When I am asked what the second best buffet is, I think Yoders. It has been a while since I have been to Yoders and with an extended visit to the Pennsylvania Dutch area in Lancaster County, PA, dinner at Yoders was definitely on the schedule.
Yoders is a restaurant and buffet that I have written about before, It is a bit unusual - though in this area it is not really out of the ordinary before - you see, it is located in a supermarket. In Lancaster County there are several supermarkets that have restaurants and a few of them have full buffets. The restaurant is actually in the building that the supermarket is located in but separated by a hallway that goes past gift shops and there is the restaurant. Of course, the supermarket is named Yoders as well.
From Monday to Thursday the dinner price at Yoders is $13.49. On Friday and Saturday nights the price for dinner is $14.49. Unlimited refill soft drinks cost $1.99. This may seem expensive to some used to the $10.99 buffets, but OCB also charges $1.99 for drinks. When compared to its neighbor buffet - Shady Maple, when you add the tax and tip at Yoders you come pretty close to the price that you pay there.
This is not a lavish buffet. There are no crystal chandeliers, there is no grand entrance lobby, and you do not have long buffet servers the length of the restaurant. What you do have is good food that is cooked from scratch and a nice selection with something for everyone. This visit was on a Friday night and this is Land and Sea night - as are Saturday nights - and the emphasis is on seafood.
This is a local restaurant that cooks to appeal to local tastes and this is a Mennonite and Amish area - when you are eating at Yoders, you will be eating at a table near Mennonite and Amish people. These are people who appreciate good, plain and fresh country cooking - and that is what you get at Yoders.
As usual, we started with soup. There were two soups - New England Clam Chowder and Stuffed Pepper soup. It is often the case at Yoders that the soups will be a bit out of the ordinary. I had the clam chowder. My wife skipped the soup - as you regular readers know - she is a picky eater who does not eat seafood other than shrimp, but there was plenty of non-seafood here for her to enjoy and she looks forward to coming back to Yoders. The clam chowder was thick and tasty - though a bit on the salty side. I lifted the lid on the tureen of the stuffed pepper soup and I was met with the strong and good smell of stuffed peppers. The soup was in a tomato base and was full of chopped meat and green peppers. (A day later I encountered freshly made, Stuffed Pepper Soup again at a food market - so apparently this is a local soup.)
There is a nice salad bar. It has several types of lettuce greens and also a large selection of prepared salads - some local to this area. There are toppings to make just about any type of mixed salad that you would like including Caesar Salad.
There is a large grill and on this night they were grilling marinated Delmonico steaks. You ask for your steak how you like it and that is how you get it. The steak was tasty. It did have the taste of what it had been marinated in which was slightly sweet, and, in my opinion, marinating is not necessary - but it was good. On weeknights there are other items served from the grill.
With the steak I chose potato filling - think of stuffing made of potatoes - green beans and stewed tomatoes. I also took a small amount of baked oatmeal. My good wife loves their baked oatmeal and it is good!
Thia may sound like an odd criticism of a restaurant, but portions at Yoders are large. I have said this in the past. When I eat at a buffet I like to take a tasting plate - small portions of things that I want to try and then have the ability to take a variety. When I finished the very good steak, I wanted to sample the seafood dishes that are offered Friday and Saturday nights. There were several that I had my eye on - one of which I have never had before. One other was the fried pollack and the pieces that were out where full size portions. Of course, you can take a little bit if you cut a piece of what is there but I don't like to do that. I feel that is wrong as it leaves a broken piece in the serving tray for someone else. So, I took a full piece.
The dish that I have never had before was Tuna Noodle Casserole. This was the butt of many jokes on 1960's TV comedy shows. The joke of "what is for dinner?" was always "tuna noodle casserole" and would be met with a frown. This may have been common at your house - we never had it in our family and my wife never had it on her house either - of course, she does not eat fish anyway. Well, there was tuna noodle casserole and I had to have some. It was actually very good. It was tuna - it seemed to be canned tuna which I suspect is how this is always made - and the tuna was blended with noodles, mushrooms and a cream sauce. It was thick and tasty. To this plate I also added a piece of the stuffed flounder. This was a flounder fillet that was rolled around a generic fish stuffing. It was all good. The flounder was tasty as was the pollack and the rest.
This is one of those buffets that you see things that tempt you to go back up and go a plate further. The fried chicken here is always good. I took a small piece. There was another fish dish that I wanted to try - baked haddock. This was thin fillets of haddock with a crumb and lemon topping. I could not take a whole piece and against my own desire not to cut off a piece from a larger piece there, I did just that. I did not take the fried shrimp but my wife did. There was also cocktail shrimp served both plain and spiced I passed on this too - though I have had this here before and it is good.
My wife was happy with ham loaf in pineapple sauce - chopped ham cooked into a meatloaf. She also took more than one portion of the baked oatmeal. She likes Yoders - no matter what night we are there and she was happy with the selections - which is saying a lot for any buffet on seafood night when my wife is there.
