Mechanicsville Restaurants

Giovanni's is an Italian restaurant at the Hanover Commons Shopping Centre at the corner of Chamberlayne Road (Route 301) and Shady Grove Road. The restaurant is divided into two parts: a traditional dining room and a pickup lobby for takeaway pizzas. They don't go overboard, like some Italian restaurants do, on the decor. The service is friendly and attentive, but not in your face.

Favorite Dish: I had the penne pasta and meat sauce and the chicken parmagiana. In both cases, the pasta was perfectly cooked, but the sauce was a little sweet and it drowned out the flavour of the pasta. The Greek salad is a ripoff because 90% of it is iceberg lettuce with only a little bit of the good stuff. Sadly, the feta cheese cannot be counted as the good stuff...bloody awful! The garlic bread, however, is first rate. The good news is Giovanni's is the best restaurant at Hanover Commons. The bad news is its competitor happens to be Don Pedro 2, which happens to be the worst Mexican restaurant in the metro area.

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The Cold Harbor restaurant is where the Hanover County Republican committee sometimes meets. One reason is that they are happy to accomodate our numbers which could be huge depending on the speaker, but mostly, their breakfast is VERY good. The hostess and wait staff display the kind of hospitality for which the South is noted.

Favorite Dish: Some folks are keen on salt herring because they know how to cook it properly and they are consistent. I never acquired a taste for salty fish at breakfast, actually. So, I went with the buffet. The selection was standard breakfast fare for the Southern United States: eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and biscuits. It's not anything really to write home about, but it gets you going in the morning.

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Carter's Pigpen Bar-b-Que opened in the autumn of 2008. My first go of this new place was when they were open less than a couple of weeks. We got there about 45 minutes before closing time, but the ran out of nearly all of their side dishes (except for beans and corn muffin). They were fixing to run out of pork when we placed our order. I guess when a restaurant is new, it's hard for them to gauge how much food to make each day. Business is apparently good because they had to turn away prospective customers before posted closing time. It is in an old house in old town Mechanicsville near the intersection of Cold Harbor Road and Mechanicsville Turnpike. Even though it has been converted into a restaurant, the lobby where you place your order and the small dining area (in two separate rooms) are a reminder that this was once a home. If the seats are all filled they will gladly do takeaway.

Favorite Dish: I had the Carter's combo which consists of vinegar based eastern barbecue on a bun with baked beans and corn muffins. The barbecue and beans were really good, but the portions were smaller than usual because they had to stretch the last bit of pork.

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Gus' Italian Restaurant is located in Hanover Square Shopping Centre about midway between Ukrop's supermarket and Kohl's department store. The restaurant looks rather plain on the outside, like any other tenant in the strip mall. On the inside, it is rather cozy with old posters on the wall. The wait staff was rather friendly, but if you order seafood at this Italian restaurant, expect to measure your wait time (to eat) with calendars instead of watches. You would think they had to go to the bay, catch my scallops, and come back. Once supper was served, we almost had to send the Virginia National Guard out to find the waitress.

Favorite Dish: I had the grilled bay scallops with a side salad and baked potato. The salad was rather flat and unimaginative. There was only lettuce, onions, a little mozzarella cheese, and two tiny grape tomatoes. The flavour of the scallops wasn't bad. They were grilled in butter and seasoned with Old Bay seasoning. The trouble was the portions were miniscule. It didn't bother me that bay scallops were small, but they could have put more on the plate (as you will see on the photo and, no, I didn't snatch any before taking the photo, Lee). Not only that, the scallops were served lukewarm and the baked potato was almost cold. I guess it's not a good idea to expect good seafood prepared right in a restaurant which specialises in Italian food. However, I expected common sense in food preparation to prevail here. I should go back if only to see whether they do better at serving Italian food.

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Chen's is one of the nicer Chinese restaurants in the area. On entering, you can see the restaurant is well-adorned, but the decoration isn't such that it is in your face. Chinese noodles come complimentary with a duck sauce and Chinese hot mustard in which to dip them. The service is professional and friendly; attentive but not too much so. They serve even the most elabourate dishes fairly quickly. The portions are very generous. Folks with appetites less hearty than mine may want to get the leftovers boxed up for takeaway. At the end of each meal, together with the fortune cookies, they give you orange wedges to cleanse your palate. They don't even do that at Ginger Red, a more upmarket Asian restaurant in the area. Chen's has two other locations in the area: Glen Allen and Chester.

Favorite Dish: They offer egg rolls or spring rolls for an appetiser. I can't go to a Chinese restaurant without at least one egg roll. Because scallops are my favourite seafood, I had the crystal scallops which are fresh scallops sauteed together with broccoli, mushrooms and red pepper in a light sauce. The scallops and all that came with them tasted good, but needed something else to add more flavour.

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At first glance, it might seem odd to have China Wok at the same strip mall as the former Wok 'n Roll, a Chinese buffet. However, they serve completely different clientele. Those who come to China Wok or order takeaway want the food fast and good. There is limited seating in the restaurant for those who want it there. However, most folks either come there to take it home or have it delivered. Free delivery applies for orders of $12 or more. For the health conscious, there is no MSG and they only use 100% vegetable oil. Most, but not all, dishes go for less than $10 a person.

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
Mon.- Thurs.: 11 am-10pm
Fri.-Sat.: 11 am-10:30pm
Sunday: 12 noon-10pm

Favorite Dish: I like their pepper steak with onions. The beef is tender and it is served over yellow pork fried rice and with an egg roll. I'm also keen on their sweet and sour chicken.

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Mimmo's is an Italian restaurant at Mechanicsville's Bell Creek Shopping Centre. One Sunday afternoon after church, a group of us plus my friend Paul ate here after the service. They were good to accommodate a large group of us on such short notice. Paul, Lee, and I had to squeeze into a tight corner of the table. The atmosphere of the restaurant was rather nondescript although they tried with a mural of an Italian town. The service was a little slow, but that was understandable given the after-church crowd.

Favorite Dish: I ordered the pasta carbonara and it was terrible. I know what they did wrong. They forgot to temper the eggs in the carbonara sauce. As a result, I had pasta and bacon with scrambled eggs. I hope this was an isolated mistake. They did better when they catered my friend Chris Peace's election night victory party.

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After I found out Cedar Creek Tavern closed in favour of a Mexican restaurant, I was shocked and disappointed, but I was keen on trying Don Pedro. When I did, I missed Cedar Creek all the more. The decoration was not overdone. Even taking into account that it was Friday night, the service was slow. I wondered if they had to hunt the meat and grow the corn for the tortillas. I held out hope that the food would be so good it would be worth the wait, but I was disappointed...

Favorite Dish: I had the combination 7 which consisted of one burrito, one enchilada, and two tacos. The meat in the enchiladas and tacos was terribly bland and the enchilada sauce was terrible. Most good Mexican restaurants put plenty of lettuce and tomatoes on the tacos. Instead, mine had a little lettuce amidst all the (bland) Monterey Jack cheese. The Mexican rice that comes with most combination platters has green peas in it! The only thing that saved this restaurant from the lowermost rating was the food was served hot, the seating was reasonably comfortable, and the tortilla chips and salsa were reasonably good. It's a shame when a good restaurant like Cedar Creek Tavern goes out of business, but it is even worse when the restaurant that replaces it is so inferiour. Like the title says, it's like trading in a Cadillac for a mule!

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