderful noodle dishes and great hot pots. As a means of comparison, each year I visit a Chinese friend in San Francisco. Of course we eat in Chinese restaurants. Hello Cafe is as good as any and better than most.
The staff is friendly and the young cook from Malaysia really knows what he is doing.
Rouget in Newtown
My wife and I decided to try their weekday prix fixe menu. I had gotten a restaurant..com discount which make the cost of trying it a bit cheaper.
The place is attractive. We sat in a glassed-in area and had a nice view. However the food was somewhat disappointing. The first thing I noticed was that they served salted butter. I don't consider that appropriate for this class of restaurant. I was told it was Amish butter, but it was very heavily salted.
I started with a decent mushroom soup and my wife had shrimp. The soup was OK and the shrimp were not bad. The seasoning was good, but I have had better shrimp. We went on to a salad course. My wife had various greens with Roquefort cheese, grapes and walnuts. She enjoyed it. I had a Caesar salad. It was pretty good, but had a piece of toasted bread rather than croutons.
My wife had monkfish which she enjoyed. I had a somewhat peculiar combination of Hawaiian butterfish and beef cheeks. The fish was pretty good and so were the beef cheeks. However, they did not belong together.
Dessert was White Chocolate Bread Pudding with Amaretto Sauce which my wife enjoyed and a Chocolate Torte with Liquid Chocolate Center which was also pretty good, though not outstanding.
It wasn't a bad meal, but it did not come up to my expectations.
Wor Shu Opp in Philadelphia????
Does anyone know of a restaurant where I can get wor shu opp, made in the "old fashioned" way?
Thanks.
Boulevard or The House
I'm afraid I have to differ about the House. I am visiting a friend here in SF and we went to the House. What I was expecting and what we got were nowhere nearly similar. Their greatest failing was an amazingly bad server faux pas. My friend eats very slowly, I eat rapidly. I had finished my appetizer and he was still eating his soup. The waitress brought my main dish, which surprised me. However she then brought my friends dish and set it on the table next to his soup. I found that to be an unexcusable error.
I had a deef fried salmon roll as appetizer. The texture was fine and the salmon had almost no flavor. When asked whether the salmon in another dish was farmed or wild she said that "today is is farmed." I suspect that is was farmed the day before and will be so the future.
I ordered curry noodles with shrimp as a main course. The noodles (udon) and no texture, the sauce had very little flavor, and the less said about the shrimp the better.
Even realizing that SF is an expensive city I felt the restaurant was also a poor value. I am very glad that we didn't order dessert.
Sushi House in Morrisville?
I went there a second time last night, lured by a coupon ($12 off). I had their tempura platter. While ample, it was not good. The oil seemed old and the food was greasy. I don't mind greasy in the right setting, but not for tempura. I won't be returning for dinner, though I might try their all you can eat sushi on Sundays. At least it won't be fried.
Penny Bistro -- Liberian food in Levittown
I did contract them and they gave me a credit.
Penny Bistro -- Liberian food in Levittown
I had never had Liberian food before, and when I found that I could get a restaurant.com certificate for a place serving that, which was nearby, I couldn't resist. I called before going and found that they no long took the certificates. However, my wife and I went in spite of that.
It is a small place with a counter and tables in the rear. A fairly large menu with lots of unfamiliar dishes. We ordered two main dishes and an appetizer. The appetizer and one of the entrees were sold out. We reordered and had "palm butter with rice" and "plantain and gravy". The gravy was chicken. The palm butter came with some beef, chicken and very chewy morsels of bluefish. The flavor profiles of each dish were unlike anything I have had before. I look forward to trying the restaurant again.
No desserts, no interesting beverages and the credit card machine wasn't working, but who cares when the food is so good.
You can see a menu at http://www.restaurant.com/microsite-menu-image.asp, at least until they remove it.
Great Filipino food in Hamilton.
I have eaten twice at Golden Bread, in a strip mall at the corner of Flock Road and Quakerbridge Road in Hamilton.
It is both a Filipino bakery and an eatery. The food is dispensed from behind a counter and has proven to be quite good. I first had Filipino food in New York City about fifty years ago, and liked it then, but haven't had much recently.
