Pennybackers

Leaving this post up for posterity, but Pennybacker's closed in fall 2012.

• Location: 14 E. Water Street
• Website: http://www.pennybackers.com/
• Food profile: soups, salads, sammies.
• Local sourcing: Not sure. If they use local ingredients, they don't say so.
• Price: $7 ish for a sandwich
• Take-out: Yes! And also catering.
• Warnings: For a grilled cheese, if you don't specify what kind of bread and cheese you want, you will end up with American on white. The servers don't always ask.
• Specialties: This is the place if you want a gourmet tomato soup and grilled cheese combo. All the deliciousness of childhood nostalgia, with the option of having actually good food. Yum! I'm also a big fan of the Corey. It's the only chicken salad I've ever tasted that can rival my mother-in-law's.

About Pennybackers:
This is a relative newcomer to the downtown dining scene, and may I say, "WELCOME!" They've done a great job renovating an old carriage house in the Pennybacker building. The place feels warm and friendly, like an English pub, and is decorated with old photos and postcards of Harrisonburg in days of yore. Although they're new to downtown, they've already invested in good works. Before their opening, they auctioned off their tables at a benefit for the Harrisonburg Children's Museum. Winners were able to make a design on the tabletops with pennies. Bonus: if you go there with a small child and the kid gets antsy, challenge him to find all 10 heads-up pennies in your table. The staff is generally friendly, and the management is superb. In the summertime, head up to the roof-top. The view is great--arguably the best roof-top view in town.

Food:
Pennybackers makes a great sandwich. They're piled thick with all the fixings, and the ingredients are mostly very high-quality. There's also a wide selection, and you can mix and match to make your perfect lunch combo. Pretty much everything comes with a side of tatertots, which makes me feel like I'm about seven years old again...not that this is a bad thing. My one complaint is that there aren't many ways to sub in another side without getting more food than I probably wanted (for example, adding a bowl of soup). I have a potato allergy, so I gaze longingly at my friends' tots, and usually surrender mine to them. Most other downtown restaurants have at least one non-potato side option.

The soups also deserve a mention. I had a mushroom brie soup there a few weeks ago that was just amazing. The tomato soup runs a little on the spicy side--great for grown-ups who long for the happy days of childhood, but maybe not that great for actual children. I'd avoid it if your child has a sensitive palate.

Atmosphere:
Casual, but not too casual. It's a good family place, but you shouldn't be embarrassed to take a business lunch there. It's warm and inviting, but not sloppy.

But what if I hate soups, salads, and sandwiches?
Who hates soups, salads, and sandwiches??? Go somewhere else. Jack Brown's is just down the block. Get a hamburger and wait for your normal friends to finish a great lunch at Pennybackers. You all can catch up at the cat store.

Kline's Dairy Bar

• Location: 58 E. Wolfe St. (the Jetsons-era building near the post office) and 2425 S. Main St. (look for the giant neon cone), also locations in Staunton and Waynesboro.
• Website: http://www.klinesdairybar.com/ 
• Food profile: ice cream and ice cream-related foods.
• Local sourcing: I don't think Kline's uses locally produced milk, which is too bad, given the amount of dairy farming in Rockingham County. If they do, they aren't advertising it!
• Prices: $2.36 for a single-dip in a sugar cone.
• Take-out: It's pretty much all take-out. Both locations offer patio seating, but you're free to take your cone for a downtown stroll. They also offer to-go containers with lids (be sure to specify when you order) and ice cream by the gallon.
• Warnings: On Wednesdays, the flavor of the week is SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I'm just telling you, so you won't be disappointed. Don't you dare ask to mix flavors (a scoop of vanilla, then a scoop of chocolate). It's seriously against the rules.

About Kline's: 
Kline's Dairy Bar is a Harrisonburg institution. It's been in operation since 1943, when Grover and Johnny Kline opened up their store on North Main (bonus points for having a founder named "Grover." How cool is that?). In the '60s, it moved to its present location on Wolfe Street. The Kline's process is slow and labor-intensive, and it yields an unusual eggless custard-style ice cream. Because the process takes a long time, each Kline's location only offers three flavors per week: vanilla, chocolate, and one special flavor. The special flavors are listed on boards at each location (and are different for each location), as well as on their website and Twitter. On a hot summer day, Kline's serves around 2000 people!

