Restaurant review: El Rey Tolteca - Manassas, VA

My cousin has been wanting to take Austin and I out to eat for a while now.  He owed us one, or so he said.  So we went to El Rey Tolteca.  I haven't been there in a long time.  The rage lately is upscale Mexican cuisine.  This place isn't really upscale, but the food is great.  Much good.  They serve you chips and fresh salsa when you first sit down.  I ordered the Chile Verde, sliced beef with chile verde sauce, refried beans, and rice with two flour tortillas.  Yum!  I was full to order dessert or I would have gotten flan.  I make flan, and one day I will get authentic Mexican flan.  I want to see how it compares to mine.
As is my policy, I did not take any pictures.  I will instead direct you to their website, http://www.elreytolteca.com.

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Janina said...

I wanna try Mexican flan sometime too. Btw just ate at Noodles and Company tonight. Great place. You should go sometime.

March 11, 2011 10:34 PM

karen czekalski said...

one of our favorite places here in OH is "the crazy burrito" they are very yummy :D if you are ever out here you should try it.

March 14, 2011 12:22 PM

Restaurant review: Anthony's Restaurant - Manassas, VA

I went with the family for dinner tonight at Anthony's Restaurant in Manassas.  I have been there several times before.  Love that place.  They do Greek and Italian food right.  Most times I get the Gyro Platter.  It is amazing.  Last time I was there I got stuffed grape leaves.  They were quite good.  Tonight I thought about getting the Gyro Platter again, or maybe the Gyro Pita, but I decided to go Italian instead of Greek like I normally do.  Got the Cannelloni.  Tube pasta filled with meat, topped with Marinara sauce and cheese, and baked.  It came with a house salad and garlic bread.  It was good...very good.  I was too full to order dessert or I would have ordered the special dessert, Red Velvet Cheesecake.  It sounded amazing.  Check out their website, http://www.anthonysrestaurantva.com/.  They have two locations, the one in Manassas and the original one in Falls Church.

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Restaurant review: Siam Classic - Manassas, VA

Friday evening I went with my brother, sister, her boyfriend, and his brother to Siam Classic.  I have been wanting to try it out for a while.  So when Jon and Josh came down from New York to visit Janina we decided to go.  It is a pretty small place in Old Town Manassas.  We got there and the restaurant was about half filled with people.  The kitchen was rolling out the food.  It seems like they do a lot of carry-out.  We were there about an hour and a half and people were coming in left and right to pick up their food to go.

On to what matters...the food.  I got an appetizer, Fried Tofu.  I never had tofu before and wanted to try it.  It was pretty good.  The dipping sauce that came with it made it rather good.  Eaten just by itself was a tad weird.  For an entree I got Flaming Quail.  I don't really know how to explain what it was.  It was good though.  There were some quail eggs in it.  Yum!  The flaming came from some sort of alcohol they poured over it and ignited right before serving it.  Cool presentation.

Austin got the House Seafood.  It looked great.  He said it was awesome.  The rest of them got duck.  Duck is amazing.  I was thinking about getting some sort of duck before deciding on the quail.

For dessert I got the Fried Bananas and Ice Cream.  Two pieces of banana wrapped in some sort of dough and fried.  I forget what the dough was.   Served with a scoop of coconut ice cream.  Yum, yum!  The rest of them got Fruit Cheesecake.  It snuck a taste from Jon.  It was very good!

Again, as in my other restaurant review, I did not take any pictures.  I don't want to be that foodie guy who snaps picture after picture of the food in a restaurant.  I think that is not cool.  Check out their website: http://www.siam-classic.com/.  Nice place.  I want to go again some time for lunch and during the week when they are maybe not so busy.

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Restaurant review: Tandoori Village - Manassas, VA

I want to start eating out more.  I want to eat at little places though, not big places, if you know what I mean.  Support the little man, not the big chain restaurant.

Today for lunch I went with my friend, and pastor, Ivan Schrock, to eat at Tandoori Village Restaurant in Manassas.  It is a small North Indian cuisine place.  We both got the lunch buffet.  Nice place.  Good food.  The chicken curry was good and spicy.  I don't usually like curry, but I now believe I like Indian curry.  They served us a big thing of fried bread, which was yum.  There was some sort of spinach and potato dish.  It look weird, but tasted fantastic.  The rice pudding was quite good, too.

I would go there again.  Nice place.  I didn't take any pictures but you can check out their website.

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2 comments:

Rachel said...

Tandoori Village! I love that place. I haven't been in months. I actually prefer their non-buffet meals, even though they're more expensive. My favorite is a chicken dish in a tomato and butter based sauce - it's really delicious, but I can't remember what it's called. If you go back, you should also try some of their teas. Their Punjabi Chai is great, it tastes a lot like the rice pudding, actually.

January 18, 2011 2:51 AM

Andrew Schrock said...

I want to go back sometime for dinner. We saw the lady setting up for the dinner service when we were about to leave. Looks like it would be great. Food from the buffet was good so I can imagine ordering from the menu would be even better.

January 18, 2011 11:05 PM

Restaurant review: Woodberry Kitchen - Baltimore, MD

Last Monday, September 27, was Janina's 21st birthday.  Her boyfriend came down from New York for a couple days.  Monday evening we went to Baltimore.  We went to eat at Woodberry Kitchen with our cousins Danae, Donna, and her husband, Brian.  Now, there is a little back-story to all of this.  A while back, before Donna was married, Glen and I went to Baltimore to spend the day with her.  The plan was for us three to do stuff in and around Baltimore, then go eat at Woodberry Kitchen with Danae.  The thing is, we didn't know when exactly what time we would go to Woodberry Kitchen, so we didn't make reservations.  We drove up there probably around 5:00 pm or something, and were told that without reservations we would have to wait 3 hours.  We didn't have that much time because Glen and I were planning to go to Sonar for a concert later on in the evening.  So we went to the harbor and ate at McCormick & Schmick's.  It was very good.  However, we were kinda bummed that we did not eat at Woodberry Kitchen.  So I made sure to make reservations for us Monday evening.  I think we were all impressed with the place.  It has a nice, casual vibe.  They have a big, open kitchen.  It was Monday evening and there was probably 8 chefs working, with about 5 other servers and baristas.  That was different to see, since I am not used to an open kitchen and at most we will have 4 chefs working the line on the busy weekends.  It was cool though to see how they all worked together.  Each one of them had their own specific task to do that made the whole process run smoothly.  The food was excellent.  Our server greeted us soon after we were seated and took our drink orders.  We were given complimentary water and bread before ordering.  The bread was excellent, by the way.  I ordered one of the specials, John the Butcher's Board.  It was a long, narrow board lined with several different cold cuts of meat, shaved hams, pepperoni, sausage, and such.  Oh, and there was some head cheese.  It was served with crusty bread, a bit of jam, mustard, and pickled veggies.  Was quite good.  Then for dessert I had something called Beer and Chocolate.  It was interesting, but very good.  There was some sort of house made cracker on the bottom, topped with a big chunk of milk chocolate, a bit of beer sorbet, a chocolate tuille, and sprinkled with caramel popcorn.  Quite good.  I don't know who would think of putting caramel popcorn with it, but it made the whole dessert better.  The crunch of the popcorn with the chocolate and the sorbet was very good.  They serve a wide variety of ice cream there.  Probably the most bizarre one was basil.  Brian asked the server if he had ever tried it.  He said that he had and that it had recently won an award for best dessert of something in the area.  When he brought out our other desserts he gave us a complimentary scoop of the basil ice cream for us to see what all the fuss is about.  I must say it was good.  Interesting, different, green of course, but very good.

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