West Chester Dish

A big thanks to the staff at Avalon for a relaxing dinner tour last night. Our party of 7 had a great time enjoying our courses, sampling around and choosing a winner each round. From the caramalized onions served with the cheese and bread to the bruschetta duet and the manicotti with lamb bolognase each dish was meticulously prepared and tasted amazing. The serving sizes for the tour were more than adequate and the tour option made for a fun choice to explore the menu. Thanks again!

Had a work-related dinner at Avalon. Unfortunately the experience was not a good one. There is little to absorb noise in the dining room. Had two groups of boisterous women not been there it might have been better, but it really is a crap shoot as to whether you'll have similar misfortune. Service was very slow. It was difficult to flag down our waiter who appeared to be always on the move. Maybe they were a server short? Avalon charges a corkage fee which is fine, but I ended up pouring wine for our group each and every time. Food-wise: small, small portions. The presentation of my main course, scallops, was lovely, too bad they were a bit chewy (two of the four on the plate). No side dish accompanied them. I left rather hungry. Two dining companions had the salmon putanesca, and both said that they should have selected something else as it was an odd pairing. Please know that it is cash only. We did not, and were very surprised.

I have been to Avalon many times over the past 7 years and have had varied but good experiences. While I used to find the food to be decent, I now find it to be exciting. The menu offers items that combine sweet and savory and is very foodie-friendly. I love to eat outside. My only complaint is that I think the indoor decor is having an identity crisis. It has stone and a fireplace and traditional/warm/romantic features but then they have neon aqua lights and things that just look like an attempt to be swanky. Sorry, but it kills me.

This was my 3rd trip to Avalon and it has been downhill since the first. Granted we had a party of 15 this evening, but we had reservations for over a month. Two of the entrees came out 40 minutes after the other 13. The menu was extremely limited (5 entree choices?) the portions were extremely varied. No one finished the steak on their plate yet anyone who ordered fish received about a measley 6 ounces. The waitstaff did try to make up for the shortfalls of the kitchen by bringing everyone a small mixed drink and chips and dip after dinner but the damage was done. And so am I with Avalon.

My husband and I tried Avalon for the first time on Valentine's Day. The atmosphere was cozy with a woodburning fireplace. Our waiter was great and took our compliments personally which makes me feel like he truly likes his job and takes pride in the restaurant. Our portion sizes were perfect and the food was excellent! We will definately be going back to Avalon!

My wife and I paid another visit to Avalon on Friday evening prior to a show at WCU. We tried the "Tour of the Menu" option which consists of an antipasto, a pasta, a main course and a desert. Four courses served in a medium plate format, so you had a shot at eating most of it. Everything was fresh and cooked to perfection. For our main dishes we had the swordfish and the tilapia. Wow...great seafood. The special bruschetta, onion soup, peppered lingini, mezzaluna with braised short rib filling and the deserts that followed were just as good. The wait staff was attentive, but not overbearing, and made us feel very welcome and appreciated. Avalon is not an inexpensive option, but for a special night out...it fits the bill very nicely. This was our third visit...it won't be our last.

One of the best things about living in West Chester is Avalon Restaurant. We've been there many times and have never been disappointed. The food and the service are consistently fabulous! Avalon is absolutely the best BYOB in Chester County. Try it, I know you'll agree!

What an awesome surprise right in our backyard. I would highly recommend this upscale modern gem. The food was fabulous. You definitely have to try the Misto which is the antipasto introduction which was wonderful. We had the tasting menu which was a great way to try a variety of the menu. It's a BYOB so it's even better on your wallet!

My husband and I went to Avalon to celebrate an early Valentine's Date midweek. We were seated promptly and enjoyed the ambiance of candle light and not being in a crowded room and hearing everyone elses conversations. We were lucky to get a praking space right out front and could see the car from our table. We were given a complimentary Pear Bellini, which was very tasty along with bread and roasted peppers. Although we did not know about the corkage fee in advance, it was listed in the menu and it was reasonable. The waitstaff was very attentive. We had the prix fixe menu and it gave us a good sampling of what they offered. The only complaint would be that no bread was offered with a dish that had a lot of tasty broth, but when asked, it was brought to the table. I had a pasta dish that I felt the pasta was a bit undercooked. The desserts of Tirimasu and the chocolate dessert were a good finish to our meal. Would definitely go back, but would like to see what they offer in a different season.

