The Pub of Penn Valley: Great Hot Food and Cold Beer

Cooking school is fun but expensive. You spend hours playing with your food and have access to all kinds of professional equipment. You get one-day lessons on techniques that will take much longer to master. Make no mistake, you are not a chef when you graduate from cooking school. You are the onion-peeler, the oyster-shucker, the sweeper, the dishwasher, etc. No one is going to ask you your opinion on the best way to make a sauce or anything else because no matter how high your marks were in cooking school, you really don't know anything. Working in restaurants is how I truly learned to cook. Quality of ingredients, technique, flavor profiles, cooking methods and equipment all affect how the ultimate dish comes out.

One of the things that I always look for when I go out to eat (besides tasty food) is hot food. It doesn't sound like it will be that difficult to find but in many kitchens the completed dishes sit "in the window" for a while. If the servers and bussers are extremely busy or lazy, that plate of food just lays there getting colder every second. Some kitchens will remedy this situation by installing heat lamps (like the ones they have in fast food restaurants) which keep the food warm but risks drying it out. When I go to a restaurant and the food arrives piping hot and delicious, I am overjoyed. It's a sign that the kitchen and the front of house staff work well together to get the food out as soon as it's ready.

I met my cousin at the for lunch on a sunny afternoon. In fact it was too hot to sit outside (great alfresco dining here) so we opted for the cooler inside. We ordered iced teas and diet cokes and looked over the menu. While this is a pub the fare is much more elevated than the just the typical nacho, burger, wing offerings of other pubs. Some might call it a "gastropub" but I hate that word so I won't. A basket of bread and seasoned olive oil arrived moments after our drinks.

We started off with the macaroni and cheese of the day. That day's variant had artichokes, sun dried tomatoes and cheddar cheese. This was unbelievably delicious and arrived steaming hot. It was a creamy, rich and well-seasoned plate of macaroni with plenty of cheese. The slightly tangy artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes peppered the dish with pleasing textures, tomato bomb flavors and contrasts. I guess the strongest endorsement I could find for this dish was the fact that my cousin hates cheese and she couldn't stop eating this because it was so good. We had the reds and greens side salad with the macaroni and cheese, which was simply a great fresh salad.

For our mains, we had the soup-and-sandwich combo and the black angus burger with cheddar. The seafood bisque was good—not too thick and not too thin. The sandwich was made on soft rye bread and had meaty delicious slices of corned beef.

The burger was stellar. Each bite was juicy and satisfying. I loved the patty, the bun and that it was cooked a perfect medium rare. The side salad was exemplary. It's a pet peeve of mine to order a salad and get lettuce with brown edges or cardboard tomatoes. One time, I had cucumber slices that had been left out in a hot kitchen for too long and had wilted and turned. It was pretty gross.

We saved room for the homemade desserts. The carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and strawberry sauce was outrageous. Carrot cake is my favorite and I have sampled about 6,000 different versions of the cake. The carrot cake at Pub of Penn Valley was noteworthy because it was so moist and delicious. Just a week prior, I had had a carrot cake that tasted like sawdust and sugar. This carrot cake was a revelation.

The service is professional and friendly. Our questions were answered promptly and thoroughly. Our water glasses and drink glasses never dipped below the half mark and plates were cleared as soon as we were done with them. The crowd is eclectic. There were moms, ladies who lunch, business men, students and the two of us.

The interior is quite pub-like with lots of dark wood, plenty of TV screens, a full well stocked bar and various paraphernalia from Philadelphia sports teams. The tables receive a burst of color from a small vase with red carnations and baby's breath. There is a fair amount of chatter, so this is not the place for a quiet moment of reflection.

Whenever I drove by here, I always assumed it was just a pub with mediocre food and cold beer. Boy, was I wrong. The food is excellent, well seasoned and arrives hot. I will definitely return for some great hot food and cold beer.