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Review: Ozgood’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar

Exterior of a restaurant with a witch's hat dome and a sign that reads "Ozgoods Neighborhood Grill & Bar"

The building is hard to miss as you drive west into Robesonia. Between the maroon paint with green trim and the tall spire above the entrance, Ozgood’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar is unmistakable.

Ozgood’s location has served as a restaurant since the 1930s with the White House Restaurant operating on the spot. Once the White House left, it seemed nothing could replace it: the Furnace Creek Inn, the Furnace Inn, the Toll Gate Inn and the Blue Velvet (which I vaguely remember from my youth) all came and went before Ozgood’s came to stay in 1997.

Robesonia was built as a company town, and there are reminders of that on every wall. A large painting of the iron works hangs in the corner with enlarged postcards of the furnace surrounding the dining room.

Stained glass lamps hang throughout, casting a dim light on every table. For a little brighter experience, Ozgood’s offers an outdoor patio and bar along the slow trickling Furnace Creek.

Ozgood’s menu is lengthy and includes a long list of hearty entrees like steaks, burgers and an entire section devoted to pretzel sandwiches. And of course the menu at a “neighborhood grill and bar” wouldn’t be complete without a beverage list to match.

bowl of creamy chicken soup

Despite the summer heat, the soup du jour, a chicken, potato and herb chowder, sounded too good to resist. The presentation would have been beautiful, if not for the two packs of Club crackers that it was served with. However, that did not take away from the soup itself, a thick, creamy chowder with big chunks of potato and a delicious blend of herbs (parsley, dill and more).

Then it was on the main course, a one-pound chopsteak smothered in onions and mushroom gravy called “The Worley.”

plate with a chopped steak smothered in gravy with a side of fries, assorted vegetables and a dinner roll

One pound is a lot more than it sounds on a menu meaning about half of it was still remaining on my plate when I had finished, but that was not to say it wasn’t good. The steak was cooked perfectly and the gravy was good, though it could have used one or two more ladles of gravy to cover the large piece of meat.

My sides for the day were “shoestring” fries and mixed vegetables. Though called shoestring on the menu, the fries were more like McDonald’s than the shoestrings at places like Austin’s. They were still good, just not what I was expecting. Meanwhile the vegetables were very tasty thanks to being cooked in a generous amount of butter.

Every weekend, Ozgood’s has a certain theme for their specials, and on our trip, it happened to be shrimp weekend.

plate with fried shrimp and crab-stuffed shrimp

As such, my wife decided to try a little bit of everything with the shrimp sampler platter. The sampler included shrimp done three ways: fried, broiled and stuffed with crab. All three were good and done just right, but the crab-stuffed was her favorite as the crab added even more flavor to an already good piece of shrimp.

Unfortunately the generous portions left no room for dessert, but we still left satisfied. Our meals were a little pricey, coming in at more than $35 for the pair, but we certainly felt like we got our money’s worth out of them.

Nearly two decades after Ozgood’s ended the musical chairs of restaurants in Robesonia, it is trying to do the same in Kutztown, where it recently opened a second location in the former TC’s Food & Spirits building.

And if the new location is serving the same good food as in Robesonia, Ozgood’s will have another success story to brag about.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

Ozgood’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar
319 E. Penn Ave
Robesonia, PA 19551

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Road Trip: Shady Maple Smorgasbord

Maple-leaf shaped sign with the words "Shady Maple Smorgasbord"

Berks County Eats crosses the county line to bring you some of the best dining both near and far. This edition takes us 23 miles southwest of Reading to East Earl, PA.

I think everyone has a birthday tradition.

For myself, and many people who live within driving distance of Lancaster County, that tradition includes a birthday feast at one of the best buffets in the entire country.

Every year on May 30, my wife and I make the short drive south to East Earl to join the throngs of thousands that pour into Shady Maple Smorgasbord daily.

East Earl, a community of just over 1,000 people, doubles in size during the evening dinner rush. That’s the way it has been since Shady Maple expanded its smorgasbord more than a decade ago to create the glorious food paradise it is today.

