Lambertville is a funky place. This small New Jersey city has a deep history dating back to 1732 and has visible ties to the Revolutionary War era. Beautiful row houses and narrow streets give this town a distinct historic charm.
There is a level of diversity we see here that we haven’t seen since living in cities like San Francisco and Portland. LGBT friendly, it is replete with artists, musicians, and a vibrant culinary scene that contributes to the rich culture of the town. It is a perfect mirror of neighboring New Hope which is right across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.
We’ve dined at a number of restaurants here. The area provides a variety of different eateries whether it being Peruvian or an upscale steak house. One of our favorite places to visit is Bell’s Tavern.
It is a quaint yet very busy Tavern that’s has been family owned for years that offer excellent cocktails, wine and beer, and every Tuesday, they create a twenty dollar bottle wine menu and a twelve dollar pasta menu that comes with a salad and garlic bread.
My wife opted for the linguine with meat sauce. The portions are massive and we ended up taking half home. For an additional three dollars more, you can order another bowl. The pasta was cooked perfectly and their sauce was amazing. For two people, you could have wine and a full meal for less than twenty five dollars a person.
I opted for a steak, with mashed potatoes and a side of sautéed spinach. I haven’t had a steak in over a year, and it was spectacular. It was also accompanied by a side of roasted red bell peppers. Cooked a perfect midrare. The side of spinach had hints of chili flakes and a generous amount of garlic. We devoured it, no questions asked.
The place is always lively with a great mix of folks who frequently dine here. The service is friendly and efficient. We didn’t feel rushed even though the dining room filled up quickly. Our next visit we plan on sitting at the bar. It always gives off a party vibe when we pass through.
I highly recommend Bell’s Tavern to anyone who appreciates a well executed menu with great, friendly service.
La Maya Hellertown
June 2, 2026
In the vast culinary landscape of rural South East Pennsylvania, using the old adage needle in a haystack phrase rings true on many occasions when you are attempting to find food that doesnt fall under the category of tavern, Italian or diner.
I get it. The area is replete with my fellow working class folks who enjoy simple meals, but we are definitely witnessing a gentrification of areas once home to acres upon acres of farmland. Sprawling fields of agriculture being gobbled up by subdivisions of McMansions as far as the eye can see.
We find ourselves venturing outside of Bucks County to seek out food that doesn’t usually fit into the categories I just previously mentioned. Hellertown is a charming little borough in the Lehigh Valley county of Northampton.
Founded in 1742, Hellertown consists of a modest downtown that is home to a number of restaurants that continue to draw us to this charming hamlet. Typical Mexican restaurants where we live simply don’t exist or they aren’t very good. This place was highly recommended. We made the choice. Off to Hellertown we go!
Even though the place has a feeling of slight appropriation and a tad hipsterish, we do appreciate good food made with local ingredients. All in house liquor is PA made and it’s a scratch kitchen so we entered the vestibule with an open mind.
The bar and dining area is shotgun designed that seats around forty guests. It is well decorated and unlike typical Mexican restaurants.
Perusing the menu, we were greeted by an eager server who was definitely trained to steer us to fan favorites that he highly recommended. Having never dined here before, we put our faith in his hands and chose items from the menu he suggested.
We first decided on two cocktails. La Moda Mexicana and the Coco Pasion. Both delicious.
Our server suggested their most popular appetizers to start. The ceviche and guacamole and chips. We enjoyed the flavors of both dishes though they could have been simplified a bit so they could be navigated easier. The seafood on the ceviche was cut extremely small so we fumbled when trying to make it’s way to our mouths and the two large tortilla shells didn’t work well when breaking them apart as we dug into the guacamole.
We moved on to one of our favorite appetizers. Enfrijolada is Queso Oaxaca, corn and wild mushroom stuffed tortilla, bean sauce, habanero crema, and queso fresco. We found the flavors unique. It was a fantastic dish.
We shared the Pescado a la Talla which is butterflied grilled branzino, marinated in salsa verde, topped with red cabbage slaw, morita salsa, and verde cruda, served with house-made tortillas. It was delicious though we probably wouldn’t order it again. The amount of bones I encountered made it difficult to navigate and the micro greens made it difficult to identify the random bones as well.
We enjoyed our visit. Despite some of my mixed reviews on what we chose, we will definitely return. Their menu is extensive and veggie friendly which our dining companion really enjoyed as well.
My Recipe For A Great BBQ Sauce
February 26, 2026
I’ve tinkered around with BBQ sauces for years. There are so many variations that have roots to regions of the United States. Each sauce has it’s own distinct flavor, whether its sweet, spicy, vinegar forward or mustard. I love them all.
I tend to try to balance them all. Slightly sweet but also has a good acid presence with a little heat. It’s been an evolutionary process that now has about 15 ingredients. This is a large batch recipe but with some adjustments can be scaled down for a smaller batch. Enjoy!!
