Red Horse Tavern

Have been here twice now, once with a group of nine and once with five of us. Made reservations both time and were glad we did. Service was very good both times with staff dealing quite well with the larger group that included one six year old (they do have a children’s menu). Food — the ravioli was excellent, the steaks were (according to the gals that had them the 1^st time I was there) absolutely amazing and the tuna burger was fantastic, slightly spicy and quite smoky flavored. Second visit two of us had steak — flavorful and tender and cooked correctly to our requested degree (the gals were right). However, slightly too salty — the Prosciutto Parmesan added on top needs to be considered — perhaps a lighter hand when salting the steak before cooking. The other dishes our group had included the pork chop, the seared scallop salad and the Louisiana shrimp starter (with a small side salad the starter made a nice light meal). As we were a family group we passed everything around and all agreed we would be happy to eat there again. The shrimp and scallops were perfectly cooked and the sauce on the tender pork chop was delicious. Both visits the groups shared several of the desserts and again they were quite good. In short, everything was very nicely done, well seasoned and each with a slightly unique touch that puts it out of the ordinary. Also, it is nice to see a menu with a couple of starters that can serve as a light meal in of themselves. The dining room is nice enough though a bit noisy when the place is full. They really aren’t set up for large groups as the place isn’t that big but I wouldn’t call it a «couples only» romantic place either, just right for casual couples or family groups.

Love the food! Excellent, courteous staff who have always made us feel welcome every time we have been there. The Tuna Burger is to DIE for! And their fries are amazing. I would have given five stars… but the décor is sparse. GO for the food… it is amazing!

Great food, excellent service! Everyone in our party of four loved their dinner.

I’ve been back 3 more times and the food was great each time. My 3 year old son loves the place. Try the fried fish with Mac n cheese.

Went for dinner at 9pm on a Saturday. They seated us, and then they told us the kitchen was closed. Door says dinner hours on Friday-​Saturday are until 10pm.
Didn’t honor the hours on the door, and the staff handled the situation poorly.

Just got to carry out from Red Horse Tavern! The brisket sandwich it was awesome! I called it in and 10 minutes later I had the food, excellent service! Highly recommend this restaurant. I have dined in and received awesome service as well. Family atmosphere !

Wife and I visited last night (Saturday) for dinner.
Not to many recent reviews so we wanted to give it a go.
Arrived 5:30, no reservations, place half full.
Greeted, asked if we could wait 15 minutes, no problem. Waited in the bar, promptly served a couple of drinks and in 15 minutes our table was ready. In short, we had a fantastic meal.
Now for the details.
Get the Louisiana shrimp app. Perfectly prepared and a very good portion for the price. Also, the (truffle oil infused) fries (as an app) were excellent. These are not your everyday fries and we highly recommend them. Priced right, very good portion and again, delicious.
My wife ordered the portobello/​spinach sandwich and I ordered the brisket on a ciabatta role w/​house-​made creamy horseradish. Both were superb.
We really can’t say enough about this place, the service at the bar was excellent as was the dinner service. The food was excellent and priced right.
Oh, everything except the desserts are made in house. Warning, they only have three 2-​seat tables so it was strongly recommended to make a reservation (even though their Unilocal profile states «no» under the Reservations section. It was a bit loud but that’s ok, there were three large groups.
The place was packed by 6pm and after we finished our meal, it was clear why.
This place is a gem folks in a great location with great food and service.
Why not 5 stars then? I’ll change it to 5 after a few more visits, or not.
We will be back, very soon.

You really feel like you’re in somebody’s kitchenette. The food is way too salty and really done. Has been ordered the airline chicken. I can tell you this chicken was so dry it was beyond dead. This chicken is not going anywhere, much less fly. Airline chicken came with a side order of baked beans. Hubby said it tasted more like they opened up the Campbell’s pork and beans and added pinto beans to it. It’s called «moms baked beans.» If your mama cooks like that you should be ashamed of yourself, mama.
I thought I was the smart one and I ordered the traditional hamburger with pepper jack cheese. Exceptionally salty. I had to drink copious amounts of water to compensate. Pursley I had ordered my burger to be medium rare. My burger was very done.
On the positive note, the waitress that we had was wonderful. She was very accommodating and beyond sweet… however, we will not be going back.

