Ma(i)son

Here are some things you should know about Ma(i)son:

• When you come in the door you won't necessarily be greeted right away. 
• The "chef's table in the back" that is "a little more private" is actually the high bar at the end of the dining room that faces the kitchen.
• The menu is on a chalkboard that may not be legible from where you are seated.
• It is BYOB.

Here is the most important thing to know about Ma(i)son: the food is lovely. 

Chef owners Taylor and Leeann Mason delight in letting each ingredient be itself, delivering tight harmonies of seasonal vegetables and herbs featuring rabbit, cornish hen, beef, boar, pasta or seafood.

Ma(i)son burrata, January 2014

The menu uses words like burrata (squeaky white cheese), chevre (goat's milk cheese), sugo (Italian pasta sauce), escarole (a kind of endive) and haricot vert (thin green beans). In a lesser restaurant it would be pretentious. Here it's simply accurate.

For $14, the handmade burrata with cherry tomatoes, basil and smoked prosciutto (or with speck and roasted shallot and fig jam last winter) is as delightful to look at as it is to devour. 

While fast food chains busily pepper their websites with "artisanal" buzzwords (smashed potatoes, anyone?) Leeann and Taylor go shopping—and bring the best tastes home for us.

http://www.maisonlancaster.com/menu/ 

 

Bulls Head Public House

Lititz is a charming town, with boutique shops in old buildings that no one bothered to “improve” in the 1960s. On a winter night with snow falling and Christmas lights glittering in windows, you might be delirious to find a bustling British pub on Main Street, complete with red tin ceilings, two fireplaces and 14 strange and delicious brews on tap.

You might, in fact, go back to Lititz the following morning just to make sure, and find yourself sitting at a dark wood bar with a hot breakfast of perfectly crisped sausage, English bacon, sweet baked beans, squeaky mushrooms, a grilled tomato and two runny over-easy eggs. Plus toast. And a bottomless cup of coffee.

Suspend cynicism for one more hour. This is not the product of some national chain's market research. Owner Paul Pendyck grew up in Liverpool and most of his decor came from England, too. In fact, Lancaster Online reports that not even the name was calculated: Pendyck simply found an old wooden sign from a British pub with big letters in gold: “Bulls Head Public House.”

Let it be.

http://generalsutterinn.com/bullsheadph/