Club Diner

Front door of Club Diner

Post ballroom practice munchies call for wholesome food less than five minutes away. In the only state you can do this in, Chi and I typed "diner" into the GPS and sure enough there were seven diners within a three mile range. We picked the closest one, Club Diner, located on the Black Horse Pike in Bellmawr, NJ. We were coming down West Browning Avenue, about to make a left onto Route168, and we asked at the same time, "where is this place?" We were answered quickly when, around the corner of an art store, Club Diner's red, glowing, neon lights suddenly appeared.

Chicken Escarole Soup

Before the meal we were handed a giant basket of bread that appeared to have sourdough and a sourdough-pumpernickel swirl bread. I loved the sourdough-pumpernickel myself and Club Diner does a very nice job of combining the two bold flavors. And surprise, surprise! home made, super dense, sweet banana bread was hiding at the bottom of the basket, delicious.  Also, as an appetizer I ordered the chicken escarole soup. This salty and savory soup was a great way to start the meal. It had nice big chicken meatballs full of flavor and texture as well as diced pieces of white meat.

Wanting to try something new, I originally thought I would order a roast beef sandwich to see how it compared to the roast beef deli meet sold at Wegmans, but then I saw ravioli and meatballs and my stomach ended up deciding for me. Evidently I didn't know that cheese ravioli and meatballs is weird, but everyone (my girlfriend and parents) informed me that it's strange (I mean come on, Chef Boyardee has meet ravioli with meatballs in a can, but Boyardee isn't an expert on Italian cuisine, so that's that). Regardless of how different this plate selection was (by the way, you have an option between meatballs and Italian sausage. I think I made the right choice) it had some high points even though the plating was strange. 

Ravioli and Meatballs

You know how sometimes a dish can get boring as you keep eating it because it's a lot of the same thing? Well, the Ricotta cheese filling was very creamy and even nearing the end of the plate the dish never became repetitive. The pasta sauce was unique. I can't quite place my finger on whether it's homemade or just altered sauce from a can, but it had a nice sweetness and thick, not chunky, consistency. The meatballs were sadly the low point of the meal (maybe I'll do Italian sausage if I ever try it again). My best guess is that it was an all beef meatball (onions and other spices in the blend) that was moist like a meatball should be, but it was soft and mushy and had a downright strange texture to it (they should set their beef grinder to the same setting as their chicken grinder).

Blueberry Pie with Whipped Cream

Dessert came with the meal (awesome) and after our waitress (who was wonderful) listed off all the different pies they had, I decided on blueberry almost immediately. She asked if I wanted whipped cream on mine. I said yes. The pie wasn't exactly what I expected. The crust had a similar taste to a palmier and it was thin, soft, and almost had a slight chewiness. At first it was off putting but I grew to like it as I kept eating. The blueberry filling was kind of crazy. The whole reason I ordered blueberry pie was because I wanted some tartness to go along with the sweetness. This thing was all sweet, like blue sugar. I understand how people could really love this pie, but if you have a fruit that can have different flavor levels, then the pie should reflect that.

Outside

Inside

If there are different types of diners I think it would be reasonable to say that at least aesthetically, there are two kinds: the dreary, bordering on dirty diner, and the (kind of) trashy, flashy kind of diner. I think Club Diner wants to be the second kind (see pictures) with its red neon cutting through the black of the night and its digital jumbo-tron flashing advertisements and specials.


Given this, I was amused by the simplicity of the inside and the simplicity of the man sitting next to us who was talking about “a machine that puts bubbles into drinks”. Well sir, do you mean…a soda machine?

