Restaurants in Willow Grove

Growing up, Marcie Spampinato watched her father, Mike, masterfully manage a local country club. By seventh grade, she was working alongside him, and today—with a restaurant management degree from Penn State under her belt—she joins with Mike to co-manage their steak-and-sushi joint, Spamps.

Chefs trained in Japan artfully stuff the eatery's sushi rolls with fresh ingredients such as black-pepper-crusted tuna and flying fish roe. Fusion flourishes such as kimchi tartar sauce, miso beurre blanc, and sake reductions give entrees such as rib-eye steak an Asian flair.

And much like a chocoholic's dream journal, the eatery's new cocktails revolve around sweet flavors, especially Marcie's favorite, the pumpkin-pie martini. Libations, which also include wine and beer, flow freely behind a copper bar with TVs or fill glasses in a dining room with exposed brick walls and private booths. At an outdoor patio dubbed The Grotto, lofted TVs illuminate trellises and tabletops as well as bar-goers shimmying to a live DJ's beats on Friday and Saturday nights.

Marhaba Blue Bell occupies an unassuming location just past the entrance of a Super Fresh market, but those who enter find Middle-Eastern dishes featuring flavors bigger than the restaurant's physical footprint. Using local ingredients, chefs whip up lemon-infused hummus and baba ghanouj and bake pitas fresh for each order. Lamb, beef, and chicken kebabs make savory meals or edible drumsticks for touring musicians, and the Marhaba meat extravaganza, with chicken, Middle-Eastern meatloaf, lamb, and gyro meat provides a multitude of proteins to pair with a BYOB beer or wine. A hookah's snake-like coils loop beside a cash register and multicolored lamps cast light across the ceiling's wooden rafters.

Though the county creek bubbling behind Zacharia’s Creek Side Café inspired the eatery’s name, it is the creativity of owners Andrew and Nancy Gallo and a team of trained chefs who keep diners enthused about each seasonal menu of Mediterranean- and New American-inspired fare. The casual BYOB restaurant—which has garnered praise from Zagat and LifeStyle Magazine—is outfitted with a 50-seat outdoor patio and on-location bakery and serves up lunch, dinner, and prix fixe menus amid Mediterranean-inspired interior decor. Housemade pastas are decorated with wild-boar ragu, goat cheese, and pork-belly confit, while the jumbo lump crab cakes come with an entourage of roasted potatoes and asparagus. An in-house pastry chef helps patrons cap off meals with fine cookies, seasonal cappuccinos, and over-the-top specialty cakes that are exact replicas of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee.

Executive chef Erick Jones incorporates the characteristic mesquite flavors of a wood-fired grill into the fresh seafood, meat, and breakfast dishes that earned the Timber Wood Fired Grill’s three from-scratch menus OpenTable's Diners' Choice award in 2011. Rustic wood-grain décor cultivates a comfortable atmosphere and distracts interloping beavers from the tasty menu of wood-grilled entrees, such as a garlic-marinated rib eye or braised fennel and shrimp pasta. On Sunday mornings, the cooks take inventive turns whipping up brunch provisions with ingredients ranging from caramelized peach toppings to a cool smoked salmon. Handmade desserts including crème brûlée and orange-infused cheesecake wait at the conclusion of every meal with the best challenge to ambitious appetites since the invention of the word bottomless.

Cranberry Cafe's mavens-in-charge Soo and Cathy innovatively combine sauces and spices to craft salads drizzled with feta vinaigrette and sandwiches smothered in creamy cranberry mayo. Fresh ingredients become breakfasts, brunches, and lunches that land on checkered tablecloths or are delivered to customers' doorsteps and burrow openings.

Every day, chef and owner Ray Moscardelli—a graduate of the Johnson & Wales Culinary Institute—ventures out to hand pick fresh cuts of meat and seafood to sizzle and sear for The Pistachio Grille’s New-World cuisine. Vintage-style posters adorn the vermillion walls in the intimate dining room, where servers welcome diners with attentive service, and crisp white tablecloths put guests at ease with enthusiastic handshakes. Omelets and just-woken pancakes fill breakfasting bellies with morning classics. Lunch and dinner menus satisfy with piquant pastas, such as the grilled veggie lasagna or the rigatoni with broccoli, which veils a colorful mélange of jumbo-lump crabmeat and sun-dried tomatoes dapperly dressed in a white-wine-and-curry cream sauce. Guests can also bring their own bottles of wine, beer, and love potions to pair with the savory fare. Additionally, The Pistachio Grille’s on- and off-site catering pleases palates with items culled from the eatery’s menus or with custom dishes and hors d’oeuvres.