Month: September 2006

Okay, Diego, here’s a post about a restaurant in Harrisburg you’ll never visit. At least, I wouldn’t recommend visiting.

The restaurant is The Zephyr Express, named for and designed to feel like the dining car of a passenger train. I know that because I read their website, not because I could tell from the inside. I guess now that I think about it I see what they were going for.

We visited Zephyr last night, after I followed a link from Dine Indie, a cool, new (to me) website listing independent restaurants. Zephyr’s menu looked interesting — especially the Ahi Tuna and the Herb Crusted Blackberry Chicken. The website didn’t ooze excellence, but it all looked intriguing.

And it was intriguing, and they were attempting some interesting things, but, unfortunately, as we left the restaurant I said, “Well, that was a Harrisburg-caliber restaurant,” and, fortunately, Harrisburg-caliber no longer cuts it around here.

The caprese was made from grocery store plum tomatoes that had been refrigerated. Maybe our fault for ordering caprese at the end of September. The Zephyr bread was good, not in a fine dining kind of way, but in a family-style greasy cheesy kind of way. They were out of the Capicola Stuffed Chicken, which was the first thing I ordered. The Ahi Tuna was pretty good, but the seven pepper crust was so intense I couldn’t actually taste the fish. The rice pilaf that came with it was overcooked to the point of being completely inedible. However, the asparagus was pretty good, even though asparagus is out of season. My dining partner had the day’s special, which was something along the lines of tequila chicken over fettucine. It was good, but not great, tasting a lot like you’d expect chicken with melted cheese on top to taste.

So what I’m saying is the meal wasn’t a complete failure, but it was nothing special. However, it was almost four times as expensive as the meal we had at Skewers a few days earlier.

Granted, we did make a meal of appetizers and soup at Skewers, but we still left stuffed, and the food was much much better. Their lentil soup, by the way, is maybe the perfect cold remedy. It’s basically a thick broth with just enough substance to be satisfying, and employs a nice spicy (but not too spicy!) kick at the end to help clear those sinuses. If you’ve got the head and chest congestion that’s been going around, go get some soup at Skewers. Even if it means driving up from Baltimore.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been eating in Harrisburg — like *in* Harrisburg, as in downtown — quite a bit recently. As a result, I have a couple more places I’d like to comment on.

First up is Mangia Qui, an ecelectic Italian restaurant with a menu unlike any other in the area. We had the Caprese ($10) and the Misticanza ($8.50) to start. Caprese, of couse, doesn’t vary much from Italian restaurant to Italian restaurant, but this was probably the best I’ve ever had, and it’s hard to imagine better. As the menu boasts, the mozzarella is made in-house. It is saltier than many mozzarellas I’ve had before, but delicately so, and to a degree that really accentuates its freshness. The tomatoes, too, must have come from someone’s garden, as they were sweet, succulent, and out-of-this-world flavorful. The salad, ordered mostly to find out what “organic microgreens” were, was also excellent. Organic microgreens, it turns out, are pretty much what they sound like — little greens that are unlikely to be found in a grocery store.

Next up was the Costoletto di agnello Scottaditto ($28) — also known as lamb. I like eating lamb in nice restaurants because I find it difficult to do well at home. Or, rather, doing it well requires more work than I’m usually willing to undertake. The Mangia Qui lamb did not disappoint. The meat was tender, juicy, and deliciously marinated. The braised greens and crispy polenta served with it were perfect accents, although I might have preferred something less authentic than the stewed-tomato-esque sauce spooned over the polenta. I appreciate the need for simpler flavors to complement the delicate but complex focus — and the lamb was both delicate and complex — but the sauce introduced a new family of flavor, thus defeating its own purpose. However, when an otherwise-excellent tomato sauce is all I can find to complain about, I think it speaks pretty well of the restaurant. In addition, I’m a fan of their philosophy on food, which, between their website and the dining experience itself, I take to be something along the lines of, “Good for the tastebuds, good for the world.” That is, they use a lot of (in their words), “fresh, locally ground, farm-raised produce and meats,” and “embrace fair trade, environmental, and economic sustainability.” Mangia Qui is open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11:00 – 2:30; for dinner Monday through Saturday, 5:00 – 10:00; and for brunch on Sunday, 10:00 – 3:00.

Apparently, though, for every phenomenal dining experience in Harrisburg, there is a decidedly mediocre (or even bad) one waiting. This week’s mediocre (or even bad) experience took place at The Quarter, which doesn’t appear to have a website. I’d been there once before, post-midnight, for drinks, and found it to be too loud and too meat-marketish, but also realized that both of those things should be expected at such a place. Dinner on a Sunday, though admittedly the Sunday before a holiday, should have been better. And it was different. But not better.

I had a crab-stuffed portabella ($11.95) and a California salad ($8.95). Names and prices are listed as I remember them, but without a website, you know, I could be wrong. The portabella was okay, but not great. I think the crabmeat came from a can. And not one of those expensive cans. The mushroom was slightly overcooked. There was no discernable seasoning. The salad was better, with almost fresh lettuce, and sprinkled with decent gorgonzola. The dressing, though, which claimed to be raspberry vinaigrette, was more like slightly tangy raspberry syrup. The lettuce and cheese were the only parts of the salad worth eating, though, as both the cucumbers and tomatoes were almost-flavorless and what flavor they did have was a little gross. I also had two over-priced vodka tonics, which were the weakest I’ve ever had. I’m really just assuming they did actually have vodka in them, as I experienced no evidence of its presence.

Fred, who values authenticity but still has fairly good taste, said his scallops were overcooked and dry, and that his salad was terrible due to a lack of anchovies in the Caesar dressing. While I do believe that Caesar dressing should include anchovies, I’m not sure their absence is enough to catapult a salad into the “terrible” category.

Biff, whose feelings about authenticity are unknown to me, said his burger was good, but acknowledged that it was hard to screw up a burger.

We all agreed that the french fries were limp and tasteless.

Anyway, perhaps the extraordinarily mediocre food would have been worth it if it were, you know, reasonably priced, and the atmosphere was nice. But the service was terrible, and everything was, given its quality, ridiculously overpriced. So don’t go there. The entrees at Mangia Qui are only a little more expensive; take your money, and your tastebuds, there instead.