Restaurants in Chambersburg

Flames shoot in the air from grills while chefs flip, chop, and cook new york steak, lobster, and salmon for diners clustered around teppanyaki tables. At a bar decorated with two giant lobsters and 100 percent fewer flames, the sushi chefs craft personalized maki rolls or specialty rolls with tuna, creamy wasabi, shrimp tempura, and other signature combinations. Red accents carry throughout the restaurant from the napkins and roses decorating the tables to the red shelves lining the full bar stocked with both hot and cold sake and pints of imported beers.

Starry Night Bakery & Coffeehouse owner Shannon Clarke found a passion for baking delicious treats as a child, when she would whip up fresh blueberry muffins for her family in between watching Saturday morning cartoons. After kicking aside her desk job to chase her dreams, Clarke turned her passion into her livelihood by opening Starry Night Bakery & Coffeehouse. Her career change paid off. In addition to owning a thriving business, Shannon was also ask to compete on Season 3 of Food Network's popular show, Cupcake Wars against other top bakers from around the nation.

Visitors to the popular bakery can sample a rotating seasonal menu of cupcakes in classic flavors such as red velvet and chocolate chip, as well as inventive varieties, such as salted caramel apple or an espresso and chocolate ganache voodoo cake. The café also features streamlined, black-leather sofas, so customers can lounge as they sip chai and freshly ground espresso drinks, snack on Cuban ham sandwiches, or fuel up with breakfast items such as cheddar biscuits stuffed with hickory bacon. And when she is not making hand held cakes, cookies, and savory fare, Shannon combines her skills as a graphic designer and baker to create customized wedding and birthday cakes.

At Let's Dish!, families select healthy, hearty meals to eat at home without having to dedicate valuable time to planning, shopping, or preparation. After placing an order online, patrons stop by the shop at a scheduled time to find dishes that are made from fresh ingredients, customized to taste, and then, like Sleeping Beauty, frozen to prevent them from aging. Meal menus rotate monthly and include homestyle selections, such as pork tenderloin, pulled pork with mashed potatoes, and rosemary and mustard grilled flank steak. The preassembled Dish-n-Dash entrees allow for speedy pickup service, freeing families to spend more quality bonding time sorting the mail by size and color.

Owners Bruno and Jimmy fill Mamma Lucia’s kitchen with housemade Italian family recipes. At each of the eight locations, chefs mix and match myriad pastas and sauces such as penne in pink sauce or chicken pesto ravioli in a creamy pesto sauce. Chicken and veal can be dipped in egg and sautéed in a lemon-and-wine sauce or prepared in any of 15 other ways. In the dining room, servers happily deliver New York–style pizzas to tables or to passing taxicabs full of lost Brooklyn residents.

Polished chrome, checkered floors, and red, vinyl booths decorate New Towne Diner. The eatery recalls classic diners of the 1950s so well that acute ears can hear the ghosts of poodle-skirted gals and slicked-back greasers sock-hopping across the floor and extolling the wonders of this new NASA thing. Reubens, cheeseburgers, and stacks of pancakes peacefully coexist on their comprehensive menu, packed with classic diner fare from breakfast to dessert. Lox-and-onion omelets are morning highlights, and later-in-the-day staples include teriyaki chicken or beef marinated in housemade sauce. Its dessert case, populated with fresh-baked pies and cakes, was the focus of their listing with the Baltimore Sun, which claimed it "always provides reason enough to stop in."

In the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania, workers heave loads of clean-burning anthracite coal and ship them to businesses such as Coal Fire, where chefs scoop the same coal into their 900-degree ovens to bake pizzas and wings. Before baking the pies, the chefs hand-toss the aged dough, then cover it with their signature sauce and thick, house-made mozzarella cheese, as well as toppings such as sun-dried tomatoes and pepperoni procured from local merchants. Outside the kitchen, hardwood floors run past the warm, exposed brick of the ovens while servers slide across the polished floorboards, delivering platters of steaming pizzas and frosty drinks from the full bar.