Results tagged “restaurants” from Only in York County

WOW! I can't believe how many responses my post about Hess's last week drew.

I'd love to compile a thorough archive of "stores that used to be but aren't any more" in York County. I have posted about a few; if you're a newer reader to the blog, please check these out and let me know what you remember about these locations.

And for everyone - please comment and let me know what other stores you miss. I'll try to round up some info on them and post about them in the coming weeks!

Ghost stores:
- Hess's
- The North Mall (not a "store," exactly, but still.)
- J.M. Fields (at the North Mall, my sister and brother-in-law say)
- The York Mall (commenter Joe reminded me of that one) - I do remember that; wasn't there a free-standing Sears there?
- Best
- Hills
- ... and its neighbor Pathmark
- Gee Bee's
- Zaire's (which was at the same location as Hills, if I remember right??)
- I hear we had Mailman's, too, though I need some more guidance on where and when that might have been!
- Same with Two Guys - where was that?
- People's Drug (commenters Mark and Melanie mentioned all three of these last ones; do you guys have any locations?)
- From the Remember When topic on the Exchange, I learned about Bear's Department Store, which is what the picture above is of, and Stillman's Department store, as well as a place called Jack's store in York.

Ghost restaurants:
- Rax
- Rutter's (former employer of commenter friend Mark!)
- Ponderosa
- Spurg's Drive-In
- Gino's
- Bury's Hamburgers

Let's keep the list growing!

You know how I said I was spending Saturday in the Hanover area?

I used my weekend plans as an excuse to try a Hanover-area specialty that I hadn't had before - the downtown Famous Hot Weiner!

Despite being pretty familiar with the Hanover area, I'd never eaten at the original location at York Street and Broadway, just the newer one over at Dart Drive and Eichelberger Street.

So when Hubby suggested that we stop in with Sarah for our Saturday night dinner, I was totally up for it.

I went with a twist on my favorite - hot dog with ketchup and mustard - the twist being the last-minute addition of bacon after I heard another diner order it.

Sarah went with plain dog. Nothing on it.

We all shared some really, really good fries..

And Chris went for it, ordering two "famous" weiners with their "everything" - onions, mustard and the special Famous Hot Weiner chili sauce.

I have never seen so many onions in one place before!!

All in all, it was a good meal. I like my dogs basically burnt, so mine was a little light for my taste, but still yummy. Chris polished almost all of his two off, and Sarah did a great job on hers. And the fries... wow! I really liked those. (Yes, I'm a big kid at heart.)

The whole weekend was great, and I have some more pictures to share of letterbox hiking, the Summer Blast and more, but those will have to wait. Back to work for now!

One place our family likes to eat is the Cracker Barrel in York Township, near York County Tech.

In our opinion, the best day to eat there is Sunday, because of their great specials. That's where we went last Sunday after church, because Mom and I wanted to get the Sunday special of "Homestyle Chicken."

From Cracker Barrel's Web site:
"Starting at 11:00 a.m. every Sunday, enjoy two boneless chicken breasts hand-dipped in fresh buttermilk, breaded and deep fried to a golden brown in our kitchen. Served with choice of two vegetables."

While we waited, Chris and Sarah made an alien out of paper napkin rings, and we played the peg-jumping game (which Sarah is better out than I am.)

Once dinner came, we were glad to dig in.

My dinner: Homestyle chicken with fries and dumplins

(Read on for the rest of the family's choices.)

Well, despite not feeling 100 percent in the tummy after last week's stomach bug, I am not keeping my promise not to blog about food.

Today, a bunch of us ladies took a nice lunch break and went to Spataro's on Roosevelt Avenue in York. It was my first time there, and any time I try new local food, you know I have to write about it!

Lunch was:
Sam: Lasagna special with salad and garlic bread
Me: Small (hahaha!) Italian hoagie
Kara: Pizzaiola burger
Ellen: Cheese pizza
Carryout for Amy: Chicken parmigiana with capellini

And we all split an order of fries. More on those - and local fries in general - in a future post.

Suffice it to say we got a LOT of food, and for the most part we liked it a lot. Ellen wasn't crazy about the type of sauce they used on the pizza, but she really dug the fries, and Sam loved her lasagna. Kara - after learning how to pronounce pizzaiola - seemed to enjoy hers, and if you know me, you know a good Italian hoagie is one of my favorite things. It came with what I'm almost positive by the taste were Martin's chips, too.

