Jack's Firehouse

Even if you must skip appetizers, never miss salad here. Jack's contacts with Amish farmers in Lancaster are legendary. Moreover, it's rumored that this restaurant's owner has beds of lettuce and mushrooms growing on the premises' roof and cellar floor, respectively. Nowhere are the leafy greens and vegetables so extraordinarily fresh and flavorful, crisp and verdant. Add nothing more than a sprinkle of olive oil, cider vinegar and lemon. Your tastebuds ride the Paoli Local eighty miles west.

Entrées range from scrumptious to curious. There are superlatives and grateful groans emanating from patrons who've just jostled jawfulls of North Carolina Crab Cake or Breast of Goose with Pear and Black Walnuts. Giggles arise from the tickle of deep-fried kale. But if one is adventurous in an establishment reverberating with reverence for American regional dishes, then order Buffalo from Minnesota or Venison from Jack's own deerfarm without change of venue.

The former is a sautéed steak the size of a paperback dictionary whose beef is fatless and rich. The bison is painstakingly slowly pan-cooked in peanut oil to render it as tender as the cowboy's tush who rode all day to hunt it. The latter are scallops of venison tenderloin surrounded by a warm cranberry-fennel sauce. A knife served with innocuous desuetude, for a wriggle of fork's edge is all that's required to carve perfectly sized morsels. Dear deer.