Filling the Void...

Kabuki

929 Haddonfield Road

Cherry Hill, NJ 08002

kabukicherryhill.com/‎ 

My buddy from work and I had been dying to fill the void in our lives left by the closing of our favorite sushi place in Cherry Hill. I found a place for us to try one Friday for lunch, and we set out to try Kabuki Japanese cuisine in the Racetrack Shopping Center. 

 

Once we got there and stepped inside, I was pretty impressed with the decoration and layout. I had no idea that this place even existed! I opened up the menu and saw that they offered an amazing deal exactly like the place had that we used to go to all the time! I was so excited! I ordered a three roll special, which they offer for a mere $10.55. I ordered the spicy salmon roll, spicy tuna roll, and spicy yellowtail crunch roll. The meal also came with a bowl of miso soup and a salad with ginger dressing. 

I thought we were going to have to be late going back to the office, but the entire meal came out pretty quickly. The soup and salad were up first. The soup was good, but nothing spectacular. It definitely could have been improved if it had come out even a little bit hot. It was lukewarm and definitely didn’t do anything to make me think that this place was going to become our new sushi place. The salad faired a bit better. It was a solid salad, and the ginger flavor in the dressing had a really nice snap to it.

I was really impressed when the sushi came out, both by its speed, and the mere look of it. It looks awesome, and it tasted even better. For the first time in a while, the sushi that I ordered with the name spicy actually had spice to it and it was delicious! I loved each and every bite of it! The fish was fresh as can be, and the flavor was amazing. I could have eaten about 10 rolls!

Three and a half pints for Kabuki. I have ordered off the regular menu as well as off the lunch special menu, and all of the sushi is delicious. The price point could be a bit better on the regular menu, but overall they nail it. Kabuki definitely did its part to cement itself into our Friday lunch plans. While we may not be going there every week, we will probably be going every other week. They offer such a good deal for lunch, and the quality was simply fantastic. We can't wait to go back. Go try it and let me know what you think! Cheers!

Smoke and Mirrors...

Henri's Hotts BBQ

1003 Black Horse Pike

Hammonton, NJ 08037

www.henrishottsbarbeque.com/‎ 

I had heard about a barbeque joint in Hammonton that was supposed to be pretty good, and since I work there once a week or so, I told my friend that works there that we should try it the next time I was down there. It was hard for us to work it out because they only actually wound up being open from Thursday to Sunday. I planned out my last visit to be on a Thursday, and come lunch time we set out to see what the good word was about.

It took us about 10 minutes to get there, and we were the only people there once we arrived. As soon as we stepped out of the car, we could smell the smoke erupting from the two smokers parked out front of the restaurant. It seemed like it was going to be pretty good, but I guess appearances aren’t always what they seem. 

My buddy ordered a half rack of ribs, and I ordered a pulled pork platter with fries and onion rings so we could try both of the things they "won" competitions for. I say "won" because there is no way that the food that was put in front of us would have won a competition anywhere in our opinions. 

The ribs weren’t very good. They weren’t cooked to the proper temperature, and they left the silver skin on. It made the ribs completely unappetizing. The meat was ok and had some smoke flavor to them, but that’s about all that was good about them. I was really appalled that they left the silver skin on the bottom of the ribs on. Gross.

My pulled pork wasn’t very good either. While it had nice smoke to it, and the bits of bark were nice, the pork itself again hadn’t been cooked long enough, and lacked that melt in my mouth consistency that I was looking for. It left the pork stringy and chewy and pretty hard in some places. I was so disappointed because I have become obsessed with BBQ in recent years, and you just can't find good BBQ around here very often. The best part of the meal was the onion rings. They were crispy as can be, the batter held on to the onions really well, and we made them disappear very quickly.

One pint for Henri's Hotts. The bbq really missed the mark in my opinion, and I was severely disappointed because I was hoping to find a real gem when I went. After all that I had read about it, I thought that it was going to be amazing. People made it sound like it was the best place they had ever eaten at in the reviews, but if that’s true, then they really don’t get out much. Maybe they just had a bad day, but when you are only open four days a week, you should be able to get it right on those days, or there goes your money. I wouldn’t waste my time with trying Henri's Hotts, but of course you can and let me know if you have the same experience that I did. It is worth the trip over the bridge to get yourself some real deal barbeque. Cheers!

A Little Better than Ice Cream...

Capogiro Gelato

117 South 20th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

www.capogirogelato.com 

After my girlfriend and I went out to eat one Friday evning, we decided to go across the street to grab some dessert at a little gelato place called Capogiro Gelato. It is a small artisan shop that always has a steady flow of traffic moving in and out of its doors. It has always caught my eye, and I was pretty happy when my girlfriend asked if we could go after dinner.