There is good reason to leave room for dessert here. They have a nice assortment of layer cakes, hot and cold prepared desserts - including many local favorites, fruit pies, shoo fly pie - of course, and a soft serve ice cream that is very good. There is a sundae bar to top the ice cream. Yoders complex includes a dairy and that dairy makes home style ice cream. It is a shame that this hard ice cream is not included on the buffet. It is served from the menu - and you can buy it in the attached supermarket. I have been told that it is excellent.
Yoders is a must try but if you go, as I said in the beginning, do not expect lavish. You do not go to Yoders for the atmosphere, you go for the food.
There is a website for Yoders listed at the side of this article. The restaurant is located at Yoder's Supermarket or perhaps, more properly, Yoder's Country Market, Route 23, New Holland, Pennsylvania. The phone number is (717) 354-4748.
Showing posts with label None. Show all posts
Showing posts with label None. Show all posts
Friday, June 22, 2012
Friday, May 04, 2012
SHADY MAPLE SMORGASBORD COMING INTO SEASON
Shady Maple Smorgasbord,located in East Earl, PA is in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where the Amish live. Shady Maple, as our regular readers know, has been named Best Buffet of the Year for a number of years. This is a popular tourist destination and Shady Maple while a bit of a distance from where many of the attractions in this area are located, during the tourist season gets busy during the summer months and in the Fall following December. After December things slow down in this area and at Shady Maple. Some of the buffet restaurants have shorter hours. Shady Maple maintains its regular hours. To attract the locals it offers special weekend features on the buffet. Around April, Shady Maple returns to its usual menu.
I was just at Shady Maple at the end of April - there were no special features but the mid-week, Wednesday night buffet was featuring a number of Amish dishes that would mostly appeal to the local people who have grown up with them. This seems to be how Shady Maple transitions as it approaches the tourist season.
I will take the opportunity here to tell you that the Shady Maple website has a new look. Personally, I prefer the old look. This look is perhaps a little easier to navigate.
There has been one change at Shady Maple that I may have told you about. One of the minor things that has made Shady Maple unique is that it served both Coke and Pepsi. For some reason, and this reason may be pressure from one of these companies, Shady Maple only serves Pepsi products now. This is a bit of a disappointment - one which upsets my wife more than it upsets me, as I enjoy Shady Maple's brewed ice tea instead of soda with my meal.
At most buffets we start our meal with soup, but at Shady Maple we start our meal with salad. This is a throw back to the original Shady Maple building where the salad bar came first in the long, cafeteria type line that the original location had. There was something new on the salad bar. The sign said "Caesar Salad". They have had romaine lettuce before, but not Caesar dressing. This was a prepared Caesar Salad. I took some - and when I ate it I was surprised to find that it did not taste at all like Caesar Salad. It was much more like Cobb Salad. The dressing was a ranch type dressing. There was pieces of egg, chunks of real bacon, and cheese in the salad. These are all of the makings of a Cobb Salad. Later I checked at the other salad bar and it was there too - labeled the same, and exactly the same as what I had taken. This was a big surprise. Surely, Shady Maple knows the difference between Caesar Salad and Cobb Salad.
The feature on Wednesday nights is Prime Rib. This is served at the grill stations and there are several Prime Ribs that they are carving from - each cooked to a different wellness. Yes, they had rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done! They are carving full sized restaurant portions so if you want to have room for everything else that is good, you want to ask for a small slice. The Prime Rib was excellent. There is horseradish at the counter for those who enjoy that with their Prime Rib.
When I looked around the buffet servers - and remember - from what I have told you before - there are two sides of buffet servers and while SOME foods are the same on both sides there are a number of different foods on each side. Any way - when I looked around I found several local Amish dishes - Chicken Bot Boi, Snitz and Knepp, and Pig Stomach (around here called Souse0. I love all three. Before you say, how disgusting to eat pig stomach, don't knock it until you have tried it. Here it is prepared to look like a stuffing - which mostly it is. The pig stomach is cooked stuffed with potatoes, bread chunks, and pork sausage cut up. When done, all of that is chopped up so you never really see the pig stomach - it is just meat mixed in. The taste is pork - no different.
Snitz and Knepp is a mixture of stewed dumplings and apples. It is thick, gooey, and sweet. It is a side dish that you could eat for dessert. Delicious!
Chicken Bot Boi I have talked about before and it is a favorite of many of my readers who have come to the Amish area in Pennsylvania. It is stewed chicken with thick dumpling noodles, carrots, potatoes, and celery. The broth is cooked to be thick. It is also delicious and Shady Maple makes it right!
These are not dishes that you are likely to find here in June, July or August when the tourists are here.
I am not going to go into all of the other foods that were served. They were typical of other Shady Maple menus that I have written about. Desserts were out in their typical glory here. There was a chocolate layer cake with cherries on top that looked wonderful. There were a variety of cheesecakes. The sugar-free pies - and there is no artificial sweetener used in these pies, just fruit juice - were strawberry rhubarb and French apple.
