Phil's Chicken House

Name: Phil's Chicken House
Location: 1208 Maine Rd., Endicott, NY 13760
Phone: (607) 748-6855
Cuisine: American BBQ
Price: $10-$15 per adult, $5-$10 per child

Review:
Phil's Chicken House has been a Southern Tier institution for close to fifty years, offering take-out, buffet-style BBQ chicken dinners, and a Sunday brunch buffet to longtime local patrons and curious outsiders. Having never been, we decided to go for dinner last night for the buffet, which they offer seven days a week with some variations depending on which night you go.

The restaurant is one of very few in the West Corners area just north and west of Endicott. Upon arriving at Phil's for the buffet, you'll want to enter through the back, which means parking behind the restaurant and finding the entrance for the lower level. You can also enter via the upper floor but will be directed to take the stairs off the right to find the dining room. We found the dining room to be typical of what you'd expect of a "family restaurant," with a few booths along the left and some larger tables to accommodate bigger parties on the right side. A waitress came by and took our drink order and provided us a large bucket in which to place the chicken bones.

The buffet ($9.99 per adult) is not gigantic in size, but has a lot of really good options. For soups, they have both chicken noodle and cream of broccoli available regularly. A few different kinds of bread (white, garlic, banana, and pumpkin varieties) were available. There's a full salad bar complete with side salads--potato, macaroni, cole slaw. And then there was the main courses, BBQ chicken, spare ribs, beef tips, real homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese, a seafood casserole, rice pilaf, buttered green beans, and perhaps a few other things I didn't get to. I did my best to try everything, but as soon as I tried the chicken, I knew I'd be eating more of that than anything else.

The soup was good if unremarkable, and I enjoyed the salad bar too. The potato salad was pretty delicious and I'm not sure if the Thousand Island dressing was homemade or not, but whatever it was, I liked it. The pumpkin bread (not something I usually enjoy) was a definite highlight also--very moist and well-spiced and just overall very tasty.

The real draw of Phil's Chicken House, is, obviously, the BBQ chicken. A little research has turned up that the style of chicken that Phil's serves is unique to this area (the Southern Tier region south of the Finger Lakes) and is called Cornell Chicken, thus named due to its being invented by a professor at Cornell back in the 1940's. This style involves marinading the chicken in a mixture of egg, vegetable oil, cider vinegar, salt, poultry seasoning, and black pepper before grilling. I'm not sure if Phil's uses this recipe or some variant thereof, but this was some of the most tender, delicious chicken I've ever had. I admired that it wasn't at all greasy, but rather juicy with tons of flavor.

The chicken was, in my mind, the only real standout on the buffet. The barbecued spare ribs were passable, but left me pining for the recently-departed Theo's. The beef tips were tasty if perhaps a little on the tough side, while the mashed potatoes and mac & cheese were good but not transcendent.

When it came time for dessert, I opted to try the dessert of the month, Cherry Cobbler. It should be noted that while desserts are not available on the buffet, you get a free dessert with the purchase of the buffet. So definitely save a little room. The cherry cobbler was really tasty with fresh real whipped cream on top. It was pretty much like eating really good cherry pie out of a cup. I would certainly order it again, given the opportunity.

Overall, if you're looking for a solid home-style, family restaurant in the Triple Cities, Phil's Chicken House is exactly what you're looking for. This would be an excellent place to bring families with small children and the grandparents alike; there's certainly something for everyone to enjoy. From my "foodie" perspective, the Cornell Chicken is reason enough for me to make a return visit. Next time you're thinking of heading over to the Cracker Barrel, I encourage you to consider giving Phil's your business instead.

Grade: B

The Silo Restaurant

Name: The Silo Restaurant
Location: 203 Moran Rd., Greene, NY 13778
Phone: (607) 656-4377
Cuisine: American
Price: $25+ per person

Review:
Last night, Megan and I made the trek out to Greene for The Silo's Friday night seafood buffet extravaganza. It's something we've wanted to do many times over the years, but just couldn't muster the energy to make the roughly 45-minute drive out to literally the middle of nowhere, eight miles east of Greene. We noticed a coupon in Clipper Magazine for $10 off the purchase of two buffets, which provided just enough motivation.