We dined on Saturday, Feb 14th and this was a great choice for a romantic evening. Food was excellent and presentation was perfect. Service was non-intrusive, very professional and smooth. Everything flows quietly and effieciently. This was our 2nd time dining at Avalon, we have and will continue to recommend this gem to all of our friends.

One of the best BYOB's in the area. Friendly service and superb food. Will certainly return.

Avalon is a wonderful byob in West Chester. This is the 3rd time we have dined there and have never been disappointed. The food is fresh, interesting and beautifully presented. The menu is eclectic and changes seasonaly. The atmosphere is chic and
romantic with dim lighting, candles and a fire in the fireplace. Highly recommend.

Avalon was a great BYOB. We had an enjoyable evening. The food & service were great.

Avalon was recommended to us by a friend of mine, and we were not disappointed. We did the prix fixe dinner with the cheese plate beforehand, and had a leisurely (3 hr+) dining experience on a Sunday. The food was fantastic! Definitely will return!

The food was very good. The bussing service could have been better. But the most wonderful part was that they didn't rush us along. Twice during the past 6 weeks we have dined at "very fine" restaurants and were asked to vacate the table at the end of dinner because others were waiting for the table. We sat down at Avalon at 7 PM and left at 11:30 PM, and they never tried to rush us. We will definitely go back!!!

We had a early reservation and had the place to ourselves.
We were seated by the fireplace. Perfect! We decided to do the full course menu and the a cheese course as well. The assortment that we chose was great. It included a type of cheese with honey, a blue cheese and two others. We were told by Our waiter (who was awesome, I think the name Kevin) to eat the blue cheese last becuse it was the strongest of the group. When the waiter tells you to do something in regards to your meal, do it!
The Blue was the strongest. The courses were great! We had the Sautéed P.E.I. Mussels
Tomato ~ White Wine ~ Garlic Broth Truffled Ricotta Bruschetta with Prosciutto
Crab Apple Mostarda & White Truffle Honey , both were great. For the pasta dish, we had Braised Beef Short Rib Mezzaluna
Cabernet ~ Demi Sauce and the Creamy Gorgonzola, Ricotta & Poached Pear Luna
Walnut Pesto Cream Sauce, Port Wine Reduction absolutely brilliant! For our meat portion of the course, we had Grilled New York Strip Steak
Pancetta & Asiago Potato Hash, Veal & Red Wine Reduction ~ you have got to have this! My wife had the Pork Tenderloin Rustica
Cipollini Onions, Artichokes, Fingerling Potatoes, Balsamic ~ Tomato Sauce. Again awesome.
Great portions. We brought our wine and talked and ate and talked and ate! Will be back soon. BEST PLACE TO EAT IN WEST CHESTER IN OUR OPINION.

What a greaat find! The menu selection is varied and interesting. Hard to choose!!! The Brushetta appetizer was out of this world. Just the beginning of a perfect meal. Our service was attentive and friendly. We will definitely go back!!!

Food and service were outstanding! Excellent value! The butternut squash ravioli and pork tenderloin were great! We will visit again!

We live in West Chester and enjoy BYO's but they're difficult to find outside center city. We decided to try Avalon and were happy with our choice. The service was pleasant and it was a nice touch that the hostess came to our table to make sure we were enjoying our dinner. The food was very good and we were satisfied with our meals (the Braised Beef Agnoloti was interesting and very tasty, and the 7-cheese plate as an entree was plenty). We recommended Avalon to friends and were going to return for New Year's Eve but could not work out a time that worked for our entire party. Our only complaint was the corking fee.

Service was outstanding!
Food was fresh and presented by a wonderful staff. Fireplace inviting / cozy!
This is one of the "BEST" byob restaurants around west chester! Great menu...........

Wonderful service and great food!

Avalon is my favorite local (Chester County) restaurant. The food is always inventive, delicious and is fairly priced. The room is so warm, with it's fireplace and beautiful hardwood floors. The outdoor patio is secluded and can be extremely romantic, especially if seated near the little fountain as my wife and I were during lunch a month ago. The waitstaff and host is top notch, paying attention to the small details (like the old fashion touch of folding your napkin while you visit the restroom). During our last visit for dinner, last Friday, the kitchen whipped up a brand new appetizer, had the wait staff sample it and then 5 minutes later we were being offered it. It was tremendous.

On Jan 9th, I had the Braised Beef Agnoloti in a Cabernet Demi Sauce over top Broccoli Rabe Holy cow, it was incredible. The beef was so tender and succulent. My wife enjoyed the butternut squash ravioli in the most tasty brown butter sauce.

I look forward to every visit, knowing I'm going to be treated to a great meal and taken care of with precision.

You can often get a street parking spot right out front, but worst case there is a nice big lot a mere 3 blocks away on High street.

We enjoyed a very relaxing evening sitting by the fire with a glass of wine from home. The food was very fresh. The meat and cheese appetizer had many different tastes and flavors all of which were enjoyable. The service was quick but not rushed.

Skip the overpriced holiday menus. We went there last night for New Year's Eve. Food was good but not worth $75 and we were never offered champagne. We noticed that no one seated near us was offered champagne either. We had a later seating (9:00) and were presented the bill at 11:15 with no mention of it. Holiday aside - if you're going to charge people $75 each you should have something more substantial than salmon, braised short ribs and scallops on the menu.

Charming BYOB, Seasonal Menu...

Wonderful suburban BYOB with warm, yet contemporary atmosphere, and a changing seasonal menu.
Great cheese board appetizer. Good service. Made for an enjoyable dinner and evening.

I loved this restaurant!
I thought the service was great. I thought the food was excellant.
My husband and i were with another couple and all four of us reallly enjoyed the whole experience.
We cant wait to go back.
LS

Excellent food! I love the fact that the menu is seasonal & that it changes. A wonderful starter/appetizer is the Misto selection. A lovely BYOB that I will return to!

Delicious food. And our server Justin was great, warm, friendly yet efficient. builds a great fire too!

The food was very creative and delicious. I highly recommend the pumpkin raviolis if they are available. And if you order the mussels as an app, they bring out about 50. Also, the service was terrific. The parking situation, however, was not very good. There was a lot in the back, but it was only for the other businesses according to the signs. We ended up parking two blocks away. The restaurant was worth the walk though. Expect to spend about $20-25 per entree. Also, it is very close to many bars for that after dinner drink.

My wife and I joined another couple at Avalon last weekend upon their invitation and had a great experience. Having just one, unremarkable experience there years ago, we were both skeptical. But we trusted our friends’ discerning taste (and their knowledge of ours), and wow, what a delicious surprise it turned out to be!

We found the menu to have several intriguing options, and overall, the dishes were a touch creative and well executed. At our table, we started with the poached calamari (melt-in-your-mouth tender, served with kalamata olives as an inspired choice) and the grilled romaine hearts (an interesting preparation, flavored with crisp polenta croutons). Our entrée choices included the mushroom tortellini (tender and flavorful in an elegant truffled mushroom broth), the pork tenderloin (beautifully adorned with artichokes), the black pepper fettuccine carbanara (presented with an egg yolk on the top), and the braised beef agnoloti in a Cabernet demi-sauce (this dish alone is worth the trip).

As a group of wine lovers, we brought along both lighter and heavier styles of white and red that paired well with all our choices.

With respect to atmosphere, the space has an open, updated, contemporary feel to it (at least since we had been there), and the crowd was lively. Service was attentive, well paced, and even at the end of a busy Saturday shift, the servers were patient with us as we lingered over our last bottle.

On the downside, while our table near the fireplace provided nice ambience, it became smoky at one point. Also, the noise level was on the high end, but as a lively party of four ourselves, this wasn’t too much of a problem.

I will definitely return to Avalon, and encourage anyone to give it a try for the first time, or revisit it like we did.

Avalon is definitely my favorite restaurant. I recently dined there last Sunday and the food and service was as great as always. We started out with the cheese and meat platter. Let me tell you amazing! If that was all I had to eat that night I would have been completely happy. I recommend the prosciutto and parmigiano reggiano. After that i had the pumpkin butternut squash raviolis which was just plain comfort. My boyfriend had a chicken dish that was equally as enjoyable. You will not be disappointed by Avalon and your experience will definitely make this restaurant one of your favorites.

Avalon has got to be my favorite restaurant. I recently dined there last Sunday and the food and service was as great as always. We started out with the cheese and meat platter. Let me tell you amazing! If that was all I had to eat that night I would have been completely happy. I recommend the prosciutto and parmigiano reggiano. After that i had the pumpkin butternut squash raviolis which was just plain comfort. My boyfriend had a chicken dish that was equally as enjoyable. You will not be disappointed by Avalon and your experience will definitely make this restaurant one of your favorites.

Avalon has become my wife and I's favorite local restaurant and now whenever we go to a new place we tend to compare it to Avalon. Very few restaurants measure up... They do a lot of local produce in their menu and this must help as the food always tastes fresh. I am sure the quality job the Chefs are doing helps here as well as we have not yet had a bad item let alone a bad meal. We have been going to Avalon now for over a year and have taken not only friends but also family and all have enjoyed the experience. The patio in the back is an excellent choice in pleasant weather and anywhere inside on the first floor would also be recommended. I have not sat upstairs. It is a BYOB, so be sure to bring along a bottle of your favorite with you and DO NOT miss out on the fabulous Cheese platter. They seem to do the best job at combining flavors of meats, jellies, peppers and cheeses of any place we have yet found. Highly recommended! Reservation Recommended.

Like usual, people here have such a pathetic life that they need to bring down others with them. I have been to Avalon countless times and have never had a bad meal. This is one of the few places in town that the chef will give you a purple piece of meat when you ask for it rare. The service is excellent, the ambiance is great and the chefs know what they are doing. Excellent place to bring a bottle of red and a date.

5 ladies headed to Avalon after work. We all decided to choose from the Pre-fixed Menu. First course appetizer- the zucchini fries were awesome. Great, lightly fried and garlic dipping sauce. The girls that got a salad for their app were very disappointed. Smallest salad I have ever seen and this was an upgrade (increased price from the pre-fixed menu).
The entrée tasted like diner food. I got the Rainforest tilapia: big portion but smothered in a brown caper gravy sauce that hid the flavor of the fish. I would bet you money that the mashed potatoes were instant. Girls that got the chicken stuffed with ham and cheese were disappointed too. Dry chicken that was on the bone and hardly any cheese/ham. The best entre was the shrimp ceasar salad… but how hard is it to mess up a caesar salad?
Dessert was the worst. I paid for an pre-fixed upgrade for the chocolate molten cake. Definitely a frozen pre-packaged cake that was tossed in the oven for 2 mins. I only ate two bites. The terra masu was also a frozen dessert, dry and unsatisfying.

During out entire meal only two other tables were seated and it was Thursday night at 6:30! Empty! Do you think it could it be the food????

Ok. Short and Sweet. Visited on 2/2/08.

Service - My only complaint. While the server was polite and attentive at times, overall I felt it was uneven. Fact that new menu was on tap was not explained to us, but to other tables. Our salad course seemed to go missing and was not served for ~40 minutes after appetizer. Nice touch of bringing two to make up for delay though. Dinner came shortly after salad. Real quick. Then we were all but forgotten during dessert when some local celebrities were sat next to us. Request for a refill on coffee was ignored.

Food - Excellent for everything but dessert. Antipasti was delicous and the small was enough for two. Especially liked the marinated calamari salad. Salads (grilled romaine hearts) were a big winner, making the wait worth it. Interesting take on croutons. Dinners (pasta with pancetta, and mahi-mahi dish) were both satisfying. Portions were generous without being overfilling. Dessert was run-of-the-mill (molten chocolate cake, and apple cobbler). To me, they were average at best and pricey.

Called the restaurant at 7:35 on a thursday night to see if i could come in for dinner, the person on the phone told me "im sorry our chef just went home". what?!?!?!

Dined with a group of 6 at Avalon last night on the back patio, which is surprisingly big and beautiful!

For appetizer, the Fresh exotic Mushroom Mix was good - more mix than mushroom but flanked with two goat cheese fritters which were very tasty.

The Certified Angus Flat Iron Steak & Salsa Verde was very nice presentation - potatoes, fire roasted corn and the salsa verde complemented the steak, which was done medium rare since the chef recommended it this way.

Important note - the food here deserves a good wine - so BYO!