Dutch Way Family Restaurant, Myerstown, PA

I have been writing about a buffet that has been new to me for less than a year. It is the Dutch Way Family Restaurant in Gap, Pennsylvania. The three Dutch Way Markets in Pennsylvania each have a restaurant but only two of those restaurants have a buffet - Gap and Myerstown. Since being so happy with the buffet in Gap, I have been looking forward to an opportunity to try the buffet in Myerstown.

Myerstown is north of Lancaster. It is just south of Route 78 which cuts across Pennsylvania in the north to Route 80. I am not often in this part of Pennsylvania and while a trip up to this area is not out of the question if I am in Lancaster, I have been waiting for an event that we attend that is not far from Myerstown. The day of this event arrived and I looked forward to dinner with great anticipation.

The restaurant, like the restaurant in Gap, is part of a supermarket - located off to the side in a connected building. We went on a stormy Saturday night at the end of July. There were forecasts of severe but scattered thunderstorms and we drove in and out of heavy downpours as we headed south from Route 78. We arrived as rain was just stopping at about 6:45 that night.

The restaurant is to the left of the supermarket entrance. On first impression the look of the restaurant was that it was smaller than the restaurant in Gap and for lack of a better way of describing it, less formal (more casual?) than the interior in Gap. Here there are rows of tables and booths down the length of the restaurant. At the back there are two private dining rooms that are there for parties but likely would be opened if there was a crowd in the main dining. There were a number of tables filled when we went in, but through the course of our dinner the restaurant emptied out. The feature menu nights at both restaurants are the same and as this was Saturday night the feature is Prime Rib and Ham - which is the feature also on Friday nights.

The serving staff here and pretty much all of the staff here was made up of young women - some in high school. I know this because I overheard a conversation about one about to start college in the Fall but would still be working there on Saturdays. Our server was a mature woman but the people at the buffet and the carving counter and the cash register were all young women. This was also different at Gap where the staff were more mature. I will speak on this more as I go along.

The decor is very nice. The prices are the same as they are at Gap. Dinner on Friday and Saturday are $12.99. Soft drinks are $1.39. Weeknights except for Thursdays are $10.99. Thursdays are a special seafood buffet and the price is $18.99.

The buffet was almost the same. There is a much smaller serving area at this location. There is not a large grill/carvings counter but a small setup in the corner that seemed to be able to be moved away. There were fewer and smaller buffet servers and there was not the selection that I found at Gap. Let me say this right off- had I come to this location first, I would not be as enamored with Dutch Way as I was and am about the Gap restaurant. This would have been a pleasant buffet that was not much different than some other nice buffets that I have been to. It would not be in contention for best buffet of the year this year. The food was fine - so read on.

I can only make direct comparisons to describe what I am talking about. There are four soups at Gap and there are four soups here. The soups at Gap are in hot soup tureens along a counter top set up for soup. Here in Myerstown, there were still four soups - chicken rivel, ham and bean, chile, and beef vegetable. The soups were served from trays in one of the hot buffet server - not soup tureens set in, as are at other buffets - but in the usual serving trays. The chile had pretty much dried out and needed tending- stirring, moistening - or just taken away as it did not look very nice. The other three soups looked and were fine. But tending is something that was lacking and not just at this buffet server. I had the chicken rivel and this was very good. Rivels are long, narrow dumplings. My wife had the vegetable and that was fine.

We went up after soup to the salad bar. The salad bar had the basics - two types of lettuce, standard toppings, a nice selection of dressings. There were also some prepared salads. There were items missing from the salad bar that were out at Gap - and there was just no room to have added these in. Some of the prepared salads were not there. There were no chunks of Lebanon bologna - interesting as we were just north of Lebanon. Would you miss these items if you did not know they were offered at the other location? No. The salad bar was plenty adequate for a salad bar. But all being equal- price the same - things should be close to the same. Again, the salad was great and I enjoyed it very much. There were chunks of real, fried bacon and I made myself a Caesar Salad with bacon.

In the Gap restaurant there was a large selection of fancy breads. Here there was just one fancy bread and a limited selection of plain breads and rolls. The one it did have - raisin bread - was dry.

There was one and a half small but double hot buffet servers with entrees and side dishes. Again, less than at Gap. My wife felt that there were just as many dishes out but in smaller serving trays - which is sometimes better. What struck me- as we had been to Gap recently on a Friday night when the same buffet menu should have been served was the lack of local dishes here. We are north of the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country here though we did pass horse and buggies along the rode on the drive here - and there were Mennonite ladies sitting at a table nearby us. Since the Gap restaurant does not gear toward tourists, those dishes are served there for the local diners, as I would think, would be done here too. The only local dish here was pork and sauerkraut - which was very close to the very good one that I have had at Gap. Here is what was on the hot buffet - meatloaf, fried chicken (which was not labeled "Henny Penny", pork and kraut, sausage stew, corn pie, turkey in gravy, fish sticks, baked chicken, barbecue ribs (no bone formed ribs), ham balls, chicken croquet, corn, green beans, harvard beets, carrots, broccoli casserole, stewed tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, potato filling, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes with ham, and mixed vegetables. There were two carvings which are the Saturday and Friday night feature, Prime Rib and ham. There was chicken gravy and beef gravy.

I went right to the sausage stew. It was made with smoked sausage slices in a thin broth with potatoes and shredded celery and carrots. It was fine but the sausages stewed like this lost most of their taste. The The pork and kraut was good and as I mentioned earlier was much like that at Gap. I later went up for a slice of Prime Rib and the prime rib was tender and nice. I tried the chicken croquet and these breaded and fried balls of chicken and filling had a good amount of chicken in them and clearly, you knew these were chicken. This is not always so in some other buffets. I had not noticed the sign over the barbecue ribs when I first went up and when I saw them I had to try them. I did not notice also until I took a section from the pan that these were formed, boneless ribs - much like is served at McDonald's - and which I complained about at another, much fancier buffet. At that fancy, high-priced buffet these were inappropriate to serve - on the adult buffet. Here in a much less expensive and more casual buffet, they were not out of place. They did have too much sauce on them, and frankly at this point I was filling up and I left some of this over. There are better choices here than these - unless you really love these.

My wife tried the meatloaf and said it was good. It was in a thin tomato sauce. She also tried the ham balls - served in a pineapple sauce - and these too were good. She also had some of the turkey in gravy and she liked that as well. Remember, she is a picky eater. She had no problem eating here and enjoying it.

We both tried the corn pie and found it missing something. It was corn cooked with a pie shell topping mixed with potatoes. It was a bit bland and both of us commented that it should have been been for how it looked.

The dessert area is much abbreviated from the one at Gap. There was a small counter with some pies and cake slices. There was a soft serve machine with two flavors of ice cream. There was a section with fixings to make sundaes. There was also a small hot section with hot desserts in cups - similar to what there is a Gap, but less so. There was a cold section on the salad bar with a small selection of prepared desserts. Over by the breads, there had been donuts and pastries out the entire time we were there along with small wrapped muffins and little square pieces of what looked like cake with chocolate icing. When we went for dessert, I went past the donuts to see what was on the dessert area. When I walked back - in a very short time - all of the donut halves and pastries were gone. The trays had been taken away for the night. I did try the chocolate cake squares which turned out to be chocolate peanut butter cake squares. Pennsylvania loves things with chocolate and peanut butter together.

For the most part the food was good - and there was plenty to eat. It just did not come up to the selection, the tending, or the service around the buffet tables that the much better location of this same restaurant in Gap came to.

Our table server was good and she cleared our dishes promptly and refilled our beverages. As I had noted above, she was a mature woman. There were times around the buffet server that two young women working were more involved talking to each other than to get out of the way of the customers who were trying to get to the serving trays that they were standing in front of.

The restaurant closes at 8:00 pm - as do most Pennsylvania buffets that I write about. From some time after 7:00 pm the young women started cleaning. Nothing was being taken away but they were clearly shutting down the buffet. As I mentioned - the donuts were taken away -well usually before doing this - especially with only a few guests in the dining room you make an announcement - "anyone wish to have XYZ should come get it because we are taking it away." Here is was clear that they wanted to close this buffet down as soon as possible to go home. Many buffets - including Gap - say "we close at 8" but keep things going at the buffet tables until 8:30 or later. They may not seat anyone but they never take anything away.

Will I go back? Yes, if I am in this area I would go back. This is an area with not many buffet choices. There is a Golden Corral in Lebanon, but I would prefer this over Golden Corral. Had I never been to Gap - same restaurant, owner, etc. - I would be writing about the nice buffet we went to in Myerstown. It was nice. It was just nothing special. Dutch Way Gap is special.