The Louisiana shrimp are amazing. Petite filet salad with grilled preaches and Bleu cheese was very good. Service was friendly and fast. Love sitting in the bar.

Was there yesterday for a drink and then decided to get the wings, DON’T DO IT! Worst wings and I have been sick since. I have had lots of other things there and they have all been good. A little pricy for the food, but drinks are not bad. Good selection and the wait staff is always friendly, but at peak dining, there is never enough help. Don’t be in a hurry!

This place has come back with a vengeance. I was excited to see that it had reopened with new owners– essentially, a new restaurant, and this area desperately needs more of those.
I’d only been to the former establishment once, and it was good but overall nothing spectacular. The new restaurant is, upon walking in, far more comfortable. They’ve removed some tables and rearranged the remainder, and it’s far more open and easier to maneuver.
Service is friendly if not terribly fast. One server seemed to be running the entire room, and she was doing a fine job considering– but they could probably use a bit more help.
The new menu is small but creative and interesting. Selections include various appetizers, such as ahi tuna, hummus, Parmesan onion rings, and a Mexican cheese dip plate. Meals include salads, burgers, sandwiches, and entrees. I found myself torn between a smoked tuna sandwich and a portobello cheesesteak. I ended up going with the tuna, and it was absolutely incredible. Smoky, creamy rich, spicy, and crispy, it was a perfect blend of flavors and textures. One of the best burgers I can remember having in quite some time. The fries, too, are very good, though the promised truffle oil doesn’t come through. With my meal, I enjoyed a local Elk Creek Brookie Brown, one of several beers on tap.
Husband devoured his black and bleu chicken sandwich, and said the creative bleu cheese coleslaw was excellent.
The phrase «hidden gem» was created for places like this. We’ll definitely be back.

Update: Red Horse Tavern continues to be a go to place for great food. Their Friday fish sandwich is excellent. I could easily make a meal out of their mashed potatoes and Mac and Cheese. The wait staff is some of the best that I’ve experienced. They always seem to make you feel like you’re family.

There is new-​ish ownership and I have to say, I like it. They have a small but tasty menu. They have great staff and a good bar staff. I always leave here full and satisfied. Helps put Pleasant Gap on the map! yummm

This place is excellent. The food is wonderful.
Please try the truffle fries!
I’m a vegetarian and my fiancé loves bacon cheeseburgers. This restaurant has delicious options for both of us.
It’s kind of funny, the interior is really simple, and the atmosphere is super relaxed, but the food is top quality with considerable attention to detail.
Definitely worth the drive from State College. We will definitely be back.

This is definitely a hidden Central Pennsylvanian gem! I had never heard of this place before, but the recent takeover by former Gamble Mill chefs had me curious.
Those who say this food is too «upscale» for the area are off the mark – and quite frankly, insulting to those who live here. Centre County could use more non-​chain food options, and I have faith that its residents have tastebuds that function just as well as those in more urban areas. That being said, I don’t think the food here is the least bit intimidating. The menu is simple and fairly traditional with just some mild twists, and I think it’s a good fit for the area.
Apparently the new management renovated the space, but it still looked sadly outdated. Not saying they should be going for an ultra-​modern look, but maybe something akin to the Elk Creek Café’s cozy yet attractive décor would work better here. The server in the dining room was really awkward (asked her if there was a hostess since the sign stated «Please wait to be seated» but nobody came to greet us, and she looked at us like we were crazy?) but luckily we sat in the bar area and had a different server who was very friendly.
I had the parmesan-​truffle fries, the mac & cheese, and the brisket sandwich. All good choices. I couldn’t taste any truffle on the fries (wish there was shaved truffle involved) but they were tasty nonetheless. The brisket sandwich was excellent, especially the gooey carmelized onions, and though I like more of a crust on my mac & cheese, its perfect creaminess made it my favorite dish of the evening.
So yep, I’m totally into this place. Nice addition to the greater State College area!

