Grade Changes

We made our debut by rating General Hoock’s a well-deserved A. A few others joined atop the grade leader board, but each return visit to Hoock’s separated more and more from the rest of the pack. Now, it’s caused a bit of a restructuring of the system.

No restaurant we’ve visited is close to Hoock’s level, so that is the only A. Hilton Family Restaurant has slipped to an A-, joining Tully’s, Rohrbach and DiBella’s. HFR was originally our No. 1 restaurant, and received an A when we reviewed it last spring, but has since been surpassed for the top spot by Hoock's.

Before the revision there seemed to be a logjam of restaurants in the B+/B crowd, so we’ve spaced them out a bit more.

B+ restaurants are all very good places that have a few items that really stand out, and are pretty good all around.

B grades are typically places that don’t appear special from the outside, but are surprisingly good and turned our heads upon eating there.

B- grades are places that are either… a.) Good, but interchangeable with several others (usually family diners) or b.) Not quite there yet, but have potential to be great.

Few places have fallen into the C category, but the ones that have are usually way too generic. Frankly, we haven’t been to any places we absolutely wouldn’t return to, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to return to these places.

So, here are the revised grades:

A: General Hoock’s

A-: Hilton Family Restaurant, Tully’s, Rohrbach, DiBella’s

B+: Joe’s Brooklyn Pizza, Taste of Texas, Philly Steakout, Great Northern Pizza Kitchen, Abe’s, Martusciello Bread

B: Carmine’s Dakota Grill, Jo’s Diner, Krony’s Pizza, North Chili Family Restaurant, Brian’s USA Diner, Chilango’s Mexican, Olympia

B-: Anchor Bar, Hose 22, Slayton Place, Golden Eagle, Lighthouse Diner, Millhouse Family Restaurant, Arlington, Rookies, Main Street Pizza, BBQ Fred

C+: Nola’s, Redwood Inn, Tillman’s Village Inn (Wednesday BBQ Buffet)

C: Sullivan’s Charbroil

C-: Minnehan’s

These new grades will be used as precedents for future visits. As strange as it may sound, we look forward to the day we go to an all-around subpar restaurant to see if this new scale is accurate in the long run, but it seems to fit for now.

Happy Anniversary, RWG

We’re celebrating our first anniversary here at Rochester Westside Grub, reflecting on our inaugural year which included climbing all the way to No. 2 on Urbanspoon Rochester’s blog rankings.

We’ve eaten a lot of good food in the last year, and look forward to what’s to come, but it’s going to be difficult to top one restaurant: General Hoock’s.

It was the first place we visited for the blog, and it’s yet to be surpassed. That’s why it’s our 2010 Restaurant of the Year.

We’ve made several return trips, bringing along different friends each time. We’ve also passed along word to others, who tell others and keep Hoock’s customer base growing.

Each return visit provides some new delicious twist as Shawn Hoock keeps unveiling – and letting customers create – new concoctions every day.

For instance, Waffleopolous – a breakfast sandwich in between waffles. (Yes, that’s bacon cooked into the waffle)

Or there’s the Roc Bomber, basically a giant garbage plate sandwich. (Image courtesy of Hoock’s Facebook page)
We could go on and on about Hoock’s creations, but we’ll leave it up to you to visit the restaurant on Buffalo Road in Gates and see for yourself.

Believe it or not we did go to, and enjoy, and number of other restaurants as well. In fact, we’ve come up with a list of our top five thus far:

1.) General Hoock’s (1308 Buffalo Road, Gates)- See the laud fest above.

2.) Hilton Family Restaurant (54 Hovey Street, Hilton)- Hoock’s has surpassed it as our favorite place in the last year, but our hometown HFR still brings the gang together for a delicious breakfast in an atmosphere that feels like home.

3.) Tully’s (1225 Jefferson Road, Henrietta)- Our favorite sports bar, with the best chicken tenders on Earth.

4.) Rohrbach Brewing Co. (3859 Buffalo Road, Gates)- Authentic German cuisine along with various other fantastic sandwiches and some fantastic white chili.

5.) DiBella’s (2450 Ridgeway Avenue, Greece)- Consistently voted best subs in Rochester, and very high on our list despite being (as Greg calls it) a niche restaurant.

Honorable Mentions: Taste of Texas (122 South Union Street, Spencerport), Martusciello Bread (2280 Lyell Avenue, Gates), Joe’s Brooklyn Pizza (1100 Jefferson Road, Henrietta)

Another restaurant, Yumbo’s, might have cracked the list, but we just found out it closed both its locations. However, Yumbo’s still does catering and is searching for a new location, according to its website. That’s some darn good barbecue, and I hope to eat it again soon. UPDATE (8/21/11): Yumbo's has since reopened at 1460 Lyell Avenue in the city, just west of Mt. Read Boulevard.

In other news, Hoock’s clear emergence as our unquestioned favorite restaurant has forced us to change some grades up, which will be further detailed in our next post.

