Little Sicily

Little Sicily online: https://www.facebook.com/Little-Sicily-Pottsgrove-PA-393829480764617/

Had lunch today with Joel at a new pizza place, Little Sicily.  I think the location was a pizza place previously as well, but this was new to both of us and I think relatively new in town.  It is located right on the corner of Buchert and Keim.  I ride my bike past here all the time, maybe next time I'll stop in for a slice.

I called in advance to ask if it was alright if we brought some beers to enjoy with our lunch and there was no hesitation, BYOB welcome. It looks like a typical pizza place.  You go to the counter to order or pick up your food, there are a few pizzas behind glass you can order by the slice and they have a bunch of cookies in plastic clam shell containers that I forgot to ask about.

We decided to order the Margherita pizza and an eggplant parm sandwich.  We sat down and poured a homebrew first.  For two craft beer drinkers there was some concern about what beer really goes well with pizza besides Bud.  I think a belgian/saison or light IPA work well.  Our food was delivered with plates and utensils to our table.

The pizza got pretty high marks from both of us.  The sauce was fresh tasting, not sweet or overly spiced.  There was fresh mozzarella as you would expect on a Margherita pizza and also pieces of fresh basil.  The crust was crisp, but maybe could have been a little less flat - maybe a little more rise?  The center of the pie, like the points of the slices, were pretty floppy and wet.  Overall the flavor and texture was pretty good.

 The eggplant parm sandwich was on a long roll that was toasted and perfectly crisp on the outside.  The eggplant itself was thin-sliced and fried.  It was topped with some melted cheese and finished with a little sauce.  When I squeezed the sandwich there was a little oil coming out of the eggplant and you could taste the frying oil, but it didn't drip so I don't want to say it was overly oily, that was just part of the flavor.  I thought the texture was perfect.  There wasn't too much cheese either which I think can be an issue for pizza place fare.

I definitely want to go back to try their plain pie - or get one delivered.  The service was friendly, the food was good and the place was clean and welcoming.  Now I have a new menu in my drawer for takeout!  Thanks to Joel for the company, the suggestion of a new place and for getting me back to reviewing local places.  It really makes eating out more interesting :)

Chinese Food Tasting General Tso's- By The Numbers

DATE: January 14, 2016
MENU ITEMS: General Tso's Chicken
House Special Fried Rice
Singapore Mae Fun

So, this is the first of a series posts I will do about the first Chinese food tasting.  The first tasting was attended by 5 tasters. We tasted food from 8 Pottstown restaurants.  The dishes we tried from each were General Tso's Chicken, Singapore Mae Fun and House Special Fried Rice. 

I picked up all of the dishes between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, but I will note which restaurants also deliver.  The prices for each restaurant were within a couple dollars of each other.  The restaurants were:

King Wok - Offers Delivery

1102 Town Square Rd

6107188808

http://www.kingwokpottstown.com/location.aspx

Hong Kong Wok - Offers Delivery

1491 E High St

6107188797

http://610-718-8797.chinesemenu.com/

Hunan Wok

1432 E High St

6109705646

Hing San - Offers Delivery

425 High St

6109705790

China Pan - Offers Delivery

6103273382

207 E High St

New Panda - Offers Delivery

1642 W. High St
610-705-8880

http://www.newpandastowe.com/

Sakura Asian Cuisine - Offers Delivery

214 Shoemaker Rd

6103276888

http://www.pottstownsakura.com/

No 1 Chinese Restaurant - Cash Only

1300 N Charlotte St

6103236765

The most friendly service I received for my pickups was from China Pan on High Street.  They also gave me 2 free egg rolls which made an excellent breakfast the day after our tasting.  An eggroll also came with my order from No. 1 Chinese Restaurant in the North End Shopping Center.  It may have been part of a combination platter of General Tso's and pork fried rice which is not what I ordered and they totally missed the Mae Fun.  They also do not take credit cards so I had to run to the Redner's to use the ATM.  It was my last stop so my patience was a little thin at that point, but I sucked it up and got cash to pay for my partial order.

Below is the review by the numbers.  Each taster was asked to rate the dishes and make comments.  If the rating had a plus or a minus I added or subtracted .25 so it reflected in the numbers.  I will compile the comments and post them soon with lots of pictures!

