Food Country Restaurant Reviews serving the Delaware Valley

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...

Dome Restaurant and Bar, located in Hockessin , Delaware ’s Lantana Square , is the sister restaurant of Eclipse, located on Union Street in Wilmington . Both restaurants have a similar hip, modern feel, although Dome is much bigger than Eclipse, featuring a bigger bar area and outdoor dining, as well as another smaller room for private parties. Dome’s cuisine is d escribed as “urban American,” including steak, seafood, pizzas, salads, and sandwiches. Jeff’s Take: The appetizers we started off with—fried calamari, pork pot stickers, and the hummus plate—were for the most part good, but slightly flawed. The pork pot stickers featured traditional Asian-style fried pork dumplings in a sweet and sour ginger glaze. Dumplings are usually served with a saltier soy-vinegar sauce, but Dome went in the opposite direction with the sweet and sour. This mild sauce was tasty, but was overpowered by the stronger flavors of pork, scallions, and ginger in the dumplings. The fried calamari, which featu...

Stepping in to the original Charcoal Pit location on Concord Pike in Wilmington brings a sense of 50s nostalgia. You can probably tell from the picture—it’s the kind of place that has jukeboxes at every table. Known for its burgers, milkshakes, and ice cream, Charcoal Pit originally opened in 1956, and has since expanded to three additional locations in North Delaware . The burgers come in 4 oz. or 8 oz. sizes, chargrilled, with the standard optional fixings and served on a sesame-seeded bun. Like any good burger joint should, Charcoal Pit uses only fresh ground beef. The burger’s artery-clogging partner in crime is the milkshake, which Esquire magazine named on their “67 Things Worth a Detour” list a few years back. Charcoal Pit’s milkshakes are made fresh with hand-scooped ice cream and served in frosted metal cups. If you don’t like to drink your ice cream, the menu also includes a large selection of huge sundaes named after area high schools. And if you’re feeling really adventuro...

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...

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...

For the past decade, there’s been almost constant development on the Wilmington riverfront. What was once a dull cluster of old warehouses and industrial lots is now home to high-rise condominium buildings, dozens of town homes, brand new office buildings, outlet shops, a minor league baseball stadium, a farmer’s market, and of course, several restaurants. Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant appeared on the scene in 2003, in a 9,000 square foot building which includes a small bar area, a downstairs dining room, an outdoor dining area, and a second level with an additional bar and banquet room. What really makes this building special is the on-site brewery, where guests can watch the brewing process. In addition to the Wilmington location, Iron Hill has seven locations in the Delaware Valley area. For starters, the fajita-spiced chicken nachos were almost perfect. So many things can go wrong with nachos, and at most places, they do. It all starts with the tortilla chips—you can tell when...

If one were to give an out-of-towner a tour of the best food Delaware has to offer, a stop at Capriotti’s is a must. This place serves some of the best hoagies in the area—and that includes Philadelphia, which is known for having the best hoagies anywhere. The original shop, located on Union Street in Wilmington, started serving up delicious hoagies over 30 years ago. Since then, Capriotti’s has expanded to more locations around the area, as well as across the country—as far as Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Without a doubt, the star at Capriotti’s is the turkey. While most other delis continue to use processed turkey, Capriotti’s always uses freshly roasted, pulled turkey on its hoagies. You’ll never want regular deli turkey again. In addition to the standard turkey hoagie, Capriotti’s offers The Bobbie, a highly recommended mainstay at the shop, which includes turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and mayo. While Capriotti’s is most famous for its turkey hoagies, there are some other great ...

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 ...