Anyway, we’ve now added a Facebook fan page and opened a Twitter account in order to spread our name, so get involved and let others know – even if they don’t live on Greater Rochester’s west side.

We look forward to exploring visiting some new places soon and seeing if anything can touch General Hoock’s, which will be difficult. We may even make some trips farther west in to the Buffalo area, so stay tuned.

Well, thanks for a great first year, and hopefully the second will be even better.
-Rochester Westside Grub staff

A few notes...

After reflecting on all the places we have been to and consulting our grading standards, we decided our grades for a handful of restaurants needed to change slightly.

General Hoock's has blown away the rest of the competition and has even surpassed our beloved HFR, which we plan to revisit and re-evaluate soon.

DiBella's fell to an A-, simply because we haven't been back there nearly as many times as we've returned to Hoock's.

Yumbo's dropped from an A- to a B+ because it seemed closer to the category of our other B+ rated restaurants, not quite on the same level as places like Tully's and DiBella's.

In the same regard, the Arlington was changed to a B, not quite reaching the heights of our visits to places like Abe's and Krony's.

Recently a lot our reasoning behind the grades has been based on how often we would return to each place. With the updated grades, we are more comfortable with each assessment and feel they are now more consistent with our standards.

Return to General Hoock's

Written by Tyler

General Hoock’s (1308 Buffalo Road, Gates) was the first restaurant we reviewed back in February. In the months that have followed, we have continued to spread the word of this unheralded gem to our friends and family and have made several return visits, bringing along new faces each time.

We like it more and more and seem to discover or try a new item each time we go back, while it maintains the ‘A’ grade we gave it.

To recap some of our recent discoveries, we’ll start with our friend Chad, who we successfully ‘Hoocked.’ He has been back several times since we first brought him along in March.

Chad’s go-to dish is the Curly Bomber, a sandwich with shaved steak, hamburger and curly fries piled on between a delicious homemade roll.

Our friend Ryan apparently didn’t believe us when we told him the portion sizes were enormous, so he went ahead and purchased the $11 Raging Bull Bomber, which is like the Curly Bomber… except about 10 sizes larger (basically on a full-size loaf of bread) and includes onion rings (rather than curly fries), cheese and sweet “Stiggy” sauce.


Ryan said it was a great sandwich, but, needless to say, he could barely scarf down half of it.


Our friend Greg is an eating machine, who once (back in the day) randomly downed three hot dogs wrapped in turkey shortly before a football workout. He also once jokingly ordered the entire kids menu at a restaurant, but anyway, Greg ordered the Plate X-M on this, his first visit to Hoock’s.

A big fan of garbage plates, Greg enjoyed and downed what was essentially a breakfast garbage plate. It took him longer than expected, but you can always count on Greg to stomach an entire family’s worth of food.


As for me, I’ve really become a fan of General Hoock’s pizza – er, Magik Bread Pie. In an unconventional move, I have twice ordered a small pizza topped with grilled chicken, but without cheese.


The plethora of grilled chicken replaces what the cheese would be. I just like chicken so much I order it instead of cheese (which, again, is a topping here). But the ingredients on this pizza complement each other so well – the crust is baked to a perfect balance between soft and crisp, and there is the perfect amount of sauce –I can’t relent from ordering this.

In another new development, the last few times we’ve gone, proprietor Shawn Hoock has had some family members helping him out around the restaurant, rather than doing it all himself. His two young sons were even in there during one visit and drew us pictures while we waited.

Ah, General Hoock’s just keeps getting better and better and I find myself daydreaming about a cheeseless pizza again.

General Hoock & Sons All American Pizzeria & Breakfast

1308 Buffalo Road, Gates
Written by Tyler

As soon as I saw an article about this place in the Democrat & Chronicle, I knew we had to make the trip. I did my research (reading reviews) and didn’t read a bad word about it. As soon as I had a free weekend home, we made it happen.
To sum things up, we were back again one week later.

The first trip, we went around noon on a Saturday, on our way to a hockey game at Genesee Valley Park. There were only a small handful of other customers there at the time, so we ordered right away. There is a rather extensive menu, but your options go beyond what owner Shawn Hoock has written on the dry-erase boards.

We’ll start with the pizza, or as Hoock calls it, "magik bread pie.” The pizza ranges from the nine-inch small to the “holy sheet” for $16.50. A small costs just $4.50, with $1 toppings, though mozzarella is considered a topping (“don’t make it any more trivial than it is,” as one of the dry-erase boards says). Hoock offers approximately 30 toppings, but would probably throw anything you want in to your pizza.

On our first trip we tried a small pizza, which was quite larger than we expected, with grilled chicken (My personal favorite).

It came out very hot, but looked so tasty we had to dive in right away. The sauce was slightly darker than normal, and had a little thicker consistency than most other sauces, but had just the right amount on the pie.

