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Western Josephine’s The newest dining sensation in Lancaster County – some call it world-class – is this charming restaurant in an 18th-century building that originated as a log cabin. The log walls, beamed and paneled ceiling, gleaming hardwood floors and free-standing candles convey an elegant, historic ambiance in three dining rooms. Copper pans hung around the fireplace mantel in the oldest room add a French accent. Owner Jean Luc Sandillion chose the area because it reminded him of the rolling countryside of his native Poitiers. He named the restaurant after his wife’s mother. His chefs are known for superb, contemporary French food. People rave about the seafood gratinée, the baked salmon with strawberry coulis, the veal with morels in cream sauce, the filet of beef bordelaise and the rack of lamb, either roasted dijonnaise or sautéed forestière. Good starters are the specialty crab cake with salmon mousse baked in a cassoulet, frog’s legs provençal and an unusual salad of sautéed duck livers with a honey-sweetened balsamic vinaigrette served over mixed greens. Favorite desserts include crème caramel, raspberry napoleon and apple tart. The lunch fare is like that which you’d expect to find in the French countryside. (717) 426-2003. Entrees, $17.95 to $25.95. Dinner nightly, 5:30 to 9:30. Sunday, brunch 11 to 2:30, dinner 4 to 8:30.
Alois’s The creative menu for six-course meals changes often in the old Central Hotel portion of Bube's Brewery. This is the nation's only microbrewery surviving intact from the 1800s and is now home to three separate restaurants under the ownership of young entrepreneur Sam Allen. Named for Alois Bube, a German immigrant who built the brewery during Lancaster's heyday as the Munich of the New World, this section was the brewmaster's house. You think the hotel's brick exterior with its aqua and purple wood trim and shutters is colorful? Check out the flamboyant interior, four intimate dining rooms themed to their names (Canopy, Peacock, Dragonfly and Trophy), an upstairs banquet room with incredible handpainted walls and a Victorian bar to end all bars. Furnished like a Victorian parlor, it has an old gaming table with shelves underneath for drinks in one corner and, over the massive bar, a revolving silver ball like those from ’40s and ’50s dance floors, casting beams of light around the room. Chef Ophelia Horn mixes cuisines and styles – Sam calls it all "interpretive international" for the leisurely dining experience that begins in the bar. Oil lamps flickered and New Age music played here as we had drinks and the hors d’oeuvre course, small portions of roast beef pâté with onion pastries, creole quiche and crabmeat nachos on white flour chips. We asked not to be seated in the Trophy Room, where patrons dine beneath the mounted heads of animals. Instead we were assigned to the Canopy Room, named for the ceiling shaped like a canopy. The prix-fixe meal is presented course by course, with the only option being the main course (a choice of buttermilk chicken skewers or marinated shrimp skewers, one recent evening). Service was inordinately slow for a quiet night and a meal that was supposed to be paced. Gradually we got our soup course (cock-a-leekie), a mesclun salad with creamy pepper dressing and strawberry sorbet. Our main courses arrived on salad-size plates, the veal medallions with port and ginger accompanied by potatoes and the filet mignon by rice, carrots and zucchini. The blueberry cassis pie was chilled, intense and refreshing. Chocolate twigs came with the bill. (717) 653-2057. Prix-fixe, $26. Dinner by reservation, Tuesday-Sunday 5:30 to 9 or 10, Sunday to 8. The Catacombs If Alois’s is the height of Victoriana, the Catacombs is positively medieval. A serf in medieval garb greets diners and leads them on a tour of the brewery as they descend 43 feet into the stone-lined vaults that were the aging cellars of Bube's Brewery. Here are round-ceilinged rooms totally lit by candles; in fact, the stone wall at the end of one room is covered with candle drippings, the better to hold steady more candles. Owner Sam Allen and his father made the heavy pine tables, dressed in white linens and set with pewter tankards and plates. This is the setting for medieval feasts staged most Sundays at 5 year-round. The $30 tab includes wine and ale, live music and entertainment, tax and tip; everyone gasps as burly chefs carry in a whole roasted pig. On other nights, a fairly versatile menu is offered. Entrées run the gamut from flounder stuffed with crabmeat to tournedos of beef with cracked peppercorns. Chicken satay, stuffed mushrooms and sausage en croûte are among the appetizers. Dessert could be chocolate-chip cheesecake or kahlua pie. Upstairs in the brewery's original bottling plant is The Bottling Works, an atmospheric restaurant and tavern serving lunch and light fare. Interesting salads and sandwiches, gourmet burgers and bargain-priced entrées are featured. An adjacent outdoor Biergarten adds 80 seats to the 300 inside the brewery’s three restaurants. (717) 653-2056. Entrées, $16.95 to $23.95, Dinner nightly, 5:30 to 9 or 10. Lunch in Bottling Works daily from 11, Sunday from noon; dinner nightly from 5:30, from 5 on weekends. Prudhomme’s Lost
Cajun Kitchen Yes, you read the name right. David Prudhomme, nephew of the Paul Prudhomme, and his wife Sharon opened this restaurant and entertainment center in 1997 at, of all places, the edge of Pennsylvania Dutch country. "We took a wrong turn, got lost and decided to stay," David quipped as he explained the name. Actually, he grew up in Acadian Louisiana, worked in his uncle’s sausage plant and met his Yankee wife while working in the area as a stone mason. The couple gutted the main floor of the old Rising Sun Hotel, put in a new kitchen and hung a Preservation Hall sign over the bar. The decor in two dining areas seating 90 is thoroughly cajun. Besides renovating and hosting, the couple also do much of the cooking – "from scratch," David asserts. The recipes are their own, except for Enola’s eggplant piroque, borrowed from Paul’s older sister Enola, who attended their opening. Expect the usual suspects: gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys, crawfish étouffée, blackened catfish, fried or sautéed alligator platter. Plus some surprises: Sharon’s chicken toes ("our version of chicken fingers"), shrimp fais do do (done three ways) and blackened pork chops, topped with homemade pepper jelly that the couple bottle and sell here. David makes a mean pecan-banana layer cake, while Sharon’s specialty is sweet potato pie. Cajun entertainment – "not the real stuff, but as close as we can get in Pennsylvania" – is offered three nights a week. You just know that everyone has fun here. (717) 684-1706. Entrées, $6.95 to $17.95. Lunch, Tuesday-Saturday 11 to 2:30. Dinner, Monday-Saturday 4:30 to 10. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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