El Rodeo -Colonial Park

Overall Rating: I'm Just Not Sure
Highlight: Chile Rellenos
Lowlight: Mushy, Runny, Bland
Veggie Note: There's a large section on the menu dedicated to vegetarian dishes. Lot's of choices, but there's a lot of repeating elements just in different combinations. Still, cool that they have a vegetarian menu.

We have driven past El Rodeo (several of them) multiple times, and we laugh at the name every time. We finally decided to give it a try, despite the fact that it seemed just a bit too phony to be authentic.

El Rodeo is a local Mexican Restaurant chain (claims to be the first authentic Mexican restaurant in the Harrisburg area). The restaurants are very "themed" looking and boast a rotating schedule of live Mariachi music (not the night we ate there). The menu is large and looks a lot like the menu of many other "authentic" Mexican restaurants that we have been to in Pennsylvania. Lists of combination dinners, a section of specialties, some a la carte stuff and of course beans and rice served with most dishes. The whole place was brightly colored and the staff were all mostly Spanish speaking with moderate English speaking skills.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Chips & Salsa - it came as no surprise to us that we were served this standard Mexican restaurant starter. Chips and salsa were both fresh. Watch out, the side order menu says a second basket will cost you $1.25, no free refills here!

Entrees:

• Vegetarian #5 One authentic cheese chile relleno, cheese enchilada, rice and beans - The relleno was good, the sauce was interesting, almost reminiscent of some kind of Indian curry. It must have been a spice they used, but I couldn't pick it out. The enchilada didn't blow me away, I almost forgot what it was that I was eating. Melted cheese in a tortilla, the only thing that really makes that an enchilada would be good enchilada sauce, and the sauce here was just sauce. No spicy, not particularly flavorful, ho hum. Beans and rice were beans and rice. The beans here were very runny. Same as they were in the Mexican joint we used to haunt in our last home town, so maybe that is "authentic," at least for Pennsylvania standards.
• Vegetarian #9 Plato de Chile Auténtico - basically two chile rellenos. My partner really enjoyed these, saying they were better than most. So that's good I guess. They were tender, and fried very nice. Not at all spicy though.
• Combination #4 Two hard beef tacos, one beef enchilada and one chile con queso - our favorite non-vegetarian friend (who is becoming more and more vegetarian everyday - hooray!) ordered this, with cheese over the enchilada instead of enchilada sauce. There was kind of a rather confusing exchange with the waitress, who was having a hard time understanding the special request, and a lot of specific questions in general. It came with out enchilada sauce, but the cheese sauce was poured all over the plate (except for on top of the enchilada - I don't know how they managed to miss it, the whole plate was flooded.) The crunchy tortilla under the chile con queso was really soggy as a result. The server who brought our food didn't mind bringing out a crunchy replacement, but it was kind of stale (maybe that's why they flooded the first one?) Did I mention our dear friend is from Texas? "Authentic" obviously translates a little different down there. There were no blue ribbons being given on the meat-eatin side of the table.

Just a few other notes:

In general we had a little trouble communicating with our server when it came to specific questions about dishes and special requests. Ordering straight off the menu, however, was no problem.

They do have a full bar here, we ordered margaritas on the rocks and they were pretty good.

I checked out using a credit card, at the cashier's station near the exit. I was asked about how much I wanted to tip verbally, not given a chance to write it on the receipt myself. I don't like that method at all. It doesn't give you time to think and puts a lot of pressure on you in general, so anyway, just be prepared for that.

Final Thoughts: We like Mexican food, but we're pretty much limited in scope to Pennsylvania's finest. Perhaps a trip down south would ruin PA Mexican for us forever. This really wasn't a bad spot for a vegetarian. Here were tons more choices here then we were used to, and the prices were pretty reasonable (except the chip refill charge). I just wish they went a little further with spice and flavor. And be weary of making special request, the language barrier could result in a non-vegetarian result.

Gilligan's Bar & Grill - Colonial Park

Overall Rating: Good For Appetizers/Bar Food
Highlight: Smoked Gouda Quesadilla
Lowlight: Not so many dinner options
Veggie Note: There were lots of really unique and interesting appetizers to choose from that were vegetarian, but not so many entrees

We chose to eat dinner here on our way to Colonial Park for grocery shopping. We heard great reviews of the seafood here once and hoped that quality would translate into their vegetarian options as well.