I do recommend the Dutch Way Family Restaurant in Myerstown, PA. Just take note of some of the things I have commented on. Again- nothing was wrong. Nothing was not worth going for. The food was good. I enjoyed my meal and so did my wife. I just had expected more from this buffet based on its sister restaurant. My wife thinks that this is the original and Gap is a newer location and designed for greater ambiance and a larger dining room. This very well could be. I had that impression also. I had this same impression of another pair of sister restaurants that I wrote about recently that did not match.

The Dutch Way Family Restaurant in Myerstown, PA is located at 649 East Lincoln Avenue, \
Route 422 East in Myerstown, PA 17067. The phone number is 717-866-5758. There is a website for the three locations (only two are buffets) at the side of this page.

New Features at Golden Corral

Golden Corral has a new buffet feature. They have called it Tropical Island Grill. I have not been to a Golden Corral yet to sample this new feature, but I want to alert all of my readers to this - in case you have not seen the television commercials.

I am hoping that this feature has take the place of the seafood skillet feature that caused great backups at the buffet because they were cooking each skillet dish to your order. I have written about this several times in the past year and if you would like to read my experiences with this, just search our archives or look through the listings of articles in 2011.

So what does the Tropical Island Grill bring to the Golden Corral buffet? You will find marinated grilled Key West chicken breasts, breaded spicy Cozumel shrimp, grilled teriyaki sirloin steak, grilled Fiji lemon peppered talapia, and hot island pork ribs. They say that this is inspired by the best of island cooking. From what I can see it looks either very sweet or spicy. I am hoping that the standard Golden Corral steaks and barbecue ribs are still on the grill along with these new feature items.

This feature is served after four o'clock each day and Sundays after 11 am. You will not find it at lunch other than Sundays (lunch on Sundays is served at dinner prices).

Another feature has also started at Golden Corral. They have added Cotton Candy along with the chocolate fountain. I am hoping here that there is an employee putting the cotton candy on to the paper cones and that this is not a do it yourself. If it is I can just imagine the little fingers that will go into that hot spun sugar. As I have written, the chocolate fountain has been an attraction to hands and fingers and has had little employee supervision in the several Golden Corrals that I have been to and watched at. With cotton candy around the restaurant, look before you sit down. This stuff is sticky, though it can be good.

As with any feature, it is available for only a limited time. With Golden Corral, when one feature ends they usually follow it with a new feature.

I will get to a Golden Corral soon and let you know, first hand, about the Tropical Island Grill and the Cotton Candy.

Summer Holidays at Lancaster Buffets

With Labor Day coming, I thought it was timely to talk about the Lancaster, PA buffets and the summer holidays. Lancaster, PA is a major tourist area and in any tourist area a great deal of business is done over the summer holiday weekends - Memorial Day, Fourth of July (not always a weekend) and Labor Day. But if you plan to go to some of the local buffets in Lancaster on those holidays, you may be disappointed.

Memorial Day and Labor Day are very significant holidays in this area and several of the buffets close or close early in the day following the breakfast or brunch buffet. Two of the buffets high on my "go to" list in Lancaster, Yoders and Dutch Way close on Memorial Day and Labor Day at about 1:00 pm. Shady Maple Smorgasbord is completely closed on both of those days. Several of the buffets in the main tourist areas - Bird-In-Hand Family Restaurant, Family Cupboard, the chain buffets, and some others remain open. You really do need to call and check to be sure a buffet will be open.

Dutch Way also closes at 1:00 pm on July Fourth. Some of the buffets had been closed or closed early in the past on July Fourth such as Shady Maple, but a few years ago that changed and they have remained open regular hours - which means 8:00 pm closing.

Of course, the intent is to give their employees a holiday with their families and this area is all about families. You have to respect a business that will sacrifice a day of increased business for its employees.

So, just be aware. If you are heading to Lancaster and will be there on these holidays, you may not be dining in one of the buffets that I have highly recommended. You will still find a buffet - and there are still great choices, but just not as many.

Dienners Restaurant, Lancaster, PA

The only night that Dienners is open past 6:00 pm is Friday. On Fridays it is open to 8:00 pm. I am rarely near Dienners on a Friday evening to make it there. I recently was able to schedule in a visit to Dienners for dinner on a Friday night. The last time I ate at Dienners was three years ago.

When we got to Dienners it was 6:30 pm and there was a line to get in. Dienners is located on Route 30 very close to the area of Lancaster County that is the heart of the tourist trade. On a Friday night in the summer, Dienners attracts a mixed crowd of tourists and locals and on this night that we were there, there were also several groups of Mennonites that came in for dinner.

We were told that the wait would be from twenty to twenty five minutes and it was exactly that - twenty five minutes. You are given a pager to carry around so that you can visit the few shops next to the restaurant. This was an excessively hot night, and we went into the country gift shop next door just to avoid standing outside in the heat. The pager buzzes and lights and when it did we went inside and were seated.

It took about five minutes for our waitress to come over - and this was a foretelling of how she would be for the rest of the meal. I should say that she was not bad - but she was scarce to pick up soiled dishes off the table. She did eventually and she did bring drink refills.

The price of the buffet on Monday to Thursday for dinner is $10.25. On Friday and Saturday, the price is $11.50. The charge for children is 75 cents per year of age. It is actually better to order the buffet than to order off the menu here as the prices for the meals on the menu would add to more than the buffet. Soft drinks with refills are $1.49.

I have mentioned before that Dienners and the Family Cupboard restaurant are owned by members of the same family. The restaurants are operated separately, but much of the offerings on the buffet at both restaurants are the same. As I found on this visit, the recipes at each are slightly different. I am going to note here that I realized at this meal that I prefer the cooking at Family Cupboard. There is nothing wrong with Dienners, and the food is good. There is a bit more emphasis on adding a lot more butter to the recipes at Dienners.

There are two soups. One is always Chicken Corn Soup and the other varies. For Friday night, the other soup is New England Clam Chowder. The chicken corn soup is a thick chicken noodle soup with plenty of chicken, noodles, and corn - and some chopped hard boiled egg. The soup is thickened with creamed corn - not corn with cream, but corn that has been creamed - pulverized to a creamy consistency. This soup was good. On my prior visit it had been more like the one served at Family Cupboard. It is not really right of me to keep drawing comparisons to Family Cupboard, but if you have been to both you would clearly see why it lends itself so readily to do so.

The salad bar has most of what you want to create your own salad and there are a number of local recipe prepared salads. There are a several salad dressings for your salad, but just one type of lettuce.

What makes the dinner on Friday and Saturday night different from Monday to Thursday are the fried shrimp and fried cod that are on the buffet. I am guessing that these take the place of Fried Chicken and meat loaf. In addition to these two seafood dishes there were beef cubes in brown gravy, their signature rotisserie chicken, sliced ham, mashed potatoes, noodles in brown butter, green beans, beets, stewed tomatoes, kernel corn, baby carrots, bread filling, baked Lima beans, broccoli, white rice, macaroni and cheese, There is chicken gravy and brown gravy. There are also dinner rolls out with apple butter and Amish peanut butter (this is a local spread). The cooks here are Amish women and they are out at the buffet checking on what needs to be refiled and bringing more food out when needed.

I like fried fish - and one of the things I was looking forward to was the fish. The fish was strips of cod, fried in batter. It was good. The rotisserie chicken is just like that featured at Family Cupboard. I enjoy this chicken - both here and at Family Cupboard.

Noodles in brown butter are narrow noodles that have browned butter mixed thoroughly on them. To make browned butter you put butter on a stove in a pan and cook it down to almost burning to the point that brown flakes form in the butter and thicken it. It has a nutty flavor. There was a bit too much butter added. It was tasty but it really was more than it needed. The kernel corn was in a butter sauce also and that too could have had less butter and been just as good.

Don't get me wrong - it was all good. And for this area, authentic.

There is a dessert buffet server, a pie case, and a soft serve ice cream machine. There are a number of local desserts and these included egg custard, which is what I look for at PA Dutch buffet dessert bars. There were plenty of other things as well - shoo fly cake, hot fudge cake, hot apple crisp, pumpkin torte, chocolate eclair dessert, jello, cherry cheese delight, fruit salad, pistachio pudding, Oreo dessert, sugar free desserts, and much more. In the pie server there was shoo fly pie, cream pies, fruit pies, and lemon pie.

It was all good - no, I did not have all of what I have listed here and I limited my dessert to a small taste of the egg custard.

I would go back to Dienners but I would go to Family Cupboard before I would come back to Dienners. This is just my preference. I recommend Dienners but not as highly as I have in the past. If you dine early then you can go to Dienners any day. If, like many, you dine after 6:00 pm, then you can only have dinner at Dienners on Friday nights. For the same buffet menu and less butter - and open to 8 pm every night (except closed on Sundays, of course) - but with a higher meal price - go to Family Cupboard on Rt. 340.