As one reviewer noted: under new management as of Nov/​Dec 2012. New menu and re-​done interior.
My review will be somewhat warped because I went to the old Red Horse for years. It was one of my favorite restaurants and I was very disappointed when it closed. It had a comfortably worn-​in, down home feel — definitely a locals place.
This new incarnation of the Red Horse is not bad, but very different from the previous restaurant. The food is up-​scale for the area, which puzzles me a bit. Things like truffle oil on the fries. At the risk of sounding like a country bumpkin, they’re tring to add big-​city touches to a rural farming community restaurant. Granted, this is metro-​PSU so you MIGHT get some of the college professor and alum crowd. But by and large your customer base is the local blue collar and farming crowd. The menu seems inappropriately sophisticated for central PA.
That said, the food I’ve had has been very good — a very generous sized reuben sandwich; their brisket sandwich is excellent. Prices seem high for the area, but not obscene. Waitstaff is attentive (at one visit, almost TOO attentive) and very adequate but seems inexperienced or overly enthusiastic. (I know, I’m criticizing a waitress for being TOO helpful — I’ll live to regret this).
Bar area has been redone — very updated. The atmosphere of the place is disapointing — where the previous restaurant had a pleasant warm divey feel, the new place is cold, personality-​less and sterile. Seem to constantly be playing Frank Sinatra which again doesn’t fit with the area at all. I worry that the locals will not buy into this new incarnation.
Some work to do with the uninviting atmosphere, but overall a promising new place with decent food. Worth a try.

I love the Red Horse Tavern! I think they have amazing home cooked food — that’s actually home cooked. Yummy things I’ve seen and tasted:
Baked Italian Grinder — SOOO yummy! Delicious high quality meat and cheese with a fantastic homemade italian dressing on top…
Smoked Seafood Alfredo — Freakin’ incredible. A large portion of fantastic fettuccine with a homemade smoked gouda alfredo sauce that’s to die for. It has lobster, scallops, and shrimp in it… and I got an incredible caesar salad with fresh shaven parmesan on top. It also came with really yummy crusty garlic buttery bread. Jeesh!
Burgers — Super juicy, fresh never frozen beef that is cooked medium well and has crazy yummy flavors. I got it with cheddar and it comes with homemade potato chips that Randy (the chef and owner) makes homemade every single day. Crazy good.
I love that they have friendly service, a full bar with really laid back bar tenders, and a «mom and pop» feel to the restaurant that is really hard to find in Centre County.

Driven by hundreds of times and figured it was just a local bar. Decided to try it after seeing it in the «going local» book and could not have been more surprised. Up front is the typical local bar. If you come in through the bar don’t let that deter you… in the back is a quaint dining area that makes you feel like you are in a home dining room.
Menu goes way beyond a typical bar. We had four cheese fondue, chicken pot pie and cannelloni. It was reasonably priced and well portioned. Great beer menu and nice and simple but very reasonably priced wine list. Service was excellent. When the bill came it was only 40 which included premium beers. Then the waitress gave us a coupon for half off one of our entrees making it even less. We will be back for sure.

Very over priced for quality. Place was empty on a sunday night. It did not take long to understand why. Had the prime rib for $ 21 which is a fair price for a decent prime rib. But it was like a piece of leather and tasted old. Wife had a rather pedestrian turkey sandwich for $ 11 (they charge extra for fries). Kids paid $ 6 for for burnt chicken fingers. Carrot cake was old and soggy ($ 5).
To top the experience off, waitress over charged my credit card.
Not hard to see why we were the only customers on a weekend night