I love gelato, and I don’t get to have it very often, so choosing a flavor was really difficult for me. They have all kinds of options, from fruit concoctions, to others including traditional flavors like vanilla and chocolate. I wound up choosing the chocolate hazelnut flavor that they offered, and I was glad I did after having tried it.

It reminded me of Nutella. It was really, really light and it had a really nice hazelnut taste to it. It wasn’t crunchy, but it definitely had some serious texture to it. It was a really nice way to follow up our meal, and it didn’t leave us feeling like we had overeaten.

Two and a half pints for Capogiro. Not the best gelato you will ever have, but definitely a viable option. I will definitely be making a return trip to one of Capogiro's locations sometime soon. The gelato is very tasty, and they offer quite an array of ever-changing flavors. Go ahead and check it out and let me know what you think! Cheers!

A Gem of the Vetri Empire...

Osteria

640 North Broad Street

Philadelphia, PA 19130

www.osteriaphilly.com/‎ 

Since really getting into food in college, I have learned a lot about the Philadelphia dining scene. One person that has become an inspiration to be has been Marc Vetri. He is an extremely successful chef in the Philadelphia area, with his flagship Vetri being among the best restaurants in the country year in and year out. He also is partners in 3 other Philadelphia restaurants, has published cooking books, has a very successful foundation and won in Kitchen Stadium on Iron Chef America. One of the places that he is a partner in is called Osteria. I had been desperately wanting to go there for some time and was saving a gift certificate that I had been given to go there with my girlfriend. On the Friday after labor day, we headed over to North Broad to try my long awaited destination. 

We were seated in an outdoor covered veranda next to the main dining room, and were immediately greeted by out waitress. She dropped of an ipad for us to browse the drink menu on (super cool) and brought us a basket of bread. It contained three types of bread and some bread sticks. One of those types of bread, a pesto bread, was mindblowingly good. It wasn’t bread with a pesto spread on it, it was bread, with pesto baked right into it. It was outstanding!

When our waitress came back we ordered our drinks, me an Italian beer I had never seen before called Menebrea Ambrata, and my girlfriend ordered a bourbon and champagne drink with fruit juice of some sort. I also put in the rest of our order. I wanted to get a full taste of the menu, so I order us one thing from each section of the menu; the Margherita pizza, porchetta tonnato, fusilli with veal bolongnese, and rabbit casalinga. We split everything, so it wound up being a really perfect amount of food.

 

My beer was really good. It was sweeter than most amber beers I have had, but it had a smooth after taste and really paired well with our meal. The pizza and the porchetta came out together. I had ordered the pizza because I had seen Mark Summers say it was one of the best pizzas he had ever had on the Food Network. I grabbed a slice of pizza first and was very impressed with it. While my girlfriend didn’t agree, I thought it was a really fantastic Margherita pizza. She thought their was too much sauce and not enough cheese, but I thought it was fantastic. I loved getting a bite of the crust, cheese, sauce, and basil all in one bite. It was simply heavenly. The porchetta changed the pace quite a bit, but it kept the quality up to the maximum. The flavor was phenomenal, and the parmigano and arugala salad on top and dressing it was slathered with made for a perfect little morsel. I had never had a slice of a homemade porchetta before, but I loved each bite of it. It had incredible pork flavor.

The pasta and meat dishes came out next, and they brought the quality of the food to its highest level yet. The fusilli was clearly made fresh, something I had never experienced before. The meat had been cooked low and slow, and the sauce stuck to the pasta perfectly. The rabbit dish was amazing as well. It was cooked in a sage brown butter sauce and served over creamy polenta and chunks of pancetta. The rabbit was pull off the bone tender, and the sage and brown butter combined to become a combination of liquid gold flavor. There was one think I really didn’t like and it kept this dish from being perfect for me. The bones weren’t broken down cleanly, so there were shards of bone dispersed throughout the dish. If the dish wasn’t so good, I wouldn’t have finished eating it, but I put up with the bone pieces because it was absolutely delectable.

When it came time for dessert, I was stuck between two things to order. When I asked our waitress which one we should order, she didn’t even hesitate in helping me make my decision. She recommended the polenta budino, so she sold me. It was a polenta pudding with a nutella mousse and it was topped with candied hazelnuts. I never would have thought I would eat a dessert with polenta in it, but it was hands down one of the best desserts I have ever eaten. My girlfriend agreed as we discussed it while wiping the cup clean. I now have two budinos in my top 10 dessert dishes of all time, so maybe I need to find more places that make them. The espresso that I ordered was super strong, and a nice change from what some other restaurants call espresso. It was really good coffee, and something delicious to pair well with my dessert.

Four pints for Osteria. Osteria really blew me away. If it wasn’t for the bone pieces in the rabbit dish, I would have had an absolutely flawless meal from start to finish. I will be going back for as long as it hangs around, because Marc Vetri and his partners really know how to run a good restaurant with some fantastic Italian fare. Run, don’t walk to Osteria and try it now! Cheers!