Fourth Street

4th St. "The Downtown Experience"

123 S. 4th St.
Clarksburg, WV 26301

Lunch: Monday - Friday 11am-3pm

Dinner: Monday - Saturday 5pm-10pm

Nestled on a side street in, where-else? downtown clarksburg, 4th St "The Downtown Experience" may have a bit of a confusing name...(is it just 4th St.? is it the "Downtown Experience?" or both together??) and the menu may be all over the place - sushi, burgers, gyros, filet? But the food and service is spot on.

There are two main sections, the dining room which is quiet and cozy with low lighting, candles, and a quaint view of 4th street outside; and the bar area which is also dark, cozy and inviting. A small stage sits in the middle of the bar area for the Tuesday night live blues musicians.

The place is always very quiet when we've been there during the week, and not much busier on the Saturday evening we vistied, not that I mind - I feel like it's a well kept secret. I'm just puzzled as to why more people aren't coming here to eat instead of all the chain restaurants on Emily Drive?

When we first started coming here, the full menu was available each night, however I was told last time that the full menu is only available now on Friday and Saturday evenings, with the weeknights each featuring a theme...Monday Margaritaville night with Cheeseburgers in paradise, Tuesdays Blues and Sushi, I don't remember Wednesday night but I think Thursday is a steak option? This news was very dissapointing to me, because although as I mentioned, I do think their menu is all over the place, the polar opposite of having such limited choices during the week is not a great idea either. But, off my soap box and onto the dinner table...

4th Street's signature martini consists of raspberry vodka, peach wine, champagne and berries, and I LOVE it! It says fresh raspberries on the menu, but each time I've ordered one, it has been a delightful blend of frozen mixed berries which I'm more than okay with. I may be wrong on this, but I'm thinking these are a mere $5 each which I think is fantastic, just a few streets over this drink would be at least $8.50.

As I mentioned, the menu is varied to say the least, and while in some venues, the wide variety might lead to everything being half-assed, for lack of a better term, each type of dish we have ordered has come out with such freshness and quality that you'd expect to be in a restaurant that specialized in that respective ethnic cuisine.

My husband loves deep fried oysters, and he totes the oyster appetizer as being some of the tastiest he's had....at least outside of Louisiana. While I have no desire to eat oysters in any representation, their remoulade is excellent; spicy, creamy and very flavorful. On our last visit we ordered the Crab Augratin and it was brimming with large lumps of crab, and rivaled crab we have eaten in Alaska!

While we have eaten there several times, apologetically I have not taken my camera with me (I've got to order that uv filter and lens cap today!) so again, you'll have to settle for iPhone pictures...and limited ones at that. Not pictured are the above appetizers, the seafood salad (with a large crab cake and more of that delicious remoulade), the crab cake sandwich, the oyster po'boy - can you tell my husband likes seafood? and lastly, the A la Vodka.

While I won't spend too much time talking about delicious things that you can't see, I do have to mention the A la Vodka. I ordered this because I love vodka sauce and their sauce won the 2009 Italian Heritage Festival Pasta Cookoff, and let me tell you, that is big around these here parts! One bite of the tender pasta and sauce and I could tell you why this was a winner, well really I can't put it into words other than "YUM" so you'll have to just take a leap of faith here and trust me, and order that pasta! Crisp pancetta throughout perfectly cooked pasta, tossed in the perfect, creamy, tangy goodness....I need a minute.

*****

Ahhh, okay...so what did we order that you can see?

My husband ordered a chimichanga, soft. It was enormous! Filled with slow roasted beef and served with a fresh pico de gallo, rice, black beans and fresh leaf lettuce (no bagged iceberg shreds, yay!!) After eating a half bucket of oysters he couldn't manage to finish it all, but from the size of it, he probably couldn't have finished it even without the appetizer. It was refreshing to see such fresh ingredients being used.

My meal was also very fresh and flavorful, and other than ordering pasta on the one occassion, I can't seem to stay away from the Tandori Chicken Platter.

Hot fresh flatbread, grilled marinated chicken breast, saffron rice, fresh leaf lettuce, olives, house-made hummus and tabouleh. Like other entree's here, the platter is huge and I end up taking at least half of it home so I can tell you, it is still good the next day!

