Westmont Family Diner

Even though I technically live in Haddon Township, NJ now, I still consider the entire area of "Haddon" to be home. I still live very close to Westmont, and therefore, I consider the Westmont Family Diner to be my true local diner. I say this not necessarily based on proximity alone, but also on general quality. It is the diner that is our default- in a good way. I've been here at least half a dozen times throughout the year and a half and oftentimes on Sundays when I need a quick breakfast.

On this trip, Chris and I decided to finally review it, believing that its consistency of food should be something to be shared with others. We were greeted with a quick hello and a "sit where you'd like" around 8:30am on a Thursday morning. Our coffee came with water without us asking for it.

The menu is pretty standard, but the diner really shines through its specials menu that changes one or two items every few months. We both ordered off of it- I got the Greek scramble with feta cheese and oregano that came with toast, and hashbrowns with grilled onions and peppers (as a standard). Together with the coffee, it was $6.99. My toast was wheat as usual, but toasted really well, with a higher sugar content than others I've had (even at this location). My meal was yummy, and warm, with a clear attempt at more sophisticated flavors than other diner breakfasts. For example, my my onions and peppers inside my potatoes were delicious and well seasoned with salt, pepper, and rosemary. My eggs were also delicious, although I thought there was too much feta which kind of overwhelmed my mouth on certain bites. It was a very simple scramble with exactly what it said would be inside of it which is something to appreciate in and of itself.

I am still on a biscuits and gravy kick. And, let me tell you, Westmont Family Diner does this southern classic right. The first thing you notice is some delicious looking sausage gravy covering two flaky (but you don't know they're flaky yet) biscuits. A little bit a sausage goes a long way, too. The gravy is thick and creamy, but not to the point where it becomes like toothpaste, and the nibbles of sausage along the way add a great pork flavor. The two eggs over medium were cooked perfectly. I decided to switch up my usual side of sausage to a side of bacon. Westmont delivers when it comes to pork. They serve the thick cut bacon that falls into the spectrum of chewy and crispy. Did I mention that you can lap all of this up in the gravy that is still overflowing on your plate? Just in case you do have some gravy left on your plate and you haven't started the biscuits, they happen to be the perfect morsels to mop up the remaining gravy. Like Chi said above, the Westmont has become our default and for good reason. By the way, my half of the meal cost less than $7.00.

Unfortunately, all pictures of Chris's part of the meal were accidentally deleted. Sad.

Thai Basil

Chris and I feel very fortunate to live so close to good food in Collingswood and Haddonfield, NJ.  People have been mentioning Thai Basil to us for years, but we’ve never gone. I’m always a bit skeptical when it comes to Asian-American or Asian fusion restaurants, just because I feel as if I have a high standard due to my upbringing. I imagine it’s the way Italians feel about Italian-American food. It’s indicative of the correct region, but yet, not true in spirit.

Something about the word "Thai" and this kind of sign display just seems...incorrect.

Regardless, we visited Thai Basil for a Saturday late lunch. We arrived around 2:15 to an almost empty and very low-lit restaurant. (Throughout the course of our meal, only one other couple showed up to eat). The vibe is very chill, very relaxed, with large comfy booths sectioned off to create privacy. The music is lounge-y, with every other song in French.

Right off the bat, from looking at the menu, you can tell that the focus of this food is “flavor”. They have two of their specials engraved into the mirrors in the room to showcase the range of ingredients they use for staples such as tom yum and drunken noodles. They also proudly boast four types of curry- red, green, panang, and massaman.

I ordered the drunken noodles with mock duck after reading a favorable review of it on Yelp. It was priced at around $12 which seemed perfectly reasonable. On the menu, it has two stars indicating its spiciness. I ask for it to be reduced in spice, to which the server said “We can’t make it completely spice less, but we can make it mild”. “Great,” I said, “let’s make it mild”.

Our appetizers came out before our meals. We ordered the veggie curry puff- a whimsical dish reminiscent of an Asian-style Jamacian spicy beef patty or an empanada. Flaky and doughy at the same time with rich aromas, it was filled with potatoes, curry, and onion. It came with a sweet chili sauce that tasted like Vietnamese nuoc mam ngoc with a bit of duck sauce to thicken it up. Delicious, and left us craving more.

The best way I can express my main meal is: a labor of love. Presented well in an avant-garde tilted bowl, it smelled delicious with aromas of fish sauce, chili, garlic, and all other things that make life great. My ‘duck’ was pretty good imitation, although some pieces of the ‘skin’ fell short. I don’t really see how you could imitate the high level of fat (and eventual crispiness) that you would get from an animal. Noodles were delish, just the right amount of stickiness and starchiness.  This being said, I could not eat more than two bites in a row without taking a huge sip of water. The spice level was ridiculous almost to the point of being intolerable. This was better once the dish had some time to cool. I know that one shouldn’t go into a Thai restaurant and tell the kitchen that the food is too spicy, but when you’re told that something is coming to you “mild”, you expect a certain threshold to not be breached. The only other customers there actually were comped because their food ended up being too spicy to eat.