Gilligan's is a sports bar style joint with a relatively large dining room, serving mostly traditional American fare (they claim steak, pasta, seafood). Walking into Gilligan's for the first time, it seemed obvious that this place would have once been billowing with cigarette smoke but is now smoke free thanks to the PA smoking ban. It was a very odd sensation to be in a smoke free sports bar, but much appreciated since we were there for dinner (smoke and food don't usually sit well together for me). We went planning on a traditional dinner, but after reviewing the menu, we decided we would rather try a handful of their more interesting appetizers than their less than interesting vegetarian dinner options.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Nothing complimentary served with our appetizers

Appetizers:

• Spanikopita - here's something you don't see on a sports bar menu everyday. A traditional Greek dish that has become a trendy American appetizer (I think you can buy it frozen in a 10 pound box at most warehouse stores now). Usually prepared small triangles or squares, it's puff pastry with a spinach and feta cheese filling. This spanikopita was more irregularly shaped, so it gave us the impression that it might have been hand made (at least it's not out of the frozen 10 pound box). The filling was a little runnier than normal, almost like a spinach dip, or maybe they didn't drain the spinach well enough. Either way, it wasn't the world's best, but still a nice treat.
• Cheese Quesadilla - Read the menu closely before you order this otherwise traditional looking dish. This is not your ordinary quesadilla. It is made with smoked Gouda cheese and caramelized onions (also your choice of meat, but the meat free version does come at a lower price, woohoo!) This was fabulous! The smoked Gouda paired with incredibly sweet caramelized onions reminded me of some sort of German preparation (add a few apples and I think it could have been). What a unique dish for a traditional bar. It was still served with salsa and sour cream, strange. I tried it with both, the salsa didn't really do it justice, but the sour cream did add something nice to it. Anyway about it, yum!
• Crazy Bread - almost like a Greek french bread pizza. This sub roll, cut open and toasted with Greek olives, feta cheese, tomatoes, onions and garlic was pretty tasty too. We got to this dish last, as we worked through our appetizer smorgasbord, so maybe we would have loved it even more if we weren't starting to feel bloated. It was very tasty. The sub roll is claimed to be fresh baked, and it wasn't bad. I come from the land of Amoroso's rolls, so I am very persnickety about sub rolls. That is one of the secrets, by the way, to making a killer cheese steak, a bad roll can really mess it up.

Just a few other notes:

So why did we skip the dinner entrees? This place has a huge menu (sorry it's not currently online even though the website says it is). There is a chicken page, a steak page, a seafood page, a sandwich page and a pasta page. There is a little box on the pasta page that says "Vegetarian Dishes" and that's it for the whole menu (aside from a garden salad or Greek salad). The pasta dishes were pretty boring; spaghetti, cheese ravioli, an Alfredo dish, etc... with your choice of Marinara or Meat Sauce and added meatballs (just in case the non-vegetarians didn't find what they were looking for on the rest of the menu). There was, however, the option of adding portabellas to any pasta dish or salad for a few extra bucks. I figured there are plenty of Italian restaurants in town so why spend a lot of money on pasta here? Maybe it's great, but I was more enticed by the appetizer choices.

Other choices on the appetizer menu, that we skipped, included the traditional mozzarella sticks, fried zucchini, poppers, onion rings, cheese fries, etc... and a few other goodies. The prices on these dishes are not astounding, but I was disappointed there was no appetizer assortment option, so you have to order each one individually and the cost could start to add up if you want a little variety.

Final Thoughts: So here's the deal. If you've been invited to meet some friends here for drinks and football game, you won't have any trouble finding some snacks on the menu to absorb some of the booze. You could even do like we did and make a meal out of appetizers. If you are planning a nice sit down dinner here, be prepared for pasta (or a grilled cheese off the kiddie menu). I'm sure your meat and fish loving friends would dig this place, and you could definitely make do every once in a while.

Cantone's Southern Italian - Colonial Park

Overall Rating: Save Your Money
Highlight: It could have been worse
Lowlight: We paid way too much for what we got
Veggie Note: There's not a very diverse selection of vegetarian options here, and the default seems to lean towards meaty everything.