Dienners is located in a building that at one time - many years ago - was a shoo fly pie bakery- in fact the best shoo fly pie in Lancaster. For some reason the acoustics in the dinning room are poor and it is very loud. Also for some reason the meal was not as relaxed as it should have been. It was crowded and it was warm - again, it was a record breaking heat day in July two days after July 4th.

Dienners is located at 2855 Lincoln Highway East in East Ronks, Pennsylvania (This is US Route 30). It is next to the big windmill so you cannot miss it. I have told you the hours, remember that like the rest of the local buffets it is closed on Sundays. Their phone number is 717-687-9571. There is a sparse website and that is listed at the side of this page.

Coming Back to Bird-In-Hand Family Restaurant, Lancaster, PA

I have written about the buffet at the Bird-In-Hand Family Restaurant several times in the past. My last article about this buffet was a year ago. We went back this year on the Fourth of July. Not all of the local buffet restaurants are open on the Fourth of July, for example, Dutch-Way and Yoders are both closed (or are open only until early in the afternoon). When selecting a buffet to dine at in this area, as many of you know, there are several that are at the top of my list. This one is about mid-way down. At times in the past, it has disappointed, but it is more often very good than not.

For a holiday night, the restaurant was not crowded, but the Fourth of July fell on a Wednesday night and those traveling to the area who could not have an extended Fourth of July weekend came on the weekend before or were coming on the weekend after. This was seen throughout Lancaster even at the tourist sites on July Fourth. The restaurant was not empty, but we have been here at this time of the year before and there have been waits to get in. We were seated right away.

The price for dinner has not changed since last year and it is still $17.99. The price of the dinner buffet includes the beverage. We had a coupon from their website - which is also found in the local tourist newspapers which are available all over the area for free - which gave $2 off the dinner price for each adult. This made the price not bad considering that drinks are usually 1.99 extra- so with the coupon this is equivalent to a 13.99 dinner at other buffets. It is a great value at the $13.99 equivalent - find a coupon before you come. The price may vary by the night. It may be higher on Fridays and Saturday nights.

My favorite thing at this restaurant is the chicken corn soup. It is unlike other chicken corn soups in the area. It is thick and rich. The soup is full of chicken, chopped hard boiled egg, and corn, and it is thickened with some type of grain. There is a slight vinegar taste to the soup. It is excellent. The other soups on the buffet on this night were vegetable beef and beef noodle. My wife had the vegetable beef soup - and as always here, liked it.

There is good salad bar here - and you can opt to just have the soup and salad bar as a meal. There is a good assortment of salad fixings for the lettuce that is out. There are also a number of prepared local salads. I had tried the Caesar Salad a year ago and I like it. I took Caesar Salad and it was just OK this time. There was nothing wrong with it, but I have had better. There is an excellent ham salad and this is something to try if they have it when you come. This salad seems to alternate with chicken salad - which is also very good here and tuna salad. I also took some cottage cheese and apple butter which is a local favorite. You have to put this together yourself - as for many years it is not often found talked about or even put out next to each other. Take a spoonful or more of cottage cheese and then put a spoonful of apple butter on top of it. This is really a taste treat - sweet, tart, and salty all at the same time. There is a small buffet server off to the side with white, wheat, and crispy rolls, raisin bread, wheat bread, white bread. There are also assorted cubed cheeses. Here you will find the apple butter also. The cottage cheese is on the cold server salad bar.

The buffet menu varies here by the night so what you may find one night, you may not find on another night of the week. The Friday and Saturday night offerings include more carvings. On this night on the hot buffet there was country sausage from New Holland Meats, chicken bot boi - very thick, full of large dumplings, chicken, and potatoes, fried shrimp, broasted chicken, pork and kraut- sweet and with plenty of pork, roast beef, turkey - two ways - in a tray and on the carving station, carved ham, Swedish meatballs, broiled pollack , pizza, zucchini casserole, red potatoes, corn on the cob, baked lima beans, bread filling, succatash, ham and scalloped potatoes, carrots, stewed tomatoes, buttered noodles, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy and beef gravy.

I love the turkey here that is served per-carved in the tray. It is a whole turkey cut into pieces, both white meat and dark, and served in its own liquid. I find it has a great taste that is unlike carved turkey. I eat a lot of turkey. To me this is the best. The sausage was very good. This is local country sausage and I enjoyed it a lot. The chicken bot boi was very good because of how thick and full it was - no skimping on any ingredient. The pork and sauerkraut was outstanding. It was more sweet than tart. Generally, the tartness of sauerkraut can overwhelm this dish. Here the sauerkraut was sweetened and this really added to this local favorite. It was also full of chopped pork. The broiled pollack, however, was too salty. The zucchini casserole was good but it had an under taste of some seasoning that was OK but I did not care for. My wife did like it.

On Saturday nights, there is a separate buffet set up for kids. It was set up on this night also - perhaps because it was a holiday. They call it the Kids Corner. There were hot dogs, hamburgers, nacho chips with cheese sauce on the side, chicken nuggets, turkey, macaroni and cheese, smiley face potatoes, carrots, kernal corn, pretzals, potato chips, apple sauce, canned peaches, chocolate pudding, and cookies in little packages. The price for kids is 75 cents per year of age from ages 4 to 12. I don't think that they would mind if an adult having the buffet also sampled some of this.

There is a serving counter at the back wall that is the dessert area. There was shoo fly pie, custard pie, oatmeal pie, vanilla pie, fruit pies, shoo fly cake, sheet cake, whoopie pies, prepared desserts, pudding, canned fruit, softserve ice cream, and two flavors of Slushies. On this night there was no fresh fruit. The baking is good here. This restaurant is associated with the Bird-In-Hand Bake Shop. You can just order the dessert bar without a meal.

I very much enjoyed this meal at the Bird-In-Hand Family Restaurant. It made me wonder why I have not gone back as often. One thing had been in the past - longer than a year ago, the price here was higher - a lot higher. They seem to have realized that to bring in the families of tourists to compete in this area you need to be affordable - while serving a good and quality meal. They are doing that at the current pricing. I also liked the selections on this night more than what I have had here on Friday or Saturday nights. This is just a personal preference of my own.

I highly recommend that you try the buffet at Bird-In-Hand Family Restaurant. I was asked recently by a friend where to dine in Lancaster and, of course, recommended the usual tops on my list but added that if they did not want to travel too far out of the central area for dinner to go here. Try it.

Like all of the other local buffets and restaurants they do close at 8:00 pm and they are not open on Sundays. There is a good chance when you come here there will be Amish and Mennonites dining here as well.

Bird-in-Hand Family Restaurant is located at 2760 Old Philadelphia Pike, Bird-in-Hand, PA 17505. The phone number is 1-800-665-8780. There is a website located at the side of this page.

A New Rule...

There has not been a new rule of the buffet in some time. Not that there have not been really outlandish things observed. More and more I have been seeing something happen at various buffets that needs to be noted and a new rule made. The new rule is -

If you take a plate, bowl, cup, or piece of silverware and you decide you don't want it, do not put it back on the stack of clean dishes or back with the clean silverware. Take it back to your table or put it on the side of the stack where it will not be taken as clean.

Why? I have watched people of all ages - this is not just kids, though kids do this too - take a plate and then put it right back on the top of the stack of clean plates. So, you ask what is the big deal? Well, the big deal is that where ever that person's hands have been, I do not want to have to eat from a plate that they touched.

Here is an example - Mr. X blows his nose before going up to the buffet server. It is bad enough that he will be touching the serving pieces but he takes a plate and then goes back and puts it back on the stack. You take that plate and are eating directly off the surface that his hands held right after blowing his nose. Another example - Little Susy has been to the restroom. As many children in buffets seldom are, she was not accompanied by her mother. She did not wash her hands. Little Susy goes up to the silverware and takes a spoon - and then decides she does not want that spoon and back it goes into the cup with the clean spoons - just waiting for you to take it next. Better yet, Little Susy puts the spoon in her mouth and then decides to put it back. I have watched these happen and more. Again, this is not just about kids - adults do this - and frequently.

Come on people. If you take it or touch it - and you don't want it, it is simple - bring it back to your table and put it on the side and the server will take it away- no extra charge.

So here are our rules now in total - including our new #30.




RULES OF THE BUFFET

1. All you can eat is not a challenge. It is an offer!

2. There is no limit to the number of times that you can go up and get food.

3. Take your food in courses - as you would be served if ordering from a menu.

4. Everyone must pay!

5. No food is permitted to be taken out of the restaurant.

6. Take only what you will eat - do not waste food.

7. For a more social meal, it is polite to wait for the others at the table to finish their plates and then go up together to get more.