As I eavesdropped, I surveyed the menu that I thought to be rather dinner-heavy, including a whole page full of $9.99 specials. I settled on the fried flounder after much hesitation about having fish again at a diner so soon after the Silver Coin debacle. But I decided to take a chance, especially since the Club Diner’s $9.99 special comes with:

1 entrée

1 soup du jour or 1 salad

2 vegetable sides (they also had rice pilaf as an option)

1 dessert (they have a bakery on site)

I was charmed by this deal, especially since it cost me $11.00 earlier in the day for a grilled cheese sandwich and some chips in Philadelphia. I opted for the salad (because the veggie soup option was split pea) and soon enough presented to me was The Wettest Salad Ever. It was not soggy at all, nor were the greens especially juicy. It was physically wet. It’s like they washed the iceberg and cherry tomatoes proceed to throw it on my plate without so much as waiting for it to drip excess water away or heaven-forbid put it through a colander or salad spinner.  I was literary eating water, and not in the way that lettuce is water anyways. However, having been the one to find the hidden pieces of banana bread in our (extensive) bread basket (with whipped butter) I was quickly appeased.

Broccoli and Potatoes

Fried Flounder

My fish was surprisingly well-thought out. It was fried, but not so much that it lost the fish’s natural tenderness. The filet was a good size and the fish itself was fresh tasting and flaky. My sides of baked potato and broccoli were almost on par with the fish. My baked potato would have delicious if there was some fluffing of the actual starch to make it easier to eat, particularly since it came out sans toppings and still in its foil casing. My broccoli was the biggest disappointment of the night, as it came out in HUGE stalks and was chewy. But I should point that this probably stemmed from the fact that broccoli is the veggie I eat the most and the fact that my dinner knife was incredibly dull and could barely saw through it.

I chose pumpkin pie as my desert since I make it point to go out of my way to eat pumpkin in the fall. I am OBSESSED with pumpkin spiced lattes and pumpkin muffins, by the way. The waitress had said it was her favorite, and I can see why. The pie was sweet, but still flavorful with notes of different spices. The actual filling was not too dense or goopy as pumpkin pie can start to separate after a while. With the whipped cream on top it was the perfect not-too-unhealthy finish. Overall it was a good meal at a very good $9.99.

Pumpkin Pie with Chris in the Background

Caffe Aldo Lamberti

This is our second Silver Spoon restaurant to be featured and I've driven by it almost every day since May of this year. Caffe Aldo Lamberti is in Cherry Hill, NJ and sits on the corner of Rt. 70 and Grove St.

Let me preface this by saying that this restaurant from the outside looks so modern and (literally) shiny that I first mistook it years ago for a car dealership. In fact, because there is such an odd abundance of car dealerships in Cherry Hill, NJ, for a while afterwards out of the corner of my eye, I still thought that it could possibly be one. It’s located on a major highway that leads straight to Philadelphia, in a kind of hard-to-access area unless you’ve tried to get into its lot a few times.

This place has these two marquees that change weekly, sometimes daily, and always expressing some new item they’ve just received in the formula of adjective + fish + event = a reason to come try their food. For example, “Sweet Chilean Sea Bass freshly flown in, just in time for Prom”! Well, they probably didn’t market themselves quite that way for the prom crowd, but regardless, you get my drift.

I decided on a whim the Friday of my first week of work to celebrate and go. We had made a promise that we couldn’t review anymore diners until we reviewed a silver spoon, so this was perfect. We were somewhat out of place (not just because I had incorrectly told Chris that nice shorts were probably OK) but because we were younger than the average person in there by about 10-15 years- at least! It should be noted that we dined at 6:00 PM and almost everybody was at the bar that is outside, but features one side that is covered by the ceiling for those wanting to talk to their dates with less whooshing from cars flying down Route 70. I feel like our waiters noticed too, but among the three (3!) people that serviced us for those couple of hours we were definitely well taken care of- even if each side perceived the other to be…awkward.

For my main course I ordered off their Seasonal Menu (this was only after I turned down some of their specials which included a butterfish). I went with the Pan Seared Cape May Sea Scallops. It seemed more environmentally friendly to go with a more local selection than to eat a fish that was flown in from the Southeast Pacific (probably fresher, too). Our waiter complemented me on my selection and went to place our order. Chi and I then sat and waited for a while nibbling on the two types of bread that was brought to our table. The bread was served with home made (or at least home bottled) extra virgin olive oil. The olive oil certainly was different than anything I've ever bought from Wegmans. It had a fresh, cool quality to it, and for me, it set the tone for what the rest of the meal would be like; Caffe Aldo Lamberti tries to take the standard to the next level. The other bread that was at our table had a tomato sauce on it, which essentially made it a bunch of pizza-sticks (not to detract from the complexity of the sauce). They were tangy and warm, and like the olive oil, fresh. It was the first time I have been served complementary bread before a meal that was more than bread.