This restaurant was recommended to us by several people as a great spot to get some home-cooking style Italian food.

Cantone's is a southern Italian style restaurant off the main drag in the Colonial Park area of Harrisburg. It was actually a little nicer and more comfortable in the dining room than we had anticipated, having come from the land of good, cheap Italian restaurants that tend to skimp on their interior design efforts. We were asked if we had reservations, which we did not, but that didn't prevent us from being seated right away (we just ended up way in the back). There is a bar here, and they had a pretty nice selection of beers on tap (more than just the many varieties of Bud, which all taste like dirty dish water to me). The menu was swimming with super-meaty dishes, which is no surprise considering it's southern Italian style. There were three meatless dishes and then a build your own pasta section.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Bread Basket - after ordering our entrees we received a basket of warm Italian bread, crusty on the outside and soft in the center. It was pretty good.

Entrees:

• Eggplant Parmigiana - comes with a choice of Marinara or Mrs. C's sauce. Mrs. C's sauce is their meat sauce, so obviously I went with the Marinara. Too bad though. It was definitely missing the love that I bet Mrs. C's sauce has in it. It was about as exciting as a jar of Ragu. The fried eggplant slices were okay, they probably were freshly cut and breaded, but there was nothing about them that couldn't have been reproduced from frozen eggplant out of a box. The dish also comes with some spaghetti. It was cooked al dente, but was also pretty boring. I ate about half of this dish and really struggled to decide if I wanted to bother taking the rest home. It didn't take me long to remember that this dish cost me $15 and I darn well better get my money's worth, so I took the rest home to eat later with hopes it would be better the second time around (I ended up eating it for breakfast, being able to be lazy and just reheat leftovers added something to this dish, but not much).
• Penne Spinaca - This dish was definitely more interesting than the eggplant. The spinach was fresh, not frozen. The sun dried tomatoes may have been a bit too populous, but you can eat around them. It was plenty garlicky and nice. There was nothing special about this pasta either. It definitely looked fancier on the plate than the eggplant did, and it smelled better too.
• Side Salad - both entrees came with a side salad (Ceaser salad costs $2 extra, not that we would order one due to anchovies usually being in the dressing, but jeez, that's a pretty steep extra fee for something like that). It was just a salad. I opted for the homemade bleu cheese dressing, even though it came wiht an extra 75 cent price tag. It was not worth tacking that extra cost onto the bill. I definitely couldn't tell it was homemade and not mass-produced.

Just a few other notes:

I have had good home-style Italian cooking, at home and in restaurants before. There was nothing particularly wrong with the food here, but it wasn't extra-super special, even though the prices said otherwise. $15 for spaghetti noodles, plain marinara sauce, and some breaded eggplant is astounding. I can get three whole pounds of plain old pasta (with meat) from Pizza Hut for $12.99 (not that I ever would) and that also comes with bread. So what was I paying for here? There was definitely a nice family atmosphere, lots of folks talking, having fun, enjoying a meal together. That's great I guess. And maybe they are really knocking it out of the park with their meat dishes, but those all came priced at $20 or higher.

There was also a vegetarian baked capponatta on the menu. I considered ordering this but I just wasn't in the mood for it's Burgundy Wine Marinara sauce, it seemed to heavy for me by it's description. The build your own pasta section is essentially choose your pasta and choose your sauce for $12-15. Pretty steep again for noodles and sauce. Want to add some veggies? That'll cost you $1 per vegetable (only broccoli and spinach are offered).

You might be able to order some of their other pasta specialties without the meat (there was a lot of ham in many of these dishes) but I would not count on getting a price reduction considering how many you get nickel and dimed to death with "additional costs" for almost everything else.

We had a friend with us who ended not ordering anything at all. Part of that can be attributed to having eaten a ton of rice about an hour earlier at a picnic, but part of that also comes from it just not being worth the money to get what was being offered, and that nothing really jumped off the menu as a spectacular find.

Final Thoughts: There's something about this place that makes people love it, but I don't know what it is. Meat maybe? Atmosphere possibly? I guarantee you it's not the fabulous deals and the great vegetarian dishes, bummer. I doubt we'll be back here.

