Hey friends! My boyfriend wanted to spend his birthday at America's largest buffet. And let's just…read moresay we are already planning our return trip! With over 200 feet of food, Shady Maple is an unforgettable experience. From the sweet treats to made-to-order meat stations, this is now my favorite buffet. The made-to-order meat stations feature cheesesteaks, burgers, sausages and steaks! All cooked to your liking, right in front of you, how cool! The buffet bars are stacked with salad bars, seafood, soups, sides, fried food, baked food, you name it! I truly enjoyed the range of options here. There's plentyyyyy to drink. Slushie machines, coffee, soda stations, tea/lemonade, fresh milk from their farms and milkshakes machines! The sweet treats are endless; pies, cakes, build-your-ice cream bowls and more! Customer service: Okay, not super friendly Prices: $33/person on a weekday. Plus free birthday meals! Plenty free parking Atmosphere: family-oriented Make sure you also check their gift shop on the lower level. I hope you enjoy!

People hate on smorgasbords for all sorts of reasons. Yes its not 5 star Michelin food (its not…read moresupposed to be). BUT it has a VARIETY of food and gives you a taste of Lancaster County. If its your birthday you get a free meal when you go with someone purchasing. To be honest, compared to other Lancaster County Buffets, their price is the most reasonable! I actually prefer their breakfast Buffet, but we recently went for dinner. Tons of seating, we went on a Friday Dinner Rush and it only took us about 10 minutes to get seated. Just some of my top picks and highlights: Steaks made to order Milkshake station The dessert bar Icee machine Potato pie Brown Butter noodles Fried chicken Corn casserole And don't forget the PIE! If you are visiting, just do it and get a taste of Lancaster County! Two huge aisles of food with different items going each direction, check both! Every night has a special, seafood night, steak night, etc...pick your favorite!

Even after going here for the first time today, I still don't get the draw of this place. For…read morethose that might not know how it works, you setup a time by calling or going online and place an order for a certain number of meals, selected from the 12 available meals for the month. Then you go in and get to work preparing the meals to be put in freezer bags to take home with you. The idea sounds good but to me it's basically like paying $25/meal to go somewhere to make your own Stouffer's frozen dinner. It doesn't look fresh, it doesn't look good and it doesn't allow you flexibility in choosing ingredients, style of sauces or cuts of meats. Plus almost all ingredients are frozen! Maybe to people who don't have much free time or cooking knowledge, and would rather step meals up a notch from frozen dinners, this would be great, but I'd rather go to a grocery store, choose my own ingredients and make a fresh dish for substantially less money. I did like how friendly all employees were and that they serve complimentary scones, coffee cake, and coffee/tea. They do their best but it's just not for me.

Let's Dish is great concept for creating meals in advance in a kitchen where someone has done most…read moreof the prep and all of the cleanup for you. My family is 2 people -- both "empty-nesters" and "snow birds". We're semi-retired but still have busy days just younger couples with families. We do the 4-meal plan once a month and split them in half. The result is 8 meals for $100. Each meal easily serves the two of us with some leftover for lunch another day. That's $12.50 for dinner for a healthy, quick dinner for two. For comparison, Wegman's offers individual meals to go for $6 (12.00 for 2). Let;s Dish is much more economical than carry out. For travel, Let's Dish is perfect! We pack a cooler bag with 8-10 meals and go to Ocean City or Florida. We can cook yummy quick meals without purchasing spices, condiments and ingredients. The staff at the Timoniuim Let's Dish are very helpful. They always offer suggestions for prep and packaging. My husband and I can bang out our 8 meals in about an hour. Since we're doing the prep we can control the salt and spice content. Fresh hot scones, coffee, and tea are always available during day sessions. We enjoy them while reviewing the menus for the coming months. There is always an instore sign-up bonus so we're always getting a little goody for free. I particularly like the suggestions for sides and wine to "go with". This info is on a printed page that I can take with me (take extra copies for travel) and post on my freezer door. Let's dish does not take the place of cooking from scratch but it has a permanent place in our schedule. It's a cost-effective time-saver. And it's a lot of fun.

Food is just OK. Turkey dinner reminded us of Swansons TV Dinner of the 1960s. Nothing special.read more

I used to love this place but today I received a text to order Thanksgiving dinner. It was…read moredelivered 3 weeks early!!! I called, heard the women saying they will put this on us, it's not our fault she didn't put the date in!!! What??? It's Thanksgiving dinner for crying out loud! It's expensive and this customer service sucks!

This woman never let me redeem my Groupon for a cooking class. She offered a full refund but then…read moreconveniently stopped replying to emails 6 months ago. Has no credibility. Filing an official complaint with Groupon to get my money back. What a disappointment.