Our (non-pizza) bread was pretty average, but I agree that our olive oil (or, “oo” as I’ll refer to it) was not. This was the first time I was ever given the whole bottle. It had high notes of what I can only imagine (in my limited oo palate) was citrus. It also came with a small dish of big green olives and made me wonder: Do real Italians eat their bread this way? Was this an attempt to be authentic, or was it truly so?

Did you know that good oo should be marketed like good wine? For example, on the bottle, it shouldn’t just say “Product of Italy” (because it you read more closely there’s a good chance that it was still bottled in the US), but it should clearly state from what olive farm/plantation in whatever city it came from.

Chris and I decided to be adventurous and essentially upgrade our usual order of calamari to their grilled octopus. We were taken back by how it was presented.

Grilled Octopus

We soon discovered that it was partially pre-disassembled for ease of consumption, which was good since it was very…fleshy. I had never tasted octopus that tasted so much like meat before. It was delicious but slightly off-putting since I don’t eat meat. It was tender, with no taste of grimy ocean, or any of the general things that can turn people off. Well, that is unless you consider the fact that the suction cups on its legs still worked. (Chris tested them). Our only critique was that we wished it was crispier at the ends. Funny enough, this was the second time we had had grilled octopus within a week. The first was at Sapori, a delicious and rustic Italian restaurant in Collingswood where I had my “yay, I’m employed”-celebration dinner. I preferred Sapori’s, but I suspect Chris enjoyed this version more.

Pan Seared Sea Scallops

When the food came to the table I was still hungry and thank goodness thing since my plate consisted of five large scallops sitting on a dense bed of squid ink linguine with oil, garlic, and zesty red and yellow tomatoes. The scallops were the slightest bit chewy even though they remained very tender. Their buttery flavor was easily the highlight of the meal. Unfortunately the searing on the scallops was not uniform on every scallop. The ones that were more seared seemed to be tenderer almost as though the less seared scallops were cooked longer at a lower temperature. I can comfortably give the scallops a very good rating, but certainly not great. This was my first time having squid ink linguine and I wasn't lying when I said it was dense. It started to fill me up right away which was a shame since the meal was going in a wonderful direction. The squid ink gave the pasta an earthy, rich flavor (I'm sure the oil contributed to that as well), but kept its raw pasta flavor while enhancing the depth of the meal. With all the sweet, wholesome notes on the plate, the garlic and tomatoes gave the dish the zip it needed. The tomatoes were bright and summery and the garlic was not cooked to sweetness and left very pure.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I ordered the sweet potato gnocchi after much debate over what entre to choose. I had originally wanted the catch-of-the-day risotto, but upon hearing that it was a Dover sole, and not wanting to purchase something without a price, I picked the gnocchi. I love the stuff and almost always gravitate towards it when eating Italian. (Side note: for great, fresh, hand-made gnocchi in the area, head to Spasso’s in Old City, Philadelphia). It sounded like a genius and whimsical take on a normal gnocchi, and I looked forward to the contrast between a likely truffle/garlic sauce and the sweetness. While there was a contrast, and the sauce and mushrooms ended up being delicious as expected, the gnocchi itself was disappointing…but the kind of disappointing that just creeps up on you. My first bite was fine, although I immediately noticed there was a slick, oily coating that seemed to not release the potato inside. A further bite confirmed my suspicion that this gnocchi wasn’t going to be satisfyingly smushable in my mouth and was (somehow) neither fluffy nor dense. It occurred to me that for it being what it was, that it wasn’t especially sweet-potato-y.

