You can’t come to Philly and not want a cheesesteak. It is the best meal of the day. Those thin little well cooked steaks in a chewy Italian roll with a generous pour of hot Cheese Wiz is one of the best food combinations around. I have to admit I have not tried the other sandwiches (yet) but that then means more trips to Philly to try them.
Carmen’s Cheesesteaks counter just moved across the aisle to a bigger spot and you can still sit at their old one around the counter. It is a place to watch the rest of Reading Market operate. Reading Market is always crowded and you watch the world go by.
The Staff at Carmen’s
I am partial to Carmen’s traditional Cheesesteak ($10.50), which means piled high with slivers of freshly fried thin steaks on the grill and then fried and chopped. They are then placed in a soft chewy hoagie roll, which they will not tell me where in New Jersey they get them and then it is topped with a generous slab of hot Cheese Wiz. You can have it with other cheeses but this is what I like on it. I prefer no onions or peppers on mine.
After it is cut and served, it is the best taste. The caramelized beef and the molten cheese just melts in your mouth and you don’t want to stop biting into it until you are done. It has the best combinations of rich flavors.
Cheesesteak with Wiz
The service is always friendly and welcoming and I have seen the same people working there over the last few years. You don’t have to go through the nonsense of ordering the way you would at Geno’s or Pat’s, where they give you a strange look when you don’t know how to order correctly.
Like the woman at the counter said to me, “We don’t play those games with the customers.” That showed me the customer service that any out-of- towner would appreciate.
When I went there for lunch recently the guy working the counter was so happy that I came down all the way from Jersey to have his sandwiches. I told him that I make a special trip at least two times a year to have his food because we do not get these in New York City or New Jersey the way they make them. That made him very happy!
Don’t miss Carmen’s when visiting Reading Market in Downtown Philadelphia, PA. It is a taste of heaven for you traditionalists.
Prices: One doughnut $1.50/Six doughnuts $6.50/Dozen $11.99
All I have to say it that Beiler’s Doughnut Store in the Reading Market is the best bakery in Philadelphia and one of the best I have been to in a long time. The doughnuts here are always fresh fried, filled on the spot and decorated. The bakery carries the most unusual flavors. The best part is that they are each $1.20 for these very original and delicious treats.
When Alvin Beiler took over the family bakery in 1985, he expanded it into the Reading Market in Philadelphia, PA where it has been serving customers for over thirty years. It was one of the first Amish businesses to open up at the market. The business has now expanded into two other locations, one in Lancaster, PA and one in University City by the University of Pennsylvania campus (Beiler Family History).
Now Alvin’s two sons, Kevin and Keith, have gotten involved in the business and the bakery continues to grow. On any given day in Reading Market, there are long lines to buy the different flavors of doughnuts. You can watch the doughnuts made, filled and iced for sale in the cases by leaning over the counter when waiting in line. All the doughnuts are fried to a nice chewy and doughy consistency (Beiler Family History).
The Salted Caramel Apple and the Caramel Apple Doughnuts
The Caramel Apple is filled with a fresh apple mixture and topped with a vanilla icing and caramel glaze. It is a nice mixture of sweet and tart. The Fruity Pebble doughnut is a chewy delight with a thick vanilla icing topped with almost a cereal bowl of Fruity Pebbles. The Banana Cream is filled with a banana pudding filling topped with a thick vanilla icing and has the sweetness of vanilla cream.
The Fruity Pebble Doughnut
The Harvest Apple doughnut is filled with a sweet apple filling and topped with a thick vanilla icing and tastes like an apple pie a la mode. The Strawberry glazed is filled with a sweet strawberry jelly filling and topped with a generous power sugary glazed. The Old Fashioned Glaze is a simple fried doughnut topped with a sugary glaze. It is a delight in each bite.
All the delicious varieties of doughnuts
Each one of these doughnuts you can watch be filled and iced right in front of you as you are waiting in line so you have time to make your selection. All the fillings are homemade and much care is taken to make all the doughnuts look visually appealing. They sit like jewels in a case when you are ordering and that’s the reason why so many people were buying them at a dozen at a time during the recent Flower Show. I have never seen a staff of people work so hard.
