Typically when I choose to go out to eat, I leave the Ewing area. No offense to Ewing, but for the most part its culinary offerings run more toward the realm of fast food and takeout, neither of which are my dinner of choice. But, a certain Editor-in-Chief of The Signal has been complaining about the lack of local food reviews, so I figured I’d pretend to care about appeasing him and took my family to Wildflowers Restaurant, just a few minutes’ drive from the College down Pennington Road.
I knew there was a reason I left the area to get a meal. This is the last time I bother trying to make Brendan McGrath happy.
To be fair, I’ve been to Wildflowers before and have enjoyed myself. However, I typically go for lunch, and always get their Soup/Caesar meal for $8.50. Their French onion soup is spectacular, the cheese engulfing the crock it’s served in, and the salad is perfect: crisp lettuce, croutons that taste homemade and a really great Caesar dressing.
This trip, however, I decided to branch out a little. I had heard rave reviews about their pizza, and decided to split a medium Mediterranean pie, topped with artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, plum tomatoes, mushrooms and feta cheese, with my mom.
I was disappointed with the size of the pizza. At $15, this medium pizza was roughly the size of the personal pizza that I ordered at Fedora Café (which I reviewed last week), but was $5 more and, in my opinion, significantly less delicious. The crust was thin and crisp, but virtually flavorless. In fact, I found the pizza in general to be very dry. To be fair, though, I ate it without the plum tomatoes, as I’ve stated my complete distrust of tomato in the past. My mother, who ate the tomatoes on her slices, assured me that they added the right amount of moisture to the pie. Regardless, I ended my meal feeling empty — there was pizza in my belly, but no food-joy in my heart.
The rest of my family was similarly dissatisfied with their meals. My aunts and uncle ordered salads, which they said were fine, but nothing particularly special. They had the same opinion about the cheese fries we split as an appetizer; they were simply fries with melted cheese, as generic as cheese fries could possibly be and not worth the calories or the money. My sister ordered chicken fingers, but proclaimed them “gross;” I stole a bite and found them to be dry and overcooked.
My dad was the only member of the family to clean his plate. He ordered the Romie Burger for $8.50, a burger topped with pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. I excitedly asked him whether or not he enjoyed it, hoping that at least one person had eaten a stellar meal. To my disappointment, he said it was fine, but once again, nothing special. He had only eaten so much because he was starving. I should have known better; I once watched him eat leftover pasta mixed with mashed potatoes; the man will eat anything. He did note that the burger bun was cold, though, which is a pet peeve of his.
I wouldn’t say that I would never return to Wildflowers. However, I know now to stick to my old reliable orders there. I would recommend the same to anyone else — play it safe and order the soup.