The only exceptions are on holidays and every Sunday when the restaurant is closed, perhaps so we can all atone for committing the deadly sin of gluttony during our visit.

people standing in line to fill up their plates at a buffet

It’s easy to get lost among the food, which is why signs point the way to both the east and west buffet. Combined, there are 10 islands, four carving stations and three drink stations. A pair of dessert stands bookend the room. Walking from one end to the other is nearly impossible as you bob and weave your way around a hundred other people, all seemingly waiting in line for the same thing you are.

But with limited stomach to work with, scoping out the entire buffet is a must. Otherwise you may miss the carved-to-order prime rib or the ICEE machine.

As much as I appreciate a good salad, the two stations full of greens are off-limits during my visits. I can get a free salad with a meal anywhere.

plate with a cup of tomato soup, dinner roll, meatball and a piergoi

Instead, my first plate included a cup of tomato basil soup, broccoli, a pierogi and a sweet and sour meatball. The soup was a beautiful shade of light orange, a result of the added cream that gave it its rich flavor. A heaping helping of peppers and onions came along with the pierogi, but it could easily stand on its own. And the meatball was more like a miniature meatloaf, packed with spices in a ketchup-based barbecue sauce. I also added on an onion biscuit, just for good measure.

plate with a slice of roast beef, carrots and potato filling

Plate number two was all about the meat as I took a slab of beef brisket and a heaping helping of roast beef. A fistful of carrots and a drop of bread filling helped balance out the plate. The brisket was a featured meat at one of the carving stations. Unfortunately the heat lamps at carving stations rarely keep meats hot, and this was no exception. It was lukewarm, and the fact that it was oven-roasted made it taste more like an ordinary slice of beef. The actual roast beef, however, was amazing. It was tender and moist, everything the brisket was not.

A plate with sweet potatoes, baked beans, dried corn casserole and mashed potatoes

My third plate was my “healthy” vegetable plate. It featured baked lima beans, which were done in a very nice, thick barbecue sauce (I wish I that for the brisket); mashed potatoes; mashed sweet potatoes, which were topped with raisins and nuts; and some of the best (and wettest) dried corn I have ever tried. All the juice you see on the plate was from the dried corn, and it was excellent.

a plate of pecan pie next to a bowl of soft serve raspberry and vanilla swirl ice cream

Dessert was a (small) slice of shoofly pie and a dish of raspberry and vanilla soft serve. The wet-bottom pie was alright, but it had obviously been chilled which hurt the filling a little bit.

After dinner, Shady Maple encourages their guests to work off their dinners and shop off some dollars in the expansive gift shop, located beneath the smorgasbord. The store is as large as the buffet, filled to the brim with everything from wind chimes and bird houses to Elvis collectibles and Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks.

If you’re looking for a little taste of Shady Maple to take home, the farmer’s market offers a large selection of fresh produce and many of the smorgasbord’s famous desserts.

Even if you don’t have a birthday coming up, Shady Maple is worth the price of admission. Dinner buffets vary depending on the featured entrees, but average around $20.00 per person. If you do happen to be celebrating, all you need is your ID and a paying guest and you’ve got your very own birthday feast on the house.

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Toscana 52 Pappa al Pomodoro
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Road Trip: Toscana 52

Berks County Eats crosses the county line to bring you some of the best dining both near and far. This edition takes us 70 miles east of Reading to Bensalem, PA.

There is no such thing as Italian cuisine.

Let me rephrase that. There is no one Italian cuisine.

The flavors of Italy are as varied as any other country. Rome, Venice, Naples and Milan all have their own foods, unique to their regions.

Most restaurants have adopted bits and pieces of each to create their menus—a little from the north, a hint of the south and a bit of the coasts thrown in—and call it Italian.

But at Toscana 52 in Bensalem, they’re taking a different approach, highlighting the cuisine of a different city each week with its 52 menu.

Bensalem, Pennsylvania is not exactly a foodie paradise. The redundantly named Street Road, the township’s main thoroughfare, is lined with chain restaurants and fast food joints.

But just a short drive north of the Turnpike is a unique eatery that doesn’t fit in with the rest.

The interior is rustic Italian, like so many other restaurants. A large family table sits in the middle of the rustic dining room, a wooden pergola offering a hint of privacy to those who put themselves on display.

