Jim's Drive In, Lewisburg, West Virginia

Jim's Drive In!

In Lewisburg, West Virginia, there are many excellent restaurants. One that I really enjoy that you may not have tried is Jim's Drive In.  Jim's is a fast food joint where you can either sit and eat in your car, or sit at one of the picnic tables that they have outside. Every single summer, I go to Jim's Drive In at least once. I usually go with my family, and some friends of ours. Although the food is so good, I'm happy we only go once a summer, because I probably couldn't handle any more since we typically eat so much!  The deal with Jim's Drive In is that practically everything is fried. They have fried onions, fries, pickles, banana peppers, green
beans and many more.  Generally we are pretty healthy eaters, but some times at Jim's we order everything fried on the menu for the table.  We call that "the fried extravaganza!"  They also have burgers, chicken fingers, corn dogs, and other entrees. My favorite part of Jim's Drive In is the milkshakes. They have about two dozen different flavors of milkshakes, everything from Butterfinger to Oreo. My personal favorite is the Butterfinger. It is a vanilla milkshake with many pieces of Butterfinger mixed in. While we were there recently, they had a few special summer shakes. They had a Mocha, Carmel Coffee, S'mores, and Hawaiian (coconut, banana, and pineapple). This time, I decided to be adventurous and have a S'mores shake.


   On my most recent trip to Jim's Drive In, I ordered a cheeseburger, fried banana peppers and a S'mores milkshake. My brother ordered chicken fingers, mac n' cheese bites (deep fried balls of mac n' cheese), and a

My burger and fried banana peppers!

Fried mushrooms! Yum! 

Oreo milkshake. My dad ordered the signature "Big Jim" Ranch Burger, which has ranch, ham, lettuce, tomato, pickles, cheese, and onion on it with a Mocha milkshake. He says it is one of his favorite burgers from anywhere.  My mom detoured from the usual burger and decided to go with the fried green tomato sandwich. The fried green tomato sandwich had fried green tomato, provolone cheese, bacon, lettuce and mayonnaise on it. She really liked it.  I tried it but I like the burgers more.  We also ordered onion rings, fried mushrooms and fried green beans for the table. Because Jim's is such a great restaurant, it is usually packed at lunch time and the restaurant only has 3 or 4 employees, thus the food took a little while to come out, but the food was worth the wait. My S'mores milkshake, as expected was delicious! It actually tasted like real s'mores! It was a vanilla milkshake with crushed graham cracker blended in, and pieces of chocolate mixed in as well. My cheeseburger was also really good, as it was meaty, juicy, and tender to the point of almost falling apart. I have three favorite fried foods at Jim's: The fried banana peppers, the onion rings, and the fried mushrooms. The fact that I love the fried banana peppers so much has always come as a surprise to me, since I won't even touch a regular banana pepper, but when Jim's fries them, they become a magical, great-tasting food! My second favorite fried food at Jim's are the onion rings. Now, unlike normal onion rings which I find are too often soggy and drenched in grease, the ones at Jim's are crunchy, and have little to no grease on them. Now for my third favorite fired food, I really love the fried mushrooms. They are really hot (as in temperature), and are crisp on the outside, but meaty, chewy, and juicy on the inside. Even though all these fried foods are great by themselves, there is a way to make them even better. The answer? Ranch. Jim's ranch is unlike any ranch I've ever had before. It is thick, creamy, tangy, and smooth, plus it compliments any fried food perfectly, blanking out the little grease the fried foods have with a thick, creamy coat of ranch goodness. For dessert my mom and I split a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles on top! It was really good! The ice
cream was house-made, so it was flavorful, creamy, smooth, soft, and a very refreshing treat in the middle of the day!

   One of the reason I love Jim's so much is because of the people there; they will bend over backwards just to make you happy. Everyone is so nice, and are happy to help you with any question you might have. And the best part? All of this is in one of the coolest small towns in America!