General Tso's Chicken						Average	Median
New China Pan	3	1	4.25	4.5	4.5	3.45	4.25
Hong Kong Wok	3	4	4.75	4	3.5	3.85	4
No. 1 Chinese Rest.	3	4	2.5	3.75	2	3.05	3
King Wok	3	3	4.5	4	3	3.5	3
New Panda	3	4	3	4.5	3	3.5	3
Sakura	3	2	4.5	4	2	3.1	3
Hung San	1	2	5	3	1	2.4	2
Hunan Wok	1	4	1	3.5	1	2.1	1

House Special Fried Rice						Average	Median
No. 1 Chinese Rest.	3	4	5	3.5		3.875	3.75
New Panda	4	3.75	3.25	2.5		3.375	3.5
Hung San	2	3.75	4	3		3.1875	3.375
Sakura	3	4	1.75	3.25		3	3.125
King Wok	3	3	1	3.5		2.625	3
Hong Kong Wok	3	4.5	1	2		2.625	2.5
New China Pan	3	4	1.25	1		2.3125	2.125
Hunan Wok	2	4	1	2		2.25	2

Singapore Mae Fun						Average	Median
New China Pan	4	3.5	2	4	4	3.5	4
Sakura	4.5	3	4	2	3.75	3.45	3.75
Hong Kong Wok	4.5	2.5	2	4	3.25	3.25	3.25
King Wok	4	3.5	3	3	3	3.3	3
New Panda	4.5	4	3	3	3	3.5	3
Hung San	4	3.75	2	3	2	2.95	3
Hunan Wok	3	3.25	3	1	3.5	2.75	3

                          

Nick's Pizza

Nick's website: http://www.nicksstowe.com/

I ordered delivery again - hey, it's winter, who wants to go out?   This time I was laying in bed with my cell phone and I went to Nick's website where they offer an opportunity to order online.  The link to order online is: http://order.ehungry.com/nickspizza/?form=ordering&form=ordering.  This was great, I could lay in bed, order food without even speaking with anyone and maybe by the time I got up and got dressed the delivery guy would be at my door...

The site was pretty easy to use.  I clicked on Italian Dinners and chose Spaghetti and Meatballs.  When you click on the dinner it takes you to a page where you can choose your salad dressing and whether you want garlic bread or homemade bread and butter.  I chose Ranch Dressing and homemade bread.  There was a section for Special Instructions.  Realizing I had no parmesan cheese in the house I entered a request for a side of parm not sure if I would actually get it or not.  Under Appetizers & Side Orders I chose a side of Sausage in Sauce.

The site looked like it was estimating my delivery time at about 30 minutes, but not sure that's actually what it was saying.  The checkout was easy enough for me to do it on my phone and I used my credit card.  There was a section to add a tip as well which I did.

The delivery took more like an hour.  When it arrived the delivery guy handed me my food in a short cardboard box and quickly left.  I didn't have to sign anything, but I noticed later that the tip I had added to my order was not included.  I didn't get the chance to see that before he left - sorry.

The first thing I noticed was the massive amount of bread that was included in my order.  It was a little late so it's possible that they were giving me whatever was leftover at the end of the night, but whatever the reason, it was a ton of bread with a ton of butter.  The bread was kind of dense and chewy, a little crisp in the crust and it was warmed.

The salad had iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber, roasted red peppers and a pickled cauliflower topped with croutons.  I appreciate the effort to improve the basic salad with things like the peppers and cauliflower, but it's not really my cup of tea.  The ingredients were fresh though.  The dressing was Ken's, who can argue with that?

The pasta was not spaghetti.  It was more like a linguine which I didn't mind.  And hey, look, they sent me my side of parm, woohoo!  I always think pasta is a risky choice when ordering delivery because the hot pasta is closed up, soaking in it's own steam for an undetermined period of time before it arrives at your door where it will likely be completely overcooked. This wasn't bad though.  Linguine was probably a better choice for this anyway.

The sauce wasn't too sweet or spicy.  It was a little herby and thick.  It's a little generic, but good.

I thought the meatballs were quite good.  They were very light in color inside with some herbs mixed in.  They appeared to be handmade, a little irregular in shape.  Nicely mixed, not too dense.  You didn't even need to chew them, you could just kind of squish each bite in your mouth, they fell apart easily, but didn't quite melt - still maintained some texture.  The sausage was nothing to write home about.  It was a basic, Italian sweet sausage with a fennel flavor.  The portion was good.  It wasn't really browned on the outside or anything so I would guess it was probably boiled vs cooked on the grill.

So, I would definitely order from Nick's again.  Their food was good and the service was decent although the delivery may have been slow.  Maybe the guy drove around with my food extra long because I didn't leave a tip.  The online system was easy to use except, apparently for that pesky tip.  Love that they included my request for parm.  Now, what to do with all that bread?  