8. Take a clean plate every time that you go up to the buffet tables.

9. If you put it on your plate, leave it there. Never return food to the serving tray.

10. Never eat at the buffet tables!

11. Children under 12 should not be going up to the buffet tables alone.

12. The buffet table is not a cafeteria line.

13. Tip the server.

14. Never take a serving piece from one item and use it for another item.

15. Never place your dirty plates on someone else's table.

16. Never use your silverware to serve yourself from the buffet trays.

17. Once you have gotten what you want, don't stand around the buffet tables. Move on back to your table.

18. Children should remain seated through the meal.

19. Do not fill community plates for the "table". Each should take their own plate of what they wish to eat.

20. If you cough or sneeze into your hand, please do not use that hand to pick up the serving utensils.

21. In the buffet, as in any restaurant, children (and adults) should use their inside voices.

22. Don't talk on your cell phone while you are getting your food at the buffet tables.

23. Never bring an animal into the buffet. (this is not referring to medical guide dogs)

24. Never put your hands into a serving tray.

25. Tell your children not to put their hands into a serving tray - and make sure that they do not!

26. Do not carry on a conversation throughout dinner with the people at the tables around you.

27. Do not put anything back into a serving tray that has dropped onto the serving counter - and never put anything back into a serving tray (whether from the counter or your dish) with your fingers.

28. Never put the serving utensil, whether it a spoon, fork, or tongs, up to your nose to smell the food that you have taken out of the serving tray.

29. Do not eat while walking with your plate back to your table.

30. If you take a plate, bowl, cup, or piece of silverware and you decide you don't want it, do not put it back on the stack of clean dishes or back with the clean silverware. Take it back to your table or put it on the side of the stack where it will not be taken as clean.

Tuesday Night at Dutch-Way Family Restaurant, Gap, PA

It was just a few weeks ago that I wrote about my second trip to Dutch-Way Family Restaurant in Gap, Pennsylvania. I had an opportunity to return to Dutch Way Restaurant just a month after my recent visit that appeared here in June. This time I went on a Tuesday night and the special theme feature on Tuesday nights is Build Your Own Burger and Wings.

The night we went was the night before the Fourth of July and the restaurant was the busiest that I have seen it. We did not have to wait for a table but the dining rooms while not completely filled were full. As I have written about this restaurant before, this is a locals restaurant and not one that attracts tourists. The reason for this is its location as it is in one of the more distant eastern ends of Lancaster County. It impresses me more that locals would come out to this restaurant on the night before a holiday when this area is overfull of tourists. It is the locals that appreciate the restaurant in a way that makes them come here - and not as a place to eat chosen at random by tourists. I have often thought that I should not write about these hidden gems - as I do not want them to be overrun by tourists - but at the same time I want to share a great place with my readers - who, I hope know how to act when they come to a restaurant like this - and not act as the tourists often do.

Anyway. We were seated and in a few minutes our server came over with a big smile and a very friendly greeting and took our beverage order and noted that we were there for the buffet and not the menu offerings.

The price of the buffet for dinner is $10.99 on Tuesday nights. Unlimited beverage refills are $1.79. Right here we are beating OCB's prices. Prices do vary by night- Monday to Wednesday will be this same price. Thursday is Seafood Night and the price then is $18.99. Friday and Saturday are less than Thursday, but more than Monday to Wednesday.

As there has been, there were four soups. The choice this night included beef vegetable, chili, ham and bean, and stuffed pepper soup. I tried the ham and bean and my wife had the beef vegetable. My soup was full and flavorful. The beef vegetable soup was according to my wife, "very nice". (From my picky eater wife, this is a rave review.)

The salad bar was as extensive as it has been with much of the same choices. There are many local styled prepared salads and and an overwhelming selections of items to create a salad. They don't have just bacon bits or chopped bacon. They have large pieces of crumbled fried bacon!
I went over to the grill to check out the features - build your own burger and wings. There was a large crowd of people around the grill and two chefs behind doing their best to get out the orders - each person, of course, was ordering their burgers and wings the way they wanted them. This is a very popular feature theme! I decided that I would explore the hot buffet tables first and come back to the grill later on. There were four types of wings to choose - hot, mild, ranch, and honey mustard. You asked for as many and what ever combination you wanted. The burgers were being cooked and built to order. The toppings included any of these cheeses - American, Swiss, cheddar, and pepper jack. Then you could add bacon, sauteed mushrooms, friend onions, barbecue sauce, tomato, lettuce, and more. Then there were the condiments that were your basics plus raw onion. Any or all of this cooked to your liking, and then assembled on a large bun. The burgers were large and thick.

Over at the buffet servers there was a large variety of very interesting dishes. There was chicken and biscuits - a thick creamed chicken with bits of chicken pulverized in a dense cream sauce served over biscuits. There was Dutch meat loaf. There were ham balls in a not overly sweet pineapple sauce. There was an excellent pork and sauerkraut. There was something called porcupine meatballs. We wondered. This could not be porcupine - could it? No, it was beef mixed with rice. It was good. There was sauteed beef and vegetables which was later replaced with chicken and vegetables, but later still was back to beef and vegetables. There was a thin but tasty version of the local dish, Chicken Bot Boi (I have described what this is many times before). There was so much for a buffet that that I will just list what else there was - Henny Penny Fried Chicken, roast turkey in gravy, roast beef in gravy, zesty talapia, mashed potatoes, potato filling (wonderfully different here), carrots, string beans with bacon, mixed vegetables of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, herb roasted potatoes with peppers and onions, stewed tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, beets, and baked beans.

I tried a little of several things that I had not had before and enjoyed the chicken and biscuits very much. I enjoyed everything that I tried very much! This is my third time back to this buffet and I have not been disappointed yet.

Not long after seeing the crowd at the grill, the crowd thinned out and I went up and "built a burger". I had the chef put cheddar cheese, bacon, sauteed mushrooms, and fried onions on a medium rare burger - and skipped the roll. Let me say this about build a burger - eat one large burgers like this and there is not much room for much else to eat. I would have been happier with a thinner burger only because there was so much more to eat with everything else on the buffet! I enjoyed the burger. I did not try the wings. I am not much for wings and was not looking for anything spicy. Many were eating the wings with looks of great enjoyment on their faces and lips - lots of licking of lips.

There were various breads to try - warm, crusty rolls, white rolls, wheat rolls, pumpkin bread, cornbread, blueberry bread, and cranberry bread. There were also assorted bread sticks.
With all of this can you fit in dessert too? There are plenty of desserts to end your meal with. There was shoo fly cake, shoo fly pie, molten lava chocolate and vanilla - a hot dessert that was later replaced with hot peach cobbler, apple cobbler, egg custard pie, fruit pies, layer cakes, corn bread in a cup, an extensive assortment of prepared desserts, fresh fruits, puddings, and more. There was one prepared dessert called "Broken Glass". It was a pudding with pieces of different color jelly candies that looked like pieces of glass!

And, just like on my last visit there were chocolate donuts cut in half. I cannot resist chocolate donuts and I indulged in just one half, but I really should not have, but what the heck.
So there you have another featured theme at Dutch Way Restaurant Buffet. As it has been each other time I have been here it was WONDERFUL!

There is something that you need to know about this restaurant - if it is a holiday it may be open only until about 1 pm or it will just be closed. It is also closed on Sundays - as are most local restaurants in this area.

I will be going back. I may be able to try another location of this buffet in the near future. There are two. I am sure it will be just as great. Perhaps it is too early to be thinking that Shady Maple - for me, at least, may have a rival. Dutch-Way is much smaller. It does not have anywhere near the selection. But, as far as value and my looking forward to the next time going back as soon as I am walking out the door of the restaurant - there is something very special here.

The Dutch-Way Family Restaurant is located at the Dutch-Way Farm Market Supermarket at 365 Gap Newport Pike (Route 41), Gap, Pennsylvania 17527. The buffet is served from 4 pm to 8 pm Monday to Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sundays. This is about two and a half miles south of Route 30. There is a web site and that is linked at the side of this page. The phone number is 610-593-6080.

Midsummer Swedish Smorgasbord at IKEA

We have just returned from the Midsummer Swedish Smorgasbord served for one night in June each year at the store restaurant at IKEA. IKEA has five one night special all you care to eat meals at their store restaurants during the year. This one is held in June each year.

We had been to the Easter Smorgasbord at IKEA this past April and enjoyed it very much. When we learned that there would be another in June we watched closely at the store for signs about when it would be. This year it was held on Friday, June 15th. These dinners are always held on Fridays. There are two seatings. The first is in the late afternoon starting at 4:00 pm and ending at 6:00 pm. There is an hour to reset the dining room and replenish the serving tables and the second seating starts at 7:00 pm and ends at 9:00 pm. Tickets for these dinners must be purchased in advance at the store restaurant and there are a limited number of tickets sold. The price of the meal including everything is $9.99 - and the meal is worth much more.

