Two restaurants cling to the banks of the meandering Conestoga River east of Lancaster. Both have big parking lots, spacious outdoor decks and tacky interiors. The Waterfront offers a “waterside dining experience of casual elegance”; Conestoga makes much of the fact that an inn stood there in 1741, even though the current building is cinder block and formstone. Both serve mediocre food that they pretend is haute cuisine.
And yet, after six years of sampling, I have a clear favorite: Conestoga.
- Better river views. Where the Waterfront sits low on a bare mud bank, the Conestoga overlooks a landscaped yard that slopes down to the arched East King Street bridge. In the spring, there is constant entertainment from swallows darting to catch fat mayflies rising from the water. In the evening, the deck is ringed by gas torches that make it cozy and sheltered from the street.
- Less attitude. I’ll be honest: I haven't experienced great service in either location. If you go to the Conestoga during the 7 p.m. rush you may wait forever to be noticed, and again to get your food. But just an hour later and you could have the deck to yourself.
- Surprisingly good food. It’s all about managing expectations. Conestoga promises less than The Waterfront and delivers more than expected. The thing that I often order is a gyro sandwich with a small Greek salad. The salad is fresh and comes with stuffed grape leaves; the gyro is pleasantly warm and spicy. Conestoga has a funny thing about putting meat on burgers (consider the Lumpy Bleu Burger which includes fresh lump crab meat and house smoked cherry bacon) but none of sandwiches are bad. I wouldn’t recommend the spinach pie or the “specialty drinks.”
One of my treasured Lancaster dining moments was the evening that four of us were dropping an absurd amount of money on some nearly-deserving farm-to-table fare at John J. Jeffries, and the waiter was going on about how their red velvet cake is colored the authentic way—with beet juice—and after he left the couple beside us turned to our table and said conspiratorially, “The food is so much better at The Loft.”
Okay, look: they’re entitled to their opinion. But they’re wrong.
John J. Jeffries is the place that serves an amazing Korean-influenced small plate they call “Jim Bim Bop,” with spicy pork, rice, kimchi, seasonal vegetables, chili paste, sesame ginger soy sauce and a fried egg.
The Loft is a restaurant where you get a small vat of soft butter to go with your hard dinner roll, and just in case that weren’t enough processed fat, an equal bowl of sour cream with chives.
The Loft’s website says it’s “poised to be a contender for one of the country’s top restaurants.”
Is it a typo? Do they mean county? C’mon folks—we don’t live in Trumpville. Just because you're brazen enough to say something outrageous doesn’t make it true.
The Loft was hot before Molly’s Pub was hot before Character’s Pub was hot. What’s the connection? Former owners George Centini and Gary Hufford. I don’t know what they’re doing now, but I bet it’s hot.
In the meantime, all the restaurants they started float on like week-old helium balloons. You won’t die from eating there; you might even have a good time. But you probably don’t want to proclaim their culinary merits outside of Cracker Barrel.
http://www.theloftlancaster.com/menu/
One night in 2012 educator Mike Simpson called Brandon Stetser from Crush Wine Bar. He had just tried some of Aaron Risser’s carefully crafted home brews, and he was excited. “We got to give money to this guy,” he said.
In retrospect, perhaps Brandon should have asked how many brews Mike had tried—but no matter. Three years later, Fetish Brewing Company has an underground following that confirms their, er, business instincts. They brewed in Aaron’s driveway in the dead of winter, distributed bottles to an elite group of club members, got picked up by bottle shops like the Fridge and restaurants like Pour, and, last Christmas, they opened their own, unmarked tasting room on Ice Avenue.
Let me tell you about these beers. Fetish started with Spelt, an easy-drinking ale that easily competes with Wacker’s kölsch (although kölsch is lager, so that’s really not a fair match) and a Ghost Pepper stout that is, shall we say, an acquired taste. Later they added a Peat that fermented among Laphroig-soaked oak chips for eight weeks. When I visited the Fetish tasting room in December, they were still serving a double IPA under its test name “Stunt 006.”
All told, there are at least ten brews in circulation. The pride of 2015 is two varieties of sour Wild American ale that were aged in cabernet barrels from Demuth Winery for 18 months. The Wild American Dark enjoyed two helpings of dark cherries and came out smooth and complex, with just an edge of tartness. In December they were flying out the door.
I admit that adequate adjectives often fail me when it comes to alcohol. I end up saying things like, “Oh, that’s good,” and “Oooh, that’s really really good.”
So let me just say: we've got to give money to these guys.
https://www.facebook.com/fetishbeer
