For all you/us out-of-towners, the Big Oak is the café/restaurant attached to The Butcher Shoppe.
Seating: Booths, tables for two, tables for several, and a few tall chairs at a counter. There is way more seating than is immediately visible when you come in through the front, i.e., by the counter where you place your order. The whole place is shaped like a rectangle with a bottleneck in the middle by the restroom (a unisex, one-at-a-time affair), so head away from the counter for the rest of the seating. If you come in through the back, i.e., through Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe, you'll already be passing through this seating area on your way to place your order. This room has a faux fireplace with a flatscreen above the mantle, tuned to sports when I was there (with the volume down, I think).
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--this way to/from The Butcher Shoppe O
R
| -- -- -- -- D
| S I T H E R E | | | | O R H E R E E
| | | WC | R
| (TV but no fire) | | | | |
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- front door -- --
(The diagram above looks good in Arial 12!)
They advertise free wifi, and when we arrived around 12:30 I did see one person with a laptop presumably hanging on from the more contemplative morning hours. If you're a laptopper I'd definitely recommend you prepare yourself to be overwhelmed by the lunch crowd. The place was packed to the point that people had started to hover, waiting for tables.
After you order you get a number and wait for the food to find you. We were told that our drinks might be be ready first and that if we heard them shouting our number we could come get them; however, in this case the drinks were delivered to us (before the sandwiches). The person who took our order was friendly and helpful, and our order came out quickly enough considering it was the middle of lunch chaos.
They offer lots of sandwiches with odd names, fully described in the menu (print and online). I hear the "Meadow" wrap is super, especially the dressing on the greens. If you want to name the ingredients in your sandwich, ask for a "Standard." My Standard was a good, solid sandwich, not too big and not too small--though in Chambersburg I might have expected more for the price ($6.95). But the times, I hear, they are a-changin', even in Chambersburg, and to be fair the sandwich I ordered -- roast beef, swiss, lettuce, tomato, and mustard on pumpernickel since they were out of or don't carry rye -- was not nearly as fancy as the ones suggested on their menu which might be more worth the price.
The Baked Potato soup: it's like they turned a baked potato into a soup. It's creamy and heavy, and it even has bits of bacon.
Try the mango-orange-juice iced tea, which is very/too sweet -- though I think it would make a great Thai-(ish)-style iced tea. Next time I'll add some half and half from the coffee bar. read more