This is the menu that was presented by IKEA for the meal that would be served at the Midsummer Swedish Smorgasbord:

Assorted varieties of Herring
Hard boiled Eggs with Shrimp
Gravad Lax with Mustard Sauce
Smoked Salmon w/Horseradish Sauce
Whole Poached Salmon
Tossed Green Salad
Cucumber Salad
Rhode Island Salad
Midsummer Fruit Salad
Assorted Swedish Cheeses
Boiled Dill New Potatoes
Meatballs with Lingonberries
Swedish Ham (served cold) w/Mustard
Prinskorv Sausage (sautéed)
Crispbread, Thin bread, Dinner rolls
Strawberries and Whipped Crème
Ice Cream
Assorted Desserts
Coffee, Tea, Fountain Beverage

Everything on this menu was there at the dinner. The Easter dinner had some differences and actually, was more extensive. The set up for Easter was more extensive and a bit more organized as well, but at Easter there were many more people in attendance. At Easter there were hot trays to keep the hot food hot - here the few hot dishes that were served were in smaller serving dishes that were continually brought out hot as they needed replenishing - so everything remained at a good eating temperature.

We arrived a half hour early for the 7:00 pm seating and there was a long line to get in. The regular restaurant is closed for the day when this meal is served. We were let in about five minutes to 7. You enter and find a table. The tables are pre-set with silverware, a glass with a festive color paper napkin folded inside the glass, and for this dinner each table had a plate of Swedish crispbread and also a plate of chocolate bonbon cakes - one large one in the center of the plate and several smaller ones around the outside that were chocolate covered in coconut. The smallest tables seat four, but are separated in the middle so it may seat two couples without each couple touching the other's table. There are tables for larger groups as well - and the staff are very accommodating putting tables together for large groups. We found a table for two/four. No one else sat with us at the other half of the table. There were less people here for this dinner than there were at the Easter dinner - at which another couple did sit down at the other half of our table. You then get on a line to go into the serving area and there are two buffet serving tables with another shorter table opposite each of those at the end. Each side of the serving table duplicates what is on the other side and much is in the middle. On the ends you do have to reach from side to side for a few dishes.

When we had come in April we had jackets with us and it was easy to mark our table as taken. It was over 70 degrees out on this day and we did not think to bring a jacket in with us just to put on a chair at the table. To make sure our table remained ours, the first time we went up, we went up separately. When I returned to the table, I realize that all we had to do was fill our drink glasses with soda and our table would have been saved. As it turned out, there would have been no problem.

The dinner was very good and the food was very good as well. I tried a little of everything and I was pretty much full at the second dish. Of course, there are always things that I want to try some more of and the third time up was perhaps one trip too many, even with the small amounts that I took. The hardboiled eggs with shrimp also had a bit of caviar on top and this was good. The graved lox was excellent. I have said before that I don't like salmon that is not either smoked or raw. The poached salmon was exceptional and was served with a sour cream and cucumber sauce on the side. This is the only cooked salmon that I have liked. I had this at Easter also and made a point to take more of it this time.The ham was a baked ham that was served cold and was very good. There were little sausages (Prinskorv Sausage) that were sauteed with thin cut onions and these were very good. I had these also at Easter and at that time they ran out quickly. Tonight, they were continually replenished. While I enjoy cheeses, I don't generally choose them at a buffet but there were three cheeses that I had to try - one was semi-soft, one was semi-hard, and the third was hard. They reminded me of other cheeses that I have had. I am not cheese-saavy, so I can't identify what they were or what they were like, but I enjoyed all three. Not on the list about, but out on the buffet were jars of sliced sweet pickles. These were very thinly sliced and while they tasted like most sweet pickles, because they were so thin, they were quite different. I liked all three herrings with the herring in cream sauce as the one I enjoyed most. The other two were herring in wine sauce and herring in a yellow cream sauce that must have had mustard in it.

At the dessert server there was a large bowl of huge, fresh strawberries with the green leaves cut off the tops. Next to that bowl was a bowl with whipped cream. People before they went up for their meal, went straight to those strawberries and mounded them on plates and mounded whipped cream on top. There were also bowls of cut up strawberries and blueberries. There were several desserts. We decided that we would each take a dessert and taste it. We took a small piece of a dense cinnamon swirled cake covered in chocolate and a pudding cup with caramel swirled on the sides and a vanilla custard pudding. There also was fruit salad, the strawberries, the strawberries with blueberries, ice cream cups, small two color chocolate(what looked like) brownies, and a pink dome of smooth frosting with some type of cream inside. The chocolate cinnamon cake was very good. The pudding was nice, but not what I anticipated. It had appeared to be an egg custard - my perception only - and it was more a custardy vanilla pudding.

The people who are working at this dinner and at the Easter dinner are exceptional. Everyone is going out to their way to be welcoming and friendly. They go around the dining room and greet you. This dinner is a Swedish festival at which summer wreathes are made and worn like crowns. They were putting these flower crowns (artificial flowers - no allergies) on the children's heads to keep. We suspect that the people who are hear are store management - they go so much beyond what the general employees do - not saying the regular employees would not be this nice - but this really is beyond what we experience at this same restaurant when we dine here for regular meals that are not special dinners like this one. My wife wanted tea and was not sure what to push on the coffee urn to just get hot water and went over to one of the people working and was greeted and told that she would come over and show her - she could have just said push the orange button in the middle. Everyone was all smiles. And we experienced this same thing in April at the Easter dinner.

You do clear your own table here - as you do when you eat at this restaurant for regular meals. There are stacks of tray carriers with trays walled off from the dining area (two of these setups on the floor) and you take your dirty dishes and put them on the trays - and then go for more. This is not a problem. And if you have dishes stacking up on your table you have only you to blame. Plus there is no one to tip!

We learned on this night that the next all you can eat dinner will be Crawfish - all you can eat crawfish. This will be in August. We will skip this one. I only marginally like crawfish and my wife would not eat it at all.

There will be another big smorgasbord in the Fall. I don't know when that one will be. Following that there is one for Christmas, and then Easter again.

When I have talked about these meals at IKEA in the past there have been some very unjustified negative comments and not from anyone who had ever had one of these meals. If you would like to try something different - with good food - and I will add quality food (much of it is sold in their small grocery department and it is imported from Sweden and expensive) - then try one of these smorgasbords. For $9.99 you can't get a quarter pound of gravad lax at a gourmet counter - you get all you care to eat of that here plus the herring and all the rest for $9.99. If you want to be a food snob, then stay away. This is a loss leader for the store - they do it to get you into the store in hopes that you will shop - and to introduce you to foods that they sell for you to take home. In fact one of the nice ladies came around and told us that we can get much of what we ate down in the grocery section to take home - and gave us a coupon to save money on it, as well! If you want to feel rich on at a $9.99 AYCE meal- go for it. I will be back!

Willow Tree Restaurant and Smorgasbord, Lancaster, PA

The Willow Tree Restaurant and Smorgasbord in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was formerly called the Willow Valley Farm Restaurant and Smorgasbord. It is part of a hotel complex called The Willow Valley Farm Inn and Suites. I had been to this restaurant/buffet a number of years back and to our recollection we had been there perhaps three or four times. This was before I started writing this site. We had not gone back. One reason was that my good wife would have stomach problems after eating here. Another was that it is located in an area that is out of the mainstream of Lancaster County - below the City of Lancaster and getting there requires driving through Center City Lancaster which is just OK and, surprisingly for a city surrounded by gentle people and farmlands, it is very urban.

It has been a long time and we were in Lancaster County on a Sunday night. There are few buffets open on a Sunday in Lancaster. Willow Tree is open - as it is the hotel's restaurant (which recently started serving only buffet and on longer serves from a menu). We talked it over and figured that after so many years things must have changed and we would try it again - and hopefully, my wife would be fine after the meal.

We set out for the restaurant using the GPS and I saw that it had a way to go that did not go through the city. Interesting. OK, we started out and soon discovered that this route was taking us on mountain-like roads that were single lane. We came to one spot along the way with a single lane bridge. It was still daylight even though it was dinner time and we at least could easily see the road and where we were going. Of course, when we came to the road that the restaurant is located on it had us turn right instead of left - and before we could turn around we were in the city. Finally, we arrived at the restaurant. We decided right then that we would go back the usual way through the city after dinner.

There are now two hotels in the complex. One is a Double Tree and the older part of the complex is the Willow Valley Farm Inn and Resort. The restaurant is around the back of the building that is signed as the office for the hotel. You follow the parking lot around and you will see a very pretty pond with fountains. The restaurant is in the building facing the pond and there is a sign. You climb up a staircase to get to the restaurant from the parking lot.

I had vague recollections of what the restaurant looked like inside though my wife remembered it exactly as it is now. You enter past a cashier's desk and there is a hostess pedestal there. You are seated in one of two dining rooms. We were there on a Sunday night on Memorial Day weekend in one of the few buffet restaurants open. There was hardly anyone there dining. This should have told me something. I also should have walked around and looked at what was offered on the buffet before we sat down, but I rarely, if ever do this, and we were seated, ordered soft drinks and went up to start our meal. I still did not look at the hot buffet servers.

