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...