Our Own Version Of Cheers Revisted
February 26, 2026
In the vast wasteland of Bucks County Tavern and Pub scene, there are diamonds in the rough that give you that Cheers feeling of inclusion.
My last few years as a chef have been mainly focused on upscale tavern cuisine. Simple, home-cooked meals, elevated but still approachable to the working class folks that keep these places humming.
We’ve tried a number of places to extract those feelings of inclusion and community. My previous employment at The Farmhouse Tavern comes to mind. Unfortunately due to poor management and unsavory business practices out of my control, this place is no longer an option for our dining needs.
We ventured into a local tavern just up the hill from our home called The Gardenville Hotel. Not a hotel anymore but it is an historic tavern dating all the way back to the Civil War, steeped in history.
We love connecting with local patrons. We tried this in Cincinnati at a place called The Friendly Stop in Glendale Ohio. Great food but friendly wasn’t on the menu. We literally felt invisible everytime we went in. Check please!
We initially went for drinks at The Gardenville. I’ve always been skeptical of pub food establishments. I always compared their food with mine and my wife always complained that she preferred my food over anywhere we ate. Not to sound ego centric but so did I.
We started going more frequently to Gardenville. It’s cozy, welcoming and the staff is always really attentive and seemed to love working there.
We noticed everyone ate when sitting in the bar section of the Hotel. It’s a small, funky space replete with deer heads, odd decorations and a comfortable seating area. Perfect for what we were looking for.
They have a decent tap list, a great to go beer selection and a well rounded food menu. We decided to try some of their offerings. We ended up being one of their biggest fans. Really good burgers, fish and chips and great turkey dinners.
Our wallets weren’t happy because I constantly drug my wife there because the social scene keeps us in a positive light being stuck in the middle of nowhere.
No one screams our name when we come in but they know what we drink, and are always happy to strike up a spirited conversation with us. It definitely makes us feel welcomed and that’s really important during these trying times.
This Cracker Hated The Barrel!
November 6, 2025
There’s this old adage that has forever rang true to me. “First time, shame on you, second time, shame on me.”
Enter Cracker Barrel. This is one of those shame on me moments. I’m currently seeing my mom, who is in hospice, which in itself is painful enough, but then you add an excruciating trip through the culinary gates of hell called Cracker Barrel, I believe I must have committed some mortal sin that carved a path to what they consider a foyer.
If every exploited nation that produced useless Tchotchkes were to take a gigantic dump at the same time, all of these consumer feces would have landed smack dab in the lobby of The Barrel.
The lobby was a horrid labyrinth of isles chock full of shit no one needs, a cacophony of keyboards playing music that would make baby Jesus ears bleed rivers of blood and a tsunami of olfactory aromas where you could literally smell fried food and sandlewood at the same time.
Just trying to navigate our way to put our name in for a seat triggered my afib. I’ve seen Japanese subway cram videos that were less claustrophobic than a Cracker Barrel lobby. My head was spinning.
The entire seating procedures were culled straight from a Six Flags business model. Replete with a PA system, we heard our name unfortunately called, which blasted out from a speaker and proceeded to navigate past a horde of ravenous groups of people that should have sworn off this establishment years ago.
The noise level was deafening with screaming kids, food chomping parents, and staff that had to yell over everyone to just do their jobs. It was like being in a wind tunnel.
Speaking of the staff. I genuinely felt for them. Dealing with people that treated them like paid slaves, unruly kids, and huge groups of people wanting everything immediately, every one of them had the appearance of someone that had every ounce of their soul drained from bodies. I actually felt guilty ordering, but we needed to see this through.
I ordered the fried chicken, and my wife ordered over easy eggs with pancakes, and our friend ordered biscuits and gravy.
It’s painfully obvious these places only goal is to stuff asses into seats but as a chef, what I saw coming out of the kitchen resembled every short cut you could take to handle the greed they displayed by over seating this place.
Every item we had besides my wife’s eggs was pre made and then reheated. Reheated pancakes, my chicken was luke warm, and the sides were all slop and serve.
My friends biscuit gravy was so gelatinous that her spoon stood straight up in the serving cup. I looked at her and said, “Are they mad at you? We finally took our last edible bites and begged for the check. Another bizarre moment is when you have to pay. You are once again forced to endure their hellish gift shop to line up in front of a row of kiosks to pay for your “meal.”
It would be easy enough to just pay and leave but the staff is required under penalty of the business end of a cattle prod to bombard you with merchandise questions about if you want to buy any of their garbage on their shelves. My wife almost lost her shit on that poor soul taking our money, but to her credit, she kept her composure as we sprinted to our car.
Yeah, lets not boycott Cracker Barrel for their shameless peddling of foreign produced garbage, the glaring culinary sins committed, or their obvious seating missteps but instead lets boycott them because they changed their fucking logo. We are so cooked as a country, I swear to God. In the fifteen years of contributing to this blog, I’ve never written a negative review about food, but this shame on me experience warranted it. Full fucking stop. Never, ever again
The Only Tavern We Support
September 7, 2025
I realize Bucks County has a ways to go to achieve what other areas of the country have gained culinary. It’s rural, sparsely populated, and isn’t pushing envelopes we’ve been used to.