Giuseppe's Pizza

Giuseppe's has a facebook page at:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Giuseppes-Pizza-Restaurant/182623725135386

(menu)

I ordered delivery from Giuseppe's Pizza on a Monday night.  I went out on a limb and ordered the Giuseppe's Special.  It was listed on the menu under "Chicken Steaks", but it was described as Breaded chicken, tomato, onions, bacon, ranch, mozzarella cheese, baked in the oven."  It is not something I would normally order and especially not for delivery because certain things don't hold up well to being wrapped up and transported.  I asked for a side of marinara sauce which the guy on the phone seemed to think was odd, but he did it anyway.  The menu says sauce and fried onions are free for steaks.  I also threw a small salad in there for my guilt over the sandwich.

He said it would be 40 minutes and it turned out to take about 50 minutes.  The delivery guy called me Sweetie which is fine with me.  He was quick and friendly.  The salad was in a styrofoam container.  It was basic lettuce, tomato, cucumber and purple cabbage.  The dressing was wrapped in foil which was overkill, maybe, but better than spilling in the bag.  The veggies were crisp and fresh and you can't ask for much more from a basic side salad.

The sandwich had one of those little plastic sheets on top, then was wrapped in foil and then paper.  I appreciate good wrapping because it does help the sandwich survive that dreaded delivery, staying somewhat crisp and warm.  The outside of the sandwich was toasty and even though there was ranch on it, there was no sogginess at all.  (Awesome!)  

I had a hard time getting a decent picture of the sandwich.   It was just as described.  The fried chicken fingers were still crispy.  The tomato and onion were raw which I found interesting, but they were warmed inside the sandwich and I thought it worked well.  The dressing was in there, it was sprinkled with small pieces of bacon and then everything was apparently baked with the cheese on top.  I am not a huge fan of raw onion so I pulled most of them out, but it wasn't a ton of onion, just a personal preference.  I loved the texture of the chicken, raw onion and crispy bread with everything else.  The ranch was there, but not overdone a little bit of bacon in there, just a nice balance compared to some of the "chicken, bacon, ranch" variations I have seen out there swimming in a puddle of grease and dressing.  This was way better and doesn't deserve the stigma.  

The marinara (also wrapped in foil) was unnecessary but actually went ok with everything else.  It tasted mostly of pureed tomatoes, so nothing exciting, but sometimes that's a good thing.  

Previously I had pizza from Giuseppe's.  I stopped in there and picked it up.  They were friendly there too and the pizza was good.  I will definitely go back.

Beijing Gardens

Beijing Gardens' menu is online at http://www.beijinggardens.com/

Ordered delivery lunch on a Tuesday from Beijing Garden.  I ordered around 11:00 and put the purchase on my credit card.  The person that took my order was reasonably friendly, a little hard to understand.  It only took about 20 minutes for my food to arrive.  The delivery person wasn't rude, but he didn't say one word to my "hello" or through signing the check or my wish for him to have a nice day.  Could have been worse I guess.

I ordered a small #17, Wonton Soup, #38b, Shrimp Pad Thai and V1, a Vegetarian Spring Roll.  My delivery came with mustard, soy sauce and duck sauce.  I also got a bag of those wide, greasy fried noodles, I'm assuming they were included because of my soup.  They also threw in two fortune cookies.  Sometimes I can tell I've ordered too much food if I get like 5 cookies, but I think 2 is probably standard.

The wonton soup looked mostly typical.  There wasn't anything in the broth besides some scallions though.  Once I cut into the wontons, I felt they were a bit short on meat.  More on a wonton soup experiment in a future post.

A lady I know makes these amazing spring rolls in a moist, rice-paper wrapper.  Sometimes when I order a spring roll I hope for something like that.  Unfortunately, this was more like a regular, fried spring roll with a thin shell.  It wasn't very dark in color, but it was fried and the outside was crispy.  The inside had big pieces of cabbage, carrots and mushrooms.  It was pretty good, actually.  

I ordered the Pad Thai mostly because I'm trying to mix it up.  I can't write about the same meal over and over and part of my purpose with this blog was to enjoy some restaurants and some menu items I might not have otherwise.  So, I don't have a lot of recent Pad Thai experience.  I turned to the interwebs for an idea of what makes a traditional Pad Thai and that is where some of my evaluation comes from here.


