On a whim, Associate Editor Jenny Ruvolo and I decided to take a trip down to Lancaster, PA for a 3 day weekend. She needed to zone out and remove herself from the city while I needed a palate cleanser. I had heard some great things about a few new Lancaster restaurants and was excited to hang out with cows and sheep for a few days. Things were very different here than I remembered; but most of the changes have been for the good. So forget the Lancaster you think you know and take the journey with me through this wonderful area just a few hours away from NY.
We took the 2 hr Amtrak ride down and rented a car close to the Lancaster train station. This is a very comfortable way to travel if you can’t take your own car and relatively inexpensive too (about $60 for business class). However, I just have to mention that they are renovating the Lancaster Amtrak station and it’s currently in shambles. Plus, the Avis that usually sits in the station is no longer there so you need to call them and then they pick you up in the car you rented. I was kinda creeped out by this – not really ok with getting into cars with strangers. Sorry Avis.
After getting the car (and filling out the car rental paperwork on a laptop in a public garage), we checked in at the Courtyard Marriott and drove over to Kettle Kitchen Village down Old Philadelphia Pike to kill some time before dinner. The place is exactly what it sounds like: a little village of shops that sell you goodies and Pennsylvania Dutch trinkets. If you are driving past this place, make a stop and look around. If not, you really don’t need to make the trip. The one thing we did love at Kettle Kitchen was the turkey jerky and the birch beer at their Smokehouse Shop. We didn’t know it then, but turkey jerky would soon become the main theme of our trip. It was so delicious we ate the 1/4 lb before walking off the village grounds and vowed to return to the Smokehouse the next day to pick up more of the deliciously salted, dried meat sticks. Next stop: dinner time.
Something to keep in mind when traveling to Lancaster. Your schedule will odds are be very different from what you’re use to. A lot of the restaurants in the area outside of the city close around 8pm and the shops close even earlier so you may be eating dinner a lot earlier than usual. After some serious debate, we decided to visit the tried and true Good ‘N Plenty in honor of our late Aunt Dee Dee (lord knows just how many times Dee Dee went to Good ‘N Plenty but it was enough that even the smell of the restaurant made us think of her). Since we were both suffering from serious headaches and even a little nauseous from the jerky overload mere minutes before, we ate in the ‘Harvest Room’. Quick rundown: if you eat in the Harvest Room, you eat the harvest platters, which means you eat normally with your party. If you eat “family style”, you’re stuck at a huge table with strangers who want to talk to you all night and are subjected to large quantities of comfort food. Not like harvest platter portions are tiny, for $10 you get 2 pieces of chicken, 2 side dishes (corn, carrots, mashed, soup, salad, etc), and 2 DESSERTS. Yes, each person receives 2 separates desserts – this STILL blows my mind. The fried chicken was very good but not amazing and the side dishes were also very tasty; buttery carrots and fluffy mashed. The only part that wasn’t good was the gravy, it didn’t taste like anything. How do you mess up gravy?? Its so easy to make?!! The desserts were just as homey: cracker pudding, blueberry cobbler, and the Lancaster favorite: shoofly pie. If you go, don’t get the shoofly pie like everyone else – its good but you’ll find it EVERYWHERE there – get the cracker pudding. It was like someone mixed together homemade vanilla pudding, coconut fakes, and salty cracker crumbs for a delightful combination not to be missed. There are plenty of family style dutch restaurants in Lancaster to go to, but go to Good ‘N Plenty because its an institution down there. Everyone has to go at least once in their life.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Journery Thru Lancaster – Part 2, where we’ll visit the local favorite Achenbach bakery, the Nissleys Vineyard and Winery, Porkys Place, and the Bird-In-Hand Farmers Market.