Asian Noodle House - Camp Hill

Overall Rating: Great!
Highlight: Fun Veggie Shrimp (and other meat)
Lowlight: Veggie Steak was a little tough
Veggie Note: The menu here has a vegetarian section with chicken, steak and shrimp substitutes. There are also lots of tofu options throughout the menu, dishes with meat are clearly marked and a request from the chef to inform the server of any dietary needs is also stated right on the menu.

We made a special trip here after some discussion about the vegetarian meat substitutes in a Pennlive forum thread.

Asian Noodle House is a relatively new Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant (grand opening banner still up when we ate there). It is clean and bright, but the dining room is small (the service area/soda fountain is right in the middle of everything). It was not very crowded (empty when we arrived, two other tables filled while we were there). Their menu is printed on the wall, counter service style, but we were also handed menus ate our table and our order was taken from there. The service was quick and polite. The couple that came in right after us asked the server for a replacement for a dirty plate that was on their table and we clearly heard him behind the kitchen wall scolding whoever was responsible for dish washing. Then he very carefully examined the next plate before he brought it to their table. That was theme for the evening as well. Everything was very thorough.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Nothing complementary was served here

Appetizer:

• Steamed Edemame - very fresh, but not very salty. We added our own.

Entrees:

• Vegetarian General Tso's Chicken: Plenty of Chinese restaurants are offering a vegetarian version of General Tso's these days, but most just serve it with fried pieces of tofu. Here it was actually served with a vegetarian meat substitute (they did also offer it with tofu in the regular menu and with crispy fried tofu in the bean curd section of the menu - I'm not sure if there was actually a difference between those dishes or not). The sauce was delicious, just the right kind of sweet and spicy for me. The meat substitute reminded me a bit of the dehydrated steak pieces we used to buy at the food co-op in our old town, long ago before Morningstar Farms came out with their steak strips. When re-hydrated, they were pretty tasty (as long as you had a good sauce or marinade) but they were always a little bit tough. The same goes for this meat tonight. But that did not stop me from eating quite a bit of it, and then eating the rest for lunch later this week. It was tasty.
  
• Vegetarian Happy Family: A combination of all meats and vegetables or in this case all meat substitutes, which included beef, chicken and shrimp. The whole thing was in a brown sauce, to which we forgot to request a little added spice. There was a bowl of spicy garlic sauce on the table though, which helped to make it a little more our style. The beef pieces looked the same as (and were tough like) the meat in the general tso's, and the chicken pieces were a bit smaller (also much more tender than the steak) The real fun of this dish was the veggie shrimp. I have seen little tiny veggie shrimp before, but never anything like these. We took a picture with my phone, it doesn't do it great justice, but I have posted it here anyway. They were kind of the consistency of that imitation crabmeat (fish based) they often call "sea legs" in the grocery store. But the menu clearly stated that they were soy or vegetable based. Sometimes though, it's just more comforting to eat fake meat that isn't very meat-like. I thought these were spectacular, my partner didn't like them as much, but also never liked shrimp prior to becoming a vegetarian either.

Just a few other notes:

There were several other vegetarian dishes on the menu including an orange steak, shrimp and vegetables, and I think another chicken stir-fry kind of dish. In addition, there was a section of specialties on the menu where you choose what type of protein you want and then the type of dish, so you could pretty much put tofu into anything. These dishes included a variety of more popular Chinese dishes and some I did not recognize (maybe Vietnamese style). Also, there was also a section of Bean Curd dishes, and those that contained meat gave you clear warnings. There really were not any vegetarian options in the Vietnamese (noodle) section of the menu.

This was definitely a very casual restaurant and it attracted an interesting clientele (nothing bad, just reminiscent of some of the folks my parents used to play D&D with in the 80's). It would probably make a great spot for grabbing some take-out as well.