Don’t miss the Beiler’s Doughnut store when visiting the Reading Market. It is a delicious and sweet treat! Don’t miss the bakery across the aisle as well. The cookies and sweet rolls are the best.
Spoiler: On Saturday nights when they are closing for the night and closed for the rest of the week until the next Thursday, all the items at the top of the counter are $2.00! Make a b-line to that. I got the most delicious Chocolate Chip cookies and Raison Sweet Rolls in packages for $3.00.
Every time I visit Philadelphia, The Reading Market is one of the first stops on the list. There is such a variety of places to eat and the cuisine ranges from Chinese to Italian to ice cream to baked goods. There are so many choices that it is hard to choose between them.
One of my favorite places to eat is the Dutch Eating Place. It is true Pennsylvania Dutch cooking that is ‘homey’ and ‘stick to your ribs’ type of cooking. For breakfast, it is layers of pancakes or French toast, scrambled eggs cooked in real butter and sticky buns.
For lunch it could be meatloaf, chicken pot pie or my favorite, a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and lots of gravy on top. I always get a kick at the way the cooks and servers watch me with the big smile on my face when I see the food come and the big ‘MMMMMMs” while I am eating. The food is consistently good.
The last time I was in Philly for the Cornell-Penn Game, I had come here for lunch and had the Chicken Pot Pie ($7.95). Just to let readers know this is not the traditional pot pie with a thick gravy and a golden crust but more of a stew with thick egg noodles mixed in. The whole stew is large chunks of white meat cooked in a gravy with large cuts of fresh vegetables and thick egg noodles cooked in the mixture. It may not be the traditional pot pie we know but it still is delicious and the portion size is large.
Chicken Pot Pie stew
On my recent trip to Philly for the Flower Show, I had the Hot Turkey Sandwich ($8.25) which I love and highly recommend. Slices of freshly roasted turkey line two thickly cut pieces of freshly baked bread and then covered in a rich brown turkey gravy and served with mashed potatoes loaded with fresh butter and a side of cranberry berry sauce and Cole slaw. The portion size was very large but perfect after a long afternoon of walking the show.
The sliced turkey was juicy and moist and there was layer upon layer between the two thick slices of bread. I made sure that I saved some of the bread so that I could soak up the rest of the gravy.
I have eaten breakfast here many times on my visits to Philly. My first morning I had the pancakes with a side of sausage. I received two large golden brown pancakes with a big slab of fresh butter on top ($5.75) with a side of sausage ($2.75). The breakfast was delicious. The pancakes are huge and take up the whole plate. They have a nice caramelized outside and a soft inside accented by the fresh butter and maple syrup.
On my third trip here, I had the Blueberry Pancakes with a side of Turkey Bacon ($5.95) that were just excellent. The pancakes were loaded with fresh blueberries that were in each bite and had a big slab of fresh churned butter on top. The Turkey bacon was well cured and had a smoky flavor to it.
The pancakes here are excellent
The Apple French Toast ($5.75) is the same with a nice caramelized, crisp buttery outside and a soft sweet interior because the freshly baked bread that is used to make it. A fresh apple mixture tops the two pieces of toast that you get and with the syrup has a nice complexity that gives the apples a nice sweet taste.
The special came with a side of the Turkey bacon the third time I visited. The scrambled egg on the side was cooked in clarified butter and was so good. You could taste the butter cooked in the egg.
The Apple French Toast is out of the this world!
The sausage and bacon are all freshly made and have a nice smoked flavor to them. The sausage are large, plump and have the right amount of spices and smoked nicely. The bacon is cured and thickly cut. I am sure these are made by their own butchers. This is not your standard grocery store meats.
The service is always nice and even in busy times is very engaging. The Amish families that work at the restaurant could not be nicer and even in the busiest times always have a smile on their face.
They make the best recommendations of what to order and will describe all the dishes to you. It seems that they had a lot of problems with people ordering the chicken pot pie and have put a better description of it up on the board.
