This is perfectly adequate pizza served up in a no-frills storefront with a bare minimum of decoration (nothing says "class" quite like a tie-in pinball machine for a 15-year old Sylvester Stallone film). I would complain that it seems a touch pricey, but the "$20+ for a meat-heavy large" seems to be more the rule than the exception these days. I will note a lack of appetizers (hot wings were advertized on a chalkboard behind the counter, but not on the printed menu), and the decision to inflict cauliflower on a defenseless salad makes me vote thumbs down on that option.
If the area pizza options were limited, I could see Nino's as a decent choice, but they aren't: Reale's just south on 183, Brooklyn Heights on Avery Ranch, and Rudino's on 620 all offer better pizza and a wider menu (and Reale's and Brooklyn Heights provide much nicer surroundings to boot). As such, I can't recommend Nino's over them unless you're within walking distance.
Galaxy Café flits in that uneasy twilight zone betwixt hamburger joint and trendy bistro. The burgers are fine, but too expensive for a real hamburger joint (and the lack of white hamburger buns just reeks of trendoid condescension). The décor is nice enough, but the order-at-the-counter/get-your-own refills doesn't fit the bistro profile. I liked my sweet potato fries on the side, and the crème brulee was a comparative bargain at $4.25 for a substantial serving. And this is the first restaurant I've been to where the manager sat one of the tables fiddling with his laptop. The side salad was forgettable. Service was very quick.
I have no strong feelings about Galaxy Café. It offers you a better bang for your dining buck than Mandola's in the same center, but if I actually wanted a hamburger and didn't care about décor, I'd probably drive on over to Phil's Ice House. I wouldn't mind being dragged back to Galaxy Café, but I'd probably try something other than the hamburger.
Freda's does a lot of things right. They have to in order to survive what seems to be a delibrate effort by local officials to basically destroy their business through road construction. I think the dinners are good and reasonably priced, and they do a very good all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch (complete with shrimp, oysters, and crab legs; at some point I'm going to make Lawrence get up early on a Sunday and go).
I like Freda's well enough. The appetizers (calamari, crab cakes, etc.) and gumbo are still pretty good, my blackened snapper was just fine, and service was quite good after an initial drink mix-up (for which the watron apologized profusely). My problem with Freda's is that when all is said and done, I end up dropping about as much here as I do at Gumbo's, or Pappadeaux, or Truluck's, but the food isn't as good and the portions aren't as generous. That may also explain why it was so inexplicably empty on a Saturday night. Some adjustment is in order.
Perfectly acceptable Thai food. Prices seem reasonable. It didn't blow me away, but it is the best Thai I've found this far north to date.
This is a new, and fairly decent, Thai place. The coconut chicken soup was pretty savory, and all the appetizers (dumplings, calamari, BBQ pork ribs) were at least credible. For a change, they made my entrée (garlic pepper pork) as hot as I wanted it, but it still ended up just a little on the dry side after mixing with rice; a bit more sauce would help.
Service was a bit more problematic. Woe be unto those who can't remember the number of the dish they ordered, as just telling them in plain English seems insufficient. Plus there were few other service lapses, such as not bringing individual serving plates for the appetizers. It wasn't too bad, just a little haphazard, and they did recover from an order mixup fairly quickly.
All in all this strikes me as both better and cheaper than Thai Passion North, though not nearly as good as perennial favorite Thai Kitchen. Worth trying if you live north of 183.
See the logs for November of 2008.