An excerpt from my book going LOCAL!
This is a place I have known about since I was a kid. Back then I thought it was a Wild West saloons where bar fights were a nightly thing. Keep in mind, I had never been inside this place (I was a little kid, after all) but back in the day, the Red Horse Tavern had a huge sign out front with a 20 foot-​high painting of a charging red horse coming right at me! It burned an image into my young brain like a red hot branding iron and scared the crap out of me! But, it also set in motion an imagination that is still fertile to this day.
In my overactive mind, this great red horse was a charging messenger of a time that I only knew about from John Wayne movies and Sunday afternoon television shows like Rawhide while curled up on the floor with my dad. But this wasn’t Texas or Oklahoma, this was Pleasant Gap, PA, and the only cowboys around there were Amish guys who got up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows.
So what was going on inside that place? Were there poker games, loose women and bottles of whiskey being chugged and then smashed over the head of some unsuspecting cowpoke? Could Doc Holliday be in there, sitting at a table, one hand on his cards while the other gripped his .44? Was Billy the Kid standing at the bar waiting for someone to give him the stink eye so he could «fill him full o’ lead?» Or was a lady in a fancy dress sitting on top of a piano while her colleagues danced with dust-​covered men wearing chaps and spurs? If I could only get inside…
Well, its 40 years later and I’m well aware that this isn’t the Wild West and that dance hall girls weren’t just for dancing. Still, I decided to check the place out. I had heard that it had recently changed hands and the once scary, seedy western bar had become quite genteel. I walked through the door and as it happens in most local watering holes, every head turned and every eye looked my way. I gazed across the length of the bar and saw not a cowboy hat in sight. There were plenty of baseball caps, but no Stetsons. One dude was even texting with his cell phone and Cold Play was on the juke box. There were women too, but instead of big ornate dresses, these girls wore low-​riding jeans and tight NASCAR t-​shirts.
Every table was filled with friends and families enjoying homemade dinners and libations from the bar. Laughter and conversation from the dining room was eclipsed by the din of the barroom. I took a seat at the far end of the bar so I could soak in the vibe. At first, it was hard to shake the Wild West memories, but when Aerosmith blasted from the jukebox and I saw that they had Guinness on tap, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I ordered the Guinness and looked over the menu. The selection was mostly sandwiches and burgers, but they had some really nice entrée specials including prime rib and crab cakes. I was told that everything on the menu was homemade except for the beer battered fish sandwich, and that was exactly what I was hungry for. The bartender brought me my Guinness and I asked about the fish sandwich. She took her hands, spread them apart to about 12 inches, and said that was how big the piece of fish was.
Well, mama didn’t raise no fool, and I come from a long line of «fish liars,» so I anticipated eight inches, tops. But when the sandwich arrived at my table, I was happily wrong. I have never seen a piece of cooked fish that big! It was at least a foot long, garnished with lettuce and tomatoes, and was served on a hoagie roll that would make Dr. Atkins spin in his grave! Fresh-​cut French fries nearly overflowed from what little space was left on the plate.
So there I was, Kenny the Kid, sitting in his boyhood Wild West saloon, drinking Guinness and chowing down on a beautifully prepared fish sandwich and fries! No bar fights, no gun shots fired into the ceiling, no dusty cowpokes crawl-​fishing (cheating) on a poker hand and getting blasted in the belly for it. And no perfumed petticoat-​clad women escorting men to the «dance floor.»
After dinner I met the owners. Randy and Paula Sherman are like the poster kids for this book — supportive of local farmers and passionate about their business. They promote a smoke-​free bar and dining area, encourage friendly interaction and greet you not just as a customer, but as a friend and neighbor. They love what they do and they love that they can do it here — in their hometown.
Sadly, the infamous sign of the charging red horse is no longer there, but the inspiration that it brought to an aspiring young cowboy is alive and well today in a still-​youthful, metro-​sexual, foodie/​beer geek. What once frightened me now delights me, and the Red Horse has become a gathering place for locals as well as the occasional «drifter.» Gone is the cheap whiskey and saloon grub of my imagination, but what is real is the haute but humble cuisine of a passionate and dedicated husband and wife team. YE-​HA!
Enjoy!