The Back Forty Bar & Grill is now closed. The restaurant closed for ‘vacation’ in the summer of 2017, but never reopened.

The year 2014 was a tough one for diners in western Berks County. Both of Stouchsburg’s two restaurants, Risser’s Family Restaurant and the Black Dog Cafe, shut their doors for good.

It took more than a year, but both locations are once again thriving. Risser’s is now the Blue Star Family Restaurant. And in August, 2015, the Black Dog was transformed into the Back Forty Bar & Grill.

While the Blue Star sits right along busy Route 422, Back Forty is located in the heart of the village of Stouchsburg. An oversized sign points passersby to the restaurant from the highway. It’s easy to find, but it can be a little challenging crossing Main Street to get to the restaurant and its parking lot.

The place is divided in two, one room is the dining room, the other is the bar (with a few extra seats for overflow). Pigs and chickens are stenciled on to the multi-colored chairs around every table. A license plate sculpture depicts a pig on one of the walls.

All of these depictions are a reminder of the restaurant’s promise: to use locally sourced proteins whenever possible. That means farm-to-fork meats in many of Back Forty’s signature dishes.

One of those dishes is the Back Forty Farmhouse Chili. The chili includes two meats: smoked pork and cubed steak, and it’s topped off with cheddar and sour cream.

It was a hearty chili, but not too spicy (the vegetarian Dragged through the Garden Chili was advertised as the hotter option). It was still a very enjoyable start to the meal.

Also enjoyable was the bread and house made garlic butter. Normally, I don’t talk about the bread and rolls at restaurants (and the bread, here was thicker and heavier than I would have cared for), but the garlic butter was just too good to ignore. It was packed with herbs, a little salt and plenty of garlic. And I loved it.

While I enjoyed my chili, Julie’s meal came with a house salad with “fresh spring greens, hand-picked garden vegetables and house made croutons.” The salad was good, but we both agreed that whatever ranch dressing they were using had a salty taste to it that we didn’t care for.

When it came time for the main courses, our waitress apologized to me. I had ordered the pappardelle pasta and asked to add chicken, but she had forgot to add the chicken to our order.

The pappardelle can be served as a vegetarian dish, and that’s how mine started. The pasta was tossed in brown butter and sage with kale, green and yellow peppers, and yellow squash. It was very good, though the brown butter settled to the bottom of the bowl, not sticking very well to any of the ingredients.

My chicken appeared a short time later (I had more than half of my pasta left). It was coated in herbs and grilled perfectly. It had lots of flavor, but I felt like it didn’t blend as well with my pasta. Maybe it was because it hadn’t been tossed together; or maybe because both the pasta and the chicken were flavorful on their own. Either way, I enjoyed them more as two separate dishes.

Being St. Patrick’s Day weekend, all of the restaurant’s specials were take-offs on Irish dishes, like the smoked pulled pork and brisket shepherd’s pie that excited Julie.

This was one hearty meal. The bowl was overflowing with potatoes and gravy. It was packed with pork and brisket, with peas and carrots. But it was also very wet, soup-like at times thanks to a generous amount of gravy hiding beneath of the top layer of potatoes.

It was also hard to get used to the pulled pork and brisket. Eating them with gravy and mashed potatoes is very different than eating them with a sweet barbecue sauce, which is how we usually find both of those meats.

Neither of our meals left us with room for dessert, but we had a lot of family with us, and between the eight of us, we figured there were enough mouths to manage an order of the chocolate raspberry truffle tortes.

The tortes consisted of layers of chocolate cake, mousse and ganache, topped with raspberry puree and served with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

It was a heavenly dessert. All of the chocolate layers were incredible, especially the ganache. The raspberry was highly concentrated and gave a jolt of sweetness. It really did taste like you were biting into a rich chocolate truffle.

Everyone was in agreement that this was the best part of the meal.

The dessert was $9, but as the waitress said, “you get what you pay for.” The rest of our meal — two entrees and a cup of chili — was around $40.

While we ate, all of the tables in the dining room filled up around us. It’s clear that Back Forty has already become a very popular place in the seven months since it opened.

Stouchsburg has its two restaurants back, and it looks like that’s how it’s going to stay.

Editor’s Note: Pretzel Revolution & Creamery closed on December 31, 2016.

Last fall, when Berks County Eats visited Blind Hartman’s Tavern, a new sign was going up across the street, announcing the arrival of Pretzel Revolution and Creamery to Route 12 just north of Reading.

It was exciting news. Years ago, long before Berks County Eats came into existence, I made a couple visits to the original Pretzel Revolution in Kutztown and fell in love with the savory, greasy stuffed pretzels.

Though the new location serves the same recipe pretzels, it is serving a very different clientele. The Kutztown location is open until 3 a.m. three nights a week. On Route 12, it closes at 8 p.m. daily.

On our visit, the main dining room, with three booths along the wall, was empty. But the private room behind the counter was packed with a Brownies troop and their moms.

Bringing in ice cream and making it a family-friendly experience was the right move for a location that doesn’t have 9,000 college students in its backyard.