Food:
Man, that is some nice ice cream. It's nothing fancy, but it's good. It's creamy and delicious, and the fruit flavors actually taste like there was some fruit involved at some point. My personal favorite is the pumpkin ice cream, and we're just now getting into the season for it. I'm not alone--someone on North High St. put a sign in their yard last week that just said, "Kline's has pumpkin!" Kline's is usually mobbed in the summertime, and for good reason, but you'll see me gripping my sugar cone in my little mittened hands.

Atmosphere:
Kline's has that vintage small-town-big-heart feeling. You get your ice cream and admire the planters, wave to your neighbors, and feel happy. The South Main location, through no fault of anyone at Kline's, doesn't have quite the happy, mellow feel of the Wolfe Street one. You see, once upon a time, I'm sure that South Main was a sleepy little two-lane, creeping down into Rockingham's bucolic farmland. Now, however, it's five lanes of madness. You can enjoy your cone to the dulcet sounds of an 18-wheeler's airbrakes, or a posse of Harley-Davidsons out for a joy ride. The ice cream is scrumptious at either location, but the atmosphere on Wolfe St. is less frenetic.

What if I don't like ice cream?
Well, it's not JUST ice cream, you know. I had a wonderful shake there one time...ok, that's ice cream too...uhm...Rumor has it you can get coffee there. Look, if you don't like (or can't eat) ice cream, just don't go.

Taste of Thai

• Location: 917 S. High Street (aka rt. 42). If you're heading south on 42, it will be on your right. If you get to the Rocking R Hardware Store, you've gone too far. Check out the Asian grocery store behind Taste of Thai while you're there. 
• Website: http://www.taste-of-thai.com/
• Food profile: Thai (duh).
• Local meats: not sure, but I don't think so. If someone from ToT reads this, please comment to let us know. If you have local or organic meats, you should advertise it! People love that sort of thing.
• Price: Entrees range from $11 upwards to $25. 
• Take-out: Yes! In fact, it's probably a better place for take-out than dine-in. The place is usually so crowded that it's hard to hear your dining partners. Also, many diners insist that take-out portions are larger.
• Warnings: 
  • If you pull into the parking lot and it looks insanely full, don't panic! The restaurant is much larger than it looks from the outside. At least go in and see if there's a wait.
  • As noted above, it gets really loud in there, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.
  • They don't take reservations for parties smaller than 5.
• Specialties: The broccoli sesame chicken is delicious, if you're in the mood for that kind of thing, though it sometimes borders on being overly sweet. The pad talay is a smorgasbord of sea food--a variety you'd be hard pressed to find on any other plate in the 'burg. If you want to really blow your own mind, check out the Thai coffee--but not if you plan on sleeping any time this week. It's enough caffeine and sugar to power you through whatever life throws at you.
  

∫About Taste of Thai: 

This was the first wonderful Harrisonburg restaurant I ever visited, back in the fall of 2004, when I had just moved to Staunton. At that time, our fair city didn't boast the numerous downtown dining options that it now has to offer. After walking around the Court Square area, I asked someone at A Touch of the Earth where I should go for lunch. She directed me to ToT, and I was shocked that such high-quality ethnic food was available in the Shenandoah Valley. Taste of Thai was serving up yum back when Thai Flavor was just a shadow of a twinkle of a dream. They proved that an Asian restaurant could thrive in this town.

Food:

Practically everything is fantastic. The "Thai spicy" food can be pretty intense, but nothing you can't handle. The tofu curry runs on the bland side--I recommend asking for it a bit spicier. Don't miss out on the tom yum goong, a soup with lemongrass and mushrooms. I wouldn't have ordered it, but a friend told me to try it, and it's a surprising blend of spicy and tangy flavors, complex on the palate, but refreshing as well. 

Atmosphere:

This is a classy place--plush decor, a courteous staff, and beautiful serving dishes. Dress decently or you'll mess it all up. It's a perfect restaurant for a business lunch with the client you're trying to land, a family celebration, or a date that is a step above Cally's, but not quite Joshua Wilton House. 

But what if I hate Thai food?