The thing I liked best was our waitress, who was super-friendly, didn't mind splitting a check four ways, kept our drinks full, and made good conversation. She was great.

The other great part? It was cheap! My hoagie and Kara's were less than $4 apiece. Amy's chicken parm was only $6.50, it came with a salad, and had a good-sized portion of meat and pasta.

All in all, I think you should pay them a visit! It's great to eat somewhere locally owned, and it's much better than some Italian chains I won't mention.

It's been a while since I shared one of my Page-A-Day Web sites with you, but today's got me thinking in a local way.

It's a page of McDonald's "local adaptations" in its foreign locations. You know, the Greek Mac in a pita, the Indian Chicken Maharaja Mac, the McKebab in Isreal, the Candaian McLobster Roll, and even the German McFeast, which you can wash down with beer.

So I started thinking... what if our local McDonald's tried to immerse itself in our culture? Would we get the McScrapple Deluxe? The McPretzel, in which your burger is served on a pretzel roll?

C'mon, have fun with this. What are your suggestions?

One of my favorite locally owned places to eat is Alexander's Restaurant on Route 74 in West Manchester Township.

I took Hubby there for lunch last Friday, and for less than the cost of a couple of value meals, he had a great French toast breakfast and I had a bacon cheeseburger deluxe.

Here it is, missing a bite:

The thing I love about Alexander's and several other local restaurants is that they always have feta cheese (one of my favorites) on hand. So they had no problem swapping feta out for the cheddar or American or whatever was supposed to be on the cheeseburger. It was AWESOME. Thick burger, feta cheese, crispy bacon, ketchup and mustard.

Yum.

OK, your turn: Favorite burger topping combinations? Best place to get burgers locally?

It's been a while since I posted about Showbiz Pizza and other former York County pizza places, like Pappy's.

But while doing this week's promised clean-out of e-mail, I found a couple of Showbiz comments, both of which were too good not to share.

New commenter Kevin said he was a huge fan of places like Showbiz. He wrote: "In Minnesota, we had Circus Pizza, which I'm almost positive was from the same company. Same band, same games, everything." Despite liking the pizza, he said the band "still haunts my nightmares to this day." Now, here's the scary part. He wrote a very interesting blog post on the most awful bears - and the Showbiz Pizza band makes up a lot of it.

He's right, they ARE kind of creepy.

Now, that brings me to another first-time commenter, Chris. Now Chris is a lifelong Yorker like me, it looks like, judging from his comments and his bio on his Web site.

He remembers Roll R Way burning down, and also Pappy's Pizza and Showbiz. He said he's still friends with the former manager of Showbiz and also with Aaron Fechter, the co-founder of Showbiz in the 80s.

Now, this is where he really got me. He wrote: "I loved Showbiz pizza so much, I even bought the animatronic band off eBay! Too bad kids these days don't have cool places like that to hang out at."

OK. Animatronic band purchase on eBay. That definitely makes you a fan. Interestingly, if you check out Chris's site, he's very into making Halloween displays. Now, I'm editorializing here, but I happen to think that creepy band would be MUCH more suited for a scary Halloween display than it would be for a fun kids' amusement. Creepy!

Went to Isaac's tonight with Rose, a chance to sit down and have dinner away from a busy night at work.

It was great, and while there, I happened on a new item of theirs that made for a perfect blog post!

No, that's not a misprint. At first, we thought they just couldn't spell "sultry." But then, I read the description of this new cocoa drink, which you can find here.

The trick?

It's hot chocolate, sweetened with caramel, whipped cream and hot fudge... then drizzled with red salt.

Sweet and salty. Indeed. Way to go, Isaac's!

It was Salvo's Pizza.

Bless you, bless you, bless you, Mandy. I was beating my head into the wall trying to remember!

It's Monday, the start of another workweek.

If, like me, you're interested in having a somewhat healthy lunch some day this week, I've got a recommendation: Go to Ruby Tuesday and get the garden bar with the Ruby's mini burgers. You get two little burgers, fries and as much salad bar as you can eat.

I went last week with Mom, and we both got that.

Here's my salad:

If you really want to make it healthier, either have them hold the fries or just eat a few of them. They do make turkey-burger minis, though I went for the beef version, but you could sub those out if you wanted to be healthier, too.

*Note to my healthy-eating friends reading this: You'll notice I ate (gasp) green vegetables on my salad!*

I'm definitely on the hunt for more healthy lunch suggestions, so if you have some, comment!