Worcester Day of eating trip report

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (mr chips)

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:21:59 GMT

It looks like a wonderful day. I feel as if i were there with you. my first wife was from Lancaster near Worcester and i enjoyed my only visit there in my pre-roadfood days. Thanks to all of you 4 sharing.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (Ralph Melton)

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:37:22 GMT

No one at Clear Flour gave me any reaction at all to my picture-taking.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ScreenBear)

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 09:05:19 GMT

Peeking into Real McCoy Sandwich Shop on Carson, just to see what that's all about? In any case, bon appetit.
The Bear

Oops. Meant to put this in the Pittsburgh thread. Never mind.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (billyboy)

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:35:16 GMT

Love that write-up, Ralph and those pics were just great. Did anyone at Clear Flour give you grief over taking pics inside?

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (Ralph Melton)

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:22:44 GMT

I finally got around to chronicling the rest of that weekend: Worcester/Boston Trip, Part II

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (icecreamchick)

Mon, 28 May 2012 23:34:58 GMT

Ralph's pretty much said it all, but I wanted to say a big "thank you" to all of you for a great day! What a great break from the end-of-the-year stress at school!

Special thanks to Karilyn and Beth for doing such a fantastic job of organizing and taking care to make sure everyone was on track and having fun!

Can't wait to see all of you again!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wheregreggeats.com)

Sun, 27 May 2012 18:25:41 GMT

Thanks to everyone.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wanderingjew)

Sun, 27 May 2012 11:26:04 GMT

Ralph

Thanks for adding the report and photos-

You covered just about everything. I'll add a couple of additional photos.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (buffetbuster)

Sun, 27 May 2012 01:36:59 GMT

Outstanding report and beautiful photos Ralph! Thanks for the back story about some of these places. Very interesting!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ScreamingChicken)

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:07:00 GMT

When the zombies take over Paulde is the first one they're going after...because advertising works!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (karilyn)

Sat, 26 May 2012 20:43:20 GMT

THANK YOU RALPH!!! I loved your report . . . but what impressed me more was that you took the time to chat with the locals and learn some stories behind the places where we went. Love that!!! That free t-shirt was certainly well deserved!!! And the pictures - outstanding!!!!

I saw that you are planning a Pittsburgh adventure. Bad timing for me . . . I would love to be able to go. I'm sure it will be a success!

Hope to see you and Lori again at a future gathering . . . . best, karilyn

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (Ralph Melton)

Sat, 26 May 2012 18:01:44 GMT

paulde

Thanks for posting such great pic's. Feel free to post my license plate if you choose.

Paul

We were also tickled enough by paulde's license plate to take a picture:
Untitled by Ralph Melton, on Flickr

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (Ralph Melton)

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:57:34 GMT

I've been very busy with work, but I finally managed to write up a report of our time with the group:

Our weekend trip to Massachusetts extended our streak of low-hassle flights to four trips. We were right behind Cliff and Mariton on the flight out. We had a moiety of difficulty with the rental car; I didn't realize that we had to call to summon the shuttle to the rental car. (And I was disappointed that there was a shuttle involved at all, because I had chosen that rental agency specifically because it said "in terminal".) We had to drive for almost an hour to our hotel, but made it without difficulty.

We were slower than we had hoped at getting to Crown Bakery, and everyone had left for the next stop by the time we arrived. But we decided to take a look around before catching up to them. It was a very cute bakery, with a great many pretty things.



I noticed a distinctively Scandinavian touch in the bakery. (I later learned that Worcester has a significant Swedish population.)

I made my first breakfast a hearty corn muffin; Lori chose a slice of cake. We each ate one of the jelly-filled macarons, and they were delicious as well as beautiful; unfortunately, the other two were wasted.

At Acoustic Java, we met the group outside; I don't think we even made it inside. Karilyn offered us each a slice of the chocolate roll from Crown Bakery; the cake was very light with a delicate cream filling.

Our next destination: Boulevard Diner, a pretty diner with a wooden interior.

We shared a booth with bethgrd and karilyn, and quite enjoyed our conversation. Lori and I shared the Holy Cross omelet, selected from a large selection of omelets named after local colleges, with pastrami, peppers, onions, and cheese. It was pretty tasty, but the accompanying potatoes were flavorless. Unfortunately, the waitress misunderstood our orders, and brought us two omelets instead of the one we had ordered, and brought Beth and Karilyn two plates of poached eggs and toast instead of one. The manager did almost exactly the right thing. The good thing was that she didn't charge us for the extra meals. The down side, though, was that she didn't tell us that she wasn't charging us, and she offered us the plates with an indifferent "We've cooked these extra plates…" So the two of us who didn't see the bill went off in high dudgeon in the mistaken belief that we were charged for food we didn't order.

