Author: admin (Page 27 of 51)

In the last few days I’ve gotten a couple of new (for me) cookbooks through swaptree.com, a service which allows you to trade cookbooks online. This is what I’ve got:
Ma Cuisine by Auguste Escoffier, the god of French haute cuisine. Ma Cuisine is directed to the home cook and I’m fully intending on doing at least a couple of recipes from there.
LA Vera Cucina Italiana: The Fundamentals of Classic Italian Cooking. I’m actually planning to read this book in addition to cooking from it.
I was also supposed to get The Cooking of Southwest France : Recipes from France’s Magnificent Rustic Cuisine but the book seems to have been lost in the mail 🙁
Anyway, I do have a fair number of cookbooks and I really should make a point of cooking a recipe from one cookbook (as opposed to epicurious) a week.

If you google “The Apple Peddler” the fourth link your get is one to my review of the Roseburg, OR location of that restaurant chain. I guess for that reason people have written to me with their impressions (read complaints) about the chain. In 2007, I posted this complaint about the Sutherlin Apple Peddler, and here is a recent one about the one in Burns.

We visited the Apple Peddlers restaurant in Burns Oregon on Sunday November 29, 2009, again, for the first time in several years . It was worse than the last time we decided to quit eating there, several years ago for the same reason.
The service was terrible, unfriendly and extremely slow. Waitress was more interested in cleaning tables and filling jelly racks than waiting on us and taking our order.
I ordered a hamburger with french fries. My husband ordered a senior omelet. When she finally brought our order, she brought two hamburgers and fries. She took the one back and reordered an omelet . My hamburger patty was so tough I could barely cut the hamburger in half, and the fries actually had ice crystals still on the inside.
I asked another waitress to return the fries and I received one that was just out of the fryer and quite pale, but edible. My Husbands omelet arrived and the cheese on it was not melted and it was very cold and tasteless, the biscuit was so cold it would not even begin to melt the butter.
We decided to give up and call it quits and took part of the hamburger to the dog. Dog refused to eat it ! So it was 17.99 down the drain as far as we are concerned.
We will not stop there again, which is very sad , as it is one of the few eating restaurants in Burns Oregon. McDonalds is a lot better and at least the food is cooked and hot when we receive it.
Betty McBee
Emmett, Id 83617

I think there are Sharis in California, but we have never felt
compelled to visit one until the night we were staying in Central Point,
OR and had nowhere else to go for dinner. Our expectations weren’t
very high, so we were pleasantly surprised. While Sharis does not
offer anything close to a gourmet experience, the food is fine and
definitely merits a B (“Better than expected”) in my
“road restaurant” scale.
The restaurant itself is your basic family restaurant/coffee shop. It
does not have a particularly gimmick, but it’s pleasantly appointed; one
of its dining rooms has all booths and the other one tables and chairs.
We were offered a choice of a booth or a table, though we had to wait
for a few minutes for the former. Service was very good.
We all liked the thick beer battered onion rings, they were tasty
(though not very crispy) with and without the ranch sauce. My “baby
back” ribs ($10) were large and meaty, definitely not what you think as
babybacks, but there was plenty of meat. The BBQ sauce was very
average. It came with some mixed veggies, OK loaded mashed potatoes and
an absolutely marvelous slice of corn bread. Its texture was closer to
corn cake and it was rather sweet and quite delicious.
Mike had the fish and chips and they were pretty mediocre. He felt the
fish had too much breading and the fries were merely OK. The portion
was also not very large, though mine was generous enough to share. Mika
had the sliders from the kid’s menu. Mike thought they were very dry,
but Mika loved them: “they tasted just like the ones from school,” she
said. Camila had the mac & cheese and was quite satisfied, but she’s
not very demanding.
In all our dinner at Sharis was fine. I wouldn’t go there if there was
an Elmer’s around, but I’d definitely prefer it to a Denny’s or Applebees.
Shari’s Restaurant
210 Penninger St
Central Point, OR
(541) 665-7070
www.sharis.com
Marga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews
Marga’s Road Restaurant Reviews
Marga’s Bay Area Restaurant Reviews

