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Thursday Evening, December 22

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Traffic was very slow and busy as we traveled to Lancaster on a rainy Christmas week evening.

We thought we would be 10-15 minutes early and arrived at John J. Jeffries just one minute before our 5 pm reservation.

I’m not quite sure why this is one of my favorite restaurants. The food is always delicious, but I think I like the early evening ambiance best. The room is not real large, and most people don’t arrive until 6 pm or later, giving us a nice quite place to eat. Also, they specialize in local foods and ingredients.

After the bread was delivered to our table, we each received an amuse-bouche. I think this is the only local restaurant where we receive these – so I had to look up the spelling.

Amuse-bouche is French for mouth amuser. 🙂 These are almost always the chef’s choice and there is no charge.

We started with appetizers. This was Lydia’s small dish with ingredients like grits, bacon, vegetables and shrimp.

One of my favorite things about this restaurant is their soup. This was a pumpkin/squash mix and was SO delicious.

Cerwin didn’t choose a small dish or appetizer but enjoyed the cheese, nuts, bread and fruit dish. Of, course we all sampled it.

We had a sweet time with our granddaughter Lydia, getting caught up on her life and job and learning more about her.

Her entree was salmon.

Cerwin’s meatball dish.

My main dish was the same as Lydia’s small dish appetizer.

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It seems that I forgot to take a picture of our desserts. Lydia’s was chocolate and Cerwin and I shared a Red Ape Crème Brûlée. Of course, I had to ask the reason for the name, “Red Ape”.

Our server said the cinnamon is a special red cinnamon from Indonesia and when sold to a client, the funds help to rescue local apes.

We drove home through a cold drizzly rain.