Jack's Collegetown Grill

(Jack's Grill or Jack's Collegetown Grill, it's all the same)

Sam:

For our latest restaurant outing Tommy and I ventured into Collegetown to check out Jack's Grill. We'd passed it a few times while dining at other restaurants in the area but neither of us had ever eaten there (despite Tommy once promising we'd meet there for breakfast) so we were both pretty excited to try it.

As those familiar with Collegetown will know, parking can be a bit of a challenge. So much so that it has deterred us from eating there (or anywhere where we're forced to park on the street) in the past. So imagine our suprise as we get to the top of Williams Street and see a spot right there! Pretty exciting, no? Well wait, it gets better. The spot was at the end of the metered spots so we were able to pull right in AND we were awarded with the following:

It might be hard to tell from the photo but that meter has time on it! It seems that the restaurant gods were smiling upon us today. Getting out and peeking around to the other side revealed that we only had 3 minutes but still, I'm not overreacting. This is exactly as exciting as I'm making it seem.

Throwin' it over to Tom for the actual restaurant review!

Tom:

I am writing this portion abroad from Cape Cod!!!! When we went into Jack's we immediately started stressing about the seating situation. Tables were sparse, and while we could have easily ordered to go we were lookin' for a good sit (nothin' beats it). Luckily other patrons and the staff started noticing us, and tables were cleaned allowing us to sit down.

(Order up! My complaint was that the menu was too small and hard to read)

One orders from a counter in Jack's. Sam got a 1/2 lb burger, while I got a southwestern breakfast burrito with home fries, thus providing a look into the range of the restaurant. My burrito was pretty good, it was nice and hot and grilled or something. The eggs weren't of the highest quality, and I thought the home fries were a little bland and dry, but it was overall a very satisfying, quick cheap breakfast burrito. Sam seemed pretty satisfied with his burger, though he thought it was a bit big. The fries were pretty solid.

(My burger)

(T-burg's B-Burrito)

Overall, we both agreed that Jack's basically provided a good quick cheap option in Collegetown. It's largely just a counter and not a full restaurant with full service, but it provides a nice greasy niche that we don't really have in Ithaca. It has some diner fare, but it also has a surprising deep menu of different burgers, wings, and chicken sandwiches. They had some kind of stuffed hamburger that we were too intimidated to try, and "zombie hot" chicken wings, which we agreed was not that good of a name for hot wings.

Jack's was a nice little discovery and we're gonna give it one happy guy with his burger out of one happy guy with his burger.

(One happy guy with his burger)

Lehigh Valley Restaurant

Tom:

By now, you can tell there's no real rhyme or reason to our selection scheme to eat at restaurants. So far we've been generating 5 random numbers that correspond to numbers on our list of restaurants, and picking the restaurant that makes the most sense out of those. Hence, the Lehigh Valley Restaurant, which I always thought was just a bar that served hamburgers or something, I don't know.

When Sam, special guest Danny Abowd and I came through the front doors to see a bar with 4 tables and Family Guy playing in the background, I thought my suspicions were confirmed. The waiter (who Sam and Danny figured out had some kind of High School connection to them) then asked us if we were there to drink or for food. We said food, and he promptly took us back into a much larger room filled with tables, which was an actual restaurant. Like, with menus.

(We were pleasantly surprised with the pretty-ok looking dining room)

The restaurant wasn't very crowded (as seen above), so we were served pretty quickly by the same waiter, who was the only person working in the restaurant best we could tell. I ordered a main course of toasted ravioli, which intrigued me since I'd only ever seen it as an appetizer. Sam got a cheeseburger, and Danny got a steak. "I'll be right back with some bread and your onion rings," the waiter said as he left the table. We spent the next 5 minutes sitting in a confused daze wondering if we had ordered onion rings or not, wondering if it could really be possible that a restaurant was just gonna give us some free onion rings. Sure enough, there they were sitting on a small plate with our bread, and they didn't show up on the check.

