The Hershey Pantry — Restaurant in Derry Township

Wow! What an unexpected surprise! We discovered this gem while searching for a birthday cake for my sister. Ok, this may turn into TWO reviews...!!! Desserts Etc made an Irish Car Bomb cake for her (pic attached), and when we went to pick it up, my boyfriend was super hungry. They had a limited display of non-dessert items, and he chose turkey in spinach wrap.

Sounds pretty un-assuming? Right??🙄

Well. He could NOT stop raving about it - the turkey is sooo fresh - it’s right off the bird, babe!! Everything down to the PICKLE - he commented on every single bite. My man does NOT gush over food!😃 So after the second bday cake that week was over the top - this one was peanut-butter chocolate...I flipping LOVED it - and I do NOT prefer those flavors together....we thought, hey, we need to give the Hershey Pantry our FULL attention...

We walked in at about 3:55 pm, and there were two other customers in the restaurant. We were immediately greeted by a lovely young lady named Rachel, who explained they were between lunch and dinner, but we could still get brunch if we really wanted! I told her what REALLY interested me was the Afternoon Tea, served Mon-Fri from 2p-5p. I have a bird’s appetite, so I’m thinking this may be perfect - scone, tea sandwiches, desserts, soup...delicate fare. 😊 For $20 - right??? Rachel said I would get a lot for my money - plus, I had the eating machine with me. I wasn’t worried. He opted for Chicken Parmesan with a Caesar salad.

While we waited for our meals, I noticed how clean it was; how friendly and relaxed the people who worked there were; and each table had a Sunflower on it, in short little mismatched vases...it was so inviting.❤️

The soup I picked was Chilled Cherry. 😳 Ok - full disclosure - it would have made a fine breakfast yogurt with granola and fresh fruit. At first it tasted really sweet; then it lost some of that sweetness. It was the texture of yogurt. The flavor was delicious! I was expecting a thinner consistency, I think...like a chilled cucumber soup, maybe? Anyway, I only had a few bites, because I wanted to save room for the rest of my meal.

The Caesar salad was DE-lightful - dressed perfectly, with just enough dressing so ya know it’s there; with ample amounts of yummy Parmesan cheese - the home-made croutons had this guy in 7th Heaven! But what truly made this Caesar rule was the appearance of slivers of sun-dried tomatoes!! 😍 I am a fool for a sun-dried tomato...it took an ordinary salad and turned it into something really soecial🙂

Now - the Chicken Parm was served over penne pasta. And he ate every bite! What he enjoyed most was that the coating of the chicken stayed crispy - even on the bottom - under the weight of the sauce. I wish I could tell you more - but he inhaled it!😳

The Afternoon Tea - here’s a photo of what was served. You get a scone with lightly sweetened cream cheese on top tier; a half sandwich on middle tier; and there were three desserts in the lower tier. My apologies, 1/2 if the sandwich had already been removed from the plate before I remembered to take a pic! The scone was chocolate chip and STILL WARM!! I didn’t think that cream cheese was going to taste good on it...but DAMN!!!🔥

The middle tier was the Hershey Pantry Club Turkey, cheese, yellow tomato and some of the crispiest bacon you will EVER eat, sit on top of toasted home-made, multi-grain bread. SWOOOOON!!!!!😁

Did I mention that place called Desserts Etc? Well they do ALLLLLL of the desserts for this place. What you see in this photo are a chocolate lava bomb, strawberry cheesecake, and lemon tart. The bomb has the perfect balance of sweet and bitter chocolate; the cheesecake looks like it’s HEAVY - but it is so airy! And you think you are going to get a bite of strawberry goo, and you get a dreamy bite of fresh purée and a large chunk of fresh strawberry!!!😋😋😋The lemon tart is tangy and delicious - strawberries are a good touch, however, I’d like to see raspberries or blueberries, just to mix it up.

But - that’s why I am sitting HERE. Writing about my...