Final Thoughts: A vegetarian could come back here many times and never order the same thing twice. What fun! That's a rare find. I think I may have mentioned before, but the Asians have really exceeded America in producing meat substitutes. Big cities almost always have all-vegetarian Asian restaurants in them (Zen Garden in Pittsburgh, Kingdom of Vegetarians in Philly). Asian/International grocers are also great places to get veggie meat products to use at home. I make some mean Philly cheese steaks and chicken cheese steaks out of some yummy stuff I buy at an international grocery store (Assi) in Montgomeryville, PA. Check out any city's China Town section to find your own treasures. Just watch out for bins full of live animals as well (I once almost threw a piece of trash into what I thought was a trash can but ended up being a can full of live bullfrogs staring up at me - ack!)

Hong Kong City - Colonial Park

Overall Rating: Good
Highlight: Variety of Food
Lowlight: Not a fancy dining room
Veggie Note: There are three very different types of cuisine on this menu, so you have to fumble through it to find all of the vegetarian options available, they are not all collected in one place or designated with a symbol. But there are lots of choices.

We were doing a little late evening shopping and were looking for a good option for take out dinner to bring home with us.

Hong Kong City is a fairly standard looking Chinese (American style) restaurant that probably does about 50% of its business in take-out (that was about the average while we were sitting there waiting.) The nice thing here is that they not only have a pretty complete menu of traditional Chinese-American dishes, they also have a small Thai section and a nice sushi bar menu. It's a very plain dining room (although they do try with the typical cheesy decorations). We weren't looking to sit down and eat, so I didn't give it much thought. It's not a fancy restaurant by any means. It was very clean and bright however, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't eat-in there. We walked up to the register to place our order. We were told it would be about 20 minutes, and that was pretty accurate.


We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Nothing complementary came with our take-out food, but I did see a couple eating-in that had crispy noodles and duck sauce on their table, I am assuming that they were served complimentary.
  

Off the Chinese Menu Section:

• Szechuan Style Bean Curd - one of a couple tofu/bean curd dishes available (there was also Hunan style and General Tso's style.) It was spicy, but not too spicy (could have been spicier really). We noticed after ordering that there is a little place on their take out menu that you can check off for how spicy you want your meal. We'll remember that in the future. The tofu was cut into long strips, almost like chicken stir-fry pieces, instead of just being cubed and fried. It was nice to see a detail like that. It makes you feel like they spent time thinking about and preparing the dish. Overall this was a pretty good dish.

Off the Sushi Menu:

• Vegetable Maki Combo - listed as three "vegetable rolls" on the menu, mine was prepared with an avocado roll, an avocado mango roll and a roll with avocado and sliced up pieces of inari (sweet tofu pancake) inside. I love avocado, but this was actually a bit of overload for me. On a positive note though, the avocado was at its peek of ripeness, so buttery and delicious. I had no problem finishing it all in the end. The combo meal also came with miso soup and salad with ginger dressing. Much like my experience at Mikado on 2nd, the dressing here was really chunky and ugly colored on top and then super watery at the bottom. It looks so unappealing. I have had much better looking ginger dressing in my lifetime, but so far I have not found it here in Harrisburg. I will say that while we were wandering the aisles of Costco recently, I noticed a big jug of similarly ugly-looking ginger dressing on the shelf - coincidence? There was no Costco near where we used to live, hmmmm...
• We also ordered some a la carte Inari and Tamago, our two favorite seaweed minimal sushi varieties for my seaweed-averted partner. They were good, as usual. I was reading the specials from the sushi bar, and one of their fancy rolls of the day (The Yellow Submarine) was yellowfin tuna rolled in a yellow soy wrapper. We have seen these fancy alternative sushi wrappers before (and bought a variety pack at Wegman's once). If we could talk the sushi chef into using those wrappers on some veggie rolls, that could really open the door to sushi for the seaweed opposed, and add a little fun to the very green appearance of most veggie sushi.

Just a few other notes:

To give you a rough idea, since the menu is not available online, other vegetarian options included a vegetable choice in all of the standard Chinese-American dishes (lo mein, fried rice, moo shu, egg foo young, etc...). They also had a couple other veggie dishes listed with the bean curd ones (a broccoli dish of some sort - sorry these details have left my brain now). They had Pineapple Fried Rice on the Thai menu (I'd check to make sure this is definitely meat free). The Pad Thai and other Thai dishes did not have veggies or tofu listed as an option, but I'd be willing to bet they would do some substituting for your here. There were not too many other veggie sushi options available. I asked them if they ever have sweet potato tempura rolls as a special and they said yes. I think they were pretty open to special requests here as well. In addition, they had edemame in the appetizer section of the menu.

