Restaurants, Best Restaurants, Favorite Restaurants, Favorite Places to Eat, Best Places to Eat Lunch

Vince and Dominic’s Pizza: One of my favorite places to eat lunch is at Vince and Dominic’s Pizza in Bethesda, Maryland. You can get their lunch special...a slice of pizza and a 20 ounce bottled drink for $5.51 (after tax). Any of you that are regulars may remember the $4.99 total after tax, but they just raised it in January 2008. The thing about their slice of pizza is that it’s not your average slice. It’s a humongous slice of pizza. I call it “the slab”. It has a hard crust, plenty of cheese, and is bigger than a dinner plate. Believe me, one slice will be enough. It’s easy and fast to get your food there. You pay, you sit, and eventually you may here Dominic calling out your order with his heavy Italian accent, “One slice-ah sausage-ah!” lol. Too funny. Vince and Dominic’s Restaurant is at 10474 Auto Park Avenue in Bethesda, MD. Phone 301-365-4190. They deliver. Posted January 25, 2008.
Urban BBQ: A favorite lunchbox of mine is Urban BBQ in Rockville, MD. They have a great selection of old-fashioned BBQ choices…excellent ribs, the best hamburger, pulled meat sandwiches, etc. The atmosphere is fun and inviting. They even print on their receipts “Our cornbread you’ll enjoy twice.” You have to love a restaurant with a sense of humor. They have two televisions that usually run the sports channels. Their hamburger is called the Urban Burger. It comes with bacon and cheese and “red sauce”, which is their signature sauce. Their red sauce is thin and a little heavy on the vinegar, but tastes great nonetheless. My only complaint about Urban BBQ is that this location has really limited seating. They expanded the store in 2007 and added more seats, but still, if you get there along with a busy lunch crowd, don’t expect to get a seat. And don’t bring a big group. Their tables are fit for four at the most and the narrow layout of the place doesn’t lend itself for pulling two tables together. Overall, it’s a great place to get your BBQ fix. Urban BBQ is at 2007 Chapman Avenue in Rockville, MD across from the Guitar Center. Posted January 26, 2008.
Ledo’s Pizza: A great spot for lunch is Ledo’s in Rockville. Great service, great food, good desserts. Their chicken parmasen is very good. Their BBQ Chicken Calzone is great. Tight parking, though. 01-30-08.
CiCi’s Pizza: CiCi’s Pizza in Rockville has a cheap pizza buffet that is a great lunchtime destination. They have all kinds of pizza, pasta, salad, and dessert as part of the buffet. Drinks cost extra, though. The pizza is not bad for a cheap buffet style pizza. It’s good enough that you can definitely get your $4.99 worth out of it. 02-01-08.
Famous Dave’s BBQ: Famous Dave’s is a BBQ restaurant chain. In my opinion, they have the best ribs I have ever had. Posted 02-04-08.
Sweetwater Tavern: Sweetwater Tavern is a great family steak restaurant. They have an inviting western theme combined with TV’s and a modern feel. If you are looking for a restaurant that sells terrific mouth-watering pork chops, then this is the place. The location I usually go to is at 14250 Sweetwater Lane, Centreville, VA 20121. 703-449-1100. Posted 03-09-08.
Logan’s Roadhouse: Logan’s Roadhouse in Manassas, Virginia is another of my favorite restaurants. At Logan’s you can throw your peanut shells onto the floor. And the steaks aren’t bad either. Logan's has a great deal on Mondays and Tuesdays where you get two meals for $13.99. Logan’s Roadhouse is at 7731 Donegan Drive in Manassas, VA 20110 703-369-0244. And they're in Sterling off of Cascades Parkway just north of Leesburg Pike. 703-369-0244.
Five Guys Hamburgers: Five guys makes great greasy sloppy hamburgers and great greasy fat French fries. They also have barrels of peanuts to eat while you are waiting for your burger. Update on the Rockville 5 Guys...beware of possible food poisoning. My friend and I both got immediate diarreah after eating here last Tuesday. I don't know if it was ecoli in the burgers or something else not so clean. But beware. Posted 6-1-2008. I've since been back there at least three times and haven't had anymore issues. Posted 2-20-09.
Wendy's: The Wendy's on Nicholson Lane in Rockville is a favorite lunchtime stop of mine. The spicy chicken sandwich is great. I like their Baconator hamburger. And the fries are hot and salty. Posted 6-19-2010

Avoid Restaurant.com: it's a scam

I recently saw an ad for Restaurant.com promising $25 gift certificates to popular restaurants for only $10 each. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, I went to Restaurant.com to see what the catch was. After reading their fluff, I realized they weren't going to tell me. The website gives no real details of the program. So, I did some online research and found that there are hundreds of complaints about Restaurant.com. Apparently what happens is that most customers buy the "gift certificates" and then find out that they are really coupons, not gift certificates in the usual sense. Many of the restaurants that Restaurant.com sells their "gift certificates" for won't honor them. IF you can find a restaurant that takes them, you can only use one per month, and you might have to buy $50 of food to use the $25 coupon. Ok, they should have told us that from the start, but wait...it gets worse. Many Restaurant.com customers start seeing strange charges to their credit card. Apparently, many customers are duped into becoming "members" of Shopping Essentials Plus or other unwanted monthly subscriptions. On top of all of that, the Restaurant.com customer service is very poor. Good luck getting reimbursed for any money you lose. Bottom line...avoid Restaurant.com and remember...if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Grocery Store Practices

I’ve had a few occasions where grocery stores charged me different prices than what was posted on their signs. Sometimes, the price labels can be confusing. The names of the products on the price labels are small and semi-codified. The last time it happened was at Giant. They charged me the regular price on something I thought was on sale. I stopped going to Giant for two months after that.
On March 17, 2008, I was overcharged at the Herndon Safeway on Elden Street. They charged me $1.49 each for Hershey chocolate bars that were advertised on sale for 5 for $4 for the 5 ounce bars. That should have been $0.80 each. I haven't been back to Safeway since March 17. I think I will keep them on a 3 month ban for overcharging me for the 3 chocolate bars.
On February 16, 2009, I was overcharged again at the Herndon Safeway on Elden Street. They charged me $11.39 each for two 4-packs of Red Bull. The sale sign on the shelf advertised them at $5.99 each. I had to stand at the customer service counter for 8-10 minutes while they checked and processed my refund. Safeway was overcharging me a total of $10.80 plus 27 cents tax. I guess they're banned again. I won't go back there until June.