I get it. If you are going to serve food that pleases the common working man, you have to do it right. It has to be consistent, and above all, it has to taste good.
In the last couple of years, we’ve been loyal patrons at The Gardenville Hotel. A historic mid seventeenth century former hotel. With ties to the Revolutionary War, it is a wonderful tavern that serves really good American fare.
We only just recently started going there. One reason is I was already a chef at a Doylestown Tavern call The Farmhouse. We really had no reason to venture out to any other taverns because my wife loved my cooking, and I became acquainted with many regulars who were an integral part of my social life. Plus, other taverns in the area couldn’t touch our quality of the food.
After leaving The Farmhouse in 2023, we struggled to find a decent place for a burger or wings. We lived just down the hill from Gardenville and thought of the place as a drinking establishment vs. a full service restaurant.
One afternoon, we decided on drinks at Gardenville and wandered in. The bar was funky and old. Deer heads all over the walls, various pictures on the walls, many showcasing the owner’s fishing jaunts, and we immediately felt at home.
The servers, who have been there years, provide some of the friendliest and attentive service we’ve ever experienced.
Since we now go at least twice a week, they anticipate our needs immediately. It’s a rarity to find places like this in our area. Most of the Taverns just don’t care enough to go the extra mile. This place blows most local Taverns away.
We highly suggest their wings, the burgers are excellent as well as amazing fish and chips and turkey anything. It isn’t cheap, but nothing really is post pandemic. We only sit at the tables in the bar. That’s where the fun really is. The dining room is More suited for families and older folks. We like the buzz the bar provides.
The Gardenville Burger
Bro Can Cook!
July 24, 2021
I’m currently staying at my brother’s house for a week-long visit. We are pretty simple folks. Nothing has to be too fancy and we look at food pretty straightforward. Today, he decided to ramp up his breakfast game and the result was pretty damn good. I’ve worked in upscale brunch places on and off for several years. His creation, though simple would be an excellent grab-and-go item for the busy commuter in the morning.
He made from delicious bacon, sausage, and cheese biscuit cups. He proceeded to make scrambled eggs, sausage that was chopped, and then rolled out biscuit dough with a little bit of flour and places the biscuit dough in a muffin pan, then spoon in the mixed egg and sausage mixture then top with shredded cheddar cheese. After about ten minutes, VOILA! Breakfast is served. Add some fresh fruit and it was a great filling meal! Nice job JP!!!
Fish! It’s What’s For Dinner!
July 24, 2021
As I resurrected my blog after an extended time in limbo, I didn’t think that I would be focused on cuisine that spans from South America to Spain. I’ve always enjoyed the flavor combinations that are derived from fresh ingredients and the spices that make this food patently unique. I picked up some Red Snapper at a local grocery and some simple vegetables. It was to be a quick meal to keep things lite since my diet has been all over the board recently.
I managed to find purple potatoes, which are also called Peruvian purple potatoes. They have the same texture and taste as red bliss potatoes but are bright purple. The colors tend to fade when boiled but still have a nice colorful hue. They are different than the purple Okinawan sweet potatoes which I cannot seem to find anywhere but these worked perfectly for the dish.
The aim was to make a simple has combining fresh-cut corn, potatoes, red onion, , chives and some smoked apple wood seasoning. The combinations were great. Sweet corn flavors with a hint of smoke and some heat.
I used a blackening seasoning for the snapper and seared the fish in a cast-iron skillet. I then decided on a smoked Romesco sauce. It’s a simple Spanish condiment used on various proteins such as fish, chicken, or beef. It’s a combination of roasted peppers, tomato, garlic, chili flakes, red wine vinegar, and in this case I used smoked almonds instead of regular sliced almonds. The result was a deliciously tangy and complex sauce that worked very well with the fish.
Pork! The Other White…Oh Let’s Just Do This!
July 4, 2021
In my attempt to find fun ingredients to prepare, I discovered a small grocery store in Hartwell called Country Fresh Market. They offer a variety of dry goods, meats, prepared foods, and a killer beer and wine department. The prices are competitive as well. I managed to get my hands on some beautiful Spring Onions.
I also picked up Pork Loin, Honeycrisp Apples, and other various items that will help compel me to cook versus eating at chain food outlets.
It’s a fairly straightforward dish. I roasted the Spring Onions and Apples with Olive Oil, Salt, and Pepper. I pan-seared the Pork Loin and roasted it with fresh sage. I made a simple Mushroom Couscous and then prepared a Balsamic Pan Gravy which was Beef Broth, Balsamic Reduction, and cracked Black Pepper. I reduced it to a glaze.
I let the Pork Loin repose, sliced half, and then kept the other half whole to give a contrast in texture. The result was a great, balanced meal. The whole process took me about a half-hour. No, there were no leftovers….
Bon Appetit!