I feel with any restaurant being managed by folks for whom English is not necessarily their first language (and even in some cases where English is the only language your server has ever spoken) the word vegetarian does not always translate perfectly. Be really careful with dishes marked "vegetable" but not necessarily "vegetarian." Ask questions, be specific, and peek inside your dish before you start chowing down. We had no problems here at Hong Kong City.

Final Thoughts: Trying to not compare Hong Kong City to the fancy, sit-down Asian style restaurants we have been too, this is a really nice place. For take-out or a quick eat-in meal, this is definitely a really nice place. Our food was all very delicious and we had no shortage of vegetarian choices to make. This will definitely be a place we will consider returning to when we're in the mood for take-out.

Appalachian Brewing Company - Harrisburg

Overall Rating: Not Too Bad
Highlight: The Beer
Lowlight: Burnt cheese
Veggie Note: There is no vegetarian designation for the dishes on the menu, but there are some choices available and ingredients are listed pretty well.

Came here for the beer, but had a plan to eat dinner while we were here as well.

Appalachian Brewing Company is brewery/restaurant that now has several locations around the region (Cameron St in Harrisburg is where we were). There are two floors here, with Belgian beers featured on the second floor along with pool and darts. We ate upstairs in the Abbey Bar. The table service was spotty as it is not their main dining room, but we were fine with walking to the bar if we needed something a little quicker than the bartender/server was able to bring it to us. The menu is pretty full and has changed some since the last time we ate here several years ago.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Nothing complementary served here

Appetizer:

• Appalachian Beer Cheese Dip (Backcountry Buffalo) – if you’re a regular reader you should be able to predict by now that we will almost always pick a cheese related appetizer when it’s available. This blend of beer, cheddar cheese, peppers and spices came out a little darker and chunkier than we expected it too (funny how the server said “it’s dark and chunky looking like it’s supposed to be” as she set it down – that was unsolicited and now looking back it was almost as if she was planting subliminal messages in our brains). It was also very much burnt on the bottom. All that said, it still tasted pretty good, but hey, it was cheese after all… There were two other varieties of cheese dips available as well.

Entrees:

• Springer Mountain Pasta – Somehow I misinterpreted what it was I ordered so when it came out I was a little surprised, but it ended up being pretty good. I think I was totally out of it tonight though. I’m not usually a big fan of sundried tomatoes and this dish was swimming in them, but to be honest I found myself seeking them out by the time I was done. They were very nice sundried tomatoes. The fettuccini was a little too al dente for me. Also, the “Chardonnay Sauce” was very thin and oily. I think I imagined it a little more reduced or at least something a little thicker. It splashed around a lot and I actually noticed a few little oil spots on my shirt when I got home. All of the pasta on the menu is prepared without meat, which is really great. You can add the meat of your choice if you want, or portabella mushrooms, which is what I did.
• Santa Fe Salad – This salad was all around pretty good, the dressing was the most notable (Stout BBQ Ranch) and the black beans made it very tasty. The salads, like the pasta, can be customized with your choice of meat or mushrooms, but some have meat in them already, so watch out for that.
• Pomegranate Blueberry Chicken– I forgot to mention we had a non-veggie friend with us again (it seems we have a bunch of those). Apparently this chicken was awesome; the blueberries were very unique and yummy. The onions, I’m told, could have been more caramelized than they were, but two thumbs up!

Just a few other notes:

On Tuesday nights, pool is free! (Also on Sundays)

Back in the day, ABC used to have a really nice vegetarian chili on the menu that we loved. When we travelled through this area, we often stopped here and had that. Over time it stopped being very good, so we were disappointed it’s no longer on the menu, but not surprised.

The beer made here is super good. We highly recommend a stop here for a pint or four, even if you’re not hungry. It would be interesting to find out about their brewing process. For those of you who are serious vegetarians or vegans, you may or may not already know that a common beer filtering agent is a compound that comes from fish. It is typically left behind in the settling process, but there is no guarantee that it hasn’t made it into your glass of beer and of course, if you are vegan, it is an animal by-product.