Everything is so fresh tasting and looking that it is hard to find any faults with this dish, other than I'd like more veggies in the tabouleh, and maybe twice the amount of hummus but that's probably just because that way I could eat the whole portion with the first sitting, and then have the same amount for the second sitting...

For whatever reason, we've never managed to have dessert at 4th Street, and sadly I can't recall the options but I'm sure it is just as carefully prepared as everything else they serve. I enjoy eating here, it is comfortable and unpretenious. The serving staff is polite and knowledgable, prices are very reasonable and the quality and presentation is outstanding. The first time I went, I truly wasn't expecting the food to be as good as it was, yet "The Downtown Experience" is an enjoyable one.

Muriale's

Muriale's Restaurant
1742 Fairmont Avenue
Fairmont, WV 26554-2038
(304) 363-3190

Perhaps the only reason I have not gotten around to reviewing Muriale's before now is that we eat there so often, it seems strange to me to think there is anyone who does NOT know of its yum-factor. While going through my pictures to find other restaurants I planned to review, I found these I took last summer.

One of Marion County's crown jewels, Muriale's opened its doors in 1969, and it is rare to dine there without seeing owner Rocco Muriale walking through the dining rooms and greeting customers, talking to customers, and making sure customer service is at the same high-quality level as the food being served.

I prefer to eat in the bar area, it's cozy and I enjoy the hominess of a fireplace and bookshelves filled with cookbooks. My husband also tends to like the sporting events playing on the large televisions in that room, volume turned off so as not to be completely obtrusive.

There are several things I love to order from Muriale's, the lasagna is the best I've ever eaten, anywhere, hands down. They have a fantastic chicken and asparagus salad (no longer on the menu but when I was there last time and asked for it, they prepared it for me). It was a beautifully grilled chicken breast served on a large bed of spinach and mixed greens, roasted red peppers and asparagus, along with a variety of olives topped with a lively lemon vinaigrette.

On this day, we started out with the signature house salad, with house dressing. My only complaint about their salad is the iceberg lettuce - Rocco, if you are reading this, please upgrade your lettuce! It comes with a single slice of pepperoni, some house-made pickled onions, a few jarred roasted red pepper strips, a green olive, a black olive and a hearty sprinkle of mozzarella cheese. I really like their house dressing, a simple olive oil and vinegar combination though I always ask for lemons and squeeze the juice on for extra acidity.

My favorite thing about Muriale's has to be their red sauce. It has such depth, and so many layers of flavor that try as I might I am unable to pinpoint all the ingredients that go into it, and I surely have failed at being able to recreate it. I tell my husband each time we eat there that if I knew how to make Muriale's sauce, we would never eat out at a restaurant again because I would want to make it all the time. We both ordered the meatball sandwich, and to my delight it came smothered in red sauce. I can tell you that not one drop of that sauce went to waste and it took great restraint not to just lick my plate, that's how good that sauce is people.

Several big, tender meatballs, sliced in half and, again, smothered in sauce between two thick slices of Italian bread. It really just doesn't get any more perfect. As you can see from the picture there was a little cheese sprinkled on, and I honestly can't remember if there was much cheese on the sandwich, but it doesn't matter because I didn't order it for the cheese, I ordered it for those meatballs.

Fries came on the side; steak fries, nicely browned and with cracked black pepper and a good fry to salt ratio, but really they were just a filler and I could have done without them.

Now whether we need it or not, we almost always order dessert. Usually, my game plan is to skip the pre-dinner Italian bread they bring out, and eat most of my salad. Then I eat half my lasagna (because I almost always order lasagna) and take the other half home so I will make sure to have enough room for dessert. While I've strayed a few times, with the almond torte and maybe one time the cannoli, I typically always get the tiramisu, and my husband always gets the peanut butter pie.

Every Italian restaurant serves a tiramisu and a "New York style" cheesecake, and most of these places get both delivered to their freezers. Muriale's makes their own, and it shines. The tiramisu is served in a parfait dish; its layers smooshed together, yet still discernible and delicious. I'd love to get a hold of whatever brand mascarpone they use because it is the creamiest I've ever had.

