(The New) Maple Hill Restaurant and Maritsa's Part Deux

Two Eggs and Home Fries

I won’t lie. I remember very little from this experience. In fact, I’m pretty sure I went into this meal expecting that it would be forgettable, and thus got my standard 2 eggs with home fries (not even well-done) and wheat toast. If my veggie omelette orders are the basis from which I judge tastiness (eggs  are important to all diners, and the quality/cooking of veggies determines how fresh their produce is/their rudimentary skills of cooking/not overcooking things), then 2 eggs is what I order when I just want to eat breakfast and go. I remember everything being okay, with little happening on the delicious side or the not so delicious side. If anything, I would say that it was very satisfactory, with good prices. It’s very small, with a strong local crowd, so if you want more of a diner where you can hang out with your friends and be left alone, this may be a bit too social for you. However, it’s a great place for a small party (I wouldn’t suggest more than four or five people) to enjoy a quick breakfast. This being said, now that the renovations at Maritsa’s down the street is done, I would recommend that over the Maple Hill restaurant.

Looks Good, Tastes OK.

This restaurant is quite forgettable. Chi and brainstormed for about twenty four hours before we remembered the name of the New Maple Hill Restaurant. Sadly, Chi had even taken a picture of their exterior, but forgotten she had taken it. That was the first time that happened to us. Strangely enough, the food for me, even though boring, was still good. It  was just good though, vanilla, not vanilla bean. I ordered the french toast with sausage patties (always superior to sausage links, right?). The french toast smelled great due to the copious amount of cinnamon, but it was kind of soggy and limp. It tasted good, but it was boring and it was an example of when I left feeling I could have cooked the same dish better than they could have. The sausage links impressed me a little more. I'm used to tiny hockey pucks of sausage at other diners that are overcooked and unfulfilling. At the New Maple Hill, the sausage patties were larger than average and had decent flavor and above average texture. I believed it was real. Unfortunately they still need to work on their cooking time since the patties were brought out to me lukewarm.

Combine the mediocre food with the fact the inside looked like it was put together with glossy plywood and a nail gun, the over all experience left me glad to leave. With the concentration of diners in New Jersey I recommend you head out and explore for a different place to get your breakfast fix.


Chi sums it up perfectly,

If we ate at the NEW Maple Hill Restaurant, it makes me wonder what it used to be like.

Maritsa’s PART DEUX:

Yes, we’ve gone back to Maritsa’s since the muddy mushroom’s incident. I ordered French toast, and it was very soft/buttery although perhaps not as large portion-wise as other places. My home fries were a little too well-done for my liking, because I didn’t ask them to be so. Coffee was good, and the service was faster than last time and our cups never emptied.  The inside is complete (no more random ending to the carpet/stucco-looking walls) and the waitresses were wearing proper uniforms this time. Definitely no longer a place to avoid. We'll have to go back and try something more complex and see how they handle it.


Definitely a better experience at Maritsa's. Good thing my parents really like it or I might not have gone back. My second time around I ordered the short-stack of blueberry pancakes with sausage links and scrambled eggs. The sausage was average. The blueberry pancakes were almost disappointing. They were all loaded with fresh, delicious blueberries and they were cooked to perfection. They were sadly not nearly as tasty as they looked. The blueberry came through nicely, but the sweetness had a watered down taste to it and their Heinz Syrup packets didn't help out with the flavor. When I have blueberries I expect some tartness, and since there was not I left a little suspicious. The eggs, thankfully, stole the show and Maritsa's knows how to cook them right. They were super fluffy and light and buttery. Next time I'm ordering a plate of scrambled eggs and double toast.

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.