Final Thoughts: There are no specifically vegetarian dishes on the menu, but it is nice that the pasta and salads can be customized with just mushrooms. For a place that is PA preferred (a Dept of Ag designation) it would have been nice to see a few more local foods “featured” on the menu as well.

Carley's Ristorante - Downtown Harrisburg

Overall Rating: Good Food, Mediocre Service
Highlight: Yummy Gnocchi
Lowlight: Over-fried Olives and Disconnected Server
Veggie Note: A handful of vegetarian dishes occur on the menu, but they are not listed as such so you have to read carefully and be able to translate some Italian ingredients

On a Sunday night a lot of downtown restaurants are closed, so we were happy to find an opportunity here for dinner with a visiting out of town friend.

Carley’s Ristorante is a trendy downtown Italian restaurant with a diverse menu and ample wine list. It was not too busy here considering the limited number of choices on a Sunday night. This was also day one of the first ever restaurant week in Harrisburg. We perused the special menu for the event, but no vegetarian choices were available so we ordered from the standard dinner menu. We had to decide between a few nice sounding appetizers and entrees. Luckily there were three of us so we could sample several and share.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Crusty Italian Bread – after we ordered our dinner we were brought a basket of warm crusty bread. It was flaky on the outside and soft and delicious in the middle. There was a bottle of olive oil on our table which was absolutely delicious, no bulk food, low-quality taste here at all.

Appetizer:

• Olive Ripieni – described in the menu as stuffed olives (cheese and pepper) with a garlic aioli dipping sauce, these olives came to our table breaded and deep fried, which was a surprise to us. I like fried olives, so we didn’t have a big problem with this, but it should definitely be mentioned in the description here. These olives were also overcooked; the breading was tough and dry. If you cut them open and pulled the olives out, they were still slightly moist inside. The aioli was very mild, missing a distinct garlic flavor, and could have passed for ordinary mayonnaise (which is fair considering that’s essentially what it is). The family size was plenty for the three of us.

Entrees:

• Ravioli di Ricotta al Burro e Salvia – Cheese ravioli with butter sage sauce, was tender fresh pasta with a light filling. The butter sauce had some sort of flavor added, maybe a vinegar, that was slightly strong and overpowering. There were fresh tomatoes added as well, not described on the menu. As we were finishing our meal, I noticed other servers offering freshly grated cheese to their customers, ours did not offer us that and this dish definitely would have benefitted from the addition.
• Risotto alla Millanese– The way this risotto is described on the menu, it definitely gives you the idea that it will be delightfully accompanied by olives, capers, tomatoes, basil, etc… but it was really just risotto with a minimal amount of the additions. It was still good risotto, but again not quite the way it was described in the menu.
• Gnocchi Putanesca – The highlight entrée from these three, these gnocchi were fabulously tender and the putanesca had plenty of kalamata olives and capers mixed in. This dish was a definite A+. Note that this is not the gnocchi dish listed on the online menu (at the time this was written).

Dessert:

• Amaretto Macaroons – four macaroons were served on a plate with a drizzle of chocolate sauce and caramel. The macaroons were good, a little saltier than would be expected and definitely cold in the center like they had been frozen. Four was plenty to share among two people, too bad we didn’t do that. We ended up leaving two behind (we would have liked to have taken them home but our server forgot that we asked for box and was too busy to come back to help us much once we had our check in hand, too bad)
• Zuppa Inglese - a trifle of chocolate and vanilla mousse with a mascarpone layer on top. This was a delicious treat and very well made. It was rich and heavy and could have been shared as well (although two of us each finished our own without too much effort).

Just a few other notes:

Our server, right from the start, apologized for his service, saying he was “shaky tonight.” He seemed rushed every time he came to check on us, sometimes not even stopping moving as we made requests, asked questions, etc… Most of the servers seemed to be on the ball here though so I wouldn’t call it an all-around problem at Carley’s.

A nice wine list and martini menu was presented to us without request. We ordered a bottle of wine, Italian pinot grigio, to suit our meal. It would have been nice to see a few local selections here, but they did not exist.

This restaurant is very lovely decorated and “live” piano music accompanied our meal (it was player piano).

