Dining in the Dash: Mary's Gourmet Dinner

This post is so severely overdue there are fines on it. I can't remember when exactly when ate here but it was before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving! That was a long time ago.

We met Anne and Locke here for brunch on a Sunday. I'm not sure why we came here on a Sunday considering this is their busiest day of the week and both of our husbands are off for 7 days in a row and we could have come aaaaany other day, but here we were on a Sunday, waiting in line for brunch.

That was probably my first tip off that this was going to be a good meal. Waiting in line for brunch is the norm of course… IF that is, you live in New York, Chicago, LA, San Fran, DC or any other city with public transportation and people who don't regularly go to church on Sunday. Waiting for brunch in Winston, sure. Waiting in a LINE twenty people deep? Doesn't happen here.

Fortunately, it was worth the wait. Totally, totally worth it.

There were so many things on the menu I wanted to try that I can't believe we haven't been back eighty times since then. (Matt, we need to go back to Mary's.)

Anne and I both couldn't decide between a savory or a sweet breakfast, so we split the difference. She ordered the French toast special with lemon curd and I ordered the Apple Butter, Baby. Apple Butter, Baby: scrambled eggs, smoked sausage and homemade apple butter on wheat toast.

If you don't have a friend who's willing to go half-sweet, half-savory on brunch with you then I would recommend interviewing everyone in line to find one. Best idea ever.

Our food was great, our service was excellent (responsive without being overbearing), the prices were decent and most important of all to us these days, it was very baby friendly. The husbands both had various omelets and were equally as happy. We have had so many friends recommend this place to us and I completely understand why now. It is a favorite among Winston-Salem residents and we can be counted among them now.

In fact, we liked it so much we went back just two weeks later. This time, on a Wednesday.

A review of our “Dining in the Dash” Project

• Kitchen Roselli
• The Screaming Rooster
• Goat Lady Dairy
• the Taco Truck
• Sweet Potatoes
• Breakfast Of Course
• Bernadin’s (My Review - 12/15/12)
• Meridian
• Old Salem Tavern
• King’s Crab Shack (7/01/12)
• New Town Bistro
• Muddy Creek Café
• Winston-Salem Prime
• Spring House Restaurant (My Review - 5/11/12)
• Lexington BBQ
• Hillbilly Hideaway
• Mooney’s (My Review - 6/11/12)
• Vin205
• MamaZoe Michael’s
• El Maguey
• Chef Dion Sprenkle 

Christmas Progressive Dinner at Bernardin’s {Dining in the Dash review}

In lieu of our usual Christmas tacky party, we went in the complete opposite direction and celebrated the season with our friends with a fancy-dress up progress dinner party. We missed seeing everyone decked out in their finest tacky knitwear, but I must say our friends clean up pretty good.

We started off with appetizers at Anne + Locke’s, progressed to dinner at Bernardin’s and ended with dessert at Chad + Caroline’s.

It was my first time eating at Bernardin’s, despite having heard so many good reviews about it before. I’m going to double this as a “dining in the dash” entry since that was one of the places on our list. I’m not entirely sure when they moved into the Zeverly House location but I loved it – it just such a cozy little spot for a restaurant. The downstairs has a living room like feel to the front room with the bar, and then there’s one dining room downstairs, a main one upstairs and a smaller private room. Because we were a group of fourteen, we were in the small private room upstairs. It felt as cozy as eating in one of our own homes. Except, someone else did the cooking and dishes. Win.

And the cooking! I rarely order steaks when I’m out to eat (not because I don’t like them, but I try to make it a point to order things I don’t cook very well like fish or risotto) but Jamie had told me that they had the best steaks in town. Jamie’s not a big steak eater either, so when she laid down that proclamation I simply had to follow through. Filet mignon with melted goat cheese on top? Done. I don’t even remember what the side was. Was there a side? Don’t know, don’t care. It certainly was the best steak in town. (Okay, in all fairness, I just told you I haven’t really had any of the other steaks in town… but suffice it to say, this was a great one.) My husband, usually the steak eater, ventured on to the wild side of the menu and tried the evening special – kangaroo. Truthfully, when I give him a few bites of my filet, I think he was pretty jealous he went with the roo. (His summary: like a tough pork chop.) My meal was excellent, the service was top notch, the ambience lovely and the company – well that was the best part.

It was a wonderful evening with friends and I felt like it put me in the holiday spirit for the coming two weeks. Or maybe that was a food coma. I’m not sure, but I liked it.

And I definitely owe a special thank you to Matt’s parents who came up for the evening and baby-sat our little munchkin, so we could go out on the town with our friends. That in and of itself is a Christmas present we’ll remember!