None of the entrees are over $10.00, so it is a nice place for a meal when you want traditional Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking close by the hotel and tourist district this is the place to visit.
It is so nice to have food cooked and served to you with people with patience with a smile on their faces at all times.
I have to give McDonald’s credit. Their Marketing & Sales Department really has the pulse on the nation right now. Jobs are pathetic, salaries have not risen with inflation or not at all and people are looking for something cheap and quick but still want quality. I think over the last four years I have seen a real improvement in McDonald’s food but again that depends on the individual restaurant and at what time of the day you go. For the most part I have seen an improvement in taste, speed and quality across the board.
The McDonalds in Punxsutawney, PA was open 24hours for the Groundhog’s Day festival.
The McDonalds in Union Station Washington DC is always busy.
When McDonald’s food has been sitting around, you can taste it but when a restaurant is busy the food is really hot and fresh and you can really taste it. When the fries are freshly cooked out of the fryer and salted properly, they are the best.
McDonald’s French Fries are the best
When a burger just comes off the grill and is still sizzling, the taste of the ground beef comes out. The best time to order a Sausage McMuffin with Egg is at 8:00pm.
The McDouble is always a treat
During Pre-Pandemic times, their new $1, $2 & $3 Menu, the latest promotion that has been rolled out, is marketing genius. People are really stuck these days with having to stay on a low budget but still want to go out to eat or need something reasonable on lunch hour. This new promotion is a great way to build the customer base and trade up. It has since replaced by the $3.99 Bundle promotion in select McDonalds.
Classic McDonald’s Hamburger
At the $1.00 level, you have a choice of a drink of any size (big deal in that the cost of soda is .03 cents a gallon), a Sausage Burrito, four chicken McNuggets (vastly improved) and a Cheeseburger.
At the $2.00 level you have a choice of a small McCafe drink (good deal) , two Buttermilk Chicken Tenders, a Bacon McDouble (really good) and a Sausage McGriddle (bypass).
At the $3.00 level, you can get a Happy Meal, a Sausage McMuffin with Egg (my favorite), a Classic Chicken Sandwich and a triple Cheeseburger.
The Double Cheeseburger Bundle is great!
Currently though I have noticed that the program is changing especially in New York City and the local surrounding suburbs.
The double cheeseburger makes a great snack.
The drinks have pretty stayed put on the $1.00 and $2.00 levels but sandwiches have replaced most everything on the $3.00 menu and new $3.00 bundles have been the replacement where you can get a double cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich or a fish sandwich with a small French Fries. Still reasonable but the menu has gotten much altered since 2019.
The new Promotion 2 for $3.00 bundles as the $1. $2 and $3 menu is phased out(this is now the $3.99 bundle).
They did raise the price of French Fries which may I add has one of the highest markups in the industry and everyone still order fries.
During the COVID pandemic era upon us, the bundle now has gone up to $3.99 for either a Double Cheeseburger, Six Chicken McNuggets (all white meat now) or a Chicken Sandwich with small fries. The drinks are still a dollar for any size, but I recommend the medium because how much soda do you need to drink.
Having been to about a dozen McDonald’s since the promotion has started I have noticed it has been a huge hit with the customers. I know that McDonald’s has taken some of this as a ‘loss leader’ and traded down but the one trend I have seen is that people are buying more items. I see myself doing it as well as I say “Wow, for $5.00 guess what I can buy and I will be filled up.” This is a slippery slope when you are trying to loose weight.
At a busy time though, everything tastes so good, it does not matter. When people are on a budget, you have to do what you need to do when getting something to eat. Not everyone can ‘brown-bag’ it to work and the average lunch in New York City can run between $10.00-$12.00 a day at the average restaurant. Add the fries into this mix and McDonald’s is doing what the supermarket industry has been doing for the last ten years, bundling up all the cheap items and making them look they are on sale (when they have always been that price).
Two Cheeseburgers with Medium Fries and a Coke at $7.99
Another good thing about the value menu is that you can taste a lot of their food items for a reasonable price and that is smart marketing. You can have small sample of the their Buttermilk Chicken Strips or their newly minted Chicken McNuggets with all white meal.
