Russ' Dinor - 2902 Buffalo Road, Erie, PA 16510
We had heard that Russ' Dinor (rather than Diner) was an Erie, PA landmark (though their menu says their address is Wesleyville, PA), and having lived here for more than a year, we pass by the restaurant often. We finally decided to go check it out after saying "we really should check that place out" one too many times.
I can't believe we hadn't checked this place out sooner! We love these kind of places. You almost step back in time by coming here. As soon as you enter the door, you go find a place to sit down, and you'll be greeted by the waitress as soon as she's able to get to you. Most of the clientele seems to be made up of regulars who must have been coming here for years, but we observed a number of younger people eating here as well. There was a lot of back-and-forth banter from the locals with each other as well as the waitress, and it was a lot of fun to just sit back and watch and listen to everything.
Like the restaurant in our last review, this place only accepts cash, but they also keep their prices fairly reasonable by doing so. A lot of the food seems to be made fresh, and it is very delicious. A number of people seem to stop in for just coffee and pie. We aren't coffee drinkers (Crissy will have one every now and then but only when necessary), and we'll get to the pie later.
While they seem to be best known for their breakfast foods, we came here during lunchtime and decided to go that route for our meal. We hope to be back soon to try some of their breakfast items and even some of their dinner items in the near future. We'll concentrate on lunch for now, though.
Tom had their bacon cheeseburger, which he says had an excellent taste to it and he says it contained a fairly hefty amount of bacon on it (almost the size of the burger patty itself), Tom also could not stop raving about the hot dog he had at Russ' Dinor, saying it had an amazing taste to it, reminding him of hot dogs he had when he was growing up that were made fresh by a butcher shop that had a little restaurant set up inside a building at the fairgrounds near where he grew up. We aren't sure what kind of hot dogs they serve here (we suspect they may be Smith's, which seems to be what 99% of Erie restaurants serve, being that it's the local brand of hot dog), but we know we'll be back for them often. The fries were fairly typical diner fries which tasted good with their ketchup.
Crissy also had their grilled cheese sandwich, which she says was the best grilled cheese she's ever had. You'd think she would have had tomato soup to go with her grilled cheese, but she didn't. Did I mention in a previous review how much we both love broccoli cheese soup?
Yeah, we both ordered their broccoli cheese soup. It surprised both of us, though, as in addition to the broccoli, it had carrots, celery, squash, and onion in addition to the broccoli and cheese, but boy was this one of the best tasting broccoli cheese soups we have ever had. I think both of us were a bit sad when we had finished our bowls.
I failed to mention that we started off our meals with some chocolate shakes, which were pretty large, but they sure don't last long! If you get one, make sure to wait until you've got your food before you start drinking it or else it will be gone in no time!
While we were having our meal, a couple of guys came in and sat down at a table, ordered their coffee, and asked what kind of pie they had. As soon as we heard the waitress say that one of the pies was butterscotch pie, we both looked at each other and went "ooh I bet that is delicious!" We were deciding on whether or not to have dessert, but it didn't take any convincing for us. We just had to try it. In fact, we anticipated it so much that we jumped the gun and started into our pie before we had a chance to get a picture to share! However, we stopped before we got too far along (which was no easy task, one taste of it and we were hooked!):
The pie had a fantastic flavor that was not overpowering, with a nice graham cracker crust and a topping of either pecans or walnuts for texture. I've never had anything else quite like this pie, and you could tell that it was definitely homemade. In some ways, this pie reminded me of those frozen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup pies that can sometimes be found in convenience stores, but this being homemade (and butterscotch being one of my favorite flavors overall) was a much better tasting pie than any of those. Not to mention the size of this piece of pie was huge for the price they charged for it (around $3.25). Now that's a deal if we ever heard of one.
It's time for us to be hitting the road again. We'll check in again next week with our next review. If you have comments about this restaurant, please let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment on this post. If there's a restaurant in your local area (whether or not it is local to us) that you'd like us to check out for a possible review on our blog, let us know by emailing us here.
We'll be branching further out of our local area soon with reviews from around the country, but until the next time, we'll catch you on the flip side.
This is Crissy and Tom Diehl, signing off....
No comments:
Post a Comment