Dining in the Dash: King’s Crab Shack

Winston-Salem needed a restaurant like this.  A down-home, pretend-you're-at-the-beach seafood place. My husband has said for years Winston needed a "good seafood place" and I think we finally found it.  Yes, there is the one out by the mall but we hate driving out to that trafficy-retaily side of town and there are lots of restaurants that serve amazing seafood dishes - Mozelle's, Milner's and Meridian's come to mind - but this is the kind of place where seafood is the entire point and your meal comes in plastic red baskets with a side of perfect tartar sauce and a lack of any pretense. Basically, the only thing missing is a nearby source of saltwater.

As Anne wrote in her post (she always beats me to it!), we were originally attracted to what we heard was the weekend lunch special - all you can eat crab legs. Turned out that they were $28 per person, which I did not think was very special. (I often get confused by restaurants calling something special - do they mean it's just the only time you can get it or do they mean it's a good price for something they offer regularly? I think this case might have been the former, but either way we decided not to opt for it.)

The good news is, despite the initial disappointment of no endless crab legs, everybody was very happy with their meals when all was said and done. Matt loved his spicy catfish sandwich - he is a catfish aficionado and has been disappointed ever since Village Tavern stopped carrying it on their menu a few years ago!  I debated between a shrimp po'boy and clams and finally decided to go with clams. I love me some clams, and could easily have taken down 2-3 dozen of these suckers but since that wasn't an all you can eat special, I limited myself to a dozen plus a starter salad.  They were excellent - briney and delicious, with the right complementary sides of melted butter, a tangy cocktail sauce and pungent horseradish.  Matt had a Pacifico to go with his meal, and I perused the fun drink menu for future reference.

I liked the set up of the restaurant too - it had a really long bar area, plenty of tables on the inside and lots of outdoor patio seating. (Given it was our 100+ degree Saturday, no one was taking advantage of that... no big surprise.) There were enough things on the menu I'd come back regularly, and there were options for non-seafood eaters as well too. Our meal came to $35 with gratuity and everything, so that included 2 meals, a salad and a drink - which I think is very reasonable for delicious seafood! It was just an easy, laid-back place to have a delicious seafood meal. Definitely a place we will make future visits to!

Oh, and the ego boost in the ladies restroom sure doesn’t hurt either…

A review of our “Dining in the Dash” Project*

• Kitchen Roselli
• The Screaming Rooster
• Goat Lady Dairy
• the Taco Truck
• Sweet Potatoes
• Breakfast Of Course
• Bernadin’s
• Meridian
• Old Salem Tavern
• King’s Crab Shack (7/01/12)
• New Town Bistro
• Muddy Creek Café
• Winston-Salem Prime
• Spring House Restaurant (My Review - 5/11/12)
• Lexington BBQ
• Hillbilly Hideaway
• Mooney’s (My Review - 6/11/12)
• Vin205
• MamaZoe Michael’s
• El Maguey
• Chef Dion Sprenkle 

Dining in the Dash: Mooney’s

Anne & I checked another restaurant off our list of must-try places in our Dining in the Dash project!  I know a lot of people are regulars at Mooney's, but somehow neither of us had ventured down 4th Street to try it yet.  In fact, when I tweeted that I was going at least 3 different people mentioned it was one of their W-S faves (and I even got a recommendation for a dish to try from Miriam.)

I was really happy to see Anne had snagged an outdoor table when I walked up - I love al fresco dining in the summer!  I decided to take Miriam's advice and go with a sampler plate because it seemed like a good way to try out a couple new dishes.  I've eaten a good bit of Mediterranean food but I haven't varied much from a few basic standards that I know I like.  So I decided the falafel as something completely new to me, along with some stand-by favorites like hummus and couscous.  And then I got the cauliflower just because it sounded good.  Anne ordered a moussaka that was a special recommended by the waiter. My biggest problem was narrowing down what to try on my sampler platter - I also really wanted to try the tabouli and baba ghanouj!  Just means I have to go back, right?

General food review: the hummus was excellent - very creamy and tangy.  I loved the couscous - I forget how much I like couscous because I don't cook it at home very much since Matt doesn't really like it.  I loved the addition of raisins in it for a hint of sweetness.  The fried cauliflower were great too - very light, not breaded or battered and they came with a sesame dressing for dipping.  The only thing I didn't love was my new dish, the falafel.  I didn't dislike it - but I was glad there were only two because I didn't find myself scarfing them down.  I also tried Anne's moussaka (and I'll let her review for herself) but I wasn't a fan - there was a spice in it I couldn't identify but I just didn't love.  Something that made it almost sweet... maybe nutmeg?  (Let the record show that I have no idea what moussaka is supposed to taste like though.)

