Rock Solid Food at Stoneybank

Yay, it's after Lent, so I can finally enjoy a steak on a Friday if I so desire.

My husband and I chose to drive out to Clymer to eat at Stoneybank Restaurant. You will find it on the left hand side as enter Clymer -- almost right across from Sheetz. The building itself is made of, um, stone.

When we entered the restaurant we ended up being greeted by who we believe to be the owner/executive chef. From what I understand, he cooked for many years at the Indiana Country Club (don't quote me on that exact statement, though). We were seated right away in the main dining area, which is designated as non-smoking. A very separate bar room exists for those who want to smoke or simply enjoy a few adult beverages.

The decor is very simple and down to earth. It's enough to make you feel comfortable but still has a nice feel to it.

Our waiter was really friendly, but you could tell he wasn't very experienced. I cut him some slack in that department. It's a tough job. Heck, I barely lasted 3 weeks doing it myself years ago. He wasn't a bad waiter -- he just forgot to bring us our bread/butter and forgot to bring a pen with the bill for the table next to us.

The menu has a nice assortment of classic American food plus weekly specials. These specials are typically based on seasonality and availability. They had a decent wine list of which I selected the more expensive of the two cabernet which had a nice hint of oak. Very tasty.

We both ended up ordering steak -- filet mignon, in fact. What's cool is you can upgrade your steak with different added seasonings/toppings. My husband had his plain while I had mine peppercorn crusted. Our dinners came with a tossed salad, choice of potato and veggies (and bread/butter, but ours was missing...no big deal because I would have overate it anyway). I chose onion rings with my steak while my husband went for the classic baked potato.

The base for the salads was iceberg and topped with red onion, green pepper, green olive, tomato, cucumber and carrot coins. Everything was fresh and their balsamic vinegarette was very tasty.

Both of our steaks were well-done (we ordered them medium-well), but they were still very, very tender and moist. The peppercorn crusting on mine was outstanding. I'm a total pepper monkey and this certainly gave me my fix. We had a nice California-style veggie blend of broccoli, cauliflower, orange carrots and yellow carrots. Very well seasoned and cooked perfectly.

Now, my onion rings were OUTSTANDING. I haven't had them in years, so this was a real treat for me. They were very thick cut onions which were perfectly sweet and caramel-ly on the inside. The outside crust was very, very crunchy. My guess is they used Panko breadcrumbs. I could have eaten a whole plateful of these babies. Excellent!

We passed on dessert this time (the onion rings were my treat), but the coconut cream pie is phenomenal!

Obviously, we'll go back. The prices are reasonable and the food is pretty darn good. Enjoy!