Skip this place. Or get the pad thai; it's just rice noodles and veggies--pretty innocuous.

The Little Grill Collective

• Location: 621 N. Main St. If you're heading north on Main, look for the brightly-colored Our Community Place building on the right. The Little Grill is just after that, on the left. If the tire shop isn't open, you can park there, but otherwise, stick to the street. Hippies, use side door.
• Website: http://littlegrillcollective.com/
• Food profile: Hippie.
• Local meats: Yes
• Price range: Entrees generally are around $8. LGC just redid their pricing so that, after taxes, you're always paying in whole- or half-dollar increments. Just less fiddly, yes?
• Take-out: Yes! But they don't seem to advertise it--I just happened to ask once, and they do it, in eco-friendly containers, of course.
• Warnings: 
• No plastic! Bring cash, check, or a friend you can dupe into buying your meal. 
• Sunday Brunch is pretty awesome, but when JMU is in session, be prepared to wait. Possibly for a long time. Outside.
• Specialties: For breakfast, be sure to check out the blue monkey, a banana and blueberry pancake. For lunch or dinner, Go Ask Alyce is a classic, as is Ron's Mexi Plate.
• The one thing I would improve about LGC is: Put sweet potato fries on your menu!

About the Little Grill:

Well, I should just air my bias here and now. LGC is my favorite restaurant in Harrisonburg, bar none. Why? Well, the food is great--you can't beat it for the price. The staff is friendly. The business model, where the restaurant is owned by the workers, means that every staff member cares a lot about making it great. It's a good place to see and be seen--I run into people I know every time I go. The main reason, though, is that they serve the food of my people. I grew up in a hippie community out in the booniehollers of wild and wonderful West-by-the-grace-of-God Virginia. When I went to college, I was a member of a vegetarian co-operative kitchen. The decor in the LGC, ranging from a Gonzo stuffed animal to a photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr., is so similar to that in my uncle Stump's house that I did a doubletake the first time I walked in. The music, whether new grass or Bob Marley, is always something that I heard at parties when I was a kid. When I opened the menu for the first time, I saw that LGC has a tempeh reuben, and when I bit into it, it tasted just like the ones Julie used to make in our college co-op. 

When I need a taste of home, I hit the Little Grill. If you didn't list "hippie" for your ethnicity in the 2010 census, YMMV.

Food:

So, I love the food. I do. There are a few things that aren't great--the soysage is a bit bland and crumbly, and the biscuits they use for their biscuits-n-gravy wouldn't pass muster at most self-respecting southern kitchens. A couple of minor flaws don't change the fact that LGC is an awesome restaurant. The ingredients are fresh, high-quality, and (where possible) organic and locally sourced. The last time I was there for lunch, I saw staff accept a delivery from Radical Roots Farm, of Keezletown. Although LGC's fare is mostly vegetarian, they also feature organic, free-range, and local meats. If you haven't tried free-range meat before, you're missing out. In my family, we're all beativores--we eat the happy animals. Happiness is delicious. LGC is one of the few places in Harrisonburg where you can count on some deliciously happy chicken. 

Breakfast:

Breakfast is a great meal at LGC. The coffee is fair trade organic stuff, and $2 gets you a bottomless cup. There's a featured pancake every month, and it's always creative. My favorite so far this year was the chai pancake--an intriguing concept, well-executed. My husband nearly always gets the bricker's son, which is an egg, fried in the middle of a piece of bread, and covered with bean chili. Although I'm a big fan of the huevos rancheros and the breakfast burrito, no discussion of LGC would be complete without mentioning the Blue Monkey. It's a blueberry/banana pancake, and it's incredible. Go on, order a tall stack of blue monkeys. I dares ya. (there's even a Blue Monkey t-shirt now!). 

Not a morning person? Go by on Thursday for dinner--it's Breakfast for Dinner night.

Lunch/Dinner:
Practically everything on the lunch/dinner menu is wonderful. Personally, I'm a big fan of the tempeh reuben. It's a grilled sandwich, but not too greasy, and the sauerkraut is just the right level of sauer. It's a bit messy, though--definitely a two-hand sandwich. If you're not in the mood for a sandwich, check out the Mexi-esque fare. It's more hippican than Mexican, not too spicy, but filling and yummy.