(Lehigh's signature; free onion rings)

Sam:

So it turns out that Lehigh, if famous for nothing else, is known for giving out free onion rings before their meals which none of us knew beforehand. The onion rings, while free, were not the best onion rings i've ever had but were definitely not bad (and free). Pretty quickly after the OR's and the bread came out all of our entrees arrived. We were each presented with the following:

(Tommy's ravioli)

(Danny's steak)

(My burger)

The food all looked pretty good and tasted about the same. I wouldn't say that it was the best burger i've eaten in ithaca but it was alright. Tommy said his ravioli was ok and Danny, despite just having had his wisdom teeth removed, seemed to muscle through his steak.

(Danny icing his pain like he's some sort of athlete from ESPN)

Overall I would describe our experience at the LVR as fine. This is not a restaurant that we were looking forward to eating at, and definitely not one that we would have picked outside of the context of this blog but we ended up being ok with it! Prices and portions were fine despite the reviews that we read online and the service was great. Hopefully we can have more surprises like this with some of the other restaurants that we're dreading going to.

Wok Villiage

(The less-than-appealing exterior of Wok)

Tryin' a hybrid this time you guys. A little T+S action simultaneously. We're sitting on the couch here at Tommy's with some Real Housewives of New Jersey on in the background and we just got done watching a few clips of NYC Prep (starting tonight! At 10! 9 Central!) so we're pretty much prepped to start our write up on Wok Village.

First off Wok Village does not have the best location. It took us a few minutes to figure out how to actually get there. It's tucked behind the Triphammer mall in the Bishop's small mall and surpsingly sandwiched between two other restaurants (both of which I, Sam, didn't know existed).

The nicest thing we can say about having to go to Wok Village is that we were less than "Chili's Excited" to have to eat there, but that's sort of the point of this whole thing. Inside Wok is pretty much what you'd expect. A few tables adorned with those Zodiac placemats that you see in most Chinese restaurants and some other interesting decorations on the walls (including two giant crayfish).

(I'm an interesting mix of gregariousness paired with introversion according to my zodiac sign and locals.)

Wok Village has been around for a long time, and there were a sizable number of people eating their dirt-cheap lunch buffet. Sam and I (Tom) also got the buffet, thus bypassing the need to even look at menus. They had a pretty varied assortment of standard Chinese fare, like General Tso's Chicken, Fried Rice, Egg Foo Young, and Egg Drop Soup (all of which we got in the buffet). The soup was good, and we pretty much ate all of everything else.

(The dregs of our meal)

The main draw of Wok Village is the service and price. For about 15 dollars for the both of us, we got a large meal and were in and out of the restaurant in about a 20 minute span. There are a lot of places where you could order takeout and do much worse than this. The waitress also attentively kept our water and Sprite full, so much so that when she realized that Sam hadn't touched his water, she gave me his. If you have a budget, Wok Village will certainly get you a lot of bang for your buck (or bang for your "bok" as Sam says, though I'm not sure we ate any Bok Choy). Having had takeout from here a few times before, I can also say that that option is pretty good.

We also got two excellent fortune cookies:
Tommy's: "You are about to become $8.95 poorer. ($6.95 if you had the buffet)" - which was true
Sam's: "Don't be over self-confident with your first impression of others."- which will never be true

Overall, we'd give it 2.5 "Sams" out of 4, largely because of the great service and price.



P.S. Thanks to our visit we're both a lot closer to perfecting Chinese and possible winning the lotto.

Ithaca Bakery (Route 13)

Tom:

Our first pseudo-randomly chosen restaurant was the Ithaca Bakery down on Route 13. This seemed like an ideal first choice for a few reasons: it was an Ithaca Landmark, it had recently been expanded and redone to be unlike the other Ithaca Bakerys/Collegetown Bagels, and Sam and I both knew we liked the food.

(Our own private counter)

On the way there, we encountered an absurd amount of traffic, even for lunchtime on a Saturday. Sam also absent-mindedly strolled through a red light as though it were a stop sign, indicating a good start for the blog. When we finally got to the restaurant, there was no parking, forcing us to go down the block and turn around when we saw someone leave the parking lot, whose spot we then took.