But the food is what makes Toscana different. The main menu offers five unique Crudo, or raw, dishes, Italian-style sushi plates with tuna, shrimp, oysters, clams or crab meat. Favorites like spaghetti, rigatoni and gnocchi are joined with non-Italian toppings like chilled mango salsa and wasabi cream.

menu insert highlighting foods from Florence, Italy

Then there is the 52 menu, a weekly journey across the European continent. The menu features not only entrees, but appetizers and regional wines from the featured city. Featured cities include Chianti, Napoli (Naples) and Florence.

I don’t know how often menus repeat, but on both of my trips to Toscana (10 months apart), the weekly menu featured the food of Florence, Italy.

cup of tomato soup with chunks of Italian bread and herbs

My trip to Florence began with a cup of Papa al Pomodoro, a tomato soup thickened by chucks of Italian bread that are mixed in. The beautifully presented bowl, topped with diced onions and chopped basil, harkens back to old world tradition. Before the advent of packaged croutons, chunks of bread were often added to soups to add thickness and substance.

The soup itself is naturally sweet, and thin enough that the bread is not an unwelcome addition. The addition of the fresh herbs and onions adds more flavor to an already delicious dish.

plate of gnocchi topped with cream sauce and shaved paremsan

Then came the gnudi.

Gnudi is “nude ravioli,” essentially all the filling for ravioli lumped together into dumplings without the pasta casing. Ricotta, spinach and Parmigiano cheese were rolled together and topped with a butter-sage cream sauce.

The meal is very rich. Without the pasta to tone it down, all of the ingredients have a chance to come through. The sauce is thick and creamy, but the gnudi soaks it up and absorbs all that rich flavor.

It’s a truly special dish that I have yet to find on any other menu.

strawberries in a light custard

And of course, no meal is complete without dessert. A simple strawberries and cream was the perfect ending to the meal. Ripe strawberries smothered in a semi-tart cream balanced perfectly for an (almost) guilt-free dessert.

You could spend thousands of dollars to take a tour of the Old World, but I got to experience a three-course tour of Italy for about $30.

In some ways, Toscana is not much different than any other Italian restaurant: serving favorites from across Italy in a rustic dining room here in America.

But Toscana is different. And if you find yourself driving east through Bucks County, just know that  a tour of Italy is closer than you think.

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Review: Michael’s Restaurant

Berks County is blessed with roads.

Lost in the complaints about potholes and the seemingly endless construction projects is the fact that Berks County has one of the best networks of roads in the state.

There are no two points in the county that are separated by more than an hour’s drive.

Yet the city of Reading becomes a roadblock for cross-county travel. For those of us living on the west side of town, places like Boyertown and Douglassville can feel like an eternity away.

One look at the Berks County Eats map shows that my trips to the “other side” have been few and far between. Part of it is the incredible dining options west of the city, but there is a part of me (the Pennsylvania Dutch part) that keeps me from wandering too far from home.

One of the few eastern Berks County restaurants I have frequented is Michael’s Restaurant in Douglassville.

Just two miles from the Montgomery County line, Michael’s Restaurant is your typical diner. A pair of dining rooms flanks the long lunch counter just inside the doors. A row of booths sits against the wall opposite the counter, each one equipped with a small jukebox filled with songs from the “Now That’s What I Call Music” series. I’m not brave enough to drop a quarter in to see if they actually work.

Michael’s menu is expansive, eight full pages plus daily specials, so there are always going to be hits and misses when you’re serving that many dishes. That’s why  I always stick to the Sautéed Specials page.

The Sautéed Specials includes Asian-inspired stir-fry, Italian pasta dishes and unique creations, each one mixing meat with vegetables, sauce and either pasta or rice, all for between $10-14.

salad bar items sitting on a bed of ice

A trip to the soup and salad bar is included with all of these sautés (those without pasta also get an additional vegetable). Though not the best or biggest salad bar in Berks County, Michael’s does offer two kinds of soup and a rainbow of salad ingredients.

chicken noodle soup with noodles and shell pasta

On my most recent trip, I opted for one of the more original sautés: chicken tossed with spinach, white beans and bow-tie pasta in a light cream sauce.

chicken, beans and spinach stir-fry

My dish had a beautiful presentation, and everything in it was really good (the flavor of the spinach really came through, and there was more than enough to ensure some in every bite). The only downside to the dish is that instead of coming together as one dish, it was more like a collection of individual items than a true sauté.

pierogies, chicken, and broccoli in a stir-fry

The same held true for my wife’s sauté, which included chicken, broccoli and pierogies over angel hair pasta. Though everything in it was very good, I can’t help but think that it would have been better served as a pasta entree with broccoli and pierogies on the side.