We strolled over to Union Station for a moment of digestion. It's a beautiful building, but there was something (a restaurant that wasn't open at the moment?) in the center of the large central room that spoiled the grandeur of that space.



Our next stop was the Wonder Bar, a blast-from-the-past pizza joint with dark paneling and pictures of jazz and classic rock musicians.

My first picture of most of the group:

I took this picture because I've only read about tomato sauce being called "gravy", and I hadn't yet seen it firsthand.

The pizzas were a classic thin crust pizza, with a good cheese and sauce. Lori says that the meatballs were just right.



I got to chatting with Bob and Candy, who run the place.

Bob told the story of the guitar on the wall, which was made by the rest of the staff and presented as a Christmas gift in the basement where they make the pizzas. (They bring the food up in a dumbwaiter.)

Candy pointed out the family in the pictures on the wall. I'm not sure of the exact dates, but the pictures showed that Bob had an uncle who died during World War II. The pictures also showed our waitress, Gloria, who started working at the Wonder Bar during the 1950s, and is now 85. Even so, she's still spry and quite a card; Candy says that you shouldn't play cards against Gloria. It was hard to snap a picture of Gloria, because she didn't stop moving.

As we started to leave, Bob said, "I try not to play favorites, but I like your hair," and he tossed me a Wonder Bar t-shirt. The Wonder Bar was one of my favorite stops on this tour for the family history and the chance to talk with the proprietors.

Corner Grille was a very different sort of pizza place; very much an artisan pizza place instead of a classic joint like Wonder Bar.

When we arrived (we were late because of difficulties finding a parking place; this was a recurring theme of our whole weekend), there was a spread of dessert samples put out by some of the early arrivers. From left to right: red velvet whoopee pie, rocky road brownie, and molasses cream cookie. Of these, my favorite was the molasses cream, but Lori preferred the red velvet whoopee pie.

The housemade strawberry lemonade was the best strawberry lemonade I've had. I find most strawberry lemonade too sweet, but this was immensely refreshing without being either too sweet or too tart.

Chicken caesar salad pizza on the left, tomato-basil pizza on the right. The chicken caesar salad was tasty, but I found it too difficult to keep big pieces of lettuce atop small servings of pizza. The tomato-basil pizza was great, with strong bright flavors of tomato and basil.

These two unusual pizzas were both outstanding. On the left is the "Harvest Moon" pizza, with brown sugar, butternut squash, sausage, caramelized onion, pumpkin seeds, and brown butter. It was very sweet, a bit oily, and delectable. The pizza on the right is "My Yiayia's Pie", a spanakopita-inspired pizza with spinach, feta, and shredded phyllo dough. I liked this a whole lot more than I've ever liked spanakopita.

The Corner Grille's crust is among the thinnest pizza crusts I've ever encountered.

For another break for digestion, we went to the Worcester Historical Museum. I didn't have time to see everything; I didn't even see every room. I spent a lot of time looking at one case of "bizarre stuff that was given to the Museum before it focused specifically on history." Most memorable artifact: a lock of hair from a Revolutionary soldier that was clearly acquired through grave robbery.

I had a lengthy chat with some of the staff about Irish temperance societies in and around Worcester. Irish temperance societies were mentioned in a brochure I read in Union Station, and my interest was piqued by a family story. The first time I had dinner with Lori's family, I inquired whether Catholics had a temperance tradition. After I answered their questions about the meaning of the word "temperance", Lori's father laughed and proclaimed, "We Catholics are forbidden to do many things, but drinking has never been one of them."

Salisbury Mansion was an interesting piece of historical reconstruction. I was interested in the stories of how they decided to restore it as much as the stories of what it was like originally.

George's Coney Island was a return to more classic dining. The place offers hot dogs in an art deco lounge with some splendid neon in front. (I didn't get a picture of the neon by night, but the website athttp://www.coneyislandlunch.com/ has a great nighttime picture.)

The booths are scarred by years of graffiti. A sign asks patrons not to disfigure the booths, but that horse has left its barn.

One of the art deco prints. I can't recall previously seeing such a beautiful picture framed by a hot dog window.