The buffet area is made up of two round, cold buffet servers, two small, double sided hot buffet servers, a wall with two soups and rolls, a small grill area, and another corner wall with desserts. The price of the buffet including beverages is $18.99, Sunday through Thursday and $22.99, Friday and Saturday. We had a coupon clipped from a visit Lancaster County magazine that gave $4.00 off each adult meal. There are coupons on the Lancaster County tourist website for $3.00 off each adult meal.

There were two soups. One was seafood chowder and the other was beef vegetable soup. I tried the seafood chowder. My wife had the beef vegetable. I found that the seafood chowder was overfull of potatoes. It was a white cream chowder with chunks of some type of fish and small, over cooked shrimp. The taste was more like a bisque (sharp) than a chowder. My wife found the beef vegetable soup to be salty.

The salad bar and cold servers had the makings for a lettuce salad with toppings and a few dressings. My wife commented to me that the "fresh" cucumbers that she took were just on the edge of going bad. There were prepared salads that were typical macaroni salad, potato salad, and coleslaw. There was a good tasting chicken salad, that I eventually took as part of my entrees. I will explain why as we go along. Up to this point we were pretty much fine.

We then went up to the hot servers for entrees and side dishes and we were in for a surprise. There was not very much to be had and what there was certainly did not justify the price that they were charging for this meal. Several of the dishes were almost duplicates of each other. There was stuffed cabbage and stuffed peppers - the same meat and rice stuffing in a tomato base in different casings. There were McDonalds-like boneless riblets - really, just like the boneless ribs that McDonalds serves on their rib sandwich. These were over done and were covered in a thick commercial barbecue sauce. There was pulled pork barbecue that was over sauced. There was barbecue chicken that were over done pieces of chicken covered and cooked the same commercial barbecue sauce. There was also fried chicken. Over on the side wall next to the desserts there was a small hot server with macaroni and cheese, potato tots, and chicken nuggets - obviously meant for the children. On the grill they were slicing ham with a pineapple glaze and roast beef. This was it as far as entrees. There was no fish of any kind (hot or cold). There were some side dishes and these included kernel corn, carrots, stewed tomatoes, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, red potatoes, baked beans, and what was labeled as buttered noodles but was actually ziti swimming in butter (or some butter like substance).

This is Lancaster County - bountiful and plentiful This was not a typical Lancaster County buffet. There also were no local dishes on the buffet at all. None of the usual things that are found on many of the local buffet restaurants. My wife described the buffet well - it is a typical hotel restaurant buffet.

As I walked around deciding what to take I decided that with the little that there was I would take a tasting of some of the things that I could eat. I did not take the stuffed peppers or the stuffed cabbage. I did take the riblets and the pork barbecue. The riblets were dry and over cooked. The pork barbecue was too sweet. I passed on the dry looking bbq chicken. I did take a piece of fried chicken. It did not stand out in any way. It was OK but I have had better at OCB. The selection of pieces of chicken was limited. The ham was dry and the roast beef was well done.

The vegetables were all covered and drowning in butter (or as I say, some butter type substance). They were really not edible this way and rather than give them taste, this "butter" sauce just made them oily. The ziti in "butter" was the same way - too greasy to eat. The red potatoes were not only covered in butter but also some type of hot seasoning.

This is why I went back to the salad bar and took the chicken salad - which different from the rest of the meal was not bad - though at one point I was not sure if it was chicken salad or tuna salad - had some tuna salad found its way into this serving bowl - there was no tuna salad out to be served. I also took some macaroni salad and some potato salad as I could not take any more of the greasy side dishes.

My poor wife, as my regular readers know is a picky eater and she was trying to find things to eat. Her meal mostly consisted of ham, potato tots (which actually are her favorite- and saved the meal for her), and rolls. At one point she went back for more beef vegetable soup which must have been refilled because this time it tasted very spicy. I tried a taste and it was spicy and was seasoned like clam chowder is in NY.

As there were few diners, there was not much being taken - and no one was coming around to make sure that what was out was not drying out. No one was tending the buffet - and the food was looking like it was not tended.

I looked over the desserts and there was two types of layer cake, a few different pieces of pie, pudding, and jello. There was also soft serve ice cream with a big sign on the machine that said Turkey Hill. Turkey Hill ice cream is a large brand on the East Coast and originates in Pennsylvania. I thought that this might be the one good thing here. I tried a sample and it was custard-like rather than like soft serve - but not in a good way. The pieces of pie and cake that were out were all falling apart - all split in the center - not intentionally. I wondered how long they had been sitting out.

I have had better dinners at Old Country Buffet - and after this meal I wished I had gone instead to the Old Country Buffet in Lancaster. The dinner that we had here was not good. Aside from the cooking - even if it had tasted better than it did - there was no value. You should not be paying $19 each for McDonald's riblets, chicken nuggets, and fried chicken. This was not like this the last time we had come - the selection was much better and so was the cooking - but that was many years ago. Times change and so do restaurants.

Thank goodness I had the coupon so that the meal came down to $15 each - which was still to much to pay for what we got.

I should mention that service was fine. Our server made sure there were drink refills and some of the time did not let the plates pile up on the table.

We left and drove back through the city. Remember that I said that we had stopped coming here because the food made my wife's stomach upset. Well, it did not this time - it made my stomach upset - and it only took about half an hour after the meal to send me running.

No - I do not recommend Willow Tree Restaurant and Smorgasbord. Even on a Sunday there are much better places to go in Lancaster if you want a buffet.

I will list the location of this restaurant just so you know what to avoid. I will not link the website at the side of the page - though they do have one. Willow Tree Restaurant is located at 2416 Willow Street Pike, Lancaster, PA.

A SECOND VISIT TO DUTCH-WAY FAMILY RESTAURANT - GAP, PA.

It was last November when I first found Dutch-Way Family Restaurant located on the far end of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Like Yoders, this is another restaurant that is part of a supermarket. Also like Yoders, the restaurant is in the same building but separated by a hallway, and in this case, that hallway has a snack bar with some very tempting treats. But it is wise to pass the snack bar and keep going to the restaurant - in fact, just enter from the parking lot to the door for the restaurant.

This buffet is fancier than Yoders. There are tables and booths and a carpet on the floor. The dining room is divided in sections by low level walls and the buffet servers are at the rear of the room along with a large grill area.

This restaurant is well out of the tourist area and it is unlikely that you are going to encounter anything but locals here - though I must say that the night we were there a bus group was just leaving. Happily, we missed the bus group. There are also two banquet rooms that are off to the side of the buffet area. We were there on a Saturday night and the restaurant was only moderately busy. As I have noted, this is out of the tourist area. Like almost every other buffet restaurant in Lancaster County, Dutch-Way is closed on Sundays. Monday to Friday they are open from 6 am to 8:00 pm.

Dinner here varies by the night and we were there on a Saturday night. The price of the dinner buffet was $12.99. Unlimited soft drinks are an additional $1.39. Dinner price was two dollars more than it had been during the week in November.

The feature for Saturday night is Prime Rib and ham at the grill. Thursdays is seafood night. Tuesday is now make your own burgers at the grill and wings. In addition to the feature there are two hot buffet servers filled with entrees and side dishes. While this restaurant is larger than Yoders, it does not feature as many selections, but there is plenty here to choose from.

There are four soups and on this night these included chicken corn chowder, vegetable beef, chile, and chicken noodle. I tried the chicken corn chowder, as I have not had this before. It was full of potatoes and a thin white cream base with chicken and corn. It was tasty. My wife had the vegetable beef and she enjoyed it.

There is a very large salad bar here and you can make a tossed salad with a wide variety of toppings. There are also a number of local prepared salads and in addition there was a very excellent chicken salad. This chicken salad would have made a satisfying meal on its own. To top your salad there were small pieces of real fried bacon strips. Very different from the usual bacon on a salad bar. Everything was fresh.

Walking around the hot buffet servers I spotted a local dish that is different in Lancaster from how it is served in soul food restaurants - chicken and waffles. This is not fried chicken on top of a waffle. This is a creamed chicken put over waffles. I took this along with meat loaf on my first plate. The chicken and waffles was very tasty - but unlike others that I have had in this area - there were no chunks of chicken. The chicken was blended into the cream sauce. It made for a very tasty and interesting dish. The meatloaf was thick and rather than the usual ketchup that is put on top of meatloaf in many buffets this was covered in brown gravy. This is my wife's favorite type of meatloaf - and like everything else here - it was good. I also took a small spoon of potato filling - which I have described in articles about other buffets in this area. This one had a distinct potato taste and texture. It was like stuffing and mashed potatoes blended together into a unique dish. It delightfully surprised me when I put it into my mouth. I have had all different types of potato filling and not all have been the same. This one had a differently nice texture and taste.