The best is the McCafe beverages which are only $2.00 for a small beverage. McDonald’s just brought back the ‘Shamrock Shake’ for St. Patrick’s Day and that minty green drink is really refreshing on a hot day as is the smoothie drinks in strawberry and mango. It gives a customer an opportunity to try them all.
I have to say that overall the food at McDonald’s has gotten better over the last five years. I don’t know if their purveyors have changed or just that they have put more emphasis into the quality of their food, but it does taste better.
The chicken sandwich ($1.00) is a very fair price for a meal item that is crisp and has a very nice spicy taste to it. I tried it in the River Edge, NJ McDonald’s and they did a nice job with it. It was very fresh and the bun was toasted properly. The sandwich is crisp on the outside with a little spice in the breading and is is juicy on the inside. When the sandwich is fresh, it has a nice bite to it.
I have had the Bacon McDouble in three separate McDonald’s in both New York and New Jersey and everyone has cooked it well. It has just the right amount of bacon on it and it is a fair price ($2.00) for a sandwich this size. The Cheeseburger is always consistent as well.
The regular McDouble and/or the Double Cheeseburger with a small French fry ($3.99) on the new $3.99 meal bundle was really good this afternoon. The burger just came off the grill and was still sizzling and the cheese was melted perfectly. I have noticed a consistency in the flavor of the burgers and over several McDonalds and the burgers have been very good.
The $3.99 Double Cheeseburger bundle
The fries just came out of the fryer and were super-hot and you could really taste the saltiness of them. The restaurant was really busy, and the food kept being made. I have tried this now at four different McDonald’s and the results were the same. It was fresh, hot and really good.
The Double Cheeseburger/McDouble
The McDouble is a great item in the $3.99 Bundle menu.
The Chicken McNuggets ($1.00 for four) are a vast improvement from when they were created. They are all white meat now and you can taste the difference from when they were ground up meat. When you bite into them you can see the meat. When they are cooked fresh, they are crisp and have a delicious flavor. Even the coating is not that thick and there is a good ratio of chicken to breading.
Chicken McNuggets are now all white meat
The $3.99 Six Piece Chicken McNugget meal was wonderful at the West 23rd Street restaurant in Manhattan
McDonald’s has also introduced a new version of McNuggets called the Spicy McNuggets and they really have nicely spiced flavor. They are better enhanced by their new Spicy Hot Sauce which does have some fire to it. Dipping the Spicy McNuggets into it and it adds to the heat.
Spicy McNuggets with the hot sauce
The Spicy Chicken McNuggets are now on the $3.99 bundle for a limited time and they are really good.
The Spicy Chicken Mc Nuggets taste really good with the barbecue sauce
I was recently in Pennsville, NJ and visited their McDonalds and they had a $3.99 mix and match. So, I ordered the four-piece chicken nuggets with a McDouble and a Medium Coke. It was more than enough food for lunch.
The $3.99 Mix and Match meal of a McDouble and four Chicken Mc Nuggets
I stopped in after class one night to the Union Square McDonald’s in New York City and the food is really good at this McDonalds. The manager is out front and she looks like she really cares. I had the McChicken Sandwich Bundle with French Fries and the meal was perfect. The chicken sandwich had just been fried and was crisp and juicy and the French Fries just came out of the fryer and were hot and salty when I bit into them. It is my late night favorite.
The McChicken and French Fries with a Coke makes the best late night snack
I was eating dinner at McDonalds the other night using a coupon that our local McDonalds had on a special, I had the new Fried Chicken Sandwich (to compete with Chick-fil-A), which was a nice sized fried breast on a soft roll with pickles. It was delicious and could compete with the chicken sandwich at its competitor.
The Fried Chicken Sandwich at McDonalds
The Sausage McMuffin with egg ($3.00) hands down my favorite item at McDonald’s when cooked properly is one of the best food items on the restaurant’s menu and one of the best breakfast items.