There was a pretty healthy amount of cheese, and several relatively large chunks of chicken. The crust was about average in terms of thickness, and fairly crisp, golden brown all around, and a little, as Drew says, “scaly” on the bottom. All together, we were very pleased with the quality, taste and value of our pizza, which we agreed might be enough to feed up to two people, depending how full you are. (Note: we had eaten one giant pancake, and half of a large turkey sub, respectively, just prior to eating the pizza). The only thing I regret is not letting my slices cool down more before eating, because they were fresh out of the oven.

On our return trip the following Saturday, we brought a couple others with us, including one who got a small pizza with one of the more interesting toppings, “lil’ dough stix.” The stix were simply cut up strips of the homemade dough, thrown on top of the cheese. Despite the simplicity of the stix, they appeared very appetizing on the pizza, especially if you are someone like me, who likes an abundance of dough.

Moving on from pizza, the breakfast menu is also quite extensive, not to mention mouthwatering.

Hoock offers traditional breakfast fare – home fries, bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese, etc. – which you can order thrown together in any combination, basically, including one item which is essentially a breakfast garbage plate.

On our return trip, our friend Joe decided to take down “The Fist,” which included a giant sausage patty, two eggs any style (he ordered fried) and cheese on one of the most delicious-looking rolls I have ever seen.

The roll looked about the same texture as a bagel, though larger, doughier and without the hole in the center. It had a fairly light color, appearing to have the perfect amount of doughiness.
Joe said all three main ingredients in the “meat” of the sandwich complemented each other nicely; the sausage flavorful, the eggs cooked perfectly (not runny), and the cheese melted in with the rest to perfection.



Upon pounding the fist, Joe said it was the best breakfast sandwich he has ever had in his life. My brother, Jake, said the sausage had a lot of flavor.

On both trips, I started with a “killer griddle cake” for $2.50, and well worth it. The giant pancake took up most of the space on the relatively large plate, had the perfect amount of browning, and just enough crispiness along the outer rim. I generally don’t butter my pancakes, and don’t overload them with syrup (though I put some on), and these were some of the best pancakes I have tasted. One of these killers is filling enough for me.

We also sampled the chicken wings, served with celery and bleu cheese, offered medium, mild, hot, bossy, homemade “Stiggy” sauce or a homemade sweet and sour.

Drew went with a six-piece sweet and sour on our return trip, which were quite large and came out steaming. The homemade sauce, which Hoock said included Country Sweet, Boss Sauce and a couple other ingredients, was excellent.

“They were meaty, moist and melted in my mouth,” Drew said. “It was good-quality meat too, not generic over-the-counter stuff.”


Drew also tried a turkey sub, with American cheese and mayonnaise, on our first trip. He ordered a large sub for about $8, which he claims was at least 15 inches long. It included fourteen half-slices of cheese and “piles” of turkey.

“It was like Thanksgiving-leftover amount of turkey,” Drew said.

The turkey was very thick, more like that of a holiday turkey than typical cold-cut turkey. The bread appeared homemade, and was fairly standard, but Drew says the sub was above average, and worth spending the extra money on, as compared to Subway.

One item we haven’t tried yet is the “Raging Bull” bomber. It is pictured in the D&C article and we saw two people order it on our second visit. It looked like it might result in one’s stomach exploding after eating it, but boy did that look delicious. It had (in no particular order) hamburger, steak, jalapenos, cheddar cheese, onion rings and the homemade “Stiggy” sauce. We agreed someone will try that next time.

I wish we had enough time – or appetites – to try everything at General Hoock’s, although I guess there really is no end to the options you have, as you can pretty much order any combination of anything available in the restaurant, whether it’s on the menu or not.
As mentioned earlier, Hoock is a sole-proprietor, meaning he does it all at the restaurant, including making everything from scratch.

If there are more than a handful of customers, things can get backed up. However, ourselves included, most customers look right past that. To occupy customers’ time, Hoock invites them to make themselves “at home,” with two TVs, newspapers and a steady supply of random memorabilia.

If any deliveries need to be made, Hoock briefly closes up shop to make them. There is limited seating, including a few barstools, but Hoock himself has a very inviting presence.
Once you try the food however, you, like us, will be able to look right past some of the things that might be negatives elsewhere.

The “bang for the buck” at General Hoock’s has made us give it a grade of ‘A,’ despite some things, like the wait, that would severely detract from a typical restaurant.
With that said, General Hoock’s is not your typical restaurant, and is a great value, which is why it has now become our go-to place in Gates.

Ratings:
Service/Atmosphere – Easy to find (on a major road). Hoock is very welcoming and flexible. Very admirable, considering he does literally everything that needs to be done to properly manage a restaurant. For this reason the extended wait time for typical orders can be overlooked. Not to mention the…
Food – Excellent, as stated in the review.
Value – Pretty standard prices, but the “bang for the buck” is terrific (quality and quantity). Large portions, but not at the expense of quality.
Overall- Considering we made our return trip one week after our first, I’d say this is some place we plan to make a regular stop. We would probably go out of our way to pig out here.
Grade: A