Of course, there were a number of other dishes. There were ham balls in pineapple sauce - this is chopped ham made into meatballs - turkey in gravy, roast beef in gravy, Salisbury steak in brown gravy, seafood lasagna, pork and sauerkraut, Cajun haddock, and a very good fried chicken, in fact this was one of the better fried chickens that I have had and the sign called it "henny penny" fried chicken. I, later, looked up what henny penny fried chicken is. Henny Penny is the name of a company that makes chicken pressure friers. Similar to "broasting", the chicken is deep fried under pressure. I have had broasted chicken before. This was my first time having "Henny Penny" fried chicken.

There was supposed to be ham on the carving grill, there was only Prime Rib. Well, Prime Rib is not an only. I was cut a thick slice that was nicely cooked - a little medium rare and a little better done all on the same piece. Perhaps some who only like their beef one way or the other (as I usually do) would not like this, but I liked the contrast in tastes and textures. It was good.

Side dishes included mashed potatoes, carrots, macaroni and cheese - in a thick white cheese sauce, stewed tomatoes, mixed steamed vegetables, a mixed vegetables that was in a thick cream-like sauce, and there was string bean casserole - that was called green beans and bacon. The bacon was evident in taste and it was thick with cream sauce and covered in fried onion rings. This is very much like the popular Thanksgiving dish of creamed green bean casserole covered in fried onion rings, but much better. It was "kicked up a notch" as Emeril would say, but not spicy - kicked up a notch in taste and texture.

For the most part, this is local Amish and Mennonite country cooking. With this there are more worldly dishes mixed in so it is not all farm fare, but the blend is done well - and there is something for just about anyone.

There is a section near the soups that has an assortment of different breads. There was bread with cranberries swirled through, bread with blueberries, pumpkin bread and banana bread. There were also white and wheat rolls. On the hot buffet there were hot rolls. With the bread there were also half donuts covered in chocolate, coconut, and nuts. Dessert or bread? You decide.

There is a nice dessert bar here. In addition to those donuts, there were layer cakes including party cake, chocolate cake and yellow cake with chocolate frosting. There was an assortment of pies including sugar free pies - and then like all of the other buffets in Lancaster County there were the local prepared desserts - of which there was a very large selection. There was fresh fruit salad and grapes. Over on the hot buffet there was a tray of hot desserts in little foil cups. My wife tried one of these - a chocolate cake. She said that it was not really hot - it was warm - and it was nice. I, who should not eat dessert, could not resist one of the half donuts. It was very good - but then again, I really like donuts and I very rarely - if ever, any more, have them. There is also an ice cream sundae bar with soft serve ice cream. The ice cream looked really, really good - really creamy. I was tempted, but not after eating the donut - not to mention the chicken and waffles.

Service was very good. The young lady who was serving our table made sure the plates were taken away and kept offering and bringing refills of the drinks.

I have looked forward to coming back to Dutch-Way for a year and I was very happy that I went back and look forward now to the next visit. In fact, I keep thinking since this meal, that this has to become one of my regular dinners when in Lancaster County. I find it interesting that the restaurants that are the least presumptive stand out so highly. After all, this is a restaurant buffet in a supermarket- but it is one of the better buffets that I have been to.

As I did six months ago, I still highly recommend Dutch-Way Family Restaurant!

The Dutch-Way Family Restaurant is located at the Dutch-Way Farm Market Supermarket at 365 Gap Newport Pike (Route 41), Gap, Pennsylvania 17527. The buffet is served from 4 pm to 8 pm Monday to Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sundays. This is about two and a half miles south of Route 30. There is a web site and that is linked at the side of this page. The phone number is 610-593-6080.

Return to Yoders, New Holland, Pennsylvania

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.

Back to Cactus Willies Steak Buffet and Bakery - Lancaster, PA

I have not been to Cactus Willies since 2009. We have been to Lancaster, of course, since that time but not on a Sunday night when just about all of the buffets that I have recommended in this area are closed. We were leaving Lancaster on a Sunday and our choices for a buffet meal were Old Country Buffet, a Chinese buffet, Cici's Pizza (which would have been great if I could eat that much pizza any longer) or Cactus Willies. There was no question that it would be Cactus Willies.

Cactus Willies is a two state chain of restaurants that is now down to only two locations. One is in Essex, Maryland and the other is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

My last visit to Cactus Willies was fine but as I look back on what I wrote in 2009, it could have been better. This visit was definitely better. The hours on Sundays have gone back to closing at 8:30 pm. They are open until 9:30 on Friday and Saturday nights. Monday to Thursday they are open until 8:30 pm.

At Cactus Willies, like the other chain buffets of this type, you pay as you enter. We were told to sit anywhere. You choose your soft drinks which are $1.69 with refills. You are given a slip with your drink order on it to give to your server at your table. There were a good number of people dining in the restaurant for a Sunday night in at the end of April. We sat down.

The prices at Cactus Willies are very good. Weekdays dinner is $10.29. Weekends, including Sundays, dinner is $10.79. There is a senior discount of a dollar off, and of course there are children's prices.

Our server came over to us and took the slip with our drinks and went off to get them. We went up to the buffet and went over to the soups. There have always been - and there still are - three soups to select from. One soup was missing. It did come out later. There was vegetable beef and Maryland crab. Maryland crab is a red stock crab soup that is seasoned with Old Bay seasoning. My wife took the vegetable beef. When we got back to the table I looked at her soup and asked what she had taken as it looked exactly like my Maryland crab soup. Since I know she does not eat crab, I knew that this could not be. She told me it was vegetable beef. Again, it looked exactly like my crab soup - so much so that I got up and went back to the soups to look that I did not take the beef soup. In the serving pot they did look the same. This was odd. There in my crab soup I was certain that there were the same chunks of beef as in the beef vegetable. I tasted the soup. It was definitely seasoned as Maryland crab. I could also feel the strings of crab meat slurried through the soup. But there were cubes of beef. It made me wonder if the two soups had been accidentally mixed together. It tasted good and I enjoyed it. Why it had beef in it I don't know and this really could be a problem for someone who has any reason not to eat beef. My wife's vegetable beef soup was exactly that - no taste of crab or crab seasoning at all.

We were up next to the salad bar and there are the fixings for regular salad with a variety of dressings and toppings. There is also an assortment of local-styled prepared salads. The prepared salads are "home-style" and several are Pennsylvania Dutch area salads.

Cactus Willies has a large, char-flame grill off to the side of the buffet area. There they are char-grilling steaks. There is a carving. On this night it was ham. There has been turkey and Roast Beef. There are also barbecue ribs. I went up to the grill and asked for a steak rare. The chef picked a steak - not a full steak, but a good size piece - cut into it and showed it tome. It was rare and not raw - which is good. I also took a three rib piece of ribs. The ribs are covered in barbecue sauce. The steak was very tasty and I enjoyed it. The ribs were almost fall off the bone which is what I look for in ribs. This piece was meaty and while I would have preferred less sauce, many would say the sauce was just right.

On the hot buffet servers there was my wife's favorite Cactus Willies dish, Turkey Pot Roast. This is a pot roast made from turkey thigh meat in a rich brown/red gravy with potatoes, carrots, and celery. She loves this dish here and has looked for recipes to make it. Locally to us, we have not been able to find turkey thigh meat and for the texture of this dish to resemble its beef counterpart turkey thigh meat is necessary - it gets stringy like a well cooked beef pot roast. I took some on another trip up to the buffet servers and it is very good. Also on this night on the hot buffet servers there was meat loaf, fried chicken, fried shrimp, baked fish, fried fish, lasagna, spaghetti, pork chops, and pizza. There is also a taco station where you can make both tacos and nachos. Vegetables were the usual- string beans, corn, cabbage, sweet potatoes, a baked potato bar, french fries, brussel sprouts, rice, mashed potatoes, and stewed tomatoes. There is plenty to eat here.

Desserts are not elaborate but there is a nice selection of baked goods. There are puddings, jello, prepared desserts. There are cakes and pies. There are hot fruit cobblers. I did try the soft serve and this was a little disappointing as it was icy. A lot of soft serves are icy. It would have been better if it was creamy. There is a sundae bar and ice cream cones for the ice cream. There were some nice looking cupcakes that were out.

The food is good. It is not one of the best buffet meals you will ever have but it is satisfying. This last visit made me feel that this was a place to come back to more often - and with future trips to the area that will involve Sunday nights, I am pretty sure that I will be back here soon. If it is not a Sunday, in Lancaster there are so many other buffets. Reserve this one for when those are closed.