The $6.99 Sausage McMuffin Breakfast with a Hashbrown and Hot Tea
The Sausage McMuffin with Egg is my favorite item on the McDonald’s menu!
High in fat and cholesterol yes but still tastes the best when it is fresh. Their pork sausage is delicious and well spiced.
With beverages, a soda of any size is very fair and the small McCafe with its smoothies and coffee drinks is the perfect way to try all their drink selections at a very fair price ($2.00). Go for the Mango smoothie on a hot day. It is the best!.
One of the specialty drinks that I really enjoy, and it is seasonal is the Shamrock Shake (Small $2.99 and Medium is $4.29). It is pricey for a milkshake, but it is always fun to get when St. Patrick’s Day comes around. I like the mint flavor and the consistency has changed since they went to using yogurt as a base instead of ice cream. It has a creamy consistency as all of their milkshakes have and the sweet minty flavor puts you in the holiday mood.
The Shamrock Shake is worth the trip when it is in season.
The Shamrock Shake is great with a McBundle meal.
The Shamrock Shake is a much anticipated treat every year.
Another shake that recently came out in 2023 was Grimace’s Birthday Shake, a creamy blend of berries and yogurt that makes the purple shake. It is matched with several combination meals, but I had to try it on its own. On a hot day, it hit the spot. It’s not cheap with a medium being $4.99 but for a limited time it was worth it.
The Grimace’s Birthday Shake, a purple berry shake
Whether it be a strawberry or a vanilla shake, McDonalds has improved on their shakes since I was a kid. When I have an upset stomach, the McDonald’s Vanilla shake cures all. They are the best!
The Vanilla Shake is also wonderful and very refreshing
Another item while not on the Dollar Menu or the Bundles that is served at certain times of the year is the McRib sandwich. I swear I had not eaten one of these in over twenty years. The sandwich is a boneless piece of pork shaped into a rib like appearance and then smothered in barbecue sauce, pickles and onions. A little on the pricey side at $5.95 for a sandwich it was not bad. The barbecue sauce had a nice sweet flavor to it.
The McRib Sandwich
I was recently in Abu Dhabi for a class I was taking at NYU and tried an item not available in the states, the McArabia Chicken Sandwich. It is two baked chicken patties with lettuce, tomato and sauce tucked into a pita bread studded with parsley. It was delicious and could be a big hit if it ever came to the States.
The McArabia Chicken Sandwich available in Abu Dhabi.
The McArabia Chicken Sandwich meal at McDonalds in the Middle East.
McDonald’s has also now introduced a new line of breakfast baked items. There are cinnamon buns, apple fritters and blueberry muffins. The apple fritter I had at an upstate McDonald’s was really good. The pastry was studded with small pieces of apples and had a nice sweet glaze. It will be fun to try the other items soon.
McDonald’s new breakfast baked items
On a recent trip to the McDonalds in Manhattan, I tried one of their new Blueberry Cream pies for dessert ($1.79) and I thought it was pretty good. I wish it had been a bit fresher but still the taste was delicious. The Classic Hot Apple Pies I still love but I miss them when they were fried. They tasted so good!
The new baked Blueberry Cream pie is worth the visit
The classic Baked Apple Pie is still wonderful and reminds me of my childhood. Then it was fried and was delicious back then as well.
McDonald’s came up with another new sweet dessert that has been featured aboard and that is the new Chocolate Cream pie. It is a really good. It tastes like a Devil Dog or Ring Ding. It is a chocolate cake fill with a rich cream filling and topped with sugar granules. It was sweet and delicious.
The ‘new’ Chocolate Cream pie was introduced as a tester in the United States.
The cream filled chocolate pie is delicious.
What was really good for the holidays is the limited edition ‘Holiday Pie’ that they created for Christmas. This sweet cream filled pie was delicious and was filled with a vanilla cream and topped with a flavorful level icing with sprinkles on top. It is nice way to start the holidays.
The limited edition ‘Holiday Pie’
The Yum factor!
My hats off to McDonald’s, the only national chain for making the cut in “DiningonaShoeStringinNYC”. The food at most of the McDonalds I have tried is consistent and the flavor and quality of the food has gotten better over the last five years.