I also thought it was fairly priced for the amount of food we had.  Our bill was $19 with tip for our 2 dinners (no drinks) and we both had leftovers to take home. One of my favorite things about our meal is that unlike a lot of dining out experiences, I didn't feel like the food was super heavy and I left full but not overstuffed.  While we were eating, Zac came by to pick up dinner there which gave me a lightbulb moment... I have a very small list of places that I like to pick dinner up from on nights I don’t feel like cooking because most take-out options end up being so heavy – I’d rather just eat a bowl of cereal!  So I might not race back here in lieu of some other favorites in restaurant (especially with my long list of places to try still), but there were so many other things on the menu I wanted to try I'm going to keep it in mind as a pick-up option for busy nights too.  I'll just have to remember to leave the couscous off Matt's plate!

A review of our “Dining in the Dash” Project*

• Kitchen Roselli
• The Screaming Rooster
• Goat Lady Dairy
• the Taco Truck
• Sweet Potatoes
• Breakfast Of Course
• Bernadin’s
• Meridian
• Old Salem Tavern
• King’s Crab Shack
• New Town Bistro
• Muddy Creek Café
• Winston-Salem Prime
• Spring House Restaurant (My Review - 5/11/12)
• Lexington BBQ
• Hillbilly Hideaway
• Mooney’s (6/11/12)
• Vin205
• MamaZoe Michael’s
• El Maguey
• Chef Dion Sprenkle 

*Yes, we added a few to the original list.  And it’s taking us awhile to get to them.  I anticipate this being a long (although enjoyable!) project.

Dining in the Dash: Spring House Restaurant

One of the many things I love about living in Winston-Salem is the restaurants.  For a small city, we have so many amazing options for eating out. And as our downtown continues to go through this revitalization process, there seem to be more and more wonderful places to choose from!

So of course that means we end up trying something new every time we go, right?  Of course not.  Like the townies we are, Matt and I had gotten in the habit of going to the same places over and over again.  After discussing this with Anne and finding that she and Locke were doing the same thing, we came up with a plan to make ourselves a list of places that we would try over the next year instead of going back to the same stand-by.  The only criteria was that at least one of us had never been or both of us hadn't been in over a year. And thus, our new project - Dining in the Dash - was born!

Here is the list we came up with:

• Kitchen Roselli
• The Screaming Rooster
• Goat Lady Dairy
• the Taco Truck
• Sweet Potatoes
• Breakfast Of Course
• Bernadin’s
• Meridian
• Old Salem Tavern
• King’s Crab Shack
• New Town Bistro
• Muddy Creek Café
• Winston-Salem Prime
• Spring House Restaurant
• Lexington BBQ
• Hillbilly Hideaway

Of course, Anne has beaten me to the punch with her dining review but I'm going to go ahead and post about it anyways.

The first place we picked was the Spring House.  I had heard about this new place a few months ago via Twitter and then from my friend Teri who raved about their mojitos. I'd read it was a former mansion from the "Millionaire Row" - the downtown 5th street area that was where the turn-of-century big shots had built huge estates - but which was now mostly converted to office spaces.  I love when old spaces are renovated to capture their original charm so I was excited to see what the renovations looked like.

It did not disappoint at all.  The setting is downright charming.  We lucked out with a warm spring night and the front doors of both dining rooms and the library bar were flung open on to a bright green lawn, a patio with more outdoor seating and a small collection of benches around a fountain where I could imagine comfortably waiting for our table with a glass of wine in hand.  (Fortunately we didn't have to wait since we had a reservation.)

The menu was fun and interesting, with lots of creative dishes that provided a twist on what I'd describe as maybe upscale home cooking.  I had the pork tenderloin saltimbocca and Matt had the chicken fried chicken.  (It came with a waffle.  He was pretty smitten.)  My pork dish was delicious and very tender, with an delicious smoky spoonbread for the side.  It didn't knock my socks off so I'd probably try another dish next time I went, but I definitely wasn't disappointed by it either.  I ended with a almond apple crisp that I generously passed around to share with the table, even though I could have easily hogged the whole thing myself!

One of the major features of the menu was their cocktail selections, which of course I didn't partake in, but would easily make me come back for another visit in a few months.  I would have gotten the drink Anne had - the twisted brown trucker.  It looked every bit as pretty as the description sounded and she gave it a thumbs up.  There's a couple different things that would bring me back to try this again: they offer a tasting menu which I think would be a great way to try many of the unique dishes they offer and the first Wednesday of every month has cooking classes.  Both of these are going on my to-do list... but I better wait until I get through our other places to try first.

I thought Anne summarized it well when she said it was on the pricier side if you did appetizers, drinks and dinner but definitely worth it for a nicer meal.  It would also be a great place to come for drinks and appetizers on the patio or the charming library bar.  We'll definitely be back!