As for me, I was mostly happy with the entire meal. I ordered the Laad Na off of their "Meal in a Hot Pot" page of their menu. The Laad Na's description was simple enough. I had the choice of beef, chicken, or shrimp in a pot of sauteed vegetables and seared rice noodles with gravy poured on top. I went with the beef because I was curious to see if the beef would be prepared similarly to Pho that I've had in the past. When the meal came out I was immediately pleased with what I saw. The beef was front in center, the bowl was big and deep, and the vegetables had their color. It was beautiful. Sadly the beef was a tad over cooked and not as tender as I was hoping. However, it did bring in a lot of the flavor of the sauce. My favorite part of the dish was the broad, flat, rice noodles that were soaking up the gravy at the bottom of the pot. They were extremely tender and rich. The gravy reminded me of a Vietnamese oyster sauce. It was very savory, but it definitely had some sweet element to deepen its flavor profile. The worst part of the experience was that we were seated at a table that was next to an area of the carpet that looks as though it hasn't been washed in a few years. Hopefully by the time I go back they will have already shampoo'd their carpet.

I felt very conflicted about the food because it was delicious, but for the majority of it my tongue was maxed out and the spice detracted from the layers of salty, sweet, and sour.   

Such an awful experience, but over so soon! We’re gonna have to do this one over again. Perhaps it was a fluke?

Dark, moody, and minimalistic

Extra notes:

Free soursop hard candies when you leave and it looks like they  might own a new place called Fusion Bay next door that offers similar taste profiles but in a casual dining atmosphere.

The Little Tuna

What makes a restaurant successful? Is it a well executed vision of food profiles and flavor? Is it friendly, passionate and knowledgeable staff? Or, is it in a name?

I had heard good things about The Little Tuna, located on "Restaurant Row" in Haddonfield, NJ, which is why I leaped at the chance to buy $50 worth of food for $25 on LivingSocial a few months back. However, when I got home that same day, in the weekly coupon saver, was a Little Tuna PAGE of coupons. It made me wonder if the restaurant was struggling, which in turn made me wonder about its quality.


Luckily, they (do) do tuna very well.


Let me preface this by saying that I have, thus far in my short relationship with fish, had a very volatile relationship with fish in any raw form. My first meal after becoming a pescatarian, about a year ago, I had sushi- nothing crazy, but some tuna rolls and some salmon ones. Taste-wise it was pretty uninteresting to me (I guess I'm all about the tempura-based sushi), but the real horror was that on the walk home and for the rest of the night, I started swelling up...everywhere. I had a severe allergic reaction- and to what exactly I'll never know- but that's enough to make anyone avoid raw fish.

Seared Tuna wins MVP

But, this tuna was seared, so I decided that I would try some peices off of their appetizer menu, instead of getting a tuna meal, and that it was safe enough.


The Little Tuna offers a series of tuna plates (they make it a point to tell you that it's "sushi-grade") that can be served with (a) wasabi and ginger, (b) jamacian jerk style, or (c), what we got, sesame encrusted. Truly delicious, and not overdone with sesame, the pieces came out a touch before warm with one sesame and one wasabi-based sauce for dipping. The tuna was a great pink, with no sliminess. In the past, I find that tuna in extended slices can get strange in the middle with the flesh tearing in strange, unappealing ways (especially at the moment where cooked meat meets with uncooked), but the transition on these pieces was perfect. I felt that I was actually just enjoying tuna in a very pure form with my own choice to enhance the flavor as much as I wanted. By far, my favorite part of the meal and something I would come back for.

Coconut Crusted Tilapia with Lime (?) Chutney

My main entree wasn't quite as delicious. I ordered the coconut crusted tilapia with a (supposed) lime chutney. I say supposed because the chutney was comprised of apples, and what I can only assume are a bevvy of spices, with (maybe) a squirt of lime over it. Very little lime was there to help cut through the coconut- which was thick and of the sweetened variety. This threw me off because between the reduced apples, the coconut, and the white fish (which was soft, and relatively tasty on their own) left the meal very sweet overall. Relatively delicious, but very strange. I had to salt it quite a bit to help the flavors balance out. The sides were decent- vegetables weren't too over-boiled, and my potato was yummy, as potatoes always are.

The Little Tuna served good food, however the restaurant was inconsistent to the point where it did not live up to my expectations. The Little Tuna did a nice job of creating a feeling of private dining even though most of the seating is an open table style. The tables were draped with immaculate white table clothes and came with its own bottle of imported, bottled water, which I'm sure was not complementary. We were seated immediately and our waiter hurried over. He was very eager, but that didn't make up for his lack of focus/forgetfulness since we ended up waiting for him most of the night. To put this in perspective we started out just getting water, he then said he would bring us bread, he came back and took our appetizer order without bread, reassured us he would bring us bread, came back minutes later with our appetizer with no bread, took our entree order, asked if there was anything else he could do for us, and I replied, "just the bread, please." Five minutes later we had bread. I know this sounds petty, but the point is I must hold The Little Tuna to a higher standard than Ponzio's Diner down the road.

Flounder Stuffed with Lump (?) Crabmeat

For my entree I ordered the Flounder Stuffed with Lump Crabmeat. As a rule, if I have the opportunity to eat more than one animal in an entree, I usually take the opportunity. The flounder was delicious. It was very flaky and tender. It was seasoned with an expected Old Bay-type crab seasoning making it feel very Maryland. Although it made sense it was boring. I expected that the lump crabmeat on the inside would tie everything together and bring the dish to the next level that it should be at. I was met with something I did not order. The lump crabmeat was much closer to a paste crabmeat. It was a bland texture that could have been fulfilled by the delicious garlic mashed potatoes (skin included) next to the fish. The end result tasted like delicious flounder stuffed with mushy crab-flounder. The second side on the plate was a pile of steamed, unseasoned vegetables. It was sadly uninspired and lacked an overall freshness that I look for in seafood. The natural texture and taste of crabmeat is what makes it special when paired with a flaky white fish. Don't pulverize the crab, please. Maybe I'll get a double order of seared tuna next time.

OM-NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM!