Declemente’s is awesome and you should be there right now. It’s a popular lunch spot, but it always feels like it should be busier for dinner hours. The food is great. Their Portions are big. You can eat on a budget. And the atmosphere is nice.
Declemente’s (30 W. Market St, Corning, NY) is one of those places you may not expect to be as tasty as it really is. The lunch menu is mostly deli style (it is after all called “Declemente’s Deli”), but items like cheese steaks, french fries, and popcorn chicken salad, give you more options. The dinner menu has a lot to offer, but at first glance my seem small. Daily specials are a good way to change things up for regulars.
If you’ve been to Declemente’s, you are probably familiar with their lunch menu, so I won’t dwell on it. I’ll point out a couple of my favorites: the Ruben and the cheese steak. For lunch or dinner, check the chalk board on the left when you walk in, that is where they list daily specials. The soup is always changing, and always worth trying. I recently had tomato Parmesan with bread bowl and it rocked.
The dinner menu is mostly Italian. There is a $20 dinner-for-two option: choose 2 pasta dishes and you also get salads. It’s a good deal and the portions are big. I’d like to see an option to change up the sauce for this special. Their red sauce is great, but I can get pretty tired of red sauce, so having the option to switch over to some sort of white sauce would be cool, even if it costs a little extra.
Their main pasta dishes are fantastic. I love the linguine with white clam sauce. It came with a huge pile of steamed / de-shelled clams. There are other pasta dishes with various sauces, seafood, and meats. They have steaks as well, and on Saturday nights stop in for the awesome prime rib special: prime rib w/ all you can eat crab legs. I took some picky steak eaters here and they loved it. You can get away with ordering only the all you can eat crab legs – at least I was able to do that, but I’m incredibly good looking. There’s also a pretty good salad bar. Go for the homemade Italian, it’s KILLER.
I haven’t seen all of their daily specials, but one day they had a polish menu. I grew up with polish food and their pig in a blanket (aka Golabki) was perfect! The busiest I’ve ever seen Declemente’s was for a Friday night fish fry. Judging by the plethora of Friday fish fry specials throughout Corning, I probably should keep my mouth shut, but I could care less about fried fish. But since everyone else was doing it, I took advantage of Declemente’s option of having it grilled. It was good. Just keep that in mind fatty.
At lunch you may be used to ordering at the counter, but at dinner, have a seat and a waitress will come by. The dinner atmosphere is nice. It’s a small place with comfortable seating and candle light. Oh and I can’t forget about the bread basket that comes before your meal with a dangerously delicious garlic butter sauce. Before you start thinking this all sounds rather gluttonous, let me point out my favorite meal by FAR is the roasted vegetables. Pair that up with a salad and their incredible homemade Italian dressing, and you won’t go over your calorie limit for the day.
Myles Lasco
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