What is served is, to my taste, quite authentic and very reasonably priced. I have had tocino and dinuguan (less spicy than I am used to). They are served with rice and a side dish. The portions are ample. There seem to be different choices on different days, along with items that are listed on a menu.
I have not tried any of the sweet baked goods, but the savory ones (pork and chicken empanadas, pork steamed bun, pork baked bun and a flaky pork pastry whose name I can recall) were all wonderful. I look forward to trying their sweet pastries as well as having many other meals there.
Note that the place closes at seven and many things are sold out in the early evening. You would best come for lunch.
A good meal between DIA and the University of Denver
I will be arriving at DIA from the east coast in time for a meal. I will be travelling to the University of Denver. Any suggestions for a good place to eat en route??
A great Polish restaurant in Trenton
For many years my wife and I ate at Julian's Bistro in Trenton, a very nice Polish restaurant. Sdaly, Julian's is no more and its replacement is no good.
Lately we have been frequent diners at Villa Polonia (at the corner of Mulberry and Brunswick Avenues). The food is wonderful, the service friendly and the prices more than fair. Most of the clientele is Polish.
Their soups are a treat. I have had sour soup, pickle soup, mushroom soup, borscht, tripe soup and others that I can't recall and they are all flavorful and hearty. The portion is large and the price is low.
The main dishes include many Polish specialties, again at reasonable prices.
Sometimes they have special desserts, which are basically homemade cakes. Nothing to look at, wonderful to eat. Their blintzes are different from what I am used to. Light crepes with a filling of cheese, folded in quarters. With some powdered sugar and sour cream it is blintz heaven.
Be aware that sometimes they are closed for dinner because of private paaties. It is a great restaurant.
Problem in Morrisville and happy solution in Levittown
My favorite restaurant in Morrisville (JB's) closed without warning in April. It was a wonderful place and looking at my credit card records I saw that we had eaten there at least 250 times. The fook was excellent and the prices very reasonable.
Without JB's, looking for a place to eat became quite difficult. I did turn up a fairly decent BBQ place (Tennessee's), and had at least one totally disasterous experience (Hong Kong Pearl in Levitttown, I hadn't realized that there were still such dreadful Chinese restaurants).
While driving on Route 13 we notices a sign for the Istanbul Kabob House. There used to be a number of Turkish restaurants on Route 13, but they had gone away. We decided to try is last night.
The food was very good, and the portions very large. Ordering one appetizer, two mains and two desserts, we took home quite a bit. The appetizer was a garlic and dill flavored yogurt. Nothing of that remained. We also got a kabob dish (ground meat served with fabuous rice, salads and a very deceptive pepper). the other main was a pide with everything. If you are not familiar with pide, think of it as Turkish pizza. Great food. Desserts were an OK rice pudding and an absolutely divine caramel pudding, whose name I don't recall. The texture was similar to a very good creme brulee, but without the crust.
The service was friendly and we actually spent quite a bit of time chatting with the waiter. My only complaint is that I would have liked more items on the menu.
I intend to visit again soon.
West side question from a former New Yorker
I used to live in Manhattan and knew my way around restaurants. However it has been over thirty years since I have eaten there.
I will be visiting Manhattan to audition for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". The audition is at 2:45, so I thought I might have lunch. I will be coming in by train so Korean restaurants in the Penn Station area come to mind, but I wonder if there are any other suggestions. If there are any that have particularly nice "little dishes" at lunch, I would like to hear about them.
The audition is on West 66th street, on the park block. I don't want to spend a great deal on lunch. I looked at the menu at the nearby Picholine and found it much too pricey for me. Any suggestions in the neighborhood would be welcome, or has non-ethnic food in New York gone beyond the budget of a frugal Trentonite.
Thanks for any advice.
My visit to Tsukasa in Bordentown
I have missed having a good Japanese restaurant in my area (Trenton). Having read good things about Tsukasa, we decided to try it.
We arrived early on a Friday evening and the place was empty. When we left it was completely full. Even though I had mostly heard good things about the sushi, we decided against that. My wife ordered their bento box, and my main course was Oyakodon, which is not on the menu. In addition three items were ordered from the side dish menu, salmon onigiri, umeonigiri and hiyayako.
Everything was very good. The outstanding item was the hiyayako. I don't know if it was my imagination, but the bean curd seemed specially good. It did not taste the same as most of the bean curd I have had. It was the best I have had.