    As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookieness, with one cookie being old, stale, burnt oatmeal raisin cookie nastiness, and ten cookies being warm, gooey, chewy, chocolate chip (my favorite) cookie goodness. My Cookie Counter ratings for Jim's drive-in are:

Food: 8 Cookies

     Milkshakes: 9 1/2 Cookies
     Atmosphere: 6 Cookies
     Service: 12 Cookies

Note: The fried mushrooms as shown in the picture contain many more mushrooms than what is shown. They were so good that they were almost all gone before I could take a picture! :)

Jim's Drive-In Google+: https://plus.google.com/110521968412177484113/about?gl=us&hl=en

Bistrotters- Paris, France

Bistrotters!

   Recently, I took a three week long vacation with my family all around France. It was the coolest thing I have ever done, and I had the best food I've ever eaten. On our second day in Paris, my family and I went to a small but highly-respected restaurant called Bistrotters.  My Dad found the restaurant on a website rating restaurants in Paris and out of over 10,000 restaurants it was rated #3, so we had high expectations.  Bistrotters did not disappoint, it was the best food that we ate on the trip and also the best meal I have eaten, ever!  The restaurant itself probably seated no more than 25 people, with most people in one small room at the front of the restaurant. The deal with the menu was that you could do one of two things: a two course meal, or a three course one. For the two course meal, you could pick either a appetizer and an entree, or an entree and a dessert. With the three course meal you got all three courses. For each course you have about 4 or 5 options to choose from, and they all looked delicious. My brother and I each chose to do the two-course dinner, with a entree and a dessert, but our parents and grandmother did the three-course dinner.

A very colorful veggie tart, indeed!

   For an appetizer my mom ordered a vegetable tart, and even though I don't normally like vegetables very much, this dish
made me want more of them. The vegetable tart consisted of a flaky, buttery, crispy puff pastry with mixed vegetables in a sauce on top. The vegetables were in a sweet soy sauce, and they were really good. All the vegetables were tender and soft, just perfect for the dish. It was a great start to an amazing meal! For my entree I went with a pork belly with potatoes, carrots, and onions. The pork belly was a little fatty, but the people at Bistrotters had warned us about that, so it was okay.  They said that you can just cut away the layer of fat at the start, which is what I did. The potatoes were tender and soft, the sauce on the pork belly was salty, thick, and warm. I really loved

My pork belly!

how the pork belly was crispy on the outside, but still tender and juicy on the inside. My meal was great, but someone else's was better. My mom got a fillet and it was amazing! it was tender, juicy, warm, and had a peppercorn sauce to dip it in that was smooth and peppery and went perfectly with the steak. For my dessert, I had a time choosing between a brioche french toast with a salted carmel sauce and the chocolate lava cake with raspberry sorbet, but in the end, I went with the french toast and was happy I did. Brioche is my favorite type of bread for it's butteriness, softness, and it's overall texture and taste. The brioche was cut into strips and fried and had a maple syrup tasting crust on top. There were two thin slices of chocolate which melted atop the french toast and made it even better. The salted caramel sauce wasn't very salty, but that was okay. The french toast was a little dry by itself, so the caramel sauce added not only another dimension of great taste, but some moisture that the french toast needed.

BRIOCHE FRENCH TOAST!

My grandmother got the chocolate lava cake with sorbet, and that was pretty good. The chocolate cake was rich, moist, and sweet, and the "lava" was warm, thick, rich, gooey, and chocolatey. The raspberry sorbet that was on the side was really good. It was cold to the point of refreshing, but not too cold, and the fruit in it was obviously fresh and because of this, it was evident that the sorbet was homemade.

   The atmosphere in Bistrotters was quaint and welcoming, small but special. It looked like just another small restaurant from the outside, but on the inside, it was so much more. It was the best meal I've ever eaten, but I can only hope I eat somewhere even better in the future. Also, the staff (which consisted of two people( the owners) and a chef) were all very nice. The menu was not only in French but also in English, and the staff were happy to answer any questions we had. They spoke both fluent French and English, making it easy to communicate. Overall, this was a great restaurant with the best food I've ever eaten. Everything from the presentation of the food on the plate to the taste to the atmosphere and service was fantastic.