We stopped at Granzella’s a Wednesday in November 2009 during a road
trip up north to visit my in-laws. The large signs by the freeway did
not necessarily convince us we’d find good food, but we thought the
place was worth a try. It was, but next time I’d probably try a
different restaurant.
Granzella’s is as much a travel center as a restaurant, in the style of
Harris Ranch on I-5 heading south. There is a casual restaurant, a deli
counter, a coffee/gelato counter and a store selling a variety of
gourmet foods and drinks and cute knickknacks. Apparently there is also
a hotel associated with it. Unlike Harris Ranch, there is no stench of
cow poop around it.
The kids wanted to eat in the restaurant rather than the deli so that’s where we headed. The
place has a cabin feel, with lots of wood, but the assorted decorations
are somewhat mismatched. The restaurant is pretty dark and not terribly
inviting.
The menu offers your typical family restaurant/coffeeshop fare. There
are burgers and sandwiches as well as pizza. I thought the prices ($9
for a plain cheeseburger) were a bit steep for this kind of restaurant
(and the quality of the food). There is a kids menu with your usual
choices for about $5; a soda or whole milk is included.
I had the bacon cheeseburger ($10), cooked medium rare as ordered. The
burger itself was probably fine, but it was served with so much yellow
mustard that it was impossible to taste anything else. I was not
impressed. The fries were average. Camila had the mac & cheese and it
must have been good as she ate the whole plate (not overly large). Mika
ordered the nachos, thinking it was the tortilla chip and cheese-whiz
concoction that she apparently gets at school, but refused to eat them
when she realized they had beans and not much on the way of cheese.
Mike had them later and thought they were mediocre. Both kids had hot
fudge sundaes ($2:50 each, I think), which they did enjoy. In all, I
thought the meal wasn’t worth the $36 it came to after tax and tip.
I took a look at the cafe, deli and store and, as you may suspect, it
was grossly overpriced. I think 20oz cokes were about $2.25. Still,
some of their stuff is very cute and it may be worth a quick stop just
to browse.
Granzella’s
451 6th Street
Williams, CA 95987
Restaurant: (530) 473-5583
http://www.granzellas.com/
Marga’s Road Restaurant Reviews
Marga’s Bay Area Restaurant Reviews

The Olive Garden. Yes, the Olive Garden. Look, we were staying near
the Westfield Mall in Vancouver, WA, and all of our dining choices were
chain restaurants. Frankly, neither Red Lobster, Chevy’s or Azteca
sounded like a more appealing choice. Plus I hadn’t been to the Olive
Garden in almost a decade. And you know what? It wasn’t too bad.
Generic, uninspired? Sure. But the grub was tasty enough, even good,
and the prices reasonable as well. Would I go back? Well, let’s just
say that I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid it.
The Olive Garden at the Westfield Mall looks from the outside as an
Olive Garden and from the inside as a mall restaurant. The textured
walls and Italianish decorations did not stand up against the flat roof
of our small dining room, ­ but it wasn’t unpleasant. Service was swift
and attentive, though the waitress seemed somewhat taken aback when I
pronounced the food merely “fine”. Really, given my low expectations
that was a compliment.
The menu, as you can imagine, emphasizes pastas with a few heavier
entrees added for good measure. There are plenty of fried appetizers,
but Mike and I had had a late lunch and weren’t /that/ hungry. Plus
entrees come with your choice of soup (several choices here) or salad,
and neither of these are skimpy.
I had the spaghetti with meatballs and the salad ($14)
and Mike had the tilapia and the chili soup ($16.50. The meals came accompanied
by their greatly advertised bread sticks, which were warm but still kind
of tough and otherwise unremarkable. The salad was large enough for two
or more, but also nothing to write home about. I personally found the
dressing too acidic, but Mike liked it. There was plenty of crispy,
white lettuce, a few onion and tomato slices and an amazing number of
croutons.
Mike found his chili soup watery. He was somewhat surprised it had
pasta in it (hello?! It’s the Olive Garden!) and not much meat. Maybe
try one of the other choices.
My spaghetti with meatballs, on the other hand, was surprisingly good.
OK, the spaghetti was spaghetti, and the “meat” sauce had a generic
sweet flavor to it, but the meatballs were very nice. They tasted
pretty much like you imagine a meatball would taste; nothing gourmet,
nothing revelatory, but exactly what I was looking for that night. If
you are looking for classic meatballs, you could definitely do worse.
Mike thought his tilapia was “fine”, though I remember he liking the
sauce. The portion wasn’t too big so he ate some of my meatballs (the
chutzpah!), which he also liked.
We were too full for dessert so we skipped it. Maybe next time, but
they are about $7 which I find a bit steep for dessert.
And that was it, a pleasant meal that exceeded our very low expectations.
The Olive Garden
8101 NE Parkway Dr.
Vancouver, WA
(360) 256-8174
http://www.olivegarden.com
Marga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews
Marga’s Restaurant Reviews

I just discovered that you can get coupons for San Leandro restaurants at http://www.openfence.net/coupons.cfm (they also have coupons for other businesses, but this is a food blog). Featured restaurants include The Englander, Creasian and Porky’s Pizza Palace (but there are quite a few more). You have to register to get the coupons, but they are free – albeit limited in number and only good for a month after you get them.
They also have a couple of restaurant coupons for Castro Valley (Buon Appetito, Palomares and a couple of other ones) and Oakland (Mezze, Tropix, La Cucina Italiana). I suspect they’re working on getting more restaurants, so it’ll pay to check them out before going out to eat. I know I will.