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?

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