I have to apologize for the quality of the peanut butter pie picture. You see my husband is generally tolerant of waiting to eat his meal until after I have taken a picture of it, but I only get a few takes, especially when it comes to dessert, and it just happened I was allowed to get two pictures in before he chowed down, and both were slightly blurry. You can see though that the peanut butter pie has a thick filling loaded with chocolate chips and is covered in delicious chocolate ganache on a chocolate cookie crust. They drizzle it with caramel and chocolate and serve it with ice cream, I mean really how could they go wrong with that? As with the tiramisu, it is obviously made in-house.

To me, Muriale's is comforting and homey and I love to go there on rainy Sunday evenings when I miss my family or need some comfort food. If I had an Italian grandmother, I can imagine this is the food she would serve me, of course if I had an Italian grandmother who made that sauce I would have already stolen the recipe off of her.

The Purple Fiddle

The Purple Fiddle
21 East Avenue
P.O. Box 87
Thomas, WV 26292
Phone: 304-463-4040

After nearly a year-long hiatus, here I am! A few years ago my husband and I stopped at The Purple Fiddle to eat, on our way back from a weekend trip to WV's eastern panhandle. At the time my tastes were much different to say the least...I didn't even know what hummus was for cryin' out loud! Needless to say our meal was not favorable.

Today I was traveling alone, having met my in-laws at Blackwater Falls State Park, and I decided to swing by The Purple Fiddle for a quick dinner to go, and to give it another chance. I have not been taking my d60 anywhere lately as I need to order a new uv filter and lens cap, so you will have to settle for iPhone pictures.



The Purple Fiddle is located on the riverfront in Thomas, you can't miss it! They offer both indoor and outdoor dining - extremely casual. They routinely have live music, and I would imagine the place is lively at night.



The dessert specials of the day were a chocolate sin thing and Boston cream pie...they also had several flavors of locally made ice cream including fresh peach (which I got a scoop of and really enjoyed...very real peachy instead of artificial peachy, smooth and very creamy), cantaloupe, blueberry muffin, etc... Glass apothecary jars were filled with cookies (white chocolate cranberry) and various flavors of biscotti.

The beer selection was great, lots of microbrews...I wish I would have paid more attention to the selections but there were at least 20 different choices.






Decor is as laid-back as the employees...very comfortable, easy mismatched chairs, tables, dishes, tablecloths...but everything was cohesive somehow. It is the type of place where families, bikers, bicyclists, and solo-day trippers like myself can all eat at without feeling out of place.

I was on my way home so I thought a wrap would be the easiest thing to eat on the road. I went with the New River Train- roast beef, provolone, house-made hummus and veggies.

Great choice - very flavorful, though I should have asked for no onions (it had both green and red). The roast beef could have also been made in-house, it was thick and very tender. The wrap itself was the perfect texture, slightly chewy and soft.

I would definitely make another stop here, and would really like to catch one of the musical performances. Road trip anyone?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Parkette

Parkette
(Listed as "The Parkette" on the list)
Old Rt. 50/Old Bridgeport Hill Rd
Clarksburg, WV 26431
304.623.0155

This was my second visit to the Parkette, and I'll admit I went in a little skeptical; my original visit was somewhat of a disaster. It was a cold, wet night, the place was packed, and it took half an hour to get drinks and order and an hour to get our food and all 5 of us at the table were hungry!

I'm glad this blog gave me reason to give this Harrison County mainstay another chance. Serving the area for over 50 years, Parkette serves up classic diner fare like hot turkey sandwiches, cheeseburgers and perhaps the best cherry milkshake I've ever had. In true Harrison County fashion(read: lots of Italian Heritage!), they also serve several Italian classics.

The three of us dining, barely beat the lunch rush and had no problems getting at able at 11:30. There were a variety of daily specials, so many I don't remember them all, but I know the list included stuffed peppers because I debated ordering that, and a chicken bacon sandwich, which both of my fellow diners chose. I decided on a meatball sandwich and fries, something I remembered drooling over last time.