(Tom's Roasted Red Pepper Soup)

Fans of the old Ithaca Bakery's stifling, loud atmosphere will not be disappointed with the renovation. There was no table space, forcing us to sit at some bar-like fixture in front of a giant mirror. There are now 3 separate places to order and pick up different kinds of food, which may be convenient to some, but only bewildered yokels like us. We agreed that one of us should eat food from the newly installed buffet, but upon seeing it was only breakfast food for some reason we both elected not to.

(Tom's Parisian Panini)

I ended up getting a Parisian panini (turkey, chutney, brie, spinach) and a cup of roasted red pepper soup, both of which turned out to be pretty delicious, though the panini dripped piping hot grease on my fingers. Sam got an Eggs Melissa (scrambled eggs and cheese on a bagel) which he "remixed the shit out of", since he got it on a croissant and with Munster cheese.

(My Egg's Melissa)

Sam:

I think Tommy basically covered it all. I didn't do too well getting us there, traffic was bad, it's still loud/confusing there and the food was pretty good. The only thing i'd like to add is the one new feature of the improved Ithaca Bakery that I really like. Those familiar with any of the other Ithaca Bakerys/ CTBs will know that once you place your order you have to sit and strain your ears in order to hear them mumble your name over their terrible PA system. At the new Ithaca Bakery, if you tell them that you're eating there, they'll give you a number and you can just sit down and relax and wait for them to bring you your order which is a surprsingly simple and wonderful new feature. It takes the 'stress' out of 'Esatting atr Itheaca Basksery'

(We're just two best friends eatin' food and havin' fun)

Tom:

PS When we left I heard a guy ask for an "orange-gina" and I wanted to hurt him.

Howdy, folks!

Sure is crowded in here!

The Ithaca Digest (my sister gets credit for the wonderful name) is a project in which two friends will attempt to eat at 102 restaurants (give or take) around Ithaca, NY. It is not meant strictly as a food review column, but as a wacky adventure through the depths of Ithaca's restaurants where we learn about the food, the city, and our inner demons. Sam and I do not claim to be foodies, or to have any sort of authority or training regarding food.

The idea for this blog came out of the weekly struggle that Sam and I usually go through in deciding on a place to eat in Ithaca. This is not to say that there are no good places to eat in Ithaca. I've had the "Ithaca has more restaurants per capita than Manhattan!" sound byte thrown at me my whole life. But somehow, Sam and I fell into the rut where we ate only at what we call the Chili's-Wegmans-Mall Food Court triangle. I admit that this sounds depressing, but don't get the impression that we don't thoroughly enjoy ourselves eating at only these restaurants. It's just that spending one's time and money at a chain family restaurant, a grocery store, and an admittedly fading food court (we lost Wendy's!) with all of the possibilities out there doesn't seem right. This week, the "where should we eat?" conversation turned into an exercise in naming all of the restaurants in Ithaca that we could think of, which then turned into us talking about how great it would be to eat at all of them and have a blog about it. All it took was a few "that's actually a good idea, guys"es from those around us to get it kickstarted.

Since we are two college students with constrained time and budgets, we are taking on this endeavour in a practical way. We have no rigid timetables, and no deadline for completion of the project (especially since the brunt of it will have to be done in the summers). The order we eat at the restaurants in will be basically random, but subject to our whims. There are no strict rules about what we have to order at the restaurants, but we'll try our best to keep it interesting and fair. Guests of any sort are welcome to come, and we're not above having other people pay for our meals.

We plan to eat at restaurants that are Ithaca landmarks, restaurants that basically no one has heard of, and restaurants that we've eaten religiously at for many years. Chains are included, since they are a viable food option even though they exist elsewhere. We will restrict some restaurants based on not having a dining area or something like that. For example, we don't want to order pizza from every place in town. However, we'll probably end up at Louie's Lunch and/or the Hot Truck, so any restrictions can be relaxed.