The Pad Thai was packed pretty tight in the container.  Lots of noodles and bean sprouts.  One corner of the container was filled with crushed peanuts which are a typical accompaniment.  There was a lemon slice and from what I can tell, lime would have been the more traditional choice.  I did think the lemon was a nice touch though and cut the sweetness of the noodles nicely.    Once I stirred it up I found a good amount of shrimp in the bottom.  The ratio of noodles to shrimp was pretty good.  Mixed in with the noodles and shrimp were some scallions/green onions and egg.  The flavor was sweet and maybe a little sour from the tamarind, but benefited from the lemon that I squeezed over the top and I enjoyed it.   Loved the peanuts, maybe next time I'll ask for extra.



Even with my exhaustive research on Pad Thai, there were some items in the mix I couldn't identify.   I ate one or two and what is pictured here was a little giggly, but easy to bite through. Can someone tell me what that is?Looks a little like an ear, someone suggested it might be pieces of squid - not sure about that one.  There were also a couple other pieces that looked more like beef.  Maybe it's like the buffet at Ponderosa and pieces from the other dishes fall into the nearby containers?


Anyway, I liked the Pad Thai, but maybe shouldn't look at it so closely.  According to my cookies, "All is well."  I'm OK with that.

Vito's NY Style Pizza & Deli

I was out with my neighbor on Wednesday night.  Heading home to sample a couple IPAs, we were both hungry.  I tried ordering from a couple places online or pulling menus, but it was difficult with the cell reception I had at the bar.  I remembered getting a menu for Vito's in the mail so I googled their number and figured I would order delivery and it would be there shortly after I arrived home.

I ordered a large pepperoni pizza and chicken fingers.  Gave my credit card over the phone.  It was around 7:00pm and it took a little over an hour for the delivery.  I actually called to check on the order and like magic the driver showed up a minute later.  That's always the way it is.

So, I'm not really a chicken finger girl.  I do, however know that chicken fingers can be made from real pieces of breaded chicken or from reformed pieces of chicken meat and chicken byproduct.  The verdict of my guests is that these were the latter.  I thought they were reasonably firm considering that fact, but definitely didn't seem like real chicken.



They didn't ask me about dipping sauces when I called in, but they sent a container of Ken's Honey Mustard Sauce and a barbecue sauce in a little plastic souffle cup.  Nothing exciting about these chicken fingers.  They weren't the end of the world though.

I did not really enjoy the pizza, unfortunately.  It was room temperature...maybe it sat in the car for that hour I was waiting for delivery.  So, the first piece I ate was cold.  The crust was kind of dry, almost cracker-like and crumbly.

The pepperoni was good though, a little spicy. The onions were finely sliced which I enjoyed as well.  Sometimes onions are stringy and pull everything including the cheese off the pizza when you bite into them, but I didn't really have that problem with these.  Once I put the pizza in the oven for a while it was better, but that didn't fix the crust.

Ultimately the food was not my favorite and I won't be making Vito's my first choice for pizza next time.  They were nice when I called in though, that's good.  Getting hungry thinking about my next place 

Hong Kong Wok

I ordered delivery from Hong Kong Wok.  I suppose I can admit now that I have ordered from them before.  Good thing is that they have my address/phone number combo in their system so they were able to quickly verify my address without any laborious spelling of street names.

I ordered my typical, Beef & Broccoli and an Egg Roll.  I used a card over the phone and it was easy.  Delivery arrived in 20 minutes.  The delivery guy was nice, wished me a good night and I was sure not to steal his pen.

The delivery came with two cookies, duck sauce and soy sauce packets.  I also got free white rice.  The white rice was a little drier than I would expect, but not terrible once you add it to the sauce.

The egg roll was pretty typical looking.  Nice and crunchy.  They put a little napkin in the bottom of the wax bag it was in, I assume to absorb any extra grease - good strategy.  There was very little pork in the egg roll.  Kind of disappointing.  I ate it, and I kind of enjoyed it anyway.  When you're home alone and you get solo Chinese Food delivery, fried and warm may be enough to make it enjoyable.














The Beef and Broccoli had a little higher ratio of broccoli to beef than I wanted.  The sauce was kind of sweet, but otherwise was a typical sauce like you'd expect.  I will say that I have never looked very closely at Chinese food delivery sauces, but this one was a little greasy.  If it sat for a while the grease would kind of separate and float to the top.  Not sure if this is normal.  I will order some more delivery and report back.

The beef was flat and flaccid, but exactly what you'd expect for this kind of food.  The broccoli was firm and not mushy which I love.

It was a satisfactory solo night eating out of the container the food came in.  I am curious now about all the other Chinese food establishments in Pottstown - excited to eat more.  In the meantime, like what you do.