If you’re looking for a meal, Pretzel Revolution has seven flavors of stuffed pretzels to fill you up: Buffalo chicken, chicken bacon ranch, ham and cheese, Italian, pizza, pretzel, and steak and cheese. There are also traditional pretzels (though even these come in six varieties, like garlic, sesame or banana Nutella cinnamon). French fries stand as the only hot food item that isn’t a pretzel.

Julie and I both opted for a stuffed pretzel and fries combo meal. I went with a pizza pretzel; she opted for a steak and cheese.

The pizza pretzel is stuffed with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. The pretzels are wrapped so that they have one layer of dough on the bottom and two on the top.

If I had sliced the top off, you would have never known that it was a pretzel and not a pizza. It was a little too saucy, but the pretzel was so good that it made up for it.

Mine was good, but I was envious of Julie’s steak and cheese pretzel. It was packed with steak meat and just a little cheese. It worked really well with the pretzel, especially the salt on top.

The fries arrived a few minutes into our meal, piping hot after their bath in the fryer. The thick, fresh-cut beauties were delicious, though Julie and I probably would have been fine sharing a single order with as filling as the pretzels were.

It is called Pretzel Revolution and Creamery, so we couldn’t leave without dessert.

This is the only place in Berks County, that I know of, that is serving Penn State Berkey Creamery ice cream. And Pretzel Revolution has two freezers full of the famous frozen dessert.

My choice was the orange vanilla sundae, orange sherbet swirled with vanilla ice cream. On an 80-degree day that felt more like summer than mid-March, it was a refreshing, summery treat.

Julie, meanwhile, was enjoying a scoop of mallo cup, a chocolatey treat with marshmallow and coconut shavings. I’m not much for coconut, but I would have eaten all of her ice cream if she had let me.

Two pretzels, two orders of fries, two fountain sodas and two ice cream cones later, and we were as stuffed as the pretzels. And all of that food only cost us a little more than $25.

Pretzel Revolution and Creamery takes the brand in a new direction, and that’s not a bad thing. The franchise location stands on its own as a kid-approved, family-friendly place to grab lunch or dinner.

Editor’s Note: Sofrito Mohnton is now closed. In late 2018, the owner decided to reconcentrate efforts on the original location in downtown Reading, closing the Mohnton location as a result.

Two years ago, I visited the ill-fated Maniaci’s Italian Bistro.

The restaurant had gained fame after appearing on Restaurant: Impossible in 2013. But one year later, just a few short weeks after my visit, Maniaci’s closed for good.

My review of Maniaci’s is the most-read review in the history of Berks County Eats, continuing to receive hits every day.

While Maniaci’s was buzzworthy for all the wrong reasons, a new restaurant has taken over the space and created a buzz all its own.

Sofrito Mohnton opened in the spot in February. The restaurant is the second location for the Chef Hector Ruiz, who runs Sofrito Gastro Pub on Douglass Street in Reading.

East Wyomissing Avenue is a long way from Douglass Street, but the new location tries its best to capture the vibe of the original.

The walls have been painted in a bright reddish-pink, replacing the dull grays and greens. The shelves are more sparsely populated with just a handful of stylized martini glasses replacing the potted plants and herb jars that Chef Robert Irvine had decorated Maniaci’s with.

It’s a more polished look than the eclectic Douglass Street location, but while it falls a little short on ambiance, the menu includes all of the Sofrito’s favorites plus a few items you’ll only find in Mohnton.

One of the carry-overs is the Centre Park Urban Salad, a spring mix with tomatoes, purple onions, Spanish olives and roasted red peppers with a rosemary garlic and brown sugar vinaigrette.

The Urban Salad is my favorite starter at Sofrito. I usually prefer creamy dressings, but I love the sweetness that comes through from the brown sugar in the vinaigrette. Onions were scant, and I would have liked to have seen a few more of those, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Among the additions to the menu is the picadillo stuffed poblano pepper.

The pepper was stuffed with ground beef, potatoes, onions and cheese with ranchera sauce, cotija cheese and a dollop of sour cream on top.

Poblanos are mild peppers, but it had a little bit of a kick on the back end. The pepper wasn’t stuffed evenly so some bites had more ground beef, others more potato. Eventually, I just mixed everything on my plate including the rice and beans.

The yellow rice and black beans are another hallmark of Sofrito. The addition of vegetables like celery, carrots and onions add more depth and color and ensure the rice and beans are not just an afterthought.

Another carry-over to the new restaurant is the plantain-encrusted crab cake sandwich. Though we have visited the original Sofrito multiple times, Julie had never tried the crab cake until our meal in Mohnton.

The fried plantains provided a nice change from a traditional crab cake, giving it a little sweeter crust. The cake was also meaty with very little filler, making it rich and filling. The ciabatta bread that it was served on held up well, but the crab cake fell apart easily so it was hard to eat as an actual sandwich.

Finally there are the fresh-cut fries. A must-have accompaniment for any meal at Sofrito, the fries are among the best in Berks. And Sofrito Mohnton has the same slightly crispy, golden brown treats as the original.

Like the original, the prices at Sofrito Mohnton are very reasonable. We spent just shy of $25 for the two of us (including one iced tea).

Sofrito Mohnton is a worthy second act for the celebrated Reading restaurant. Just as importantly, it’s a great addition to the dining scene south of the city.

And for a location that has an infamous history, it’s a restaurant poised to create a positive future.