{"id":70822,"date":"2025-12-26T10:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T10:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70822\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T10:16:11","slug":"friday-food-feature-with-berks-county-eats-state-hill-craft-cocktails-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70822\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Food Feature with Berks County Eats: State Hill Craft Cocktails & Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Zach Brown, Berks County Eats<\/p>\n

While we\u2019ve found a lot of great restaurants around Berks County, Julie and I are always on the\u00a0lookout for date night options \u2014 places to go when we can leave the kids with their grandparents or a sitter for a couple of hours.<\/p>\n

One of the places that has moved near the top of our list is State Hill Craft Cocktails & Kitchen in Wyomissing.<\/p>\n

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State Hill Craft opened in 2023 in the former Tino\u2019s\/Santino\u2019s along State Hill Road. It\u2019s always been an awkward location with limited parking. That was partially solved when the restaurant purchased the adjoining property and expanded with a new patio and larger parking lot. Even so, we still found a full parking lot when we arrived for dinner on a Friday night in December.<\/p>\n

We had reservations, so we weren\u2019t worried, but it turned out the crowd was for a private party on the patio, and there were plenty of tables for us in the main dining room.<\/p>\n

We were seated at a table for two at one end of a large oval-shaped banquette. Julie sat on the blue leather booth side while I took the chair. Behind me were two tables against a wall with two mirrors. More black tables with blue chairs lined the front wall.<\/p>\n

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Our first trip to State Hill came in November 2023. I wasn\u2019t writing reviews at the time, but we were incredibly impressed with our meals that night.<\/p>\n

I had the umami bomb pasta \u2014 a mushroom-infused pasta dish with miso cashew cream, while Julie had the coho salmon. It was absolutely excellent, and while the gray-tint of the pasta didn\u2019t make it the most appealing visually, the earthiness of the mushrooms combined with the nutty sweetness of the miso cashew was so good.<\/p>\n

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But by the time I got back to writing reviews, they had already swapped out their seasonal menu, and the pasta was gone.<\/p>\n

The menu has morphed many times since our visit, and the latest iteration came out in November. It\u2019s a mix of large and small plates with a few sandwiches and burger options. There\u2019s nothing quite as adventurous as the umami bomb, but even familiar items had a little bit of a unique twist to them.<\/p>\n

For example, my billionaire smash. The traditional smashburger got an upscale makeover with wagyu beef, truffle aioli, bacon onion jam, smoked cheddar, lettuce, and tomato.<\/p>\n

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As much as I love a good aioli, it was the bacon jam that made this a great burger. The salty-sweet combination is just a great addition. I had just a few bites where I didn\u2019t get enough of the jam, but others where it really shone through.<\/p>\n

The fries were also delicious. It didn\u2019t list it on the menu, but I\u2019m guessing it was garlic, parmesan, and herbs. They were addictive, and I just had to finish them, even after I was full.<\/p>\n

Julie ended up taking some of her meal home. She had the wagyu meatloaf, which came with an applejack demi glace, garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus, and crispy shallots.<\/p>\n

Like my burger, the wagyu beef had a deeper flavor than regular ground beef to start. But the applejack demi-glace, with its sweetness and a little bit of bite to it, was excellent. It made it feel like something more than meatloaf.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason that she took half of it home was that we started with an order of birria bao buns.<\/p>\n

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The fluffy buns were filled with birria-style short rib, red onion, cilantro, and mozzarella. On the side was birria consomm\u00e9. We found the consomm\u00e9 to be more like a spicy chili rather than a traditional broth, but I really enjoyed it. The bao soaked it up well, and we each finished off one and a half of them before our entrees arrived.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a great meal for a great date night.<\/p>\n

In addition to the food, Julie had a strawberry \u201cno-jito\u201d mocktail that she really liked, and I had my unsweetened iced tea.\u00a0We spent $65 after using a $10 off coupon. Even at full price, it felt reasonable for the quality of the food.<\/p>\n

State Hill Craft impressed us on our first visit and our latest visit, and we are looking forward to more impressive meals to come.<\/p>\n

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Very Good
Ambiance: Excellent<\/p>\n

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This story was contributed courtesy of Berks County Eats, a local resource for food and dining information. Berks County Eats is dedicated to promoting the dining scene in Reading and Berks County, PA, offering\u00a0restaurant reviews,\u00a0news,\u00a0and\u00a0events, and a comprehensive\u00a0Berks County restaurant directory.\u00a0You can read more at\u00a0berkscountyeats.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Zach Brown, Berks County Eats While we\u2019ve found a lot of great restaurants around Berks County, Julie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-70822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-reading-city","9":"tag-reading-city-headlines","10":"tag-reading-city-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}