The old 1950s and '60s style was to slice the onions thickly and overcook them in hot oil, which Cricklewood has perfectly recreated. These rings are large and coarse, their excess of oil soaking the paper that lines their basket, and the batter has about the same flavor as saltines. Just like when I was a kid in the 1940s and my parents would take me to the Plandome Gardens restaurant, and I'd always order this very appetizer. Chicken vegetable soup. Comes with entree.
All entrees come with soup or salad, and a choice of baked potato, rice pilaf, or vegetable medley.
This is the dinner soup, made with a light chicken stock in which pieces of breast meat swim. Also in here are peas, Roma tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, celery, and parsley leaves cooked hard but not quite to mush. A flavorful soup withal. Comes with entree. Romaine lettuce forms the basis for this old-fashioned salad that includes a helping of cold, tasteless kidney beans, several slices of pickled beets, unpeeled cucumber slices and the obligatory cherry tomato.