This was a huge waste of time and money. It was so bad, I kept thinking that I was on candid…read morecamera. First off, the lady is rude! People asked about fat and calorie content, and she told us to take each ingredient and look up the calories for the amount used and add it all up...thanks real helpful. Seems like the sort of thing you should know if you're teaching a low fat cooking class. She then hands out the recipes: they were incomplete with missing ingredients and didn't even put how much you need to use. Then we are served the dishes - bland, and the mango rice definitely did not have any mango in it. But here's the kicker - she announces that she forgot to bring the food. Seriously. So she says she is going to tell us how to make it and will email us a video of her cooking this crappy bland food. She's also got a real thing with Trader Joe's and most of the ingredients can only be bought there (i.e., a special Trader Joe's brand of dressing). Needless to say I walked out and I will be demanding my money back. I feel sorry for the others who wasted this money buying the groupon.

So I'm jumping in on the very first day of my first order to say how pleased I am at this entire…read moreconcept. You go to the website and pick meals, order it, pick a day and time to go get it and have whatever you want back at your house the next day. I'm so tired off cooking and eating out isn't exactly great for families trying to be healthy. There's so much excessive packaging. I actually think there's less than when your grocery shop and have to deal with all the packaging of everyday items. But it's nothing unless it's great food. Here's the opinion on the first meal we tried tonight which was the Broadway tomato basil soup and garlic bread. Holy cow WOW. I wish I took a picture, but I forgot because it was so beautiful and so good. My daughter hates soup so I made her penne pasta and put it on top. The color was vibrant and everyone said it was the best tomorrow tomato soup they've ever had. 3 of us ate about 25% of the frozen package so we have a lot more to eat. I didn't defrost in the fridge, but rather cut out a piece and then put it in my instant pot for 3 minutes on high and then did a quick release. It was perfect. The bread I didn't defrost in the fridge either (we didn't have the time) so just heated it up a little in the oven and then cut it open, put in the garlic butter and topped with Parm. It was perfect. The bread is wonderful. It's all gone. My son is taking soup to school for lunch tomorrow and he's never done that. The other meals for the week fit nicely in my small freezer. The quality is really nice and everyone's happy. I picked up a few meals not on my list asking with 5 other meals to try and I'll keep coming back as long as everything tastes as wonderful as it did tonight. What a huge time saver for great food.

I have been prepping our dinners here for a year now and love this for our family. The employees…read moreare welcoming and wonderfully helpful. You go to stations around the facility to put together meal items which are taken home and frozen for your family meals. Pros- so easy to NOT have to make another run to grocery store when you have these meals in your freezer. We have three adults so the portions are perfect as they come in 3 or 6 person servings. A wide variety of foods and flavors. Comfort food included as well as seasonal and healthier choices. It's fun! Extras may be purchased on site including desserts and side dishes! Con- no vegan dishes but some vegetarian. Try it yourself or they will prepare your meals and you can just pick them up!

We've been patronizing this place for the last three months. It is fun, and easy (at Dinner A'Fare…read moreas well as preparing the assembled meals at home.) My wife and I have really enjoyed the "no fuss, no muss" approach to having nutricious and delicious meals -- with the variety of a different menu each month. We find that the meals are very well-seasoned, and the ingredients seem to be of high quality. Now when you get steak, it is NOT filet or NY strip -- but the "quality" of the "cheap" cut is very good nonetheless. Another example -- they occasionally offer delicious crabcakes -- but they are far from 100% jumbo lump. Given their average price (for us) of about $6.50 per serving (including some sides you need to get at the supermarket to make for a complete meal), what should you expect? Oh, and I noted a comment from 2014 about portion sizes. Now, my wife and I are not big eaters but we are not "small portion" folks either. We normally get 3 portions out of each meal (explaining the $6.50/serving "all-in" average cost for us); only occasionally do we finish the whole meal at one sitting, leaving great leftovers. One example -- a recent shrimp dinner included 32 shrimp (@ roughly 30-40 per pound count). 10-11 shrimp of that size makes for a fine dinner (with the right sides). So I am guessing they have improved their portions, perhaps responding to that sort of review. The place is clean and welcoming, with a glass of wine or two offered as part of the deal to make the assembly "party" even more fun. Our monthly food budget has actually gone down. Yes, you can make very good meals more cheaply, but we far too often would look at the effort and hit a local chain eatery at $40-$50/dinner (with a drink and tips). Or, for roughly the $6.50 cost per serving, order pizza or stop for fast food. We wish we had discovered The Dinner A'Fare years ago!

I had heard from a few friends how much they loved the dinner affair. The concept is you go in for…read more45 minutes up to it 2 hours to prep meals of your choosing for busy days ahead. Most of the meals are freezer friendly and all of them are gourmet and look absolutely delicious. I was pleasantly surprised to go in and find it not only decorated so cute, but the staff were friendly and knowledgeable. I had six meals prepped in about 45 minutes - just amazing. I wanted to eat them immediately even though I was making them for a couple of busy weeks I had coming ahead. I would definitely recommend this for any busy family or even a person who doesn't have time to cook but doesn't want to make eating frozen boxed meals a habit.

