Cassell's Grille in Mt. Holly Springs

Cassell's Grille features a 20-seat bar.

Cassell's Grille in Mt. Holly Springs

Address: 5 West Pine St., Mt. Holly Springs, PA 17065
Website: http://cassellsgrille.com/

Date of Visit: Friday, March 9, 2018

On our inaugural hunt in search for good beer and tasty food, our sixth sense lead us to Cassell’s Grille in Mount Holly Springs. At just over one square mile, Mount Holly is located at the base of the South Mountain range, about a 10-minute drive east of Carlisle and about 25 minutes north of Gettysburg. Elevated above the street corner at the town’s intersection, the first thing you notice about Cassell’s Grille is the spacious patio. Unfortunately, at 30 degrees, we stuck to exploring the inside of this local favorite.

Draft list: Troegs, Bells, Molly Pitcher, Yards, Liquid Hero,
Great Lakes, Big Hill Cider, New Belgium

Family-Owned with Local Beer

An endearing factor of this grille is knowing that it is family-owned and run. While Barry, the father, attempts to maintain order of the busy Friday night rush in the front of the house, his wife, Annette, is running the show in the kitchen while son Nolan is helming the massive, 20-seat bar.

Featuring Liquid Hero’s Cloudification and Irregardless

Liquid Hero part-owner Matt and his wife,
who is also named Andrea!

While our wait to be seated slowly crept along, we kept hunger at bay by visiting the Liquid Hero (LH) Tap Takeover table. Cassell’s regularly features “tap takeover” nights where craft- and micro-breweries are able to feature their beers. Fortunately, LH is one of our favorite breweries from our days living in York, where they are headquartered. While we waited for an opening in the dining room, we caught up with our old friends at LH. Part-owner Matt and his wife, Andrea, introduced us to several of their new beers. The first is Cloudification, their take on the trendy, new, cloudy IPA craze. A session IPA, it was a perfect appetizer while we continued our wait to be seated. Their second new beer is a Rye Oatmeal Stout. Both are excellent additions to their already stellar arsenal of brews. At this point in our wait, which had reached about 25 minutes at this point, Barry alerted us to an end space at the bar. Immediately we were seated and served. In an effort to remain consistent with the local Tap Takeover features, Sean ordered a Cloudification while Andrea ordered one of LH’s better-known brews, the Irregardless, which is a citrusy, West Coast-style IPA.

As we caught up with the LH beer folks, we informed them of our new blog adventures to seek out all things beer, food, and ghost-related in our wonderfully historic, new stomping grounds. At this point Matt shared with us some of his personal experiences in the LH brewery. Apparently, LH is not immune to cases of footsteps, shadows and overall eeriness deep amongst the vats. We’re hoping to get a chance to follow up on these boos among the brews the next time we plan a blog-related research trip to York.

Fish and fries. SO GOOD.

Bar Food: Homemade and Delicious

While we enjoyed our beers at Cassell’s, we considered our eats. Traditionally, when figuring out what to eat one would just read the menu; however, this being small-town Mount Holly Springs, we decided to let the local bar patrons be the menu. We inquired about favorite dishes, best soups, best kind of fries, and so on. We settled on fried fish; when seeking out the best beer and ghosts, it’s always a good idea to remain Lenten…for good luck... just in case.

Sean ordered the Yuengling-battered, fried haddock sandwich with sweet potato fries; Andrea got the fish and fries, which came with a side of homemade coleslaw. The fish was golden brown, breaded and fried to a perfect crisp, and the sweet potato fries were hearty and delicious. The coleslaw was also fresh, crunchy and creamy—not the sad little plastic cup of mystery sludge that’s all too common in many eateries. The sandwich came on a fresh baguette with fresh tomato. There are many bigger fish sandwiches out there, but none of them match the quality of fish and perfect fry of the fish we had this night. After what started out to be a long and tiresome wait to be seated, the craft beer and delicious food made it totally worthwhile.

The bartender and bar patrons were all very friendly; while we waited for our order, we had hearty discussions with our fellow beer and food lovers. It turns out that the older couple who sat next to us were die-hard, lifetime Cleveland Brown fans, which turned out to be the scariest thing of the night. At last we thanked the bartender, paid our tab and bid adieu to what will certainly be one of our main local places. Though this trip may have been more on the hungry side than haunted, we at least got to swap some ghost stories and swig some brews with the LH folks…who knows, there may be a future ghost hunting collaboration on the horizon!