Food Country Restaurant Reviews serving the Delaware Valley

Jeff's Take: “Come on guys, finish this off.” The employee behind the counter didn’t have to ask me twice to clean the plate of honey smoked turkey he was offering as a free sample. And before I even got my order, it was no mystery to me why Koch’s Deli in West Philadelphia is almost a landmark around here. This place has got charm. With a little sleight of hand (read: free food), Koch’s turned a ridiculously long, crowded wait for a sandwich into a memorable experience. During my wait, I sampled two kinds of turkey, some Swiss cheese, and a few pickle spears. Koch’s is not only known for its free samples, but also its creative specialty hoagies and sandwiches and its generous portions of meat. If you like pastrami, the Reuben here is a can’t miss. My mouth watered as I watched my chopped pastrami crisped in the toaster oven, and then was topped with Swiss cheese and cooked again until it bubbled. With the meat piled high and topped with sauerkraut and thousand island dressing an...

Located in a small strip mall behind a gas station, Café Valentina isn’t easy to find. This small, somewhat cramped neighborhood Italian restaurant offers a casual atmosphere, with an intimate dining area in the front and a tiny bar in the back. The menu isn’t imaginative by any means, but features a nice selection of Italian standards, including pasta, pizza, veal, chicken, and seafood dishes. Jeff’s Take: Café Valentina is known for its delicious garlic bread, and deservedly so. Each table gets a serving of large, pillowy dinner rolls, drenched in extra virgin olive oil with fresh chopped garlic and a sprinkling of parsley. What makes it so good is that rather than serving the olive oil on the side, like most restaurants, the plated garlic bread at Café Valentina is already swimming in the olive oil and garlic, so the bread has gotten a chance to absorb the flavor. Despite the large size of the rolls, a second helping was necessary. For my entrée, I ordered the Veal Saltimbocca Roman...

The Landmark Americana Tap & Grill is a relatively new restaurant located on a corner in the heart of West Chester. It has a very slick and elegant appearance despite being a pub/tavern/sportsbar restaurant. Landmark has excellent roomy booths, flat screen televisions, and a very impressive and sturdy metal plated menu. Mike's Take: First let me say that this is my second time at the Landmark Americana, on my first visit I was very impressed with the Nacho appetizer and thought my burger was pretty delicious (though i am not sure which burger I ordered...I believe it was the Bison Burger). I was left with a very good impression on that first visit. Unfortunately, my second visit didn't quite live up to my memory of my first visit...though it's not a bad restaurant in the least. For an appetizer, we ordered some Buffalo Fries. The buffalo sauce was excellent and kept me going back for more. The fries were somewhat soggy, but I forgave this somewhat because they were dren...

Washington Street Ale House is located in downtown Wilmington on (surprise!) Washington Street and has been around since 1996. The restaurant served upscale pub and tavern food alongside handcrafted beer and microbrews in a restored downtown building. The exposed brick walls, 19th century photographs, oak floors, fireplace, and open porch give the ale house a great warm ambiance. While Washington Street does not brew any of their own beers, they do have 20 beers on-tap many of which come from local breweries. Mike’s Take: It’s hard not to draw comparisons to Iron Hill Brewery when you visit Washington Street. The menu and décor are very similar. In fact, I ordered the same cheese steak eggroll appetizer that I had at Iron Hill. Here is where the restaurants start to differ. Washington Street Ale House’s food is definitely a little more upscale than Iron Hill’s both in presentation and price. The cheese steak eggrolls were very good, but could have been cheesier and a slightly bigger po...

Jeff's Take: I’ve heard of Kansas City-style barbecue. Ditto with Texas-style and Memphis-style barbecue. But I’ve never heard of Philly-style barbecue. And I don’t think I’m alone. But Tommy Gunns, a tiny joint in Manayunk, claims that it has The City of Brotherly Love’s unique variant of the American classic. Well, at least for spare ribs. What makes “Philly-style” spare ribs unique, according to the website, is that while other styles trim more meat off the bone in order to achieve a uniform rib size, Tommy Gunns eschews size uniformity, and therefore leaves more meat on the bone. In addition, while most places serve their ribs right out of the smoker, Tommy Gunns throws them on the grill quickly before they’re plated. In the flavor department, the spare ribs here are excellent. The meat has a nice smoky flavor that’s complemented well with the dry rub Tommy Gunns uses. The accompanying barbecue sauce is also solid—tangy with just the right amount of heat. The texture of the mea...

Buckley’s Tavern, a bar and restaurant located in a historic former house on Kennett Pike in Centreville, Delaware, offers nice atmosphere for a variety of purposes. The dark, cozy bar is a great place to get some drinks, the downstairs dining room (with fireplace) offers a charming ambiance for lunch or dinner, and the rooftop deck is great when the weather gets nice. Buckley’s also has an interesting brunch policy—dine in your pajamas, and you get ½ off the bill. Enticing, but neither of us did it. Jeff’s Take: I started off with a bowl of mushroom soup—a generous portion of mushrooms with leeks and tomatoes in broth. I’m a big mushroom fan, but I found this soup to be pretty boring. The broth was salty and unimpressive, and after I finished scooping out the mushrooms it wasn’t worth bothering with. The Steak & Egg Grinder (right) was also a disappointing experience. “Tenderloin with sautéed onions, garlic & scrambled eggs topped with provolone on a crusty roll” sounded prett...

With a name like 2 Fat Guys, this restaurant sounded like it would do Food Country proud. This casual American eatery is located in Wellington Plaza, a small shopping center in Hockessin, Delaware (which also includes Okura, one of the better sushi places in the state). The interior is casual and unassuming, with a small, unpartitioned main dining room and an even smaller bar area in the back. A couple of flat screen TVs adorn the walls (showing The Simpsons and ESPN—nice). The menu is limited to standard American pub fare, so there’s nothing too creative here. The “Award-Winning Wings” are available with a variety of sauces: mild, hot, nuclear, poached pear & molasses BBQ, garlic butter, ginger Thai, and bourbon BBQ. We ordered some hot wings, expecting standard buffalo wing sauce. The buffalo wings we got, however, were covered in what was more like a sweet, milder BBQ sauce. The waiter clarified that this was 2 Fat Guys’ standard buffalo wing sauce. The sauce wasn’t bad, but it ...