We arrived around 5:00 and were seated quickly. The buffet is divided into roughly four sections. There is a gigantic salad bar with just about anything you'd ever want to put on a salad, in addition to standard fare like cole slaw, applesauce, potato salad, and macaroni salad. They also had some more odd choices like dried cranberries and what quickly became a favorite of mine, pickled watermelon rind. Each of us started with a salad and were pretty happy with what we found. If you go, I highly recommend trying the pickled watermelon rind. It's something you certainly won't find many places, and it has a surprising candy-like sweet and sour taste. I quite liked it. The applesauce was the homemade variety and quite tasty, while the potato salad was the red-skin variety and also good.

The second table on the buffet was a smaller station with chilled shrimp and soup. I elected to have a cup of the New England Clam Chowder and was very pleased with it. Definitely liberal with the clams, while bacon added some smoky flavor.

The third table had snow crab legs and a carving station featuring ham, turkey, and roast beef. These options looked very good, but I was more stoked about sampling the offerings on the fourth table, so I didn't want to fill up on other stuff.

The fourth table is what I would call the "main buffet" and had just about any seafood option you might want, in addition to some meat choices. Some choices on the main buffet that I recall are:

Seafood Newburg

Crab Cakes

Teriyaki Tuna

Mahi Mahi

Fried Shrimp, Clams, and Oysters

Escargot

Clams Casino

Mussels

Meatballs

Chicken Marsala

"Athens" beef

Sides like rice, steamed vegetables, and onion rings

I tried to sample just about everything here. The Seafood Newburg was a definite highlight. Featuring crab, shrimp, and fish in a thick sherry cream sauce, I could've eaten a plateful of just that and been happy. My favorite item on this buffet was the Teriyaki Tuna; it was perfectly grilled and totally delicious. I hadn't had fried oysters in a very long time so I made sure to load up on a healthy portion of those. Quite excellent as well. Other items I enjoyed were the "Athens beef" which was essentially beef tenderloin marinaded in lemon juice and topped with a little feta cheese. This was a personal favorite of Megan's. I was excited to have the chance to try Escargot for the first time. Nothing to get too excited about, as it turns out: it really just tasted like butter and garlic.

Items I didn't care for included the meatballs, which had little taste and reminded me of the frozen meatballs you can buy in the grocery store. The Chicken Marsala didn't really do anything for me, as the chicken was a little dried out and tougher than I would've preferred. Crab cakes are normally a favorite food of mine, but I didn't care for The Silo's version of them. They weren't bad, but were overshadowed by most of the other items on my plate. But that is certainly one of the benefits of a buffet: while you might not like one item; there certainly will be many others you do. And the hit-to-miss ratio at The Silo was quite favorable.

Ambiance at The Silo is nice, but not extraordinary. During our visit they had a singer who delivered acoustic versions of 1970's soft-rock tunes from artists like John Denver and James Taylor. It was pleasant enough, but perhaps a little intrusive and certainly more appealing to the crowd of geriatrics we dined with than to the two of us. In fact, I'd say that most of the patrons were twice my age, and at 30 years old I'm not exactly a spring chicken. So while there is a nice, quaint atmosphere, it's certainly not the hippest, and I would have a hard time recommending The Silo to folks younger than myself. I might need a trip to the ultra-swanky Lemongrass soon to wash the moth balls out of my system...

In the end, our trip to The Silo was a mixed bag in my opinion. I really liked the food overall, and there are certainly some options here you can't get anywhere else in the area, like Seafood Newburg, Fried Oysters, Escargot, and pickled watermelon rind. The food was fresh and well-prepared, and the service was friendly and generally quick. At $21.95 per person, the buffet represents pretty good value given the high quality and rarity of the food. On the other hand, it's a 45-minute drive and the stodgy atmosphere honestly didn't do much for me. I could go to Ithaca and eat at some awesome places there after making a drive of similar length, and eat with people my age. I'm glad I tried The Silo once, but I won't be too disappointed if I never make it back there again.

Grade: B