There is a nice looking baked tomato dish listed on the online menu which was not on the current menu at the restaurant. Be prepared for the menu to be different when you get there as well.

Final Thoughts: It was really nice for three of us to order three different vegetarian meals without having to ask for any substitutions, special requests, etc. It would have been so much better if our service was a little more with it, but I would recommend this as a good downtown vegetarian choice.

Okini Pan Asian - Progress (Harrisburg)

Overall Rating: Somewhere around Neutral
Highlight: Sweet Potato Roll
Lowlight: Chinese Eggplant and Limited Veggie Sushi Selection
Veggie Note: There is a “Vegetables” section in the non-sushi part of the menu. There are a handful of vegetable rolls and tamago on the sushi menu

We headed here to continue our quest for good vegetarian sushi.

Okini Pan Asian is a combination Chinese, Japanese, Thai restaurant in the Progress area of the Harrisburg suburbs. We were seated right away and the servers were very quick to our table. It was a little dark and the whole restaurant has an old carpet on the floor, a little bit icky. We’re not big fans of carpets in restaurants, kitchens and bathrooms. The restaurant was generally very comfortable and clean however. When a table finished and left, all of the available servers flocked the table and cleaned it immediately so it stayed very nice the whole time we were there.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Edemame – as soon as we sat down we were served a bowl of warm salty edemame pods. They were very tasty and a nice treat. It was odd that edemame were also listed for $5 in the appetizer section of the menu. I guess some people just can’t get enough soy beans.

Soup:

• Miso – there were no sushi entrees that were vegetarian, so I ordered a bowl of soup as an extra. It was pretty standard miso soup. Some of the miso wasn’t mixed in very well so it was in little clumps I had to break up, but otherwise it was the same as everywhere else.

Entrees:

• Chinese Eggplant in Garlic Sauce – listed as spicy in the menu (with the ubiquitous pepper icon). It was definitely not what my partner was hoping for. The sauce was not spicy at all and was actually super sweet and syrupy. The eggplant, bell peppers and onion were all very fresh though, so they may satisfy a different pallet. This came with a bowl of white rice as well.

Sushi A la Carte:

• Tamago – if it’s available, we’ll probably always order this. It was average here.
• Vegetable Supreme Roll – Asparagus, cucumber, avocado and oshinko prepared like a hand roll, very nice presentation. A little too much cucumber made it kind of watery but the ingredients were very fresh and crispy.
  
• Green Roll – this was interesting and something I’ve never had before. It was a roll of nothing but seaweed salad (the kind you usually eat in a bowl – salty/stringy seaweed). It wasn’t fabulous because the seaweed was a bit overwhelming, but it was definitely something different and fun to try.
  
• Sweet Potato Roll - my weakness. I love sweet potato tempura wrapped up in a sushi roll. Especially when it is freshly warm out of the frying oil like it was here. Again the presentation was very nice. I really enjoyed this roll.

Dessert:

• Fried Banana – the only dessert available was this tempura fried banana. It was cut into 1 inch pieces and fried and then set back in the peel which was cleverly peeled to look like a snail or something else with maraschino cherry antennae. Then the whole thing was doused in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Pretty tasty but it definitely needed the whipped cream and chocolate since the banana itself wasn't very sweet and could have maybe benefitted from a little added sugar. But this was really fun and tasty overall. I love tempura fried anything for the most part. I once had a dream that I was making a salad with tempura fried root vegetables on top. I was particularly interested in the tempura fried red beets I had conjured up, some day I plan to really try that. I’ll bet it would be good. (end of dream sequence)

Just a few other notes:

This is another BYOB restaurant, we didn’t take anything with us, but the couple behind us had a bottle of wine and the restaurant was quick to provide glasses for them.

There were about 6 dishes total in the “vegetables” section of the menu. There were a few curries in the Thai section and tofu was not a listed option, however it was included in a few other dishes so I am sure it could be easily substituted for one of the meaty options given.

Aside from the rolls I ordered, there was really only an avocado roll to complete the vegetarian selections. There was also no inari in the a la carte menu.

Final Thoughts: I guess the quest for a good vegetarian sushi joint continues… stop here for a sweet potato roll someday, you’ll thank me.