There is one funny problem with Cactus Willies. When I want to recall what the name of the restaurant is I always come up with Wild Willies and then cannot find it - of course, since the name is CACTUS Willies. Even as I sat down to write this article I stared out with Wild Willies. So remember "C A C T U S Willies".

Cactus Willies is located in a strip mall not far from the city of Lancaster. It is located at the Regency Mall, 101 Rohrerstown Rd, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The phone number is (717) 390-7060. There is a website (for both locations) and that is linked at the side of this page.

Buffets, Inc. To Close More Restauants

In May, Buffets, Inc. filed their plan to come out of bankruptcy. Their plan includes closing more restaurants as the company tries to build more traffic. There will be a confirmation hearing on the plan on June 13, 2012.

As regular readers know, Buffets, Inc. is the corporation that owns and manages the Old Country Buffet chain and the Ryan's Buffet chain. When the company filed this second bankruptcy since 2008, the company closed 81 restaurants - most of them closed overnight with no warning to unit managers or employees. Since these initial closures we have been made aware of a number of other locations that were closed following this - again, with no warning and done overnight.

The plan just announced to come out of bankruptcy that was filed in court stated: "“The financial projections also assume the closure of underperforming stores over time as it remains within the normal course of business to periodically determine which restaurant leases should be renewed as such leases come up for renewal or extension.”

This all comes following two million dollars in bonuses given at the corporate level to management who put the corporation into bankruptcy. It also comes following an announcement that Buffets, Inc. will be doing dramatic renovations in decoration to the interiors of Old Country Buffet restaurants. From the look of a sample of this new "concept" interior, there is no way that these renovations could be done on current locations without some period of closing down the unit - the changes will be that dramatic - and, frankly, in my opinion, will add nothing to increase business. And with every unit under scrutiny for performance - how could any unit afford the time to be closed for renovation? Again, Buffets, Inc. demonstrates a lack of good leadership, management, and business practice.

From a National Restaurant News article about this plan to exit bankruptcy - "For fiscal 2012, which ends June 27, Buffets expects restaurant sales to decline 13 percent from a year earlier to $1.03 billion, compared with $1.18 billion in fiscal 2011. The company cited the closure of 105 company-owned units during the fiscal year and lower guest counts at remaining restaurants for the drop-off."

Is this incredible? The company blames their drop in sales on not having the restaurants that they closed! This company counted on people traveling a distance to another location when the location near them was closed. From comments on Old Country Buffet's Facebook page from customers - there is no way they are going out of their way to travel to another Old Country Buffet. There are other reasons why there are fewer customers. The menu is tired. While there are some staples that need to remain, they have dropped too many of the things that people enjoyed coming to OCB for. OCB also serves almost the same things every night with little variation. There was a time, years ago, that there was a distinctly different menu every night of the week. Not any longer. They also dropped their seasonal or monthly features. Summer barbecue was always popular and brought people in with real barbecue ribs and brisket. Not the same pork loin that is cut into different shapes and served with barbecue sauce that they call "ribs" now - along with several other names for the same meat and sauce.

This is a company doing nothing to help what it calls "under performing stores" and is just waiting for their leases to end before they put all of these employees out of work and annoy more customers at the same time. The reader who was first to inform me about this most recent news called Buffets, Inc, "A slowly dying company."

We will watch and see.

Mountain Gate Family Restaurant, Thurmont, Maryland

The Mountain Gate Family Restaurant has two locations owned and managed by the same family. The location in Thurmont, Maryland is the original location and restaurant and began as a truck stop. It evolved into a full restaurant serving both menu and buffet meals and has a gift shop. I had never been to the Thurmont location until recently and I went the night after I had dined at the Waynesboro, PA location - which is reviewed in the last article.

Thurmont, Maryland is one of those famous, but unknown places. It is at the foot of the Catoctin Mountain and on that mountain, hidden away, is Camp David, the retreat for Presidents of the United States since Eisenhower. I have written about another buffet in this area - Cozy Restaurant - that has a hotel where the White House Press Corp would stay and dine when the President was at Camp David. The Mountain Gate Family Restaurant is just down the street from that restaurant.

Getting here can be quite an experience depending upon the direction that you come from. If you come west from Pennsylvania, you are not far from Gettysburg. If you come north from Maryland your GPS will likely route you through the Catoctin Mountain Park which is a roller coaster ride of narrow roads that wind around the mountain and in some places come very close to the edge. I went that way once, and I will never go that way again. We actually drove south and then east to travel on interstate highways to get to Thurmont to have dinner at the Mountain Gate. This was out of the way and longer in miles but actually about the same time as going the more direct but daunting route.

We arrived at the Mountain Gate Family Restaurant on a Saturday night at about 6:30 pm. There was no line to get in when we arrived but shortly after a line began to form. It is evident right away that this is the older of the two restaurants. I have spoken about the Christian decor that had been at the Waynesboro location and it is evident here. This is not any problem for us. I have read reviews where some people were troubled by it.

We were seated at a booth in what seemed to be the smaller dining room. There are three dining rooms with the buffet area located in the middle. Prices are the same at both locations. There is a noticeable difference in the tax - one restaurant is in Maryland and the other is in Pennsylvania.

I have been to the Pennsylvania location on a Saturday night and anticipated the same menu on the buffet. The buffet serving area is large - larger than in Pennsylvania, but as we went through the meal I had the impression that there were less choices being offered. The food here is, as expected, American Country and Pennsylvania Dutch. There are two soups - beef vegetable and chicken with dumplings, and a salad bar with an assortment of prepared salads, lettuce and romaine lettuce, and a large array of toppings for your salad. There were the makings for a Caesar Salad, and unlike the night before in Pennsylvania, the Caesar salad dressing was the creamy type. I tried the chicken with dumplings soup and it was very good. I made myself a Caesar salad and enjoyed that. I also took some chicken salad and some ham salad on my salad plate to taste. Both were excellent. Ham salad may be common in some areas but it is not common near us. I have had it in Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants and some (but rarely) buffets. If you have an opportunity to try it, do. It is little more than chopped ham with seasonings and mayonnaise, but it is good.

There were four carvings being sliced. The night before there had been only three. There was turkey, ham, pork, and roast beef. This roast beef was not like the beef that I had the night before in their other location. This was pretty much sliced roast beef. See my last article for my description of the one the night before. I did try the turkey and the ham. The turkey, while a turkey breast was pure turkey meat and not a turkey breast with fillers that is sometimes served. The ham was a basic sliced ham and it was good.

Looking around at the entree choices I was not seeing as much as I expected - and this surprised me. There were so many choices the night before - yes, they were seafood and it was seafood night, but I would have expected other entrees to take their place on a Saturday night. There was fried chicken, pork and sauerkraut, and chicken bot bie - a PA Dutch stew of chicken and large dumpling noodles with potatoes, carrots, and celery in a thick chicken stock. All of these are excellent. The vegetables and side dishes were very much the same as there had been at the other location - kernel corn, green beans and ham, beets, sweet peas, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, carrots, stewed tomatoes, and stuffing. There was gravy for the turkey and gravy for the roast beef. There was cranberry sauce also. All of the food was good. I just expected there to be more - though there was the fourth carving. The chicken bot bie was just as good as I expected. The fried chicken is home sytle. The stewed tomatoes are very good. The macaroni and cheese - like the one the night before - is thick with cheese and crusted with a heavy layer of melted cheddar on top. I have said it before and I will say it again - wonderful!

The dessert selection equaled the Pennsylvania selection and this was also a dessert feast with a large assortment of cakes, different fruit pies, nut pies, cream pies, pudding pies, prepared desserts, puddings, fruit, jello and on. Here it was spread out more around two serving counters that went around a wall so the presentation is not as overwhelming as it is in the smaller area at their other restaurant, but it is all here. I wanted to take something and chose a small piece of chocolate cake with white frosting. It was good.

Your meal includes soft drinks and they serve Pepsi products. They have fresh brewed ice tea and this is very good!

Our server was very good and she took the soiled plates off our table each time we got up to get more and came around with drink refills. She also came by at dessert to offer some of their in-house made ice cream.

The food was good. The service was good. I like the Pennsylvania location better. I am not really certain why that is - perhaps atmosphere. Perhaps that coming to this location is really out of the way - at least from the area that we visit when we are close enough by to come here or to the Pennsylvania location. If I were in Gettysburg, I might make the trip over to this location.

I certainly recommend that you come here. But do so only if you are already coming to this area or are very nearby. As I say, it is not easy to get to and very much out of the way. If you happen to be on the White House staff, of course, you are right near by when the President is at Camp David so you certainly should come down the mountain for a good meal.

There was a time that this restaurant was not opened on Sundays. It is now. This Mountain Gate Family Restaurant is located at 133 Frederick Road, Thurmont, Maryland 21788. The phone number is 301-271-4373. There is a website and that is linked at the side of this page.