I enjoy Michael’s for what it is – a family restaurant at a convenient location with good food for reasonable prices.

It’s also a marker on the right side of the map, the first of many trips to the “other side” of Berks County.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

Michael’s Restaurant
1211 Benjamin Franklin Hwy
Douglassville, PA 19518

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nighttime view of the Stouch Tavern in Womelsdorf
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Review: Stouch Tavern

historic home with a sign out front that reads "Stouch Tavern 1785"

(Editor’s Note: The Stouch Tavern has changed owners since this blog. The menu remains similar with a mix of Pennsylvania Dutch meals and steakhouse favorites, including their daily lunch buffet).

The business section of the Sunday Reading Eagle is not normally a place to look for inspiration – I spend less time looking through section D than I do catching up on the adventures of Prince Valiant and Hagar the Horrible – but inspiration can strike at any time.

As I leafed through the classifieds one week, one ad, in particular, stood out to me:

Historic
Stouch Tavern
Restaurant
Real Estate, Business Equipment
Liquor License, Living Quarters
Plenty of Parking
$295,000
 

I already knew the business was for sale before my last visit to the Womelsdorf establishment in February. Former owners William and Diane Crumrine passed away within a few months of each other last year, leaving the business in the hands of their children. To the family’s credit, the Stouch Tavern continues as it did in the years before, minus William playing the piano in the first floor bar room.

For more than 200 years, the building has served as an inn, restaurant and meeting place in Womelsdorf, a small town on the western edge of Berks County. Now the oldest tavern in the county, the historic inn played host to George Washington during a 1793 trip to Carlisle. Our first president now lends his name to the ghost that is said to inhabit the building’s upper floor.

From the moment you walk in, you can feel the building’s history. A steep staircase rises in front of guests at the main entrance. Portraits of former owners peer down on diners in every dining room.  The wooden floor creeks with every step.

Tables are shoehorned into the narrow rooms, fitting as many patrons as possible. It’s a lesson in how not to design a restaurant, but the building has lived through four centuries, and sometimes you just have to forgo modern luxury.

cup of asparagus soup

Our waiter weaves between tables and the salad cart to deliver my first course, a bowl of cream of asparagus soup, the soup du jour for the night. I love asparagus so I loved the soup. Though it was a little thinner than most cream soups, and a little saltier than I would have preferred, I still lapped it up quickly.

steak topped with mushrooms with a side salad

Then came the main course. a juicy filet mignon, cooked to my liking (always medium well), covered in mushrooms. There are no choices for the sides. Every entree is served with the fresh vegetables of the day. Our waiter used the back of two spoons to grab the potatoes, squash and carrots and place them, one at a time, on our plates. It’s an awkward process, but the vegetables are fresh and cooked to a perfect al dente.

steak topped with fried onion ring and cheese with a side of assorted vegetables

As good as my food was, I suggest any first-time visitor try the Specialty of the House – beef medallions and a slice of ham, smothered in mushroom sauce and Monterey jack cheese, topped with a fried onion ring (a surprising addition considering it’s the only fried item on the menu). Everything melts together into one meaty, cheesy, salty dish. It’s a unique combination of flavors only available at the Tavern.

server making bananas foster in a pan with a large flame
bowl of bananas over ice cream

No true Stouch Tavern experience is complete without dessert. More than just a sweet final course, dessert is a show. The bananas foster (as well as the cherries jubilee) is made tableside. Start with a heaping helping of butter, add brown sugar, bananas, rum and fire, and you get part dessert, part performance art. The gooey bananas mix is then poured over a giant bowl of ice cream. The sugar rush is worth the wait.

The late William Crumrine used to make the bananas himself. “I do the easy jobs,” he said. “I play the piano and make the bananas.” The Crumrines can never be replaced, but hopefully a willing buyer can be found, preferably one who is willing to make bananas foster.

The Stouch Tavern is open every day except Tuesday for dinner, and open for lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. In addition to its regular menu, the Tavern offers a buffet during lunch hours.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Very Good
Price: Reasonable

Stouch Tavern
138 W. High St
Womelsdorf, PA 19567

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