We are fans of the bake at home Stromboli. Frankly, I wasn't sure of where to get it after a place…read morelocally closed. A simple FB search showed that the Stromboli can be sourced at A Casa and even Swiss Farms. Like everyone we are homebound for New Years and are going casual and longed for these Stromboli's and happy to find them. Pepperoni, chicken cheesesteak, plain, just try them.

I grew up in Philadelphia and these Stromboli's are the best I have tasted in the area. Cook them…read moreaccording to the directions, maybe a little longer if you like it more well done. Pepperoni, sausage peppers and onions, and butternut, onion and cheese (I think only in the fall) are my favorites. It is truly rolled and not just folded over once. I serve them for movie night and parties. Everyone loves them and they go fast. Thank you, A Casa, for getting the strombolis right!!!

Chestnuts are quintessentially Autumn: The smoky aroma of the roasted chestnuts fills the street…read morecorners as vendors hand out bags full of those little plump shiny brown beauties. Getting the meat out of chestnuts, breaking and peeling away the hard shells and the inner skin, is actually fun - a moment filled with frustration and, much much more, delicious anticipation. Well, quintessential I said, but only so anywhere but the good old U.S.A: A blight in 1904 practically killed off the American chestnuts. Having recently tasted the fresh chestnuts of the season in a town renowned for its chestnuts in Nagano, Japan, I was set on a mission to find fresh chestnuts on this continent. What a great age we live in! A quick search on the Internet returned Delmarvelous Farms: It was about time someone started cultivating chestnuts again in the U.S.; after all, the blight had occurred 100 years ago. Always erring and risking on the side of ordering too much, I got myself a 10lb bag of their freshly picked chestnuts. Following the expert's advice, I scored an "X" on the flat side of the nuts and put them into the hot seat for some roasting. Half an hour later, voila, beautifully cracked and piping hot, the chestnuts seemed ready to be eaten. Impatience got my fingers burnt as the steam escaped from the helpfully scored "X." Undeterred in any case, I proceeded to test out Delmarvelous' claim that their chestnuts were easy to peel: They were. The bigger and deeper the score was, the bigger cracks the chestnuts made. So, score well. Tasting: Not so sweet as some Asian counterparts, these chestnuts were nonetheless very nutty and fragrant. The roasting had charred the shells slightly which made the kitchen smell like a wood cabin. These Delmarvelous chestnuts were generally more similar to the European chestnuts than the Asian: The texture was firmer than the softer and starchier Asian ones and the color of the flesh was yellow compared to light brown. One word of caution: These nuts were creepingly addictive. By the time I thought I was done with the sampling, more than half of the nuts were already gone. I see that 10lb bag was the right choice after all.

On Oct. 27, 2011, I placed a $69.00 gift order from Delmarvelous Farms. My bank account was…read moreimmediately debited. As of Dec. 3, there is no sign of the order. Attempts to contact Delmarvelous by email and telephone have been futile - no response, no explanation, no refund, no chestnuts. I have had to resort to BBB, sadly. I'd never order from them again.

Thank you Homecooked for the delicious Pumpkin French toast. Especially for giving us chocolate…read morechip cookies. We had fun making and eating them for Thanksgiving dessert! So easy to make and amazing good!

Home Cooked rules! It is my favorite go-to option when I just don't feel like cooking my family…read moredinner. They have a wide variety of healthy options which even my kids love! Claire and Michelle are the sweetest and are always so helpful. My absolute fave is the tortilla lasagna and their grab and go dips for parties are spectacular! I don't know what my family would do without Home Cooked. I also had my daughter's 8th Birthday Party at Home Cooked and it was fantastic. Lucy and her friends had the greatest time and all the Mom's kept complimenting me on the great idea. The kids made calzones and cupcakes and they also made their own special chef hats. It was a really fun experience for all. Thanks Claire for the years of impeccable service and delicious food. Yum yum!

Omg sooo many cookies and my eyes were a love the place. We ordered a dozen and let's just say our…read moretaste buds have been extremely happy ever since. The service was quick and the place is a nice size . Don't walk run to this place trust me your stomach will be happy. My favorite cookie was the cinnamon bun :) .

Don't bother! Ordered 12/15, shipped 1/8. The packing slip enclosed said "baked 12/17"!!!!…read moreThey arrived this week, almost MONTH after the "baked date" they enclosed. They "claim" the packing slip that THEY enclosed is wrong...... Their customer service is beyond frustrating. Excuse after excuse. My 85 year old father (the person who received the broken, dried out & month old cookies) tried to pay ME back for spending my money on this junk. So disappointed and the lack of customer service is beyond frustrating. They claim their packing slip showing the "baked date" was wrong. Don't waste your money.