I was struck by the fact they served with real china and glasses made out of glass. I can't think of other hot dog places that have done that. This was my first encounter with the Coney Island hot dog with mustard, chili, and onions. It was pleasant, but I mostly tasted the mustard and chili instead of the dog. The half-sour pickle put new emphasis on the meaning of "half-sour"; it tasted much more of cucumber than most dill pickles do.

Wholly Cannoli was a modern-looking coffee shop with many beautiful pastries.

Karilyn recommended the dynamite, a combination of cannoli filling wrapped in chocolate. It was tasty, but it suffered from the layersquish problem: applying enough pressure to break through the chocolate caused the filling to spurt everywhere. The mini cannoli, though, managed to transcend the layersquish that's endemic to cannoli: the shell was delicate enough to break only where intended, leaving the rest intact.

Our last stop together was at Sweet T Southern Kitchen, where Michaun and Tony made us tasty food. (Why is there a Southern restaurant in Worcester? Michaun had come to down for a tech job which had then laid her off, and she and Tony opened the restaurant because she missed Southern food and he could cook.) The highlight of my plate was the chicken-fried chicken; the highlight of Lori's plate was the sweet potatoes, which were as sweet as candy but managed to avoid the trap of being cloying.

The buttermilk pie was also notable for a very bright, clear buttermilk taste.

After our meal, Michaun brought out a bowl of fried okra, "because none of y'all ordered them". I cling to the belief that they weren't ordered because they weren't mentioned among the options, because I love fried okra and I think I would have ordered them if I'd noticed the option. These were piping hot from the fryer, and I popped one or two down greedily, but Michaun felt that more persuasion was necessary: "It's a deep-fried vegetable; what's not to like?"

We enjoyed our day very much. We'd like to thank everyone, particularly Beth and Karilyn, who did an outstanding job organizing this. The itinerary was very clear, and there was enough time budgeted for every stop; I shall take this as a standard to try to meet for my own organizing attempts.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (karilyn)

Thu, 24 May 2012 06:23:50 GMT

As someone who is technologically challenged, I can't thank all the photographers enough for posting their pictures. Mine came out blurry!!! Yet Mariton still managed to look fabulous in all of mine. Jealous! Ellen - I just got up and waking to photos of cannoli's made my day - thank you!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ellen4641)

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:27:56 GMT

Cannoli pics !!

I had the Triple Chocolate Dynamite Stick (among other things, lol). Wandering Jew's friend Mike had given me a taste of his, & I loved it.

Wholly Cannoli !!!

The big cannoli cake was about 32 bucks. We should've bought one, and split it 17 ways, LOL...

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ellen4641)

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:23:20 GMT

ScreamingChicken

Looks like there was enough Corner Grille pizza for each person to get a crispy edge piece - that's a good thing!

u know it, Screaming Chicken !! That's what I love about these group meat ups.
We got to try 4 different types of pizza, and it costs us only 5 bucks apiece.
(that took care of the pizza costs.) (if we wanted a drink , we just bought one on our own. I loved their big majon jar of fresh strawberry lemonade. I shared it with 3 others, LOL ...

p.s. I've got some more pics to post later :)

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ScreamingChicken)

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:24:21 GMT

Looks like there was enough Corner Grille pizza for each person to get a crispy edge piece - that's a good thing!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (kland01s)

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:56:10 GMT

Great photos everyone! Thanks for posting!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (paulde)

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:21:56 GMT

Buffetbuster

Thanks for posting such great pic's. Feel free to post my license plate if you choose.

Paul

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (buffetbuster)

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:04:36 GMT

Some bonus photos from Mariton's camera. Here is a shot of Ralph & Lori in front of Salisbury Mansion.

The group shot at the Worcester Historical Museum.

But, I like this version, with Karilyn and myself in the middle of taking pics of the photographers!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (will_work_4_bbq)

Tue, 22 May 2012 22:35:23 GMT

This is all fabulous! What a great group and wonderful itinerary! Wish I had been there!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wanderingjew)

Tue, 22 May 2012 21:02:50 GMT

wheregreggeats.com

wanderingjew

Gregg

Actually, thanks
but Buffetbuster deserves the title- he posted the photos!

oops

I still haven't come close to finishing my trip report, I don't even have time to upload photos for this one.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wheregreggeats.com)

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:57:01 GMT

wanderingjew

Gregg

Actually, thanks
but Buffetbuster deserves the title- he posted the photos!

oops

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ellen4641)

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:42:11 GMT

here's some more of my pics. Hope u all enjoy !
hey, Ann Peeples, hope to meat u , too one day soon !
Here's my "Italian Breakfast", complete with delish MEATBALL, from Boulevard Diner, $8.95

Here's happy Gregg, with Lori Melton from Pittsburgh on the right.