There has been a change in table staff and I observed this last summer - and it had changed back again in the Fall. There are a number of servers who are Russian or Ukrainian women who maybe here on an exchange program. I have observed similar some businesses in Virginia during the summer. Our server was one of these women. She was just OK - she could have been better at getting plates off the table quicker - something that is not usually a problem at Shady Maple.
I enjoyed the meal - as always. And I recommend that if you have not been to Shady Maple and you are in this area it is a must go to.
Shady Maple Smorgasbord is located at 129 Toddy Drive in East Earl, PA. Take Route 23 East or Route 322 South to get to the restaurant. The phone numbers are 1-800-238-7363 and 717-354-8222. There is a website and it is listed at the side of this page.
I was just at Shady Maple at the end of April - there were no special features but the mid-week, Wednesday night buffet was featuring a number of Amish dishes that would mostly appeal to the local people who have grown up with them. This seems to be how Shady Maple transitions as it approaches the tourist season.
I will take the opportunity here to tell you that the Shady Maple website has a new look. Personally, I prefer the old look. This look is perhaps a little easier to navigate.
There has been one change at Shady Maple that I may have told you about. One of the minor things that has made Shady Maple unique is that it served both Coke and Pepsi. For some reason, and this reason may be pressure from one of these companies, Shady Maple only serves Pepsi products now. This is a bit of a disappointment - one which upsets my wife more than it upsets me, as I enjoy Shady Maple's brewed ice tea instead of soda with my meal.
At most buffets we start our meal with soup, but at Shady Maple we start our meal with salad. This is a throw back to the original Shady Maple building where the salad bar came first in the long, cafeteria type line that the original location had. There was something new on the salad bar. The sign said "Caesar Salad". They have had romaine lettuce before, but not Caesar dressing. This was a prepared Caesar Salad. I took some - and when I ate it I was surprised to find that it did not taste at all like Caesar Salad. It was much more like Cobb Salad. The dressing was a ranch type dressing. There was pieces of egg, chunks of real bacon, and cheese in the salad. These are all of the makings of a Cobb Salad. Later I checked at the other salad bar and it was there too - labeled the same, and exactly the same as what I had taken. This was a big surprise. Surely, Shady Maple knows the difference between Caesar Salad and Cobb Salad.
The feature on Wednesday nights is Prime Rib. This is served at the grill stations and there are several Prime Ribs that they are carving from - each cooked to a different wellness. Yes, they had rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done! They are carving full sized restaurant portions so if you want to have room for everything else that is good, you want to ask for a small slice. The Prime Rib was excellent. There is horseradish at the counter for those who enjoy that with their Prime Rib.
When I looked around the buffet servers - and remember - from what I have told you before - there are two sides of buffet servers and while SOME foods are the same on both sides there are a number of different foods on each side. Any way - when I looked around I found several local Amish dishes - Chicken Bot Boi, Snitz and Knepp, and Pig Stomach (around here called Souse0. I love all three. Before you say, how disgusting to eat pig stomach, don't knock it until you have tried it. Here it is prepared to look like a stuffing - which mostly it is. The pig stomach is cooked stuffed with potatoes, bread chunks, and pork sausage cut up. When done, all of that is chopped up so you never really see the pig stomach - it is just meat mixed in. The taste is pork - no different.
Snitz and Knepp is a mixture of stewed dumplings and apples. It is thick, gooey, and sweet. It is a side dish that you could eat for dessert. Delicious!
Chicken Bot Boi I have talked about before and it is a favorite of many of my readers who have come to the Amish area in Pennsylvania. It is stewed chicken with thick dumpling noodles, carrots, potatoes, and celery. The broth is cooked to be thick. It is also delicious and Shady Maple makes it right!
These are not dishes that you are likely to find here in June, July or August when the tourists are here.
I am not going to go into all of the other foods that were served. They were typical of other Shady Maple menus that I have written about. Desserts were out in their typical glory here. There was a chocolate layer cake with cherries on top that looked wonderful. There were a variety of cheesecakes. The sugar-free pies - and there is no artificial sweetener used in these pies, just fruit juice - were strawberry rhubarb and French apple.
There has been a change in table staff and I observed this last summer - and it had changed back again in the Fall. There are a number of servers who are Russian or Ukrainian women who maybe here on an exchange program. I have observed similar some businesses in Virginia during the summer. Our server was one of these women. She was just OK - she could have been better at getting plates off the table quicker - something that is not usually a problem at Shady Maple.
I enjoyed the meal - as always. And I recommend that if you have not been to Shady Maple and you are in this area it is a must go to.
Shady Maple Smorgasbord is located at 129 Toddy Drive in East Earl, PA. Take Route 23 East or Route 322 South to get to the restaurant. The phone numbers are 1-800-238-7363 and 717-354-8222. There is a website and it is listed at the side of this page.
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