Restaurant Review: Good Enough to Eat

It’s more than just ‘good enough.’

The Upper West Side is home to a vast array of restaurants ranging from upscale French cuisine to rustic Italian, to contemporary versions of Mexican.  However, one of the gems located in the Upper West Side is Good Enough to Eat.  Specializing in traditional American cuisine, Good Enough to Eat has been the destination to go to when thinking about breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner.  Upon walking into the restaurant you can immediately see how busy it is.  With lines usually out the door and around the corner, you also get a strong feeling that you are in for some tasty food.  And with smiles and friendly vibes among the staff and customers, Good Enough to Eat is an easygoing, fun place to get delicious food.

One of the first things that should be on every customer’s mind when they walk in is to get Good Enough to Eat’s homemade bacon strips.  Coated with sugar and smoked to perfection, these strips of bacon were tender and juicy.  They had a lot of smoky quality to it which was a perfect contrast to the bits of sweetness that the bacon had because of the coating of sugar.  You should also try their homemade buttermilk biscuits with their specialty strawberry butter as well.  The biscuits were buttery and flakey and paired with the strawberry butter led to a sweet and yummy start to the meal.  The strawberry butter is also something to make note of.  Upon first tasting it, you get the strong strawberry flavor with a little bit of butter in the back of your mouth.  It was a little strange at first simply because it had the same smoothness and overall feel of butter but also had a sweetness to it.  But after you get over that initial ‘wow is this really butter?’ moment then you can really start enjoying it because that strawberry butter is worth coming back to.

And what is a traditional American brunch without some home fries?  Good Enough to Eat’s home fries were delicious.  The fries were spiced really well and had good seasoning to it.  It was juicy and full of flavor and has the right amount of savory quality to it.  Another thing anyone who goes here should order is their pancakes.  The pancakes itself were fluffy and light.  And when paired with traditional maple syrup, the pancakes tasted great in that it wasn’t too sweet.  And the strawberry butter on the pancakes just put it over the top with how great it was.  This strawberry butter is everything and more.  And the amount of renditions they have of the classic pancake is great such as their apple pancakes and their banana walnut pancakes.

And if you go there for brunch, at the very least, you have to have some sort of drink to go with it.  The wavy lemonade is the perfect drink for practically anyone.  Made simply with Tito’s vodka, St. Germain, and fresh lemonade, the wavy lemonade is cool, refreshing, and the right amount of sweet.  What’s even better is that you can barely taste the alcohol in it which is always a plus in my book.  But if you’re there at during lunchtime or dinnertime and want a drink that fits that mood then the pumpkin spice martini is a good bet.  Made with crop pumpkin vodka, stoli vanilla, Frangelico, and Bailey’s, this drink is pretty much what you would expect in a pumpkin spice latte.  Except full of alcohol.  And cold.  Which is fantastic.  That drink is a must try.

And for dessert there was the banana walnut cake.  This cake’s banana flavor was very subtle at first but once you keep on eating it really shows its face.  The walnuts in the cake also have a good crunch to it and I always love a good change of textures especially in desserts.  The cake itself was creamy, smooth, and not too sweet where it hurt to eat.  The icing was delicious too.  They could serve a bowl of that icing and it would be a hit; it was just that good.

All in all, Good Enough to Eat is a great place to get some delicious food.  The place itself is full of friendly people and no matter what you order, it will be good.  Good Enough to Eat is definitely a place where you will just want to go back.

For more information visit here: http://goodenoughtoeat.com/menus/