Here's the Foodie Queen herself, aka, ME, in front of the WONDER BAR... (real good juicy pizza!)

Ralph & Lori flew in from Pittsburgh to Boston for this Worcester meat up.
I flew in from ACY (Atlantic City airport)
Here the cute couple inside the Corner Grill. We enjoyed more real good pizza. Loved the charred crispy edges!

Here we are in the Worcester Historical Museum. Taking a break from the EATING, lol

Gregg enjoying a few relaxing minutes, while we wait for the others to show up at George's Coney Island...

My coney island dog, with chili on the side. $1.50. Gregg's weenie in the back.

I love this pic of Mariton & Cliff, (aka Buffetbuster!!). They are about to tackle their vegetable plate at Sweet T's
Southern Cuisine. Hey, Mariton, u giving the "PEACE" symbol really makes the pic :)! U look adorable, with your "Pebbles" hairstyle !

Beth's brisket from Sweet T's. She said it tasted a bit like a corned beef brisket. She gave me a taste, and
I agreed. It was just "ok", IMO. No match to Austin style brisket.

Karilyn's pulled pork. She liked it. Her skinless fried chicken is in the rear. (the only kind of fried chicken they had

My BBQ chicken wings, and my skinless fried chicken breast.
I loved the BBQ wings. I thought the fried chicken was BLAH. And pale. I wish they had regular breasts with bones, and chicken legs. I like a nice thick crispy batter, like the Golden Corral serves.
I loved my spicy corn !!! That was my fav. item !
Sweet T's Southern Kitchen, open since last year...

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (waltpiii)

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:22:32 GMT

It was great seeing everyone. I had a great day.
Thank you Beth and Karilyn for organizing the day.

Walt

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ann peeples)

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:43:52 GMT

Great pics and great eats!!But I also see Amy behind Mariton-and Ralph and his lovely bride behind Gregg( good to see you my friend) and of course, WJ. Really miss these types of meet ups!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ellen4641)

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:21:51 GMT

Here's the "Worcester 15" at the Wonder Bar, waiting for our PIZZAS !
Real good pizza, open since the 1940's.
I'm in the blue, up front, Buffetbuster just in back of me, with his lovely girlfriend, Mariton.
Gregg is across from me.
Wandering Jew on the right in green.

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (ellen4641)

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:14:50 GMT

bethgrd

The weather, the people, the camaraderie were wonderful!! Oh,and the food! Thanks to all the out of towners for attending! Ellen, Cliff, and whomever else please post photos here.
Ellen, love to eat with you!! Gregg, you are the man, sticking it out with a stomach on the blink.

Yes, it was a perfect meat up, all around !!! Yep, it's pretty amazing eating with me, huh ?! Gregg has said that everyone was in "AWE" at just how much stuff I order. Well, I like trying a few different things, & I often don't finish it, lol. (espescially, if it's nothing special, like that skinless fried chicken breast from Southern T's).
Nice photos , BUFFETBUSTER !! Yep, Mariton & I provided the assist to that security guard, lol. !
He was'nt able to hold our cameras too steady.

Tnx again for organizing a great tour, Karilyn & Beth !!
I will share this gr8 Trip Report on facebook :)

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wanderingjew)

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:57:58 GMT

Gregg

Actually, thanks
but Buffetbuster deserves the title- he posted the photos!

Re:Worcester Day of eating trip report (wheregreggeats.com)

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:20:29 GMT

WJ ... superb work ... thanks.

I did an upload of Worcester weekend and the accidental weekend where I had the honor of an extra weekend with Ellen in the Berkshires. I'm kind of new with Shutterfly and tried to abridge the whole thing and wound up with a mess that would take until the next meat up to fix up ...
LINK TO ALBUM
... kind of images from my cameras, her camera , and 2 cell phones.
... if you want to get past the burnt ends, pizza, hot dog, pizza (again), hot dog (again), brisket, burger, hot dogs (again), burger (again), wings and hot dog from the Saturday before, just kind of advance halfway through.
... better late than never I hope.
WJ, once again, you are the master.
~ Gregg