The place seems to be staffed by a husband and wife. They couldn't have been nicer. And one shouldn't forget the Spanish connection: Mi casa es Tsukasa.
wasabi wok
My wife and I went there yesterday evening. The place is nothing to look at and the booths are not very comfortable.
However, the food was pretty good.
I ordered the bento box with tuna and salmon sashimi. The fish was good and the seaweed salad tasty. The miso soup that came with it was OK, but was served in a regular little soup bowl, rather than the nice Japanese sort. There were four fried shu mai, which were tasty, but blisteringly hot. I enjoyed the meal, but it was a bit meager, so I ordered a hamachi and scallion hand roll. Quite nice.
My wife order the fusion box with cashew chicken. I didn't have any of hers, but she liked it.
The place is run by Malasian Chinese. The waitress promised me that they will be adding some Malasian dishes in the future. She also said that their chow fun used a very different recipe from what I am used to.
I plan to visit again.
The place is next door to the House of Meat. We stopped in there and I got some lamb brains and two kinds of cheese from Egypt. My wife got some goat bones for the dogs.
Short trip to Atlanta area
My wife and I went on a short trip to the Atlanta area. We were going to have three dinners, so I did a bit of searching to find good places.
The first night we were staying in College Park. BBQ Kitchen sounded very nice, but we had trouble finding it and when we did find it, it had closed for the day. So we settled on Academy Grill, on Virginia Avenue in College Park. For an emergency fall-back place it was pretty good. We each had country-fried steak, a dish a like. The meat was good, the white pasty gravy less peppery than I care for. The side were fine.
The next night we were in Marietta and Tasty China was the choice. I was bowled over. As a Jewish kid from the Bronx (long ago) I grew up with Chinese food. I have long since abandoned Bronz style and tend to go where there aren't many Caucasians. Taking a hint from what I read here about the restaurant, we skipped the "American Chinese" dishes. In fact, we just ordered appetizers. Since my wife doesn't really care for hot food, we chose milder things. We had five dishes (I only ordered four, but five came). I had never had any of them, and they all were good. This seems like a place to work through the menu over a period of time. The service left a little to be desired, but the quality of the food more than made up for it. If we every relocate to the area, I would like to get a bunch of like minded (or palated) people together for dinnes there.
The third night found use back in College Park. This time we ate at BBQ Kitchen. Very good. Simple menu. We each had port BBQ, but each with three different sides. I actually had a fourth side, taking advantage of the refill on side dish policy. The sweet tea was good. I'm sure dessert was fine, but no room for it. For $6.81, I couldn't ask for more.
Visit to Marietta
We will be spending a few days in Marietta. We will stay at the glamorous Comfort Inn near exit 261 of I-75. Any suggestions for places close to that. Southern cooking a BBQ would be nice, since there is not a whole lot of that in Trenton, NJ.
Chinese Buffet in Central Jersey-Recommendations
The World Buffet in Mercerville is marvelous. I have been eating Chinese food for at least fifty years and this place often serves up the real thing.
Almost every time that I go there I find something that I haven't had before. Lunch does not quite offer so much (no Peking duck and a smaller selection of sushi), but is still very good.
If you like oysters and clam, they have them as well as the somewhat ubiquitous green-lipped mussels.
I sometimes think that most Chinese buffets are supplied by a central kitchen located in Kansas (the geographical center of the lower 48) which makes mediocre food in large quantities.
The World Buffet is a real exception to all the others.
World Buffet 368 Highway 33 Mercerville, NJ 08619
(609) 689-3688
Late dinner and lunch in Lumberton, NC?
When my wife and I travel between Trenton and Lake Worth we make it our business to stop in Lumberton to eat at Fuller's.
I can't say that I am a bbq expert, but I know that Fuller's is one of the best I have eaten at.
Burger and Kebab Place in Fredericksburg
We ate here a few days ago. It is located on Warrenton Road, just off of I-95. Very nice and resonably price Pakistani cooking in a bare-bones place. Well worth a visit.
Recommendation in Lexington/Natural Bridge
Sad to say, I was at the Southern Inn last week and was very disappointed. I won't return. It is a pretty and pleasant place, but the food just doesn't make it, particularly when considering the price.