We went here twice during our four day stay at Hershey. The first day we went was Saturday, it was very busy but the waitress was great and the food was descent. A few issues on that day were one person got bacon that was undercooked and someone else got bacon that was burnt. My daughter got chocolate chip pancakes and I got the sampler. Pancakes were good, hash browns didn’t have any flavor, my daughters hash browns were crispy and mine were barely cooked. My mom got the pretzel egg sandwich, she said it was good but the egg was pretty runny for supposedly being cooked over medium. My husband got the pulled pork burrito which he liked.

Then we went again yesterday before leaving Hershey and it was absolutely horrible. My husband got the breakfast Cuban and he couldn’t even eat it. The “pulled pork” was just a chunk of gray fatty pork that was inedible (see the picture I posted). I ordered an omelette with peppers onions and mushrooms with Swiss cheese and asked them to cook it well done. It comes out and it’s not well done at all, it’s runny and not browned, instead of using green peppers they used roasted red peppers which are very watery and they didn’t cook the ingredients into the eggs but cooked the egg then must have just put a big spoonful into the middle and rolled it up. Usually cheese is in the middle of an omelette but there was just a piece of Swiss cheese on top of the omelette not even melted. I asked the waitress why they used roasted red peppers instead of green and she said that’s all they had. If that’s all they had shouldn’t she have told me that? Never in my life have I received roasted red peppers in an omelette. I told her I couldn’t eat it runny and that I asked for it to be well done so she took it back and had them recook it. I also ordered a side of bacon and for $4.95 I received 3 broken pieces of bacon (not whole pieces). When I received the new omelette I had a few bites and just left it. My mom ordered two eggs over medium and they came out so runny they were barely cooked. The waitress took those back too and brought out two more eggs made the same exact way. Disgusting and runny. The white was barely cooked. We told the waitress again and she offered to have them redone but at that point my mom was disgusted and had no appetite. My daughter had the French toast and that was fine. And their hot chocolate is nothing to write home about. It tastes like regular hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. I couldn’t believe it when I received the bill and we didn’t get any type of credit for any of the items we had issues with. When we go back to Hershey we will definitely not be eating at The...

It was our first time here and it was super busy. It was just 2 of us, and the wait was 15-20 min. We got a text within that time frame that 2 seats were available at the counter. We returned to the hostess stand at the side of the building and were told to go to the front door. Including that info in the text seating text would be great. We checked in with the cafe hostess and were seated at the counter. A server was at the counter chatting with a regular. It was nice they have are friendly with regulars, but she made no attempt to acknowledge us or let us know our server would be by shortly. Another server came to the counter and the server who was chatting engaged her in convo with the regular. Only after finishing that convo did our server turn to us and let us know she’d be waiting on us. While seated at the counter we had a very good view of the kitchen and got to see many of the food orders. The young lady expediting was on point! If you have a chance to sit there and see something you think you’d like, ask what it is or if you’re sitting near a regular, you may think about asking for a recommendation. I say this based on our orders. We had the sampler (over easy with bacon), broccoli cheese soup and the jalepeno popper grilled cheese. The sampler comes with plenty of of food. 2 huge pancakes, two eggs, home fries, and meat. The home fries have zero seasoning. I later found if you order online there are several mods available for the home fries, like onions, peppers and cheese, however that info did not appear on the menu nor was it offered by our server. The pancakes are sweet, the bacon very good and the eggs were cooked right. The jalepeno popper grilled cheese resembled a grilled cheese only in that they are both on bread. It consisted of blobs of jalepeno cream cheese, a minute amount of unmelted white shredded cheddar (I’m assuming) and bacon. The menu said it was on thick cut sourdough but it didn’t taste like sourdough. More like thick cut white bread. It really amounted to cream cheese with bacon on toast. The kitchen is busy and they don’t take the time they should with a grilled cheese. There was nothing grilled cheese about it and perhaps it would have been better served on a bagel. Came with chips and a pickle. The chips appeared to be your standard bagged ripple chips. I overheard someone telling the kitchen, when they forgot it on the plate, that the pickle is the best part, and I don’t disagree when it comes to the jalepeno popper “grilled cheese”. The soup def tasted homemade but was warm, not hot. Decent but...