Tiramisu

The dessert continued the theme of the restaurant. We opted for the tiramisu. We were surprised when the dish came out. The best way to describe it is an espresso soaked (soaked!) lady finger, surrounded in a mascarpone-whipped cream, dusted with espresso powder, topped with a halved strawberry, and finished off with a lady finger sticking out askew of it all. Oh, it also came in a squat martini/dessert glass, a whimsical approach on an Italian classic. The cream was the first aspect of the dessert we encountered. It was incredibly light, but at the same time it was runny (though I have a theory of why that might be). The show stopper of the dessert was what the cream was surrounding. The soaked ladyfinger in the middle was gushing with flavor. It was sweet and rich and light all at the same time. I believe the total liquid content of the dessert accounted for a runny whipped cream. The actual burst of flavor and liquid that came from the center of the tiramisu not only made the dessert delicious but also fun to eat. The ladyfinger pointing out the top was fun for dipping but in comparison to the rest, it might have well been only garnishing.

Additional notes: Don't be in a rush. There will be a wait between the courses but just enjoy the atmosphere while you watch the forty-somethings get drunk off Shiraz and Pinot Grigio during their happy hour. I took home my dish hoping that my general craving for heavy, starchy foods would leave me reheating it and giving it another chance the next day but when Chris’s mother was cleaning out the fridge a week later, I made no attempt to save it. Also, their wineries looked impressive (boasting 800 wines!!) and so I'll definitely have to come back if to do nothing else but take a tour of their selection.

Maritsa's

Maritsa's? What's a Maritsa's?

Apparently it's a not-quite-together diner with a heart of gold. You want to like Maritsa's, and if you're a citizen of Maple Shade, NJ perhaps you need to love Maritsa's.

Home Fries done the Right Way!

The uniform here unofficially (or officially) is a Phillies Jersey; waitresses pick their favorite player and channel them by briskly taking and delivering orders fast and furiously. It's charming, even as the restaurant is in the middle of expansion. It doesn't quite look like a restaurant as there is mismatched flooring and furniture. I'm not sure they really know what they want it to look like once it's all done and paid for.

Veggie Omelette

Perhaps that it's just time for Chris and I to try break up our diner outings with some silver spoon entries and I'm just getting sick of veggie omelettes. But quite seriously, I hated this one. Have you ever experienced the phenomenon that is disgusting, not-cut-up kind of muddy mushrooms? Muddy mushrooms (you heard it here first!) and this time, muddy button mushrooms. The worst. The veggies in this thing were huge- so huge that it was a chore to eat. It tasted fine (besides the mushrooms) but the labor of chewing through it was ridiculous and caused me to not finish it. I only ate half. However, I will say that Chris and I were finally introduced to the idea of putting onions and peppers and gooey American cheese onto your home fries.

It was delicious. And, I don't even like American cheese.

For Chi and I the service was a little shaky, but it could be explained through misunderstandings instead of negligence or apathy. My biggest problem with the meal was the amount of time it took my family (that's right, we were accompanied by my parents for the first time) to be waited on. We were seated almost immediately (which is pretty good for a Sunday morning), but we were seated with an extra chair at the table. Our waitress then waited for around ten minutes for our "guest" to arrive. Eventually we called her over and she apologized profusely, explained herself, and ended up a bit embarrassed, which was never our intention.

Two Egg Breakfast with Sausage

My food was perfectly ordinary. Let me explain; there was nothing about my meal that was wrong, however, there was nothing that stood out or went beyond expectation. My mug was consistently topped off with piping hot java, my eggs were as medium as medium can be, the four sausage links we juicy, my toast was liberally buttered, and my home fries (probably the best part) were right in between sliced and shredded and cooked to crispy deliciousness. The super star of every meal on the table rested on my fathers plate. As Chi mentioned above, we were in the presence of home fries that were filled with onion and green peppers and topped with gooey American cheese. The ole' man let us each have a bite and to say the least, we were impressed. The onions and peppers created a natural, fresh sweetness while the cheese on top balanced out the vegetable with its saltiness. It also helps that the potatoes stayed crispy with the extra moisture.

Additional notes: There's no big sign-on-a-post out front, so you're going to have to keep your eyes open for the front of their building along East Main street in Maple Shade.