They are doing a good job to adapting to the customers needs.
For a quick and reasonable and quality meal for around $20.00 in New York City and the surrounding towns, DiningonaShoeStringinNYC will help you stay in budget when traveling to the area.
Blogger and Culinarian (and Firefighter) Justin Watrel of DiningonaShoeStringinNYC@Wordpress.com
*Bloggers note: prices have changed since many of these posts were created and since COVID have gone up a few dollars but are still fairly priced.
Hello everyone! Welcome travelers to New York City and the surrounding suburbs!
My name is Justin Watrel and I created ‘Dining on a Shoestring in New York City’ (DiningonShoeStringinNYC.wordpress.com) as an extension to the blogs: ‘MywalkinManhattan’ (MywalkinManhattan.com) along with ‘VisitingaMuseum’ (VisitingaMuseum.com) and “LittleShoponMainStreet” (“LittleShoponMainStreet@Wordpress.com), in search of a delicious meal for $20.00 and under.
It is difficult in an area as expensive as Metropolitan New York but many restaurant owners are paving the way with small, innovative menus at a fair price.
Sweets Bakery in Chinatown, NY
I created this blog when I discovered all these wonderful small restaurants, bodegas and bakeries that were fantastic both in that the quality of their food and the prices that they cost. I also looked at atmosphere and cleanliness of the establishment. Most cost under $20.00 (USA) for their main food items and provide small places to sit down and eat.
Since the COVID pandemic though, many of the places mentioned on this blog have either closed up shop (I have noted the months and years they closed up) or the prices have risen, in some cases significantly so please be aware when you visit these restaurants. I have tried to revisit many of them since the pandemic and prices have gone up by three or four dollars. I still continue to look for restaurants in the $10.00-$20.00 range that are of high quality and fair portion sizes.
Here and there I found these eating establishments tucked in corners of the City, hiding on side streets or across from the schools where they were populated by students looking for a quick bite. I also found them near public housing or near the hotels where people were looking for a quick meal or a reasonable snack.
NoHo Juice Bar & Deli in Greenwich Village/NoHo
The signs I looked for where they accepted EBT (Electric Benefits Transfer) cards or where I saw the doormen, construction workers and cabbies eating. They always find the most reasonable places to eat and this is a group that will not tolerate food that doesn’t taste good. They would be too vocal about it (As I found on several trips to the same establishment where people would be talking about why they keep coming back and how bad the local competition was around the corner).
With everyone on a budget, I thought this would cater nicely to the traveler or NYC resident, who is looking to save some money while enjoying a quick meal or a snack when in New York City. I have extended the blog to outside New York City to all the surrounding places I have traveled on my blog, “MywalkinManhattan.com”. So you will see places in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware now.
Blue Sky-Harlem Taste Deli/Grocery in East Harlem, NY “Home of the Chopped Cheese”
In the era of COVID, I am finding that many of these places are either changing hands or are closing permanently. Please call ahead or Google the establishments to see if they are still open. It has amazed me how many of these once vibrant businesses closed their doors due the lack of customers. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on our industry.
Please share with me on the blog posts your insights on these establishments and let me know your recommendations. Please join me on the travels as I walk all the streets and avenues of Manhattan in my quest to walk every street of the Island of Manhattan in ‘MywalkinManhattan.com’. In many cases, I have cross-referenced these reviews to my TripAdvisor reviews so you can get other people’s opinions as well.
Cheesy Pizza on Upper Broadway in the Upper Upper West Side
I hope you get a chance to travel to some of these locations and try these delicious and reasonable restaurants. Since the Pandemic some prices have gone up but for the most part all of these restaurants are still reasonable and under the now $20.00 limit that I put on them. There are still many on this list that are under $10.00 but that is getting harder to find.
Dining at Barcelona’s Restaurant & Bar in Garfield, NJ
So join me as I make my way around the City and to surrounding areas to find delicious food that can meet a limited budget.
Dining on a Shoestring in the New York City area and beyond. 