I am an absolute pickle maven and expert. I have been to most of the pickle places in PA, New Jersey, New York City and Long Island. I know what good pickles should taste like-I am talking about brine fermented barrel cured kirby cucumber pickles-not the vinegar cured variety type found on supermarket shelves.
At first I thought it was great having a NY style pickle place in Quakertown...I have been a customer for over a year and have bought gallons of pickles from this guy. I have to admit I have a love/hate relationship with this place-on one hand I need my pickle fix and on the other I am tired of the poor customer service, the less-than-honest dealings with the customers by the owner and the inconsistent quality of the pickles. I have really tried to give his guy a chance, but he falls short every time to follow through on satisfaction. Let me explain:
The pickle quality and consistency varies from one week to the next. One week they are tasty "new pickles" then the next week the pickles are older and stale and on the verge of being full sour for pickles labeled as "new/half sour" Plus, sometimes the pickles have an off taste, as thought they have been sitting around in an open vat in a refrigerator that has lots of spoiled food in it. Definitely not an appetizing taste. Also, the pickles sometimes are these huge hacking pickles where you can only fit 3-4 in a quart container. When I ask about the quality the owner consistently states he switched suppliers. Every week or so you are switching suppliers?
Another point is how he packages them. In a real NY style pickle shop, the pickles are hand packed at the time of purchase into quart, half gallon or gallon containers. This owner uses tongs to put them into the container and if one pickle goes in crooked and takes up the space of two or three pickles, so be it-the customer gets shorted. It's less pickles he has to pack into your container and more pickles he has to sell overall. You see those nice bright green pickles in the barrel-forget about getting those if he already has prepackaged pickles in quart containers to sell. This is another trick he uses-he'll prepack the largest pickles he can find and force you to buy them first. If you insist you want the smaller to medium sized pickles (most people do) you are SOL! He won't sell you those-only the big hacking pickles that only have a few in a quart. Very tricky indeed!
Lastly, He refuses to give out free samples. In the pickle business it is standard operating procedure to give free samples of the products you sell. The samples don't have to be full size pickles-just slices of them. I have bought gallons of pickles from this guy-always hit or miss-as aforementioned- and he NEVER gave me a sample of a particular pickle I would ask about. Once, I asked him how garlicky his garlic dills are. His response: "Oh! They have a lot of garlic in them." WOW! That really gives me a descriptive flavor profile! NOT! Needless to say, I didn't buy any garlic dills. Hmmm...it costs a few hundreds of a CENT to give a sample and that could turn into 10s of dollars...wouldn't it make sense to give out a sample if someone asks? It's so obtuse thinking to think that you can maximize sales by not giving out samples.
I've gone on long enough...thankfully, my favorite pickle purveyor has a stand at a local outdoor farmer's market during the summer and fall. I can get free samples and the quality is consistent. read more