  If you find yourself in Paris, go to Bistrotters.  Make a reservation, though as they turned away a lot people the night we were there. They book 12 days in advance.

   As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookieness, with one cookie being burnt, old, stale oatmeal raisin cookie nastiness, and ten cookies being the perfect, warm, gooey, chewy chocolate chip (my favorite) cookie. My Cookie Counter ratings for Bistrotters are:

Food: 25 Cookies! (yes - 25 out of 10 - it's THAT good)
Atmosphere: 7 Cookies
Service: 10 Cookies

Bistrotters Website: http://www.bistrotters.com/?lang=en

 

Christiana Campbell's Tavern- Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

 Another tavern that we went to during our stay at Colonial Williamsburg was Christiana Campbell's Tavern. As we arrived at the tavern, I saw a few familiar figures. Some of my family's friends surprised us by coming to Williamsburg and having dinner with us when we weren't supposed to see them for another week and a half! We walked in and took our seats. There were two areas to sit in, a dining room on the ground level and a dining room on the second level. We ate on the second level. Much like
Shield's Tavern,  all of the waiters there are dressed in colonial period attire, and there is live music and singing. The exterior and interior of the tavern were made almost completely our of wood. The tables

The Crew!

 and seats were made of wood as well. We ate dinner by candlelight and without air conditioning, just as it would've been in the colonial times.

    Christiana Campbell's Tavern offered a wide range of food and also had a kids menu, both menus featuring colonial and modern food to appeal to all tastes.  For an appetizer, I decided to try the clam chowder. The soup was very creamy, warm, and had a lot of flavor. It was one of the best soups I've ever had! Once I finished my soup, I began looking at the menu for an entree.  To me, everything looked good, so it was hard to choose. I ended up going with a steak, my brother ordered a hamburger, and my friend Meredith wanted fried chicken, but asked for a bun to make it a sandwich. Our food came out in a matter of minutes! I have nothing but good things to say about the food. My steak was tender, juicy, and cooked exactly like I asked. My brothers burger was juicy, meaty, and awesome! My friend's fried chicken sandwich was nice and crispy, but the one complaint she had was that the chicken had bones in them. (This was kind of expected because she ordered fried chicken and just added a bun) After a filling and wonderful meal, we went for dessert. For dessert our group chose to order three kinds of ice cream: vanilla, chocolate, and mint chocolate chip. All of the ice creams are made in house at the

The inside of Christiana Campbell's Tavern

restaurant, and are always fresh. Once the ice cream came out we all dug in! I first tried the classic vanilla, and even though I usually don't like vanilla ice cream, I really liked it! The vanilla was evident in the ice cream, strong and wonderful. The actual ice cream was soft, creamy, and dreamy.  The chocolate was amazing! it was so good that it was almost like frozen hot chocolate (which is AMAZING if you haven't tried it!). But if the chocolate was like a dream, the mint chocolate chip was like a dream in paradise. Unlike most ice creams where they have that fake mint taste, this one actually tasted like real mint! The ice cream wasn't that fake green, but instead white, the natural color. The mint ice cream was a little harder, but still very good. That right there was the best ice cream I have ever had in my life. The entire meal left me overly stuffed but in a good way, because I loved every bite I took of my food from there.

   Everyone in the restaurant was so helpful, and when someone's soup came out a minute later than the others, our waiter apologized profusely. They knew everything about the menu, and were so patient even though we were such a big group! As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookieness, with one cookie being a burnt, old, stale, nasty oatmeal raisin cookie, and ten cookies being the perfect, warm, gooey, chocolate chip (my favorite) cookie. My Cookie Counter Ratings for Christiana Campbell's Tavern are:

Food: 8 Cookies

Service: 9 Cookies

Atmosphere: 8 Cookies