Restaurant Review: North Wales' 'Bacco's'

North Wales eatery dishes up Neapolitan style Italian fare.

How to explain Italian cuisine’s singular popularity?  We have heard that pizza, surely one of the most popular foods in the Western Hemisphere, surpassing even the hamburger, is also one of the more balanced nutritionally. But nutritional value is not the reason. A better, and quite literal answer is to be found by going to Frank Cipullo’s Bacco, a conspicuously handsome restaurant in the space that had once been “Big Fish” on Route 202 in North Wales, and dining on the offerings of its “Neapolitan style family kitchen.” I did that for the first time five years ago, about a month after it opened, and was blown away by the classic, authentic renditions of the delicious, mostly Southern Italian dishes, enhanced by the tasteful, evocative …

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The Main Course

Restaurant Review: Abington's 'Kitchen Bar'

The Kitchen Bar has a chic setting, and above-average service and bar drinks.

The name “Alexander’s” in large letters is inscribed above the front entrance; one could suppose this is to link the chic, sleek new Kitchen Bar with its more prosaic, yet successful and popular past.  Alexander’s, an upscale Greek diner with a bar, owned by the Makris family, was a mainstay for many years in restaurant-poor Abington. The new, completely rebuilt Kitchen Bar restaurant, reopened by the Makris family in May 2006, with its rakish modern exterior, and stylish contemporary interior, is a dramatic departure from Alexander’s. It is filled with eye-catching details, such as a wall of falling water lit with ever-changing colors (There’s one on the outside, too.), a giant metal cook’s utensils on another wall, acres of glass windows…

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Restaurant Review: Horsham's 'Otto’s Brauhaus'

The 77-year-old Horsham restaurant serves good, belly-filling German and American dishes, and has a large outside patio for summer dining.

As far back as I can remember, Otto’s Brauhaus has been there, a mile north of the Turnpike, on busy Easton Road, even before the Days Inn was erected next door.  Indeed, it was founded over 75 years ago. Though it changed ownership a few years ago, the new owners were smart enough to make this change invisible. The menu, the chefs, the longtime hostess—Ursula—the serving staff and the restaurant’s interior are largely intact, thereby holding on to Otto’s large, longtime following. Otto's offers four dining areas from which to choose: a light airy room with big bay windows, a darker central dining room, a cozy atmospheric bar decorated with hanging moose heads and shelves of beer steins, and an unusually large canopy-covered and tree-…

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Restaurant Review: North Wales' Pumpernick's

Pumpernick’s is one of the few good Jewish delis in the ‘burbs.

The Philadelphia region was once one of the best in the country for good Jewish delis—short for delicatessen, from the German/Yiddish word delikatesse (“delicacy”), also meaning the place to eat (“essen”) delicacies—but the number of real Jewish delis is rapidly shrinking. The reason is up for debate. I think it’s that few former and potential deli store owners are willing to put in the long hours involved in cooking and preparing the myriad home-cooked deli meats and salads required. It is almost as if the great Jewish delis of the past have set the bar too high. Thankfully, one of the holdouts is Paul Klein, a longtime Philadelphian and traditional deli man. He came out to the Montco suburbs four years ago and opened Pumpernick’s in the …

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Restaurant Review: Warrington's 'Longhorn Steakhouse'

Americans love their Western-style steakhouse restaurants.

Americans love Western-style steakhouse restaurants. Catering to this popularity are several national restaurant chains. There are Ponderosas, Outbacks (OK, Aussie Western-style), Texas Roadhouses and Longhorns. The latter has an outlet in the Horsham-Warrington area. Every Western cliché is present inside this Longhorn Steakhouse’s familiar free-standing building: the huge longhorn steer head in the bar, the cowboy roughrider statue, the tack, the bleached cow skull, and the 10-gallon cowboy hats and cowboy boots. It is all very kitschy, yet I find it all very well done, very pleasantly lit and decorated, and kind of fun. The Longhorn offers no less than 13 different offerings of its “legendary” grilled steaks, plus a ground steakburger…

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The Main Course

The Italian Bistro at Jarrettown Hotel features authentic, real-deal cuisine

The restaurant's sauces and main dishes are prepared with fresh ingredients — some imported from Italy — and pastas are homemade

If you drive by the old Jarrettown Hotel on Limekiln Pike in Upper Dublin Township, you will notice that it had a complete, well-needed renewal and makeover; its restaurant and bar reopened after a lengthy shutdown.  The once open porch was closed in with walls and large picture windows and made part of the attractive new dining rooms, which can be seen through openings in the thick stone outer walls, which were the original windows.  The historic hotel was established in 1847 in the village then named for Levi Jarett, an early local farmer.  The building, said to be haunted, was recently investigated for the presence of ghosts by the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance (PGHA) and was found to be haunted by at least one presence. However, …

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