Our friendly waitress took our order and the place began to fill up. What you immediately notice when you enter Parkette, is that the place is spotless! You would never know how busy it gets because everything sparkles and the side dining room where we were seated was no exception. One thing I immediately noticed, and appreciated, was the family portrait on the wall of who I'm guessing were the original owner's children, alongside their individual portraits (perhaps senior pictures?). Family and community seem to take center stage at Parkette, as other decor includes framed jerseys from the restaurant's baseball team, and numbered prints of WVU's Mountaineer Field AND Marshall's Joan C. Edward's Stadium.

As the restaurant filled up, the volume level considerably rose, making it difficult to carry on conversation (it was reaaaaaallly loud), but after 15 minutes or so we had our meals and weren't interested in talking too much then anyway. ;-)

The chicken bacon sandwiches looked amazing. The chicken was plump and juicy and the kaiser roll they were served on looked very good. As they dissapeared, I'm told they tasted as good as they looked. We all got french fries and they were nice and crispy, but they were frozen crinkle-cut fries, so beyond getting them to the right crispy level, it is hard to be more than a frozen crinkle cut fry...they were good all the same.

I ordered a meatball sandwich (different from their meatball hoagie which is served

on a 12" bun with your choice of peppers)..and as I mentioned, fries. You should know that when you live in Harrison County, as I do, you will eat about a billion meatballs...remember this is home to the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festaval, and every restaurant offers their own version.

To cut to the chase, the meatballs were perfect! So flavorful and juicy, and perfectly seasoned. I would have liked a little more sauce, but that is perhaps my only criticism. The bread was so soft and perfectly toasted, and was a great textural combination.

I'm glad I gave Parkette another try; it was a great, inexpensive and tasty lunch. Personally I like weekend meals out to be more of an experience, but for a weeknight dinner Parkette totally fits the bill.

Pies and Pints

Pies and Pints

219 W. Maple Ave.
Fayetteville, WV 25840

304.574.2200

Saturday night led myself and 3 companions to Fayetteville for a night of pizza and beer, as you probably guessed to the name of the restaurant - Pies and Pints.

Located in one of the coolest small towns in America, Fayetteville is a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts who come for various outdoor pursuits such as zip lining, kayaking, hiking, biking or rafting. It looks like the type of place you would want to poke around on a Saturday morning, going to antique stores, the farmer's market and then settle in to a nice lunch al fresco or indoors at a great little local spot - and Pies and Pints totally fits the bill.

We chose to dine outside in their lovely patio which is fully equipped with overhead heaters for chilly evenings, and an impressive play area for smaller clintele. While appetizers such as the pork and pepper nachos, and their giant, shareable Greek salads were extremelly tempting, we settled on a medium white pizza with roasted red peppers and tomatoes added on, and 3 small pies: a classico with pork sausage, banana peppers and pepperoni, a mushroom and garlic with jalepenos and my own choice, a pesto pizza fresh mozzarella (which i subbed for goat cheese) tomatoes and a basil aioli.

While the beer selection was impressive, we opted for a pitcher of Yuengling Lauger, taking advantage of it's new draft availability in our area.

Our server was polite and prompt, and before long we were enjoying our pizza feast. While I only tried 2 of the 4 pies present, I can tell you I would like nearly anything on the menu. For me it is all about the crust, and Pies and Pints has that down pat. The small pie was perfect for 1 person and two of us could have easily shared a medium and perhaps a salad, and left content.

Dessert selections included a peanut butter brownie terrine, tiramisu and cheesecake - each at

$4.75. One of my companions ordered the peanut butter brownie goodness which he gracioiusly gave me not one, but two bites of - for research purposes of course. The brownies were thin and crispy and a thick peanut butter cream seperated the layers, all dripping in a perfectly executed deep dark chocolate ganache.

The variety of toppings available was impressive, ranging from chopped sea clams and pulled pork, to grapes and gorgonzola (which are offered together on their wine and cheese pie).

I felt the pricing was very reasonable, and the ingredients were high quality; some of the best aioli I have ever had in any representation.

Pies and Pints does not accept reservations which is perhaps its only downfall. We arrived around 4:30 in order to guarantee ourselves a table, which we did easily. As we were leaving, closer to 6, the place was full! It is no surprise why, great atmosphere (both inside and out), friendly helpful staff and wonderful handcrafted pizza = a great experience!

My only question is, when can I go back?