For dinner, be sure to check out the specialty nights. Besides Breakfast for Dinner, they also have Mexi night (Tues) and Down Home night (Fri). I have to admit to being skeptical about Down Home night--a menu from the collard greens, corn bread, and catfish chapter of the Great American Cookbook. Can hippies really pull off classic southern cooking? It turns out...yes, they can! It's definitely got a hippie twist--the gravy is "groovy" (vegetarian) and the chicken is free-range, but those adjustments are definitely improvements.

Other events:
Concerts, Bingo, open mic, World Cup--there's always something interesting going on.


Atmosphere:
To give you some idea, here's what happened the last time I was at LGC. I had my three-week-old son with me, and while my sister and I were debating whether to get the Go Ask Alyce or the Breezer, he started to fuss. After a moment's hesitation, I decided to nurse him, covering up with a receiving blanket. This was the first time I had ever nursed in public, and I was pretty nervous about it. I don't think I would have attempted it at any other restaurant in town. A waitress came up to take our order. She took one look at me, the receiving blanket, the little baby legs sticking out from under it, and said, "If you're comfortable nursing with a cover, that's cool, but I just want you to know that you don't have to cover up here." If you're the sort of person who wants to give that waitress a high-five, LGC is the place for you. If, on the other hand, you can't believe I was nursing in public, even covered up--well, think twice about going, and be prepared to avert your eyes. LGC is the kind of laid-back place where you frequently see families with tiny kids, people swapping tables to chat with a friend they hadn't expected to see, and everyone from newspaper reporters in their shirts and ties to JMU kids in their jeggings.

But what if I'm not a hippie?
Have the local organic burger. It's incredibly delicious...but it's a burger. Seriously. No hippification, except for the sourcing on the meat. No weird spices, no patchouli aftertaste, no tie-dyed bun. I promise. It even comes with fries.

A town for foods

Why start a blog about Harrisonburg dining? Well, I think our little town has incredible eats. How many other towns this size can boast three Thai restaurants, two Indian restaurants, two Peruvian restaurants, and more Mexican restaurants than you can shake a stick at? When I started working in Harrisonburg in the fall of 2005, I had no idea the gustatory delights that awaited me. Unfortunately, Harrisonburg is a city that keeps its treasures hidden. You really have to know where to go. Am I the only person who has to circle through the Lowe's parking lot to figure out where to turn for Dona Rosa's? And who would guess from a glance at the exterior that Saigon Cafe is such a treasure? I only discovered all the delicious secrets of Harrisonburg by having friends tell me about them, drawing maps on the backs of envelopes and scribbling directions like, "Park at the tire store, but only after hours."

I lived in Staunton for three years, and during that time, it would never have occurred to me to trek up the highway for a great meal, even though the selections for ethnic food in Staunton at that time were really limited (basically, it was Baja Bean for Mexican, the now-defunct Joey's for Italian, or some random crappy Chinese buffet). I think that demonstrates a major failing on the part of Harrisonburg's tourism board. How could I live half an hour away from the confusingly-named American Indian Cafe (where the food is, rumor has it, Nepalese) for three years, and not have any idea? Harrisonburg should be the FOOD CITY, in the same way that Staunton is Shakespeareville. We should have it on our bumper stickers. I actually went to talk with someone at the tourism board about this, but I don't think she got it. She pointed out that we have the International Festival. Well, it's a fine event, but that comes only once per year--and how many people from neighboring cities have heard of that? So I'm taking things into my own hands. Taste of Harrisonburg, here we go.

A few notes about what to expect:

• Each entry will feature one restaurant or other food source in the Harrisonburg area. 
• I will include directions, pricing, a review of the atmosphere and the food, and, where possible, some notes on the business history. 
• I'll try to have a dining partner with me, so that you get multiple points of view. 
• I'll note my own biases, so you know where I'm coming from. 
• No one is paying me to write this stuff. If a restaurant offers me a free meal, I'll say so--and still review it fairly. 
• I don't work for any restaurants, nor have I ever worked for a restaurant in Harrisonburg. I don't even have close friends who work at the Harrisonburg restaurants, at least not at the moment. 
• All opinions expressed on this blog are my own and shouldn't be construed as any one else's.