The secrets of the Cheltenham food scene

We'll give this to you straight. While Cheltenham attracts a lot of serious foodies as residents — the nationally esteemed cookbook authors Aliza Green, Andrew Schloss and Eileen Talanian all live there — it's not at all a foodie's mecca when it comes to actual food.

Still, we at the Daily News would never send you off to explore an interesting neck of the inner-ring suburbs without telling you where to eat. We're worried you'd begin to feel faint upon leaving the city limits.

So we turned to Green for help. In addition to being a regional food treasure in her own right — among other accomplishments, she was in on the creation of the White Dog Café menu and co-wrote Georges Perrier's "Le Bec-Fin Recipes" — she's also an honorary One of Us, having written for the Daily News on happy occasions through the years.

Green was scrambling to finish her latest project, a baking guide due out this fall as a sequel to her cookbook "Starting with Ingredients" (Running Press, 2006). But for you, she said, sure.

This map locates six foodie oases that sustain her in the culinary desert that is Cheltenham Township. Be advised: one's for cookware, not food.

Come spring, you can add two more: the Glenside Farmer's Market and the Lancaster Farm Fresh community-supported agriculture program that drops off pre-paid "shares" of locally grown produce at Kol Ami synagogue. Green, who's also the author of the "Field Guide to Produce" (Quirk Books, 2004), is a proud hometown fan of both.

— Becky Batcha

Max & David's

150 Yorktown Plaza

Elkins Park

215-885-2400

Green helped design the kitchen and the menu at this new high-end kosher restaurant, so it's no surprise she likes the place. (So does the Inquirer's persnickety Craig LaBan, who just granted it a "very good" rating.) Some of her favorites: the chopped pastrami and the Texas-style barbecued brisket (both smoked on the premises), the Turkish-lamb meatballs with pomegranate sauce and the non-dairy gelati.

H Mart

7320 Old York Road

Elkins Park

215-782-1801

The Cheltenham H Mart is one of three Delaware Valley locations for the growing Korean supermarket chain, and, in Green's humble opinion, "it is absolutely the place as far as food goes."

Her favorite haunts are the bountiful produce aisle and the fish counter, where orders are cut to specification and double-bagged in plastic with ice cubes for freshness. A celebrity eel from H Mart's fish tank was a photographer's model for Green's "Field Guide to Seafood" (Quirk, 2007).

The Blue Comet Bar & Grill

106 S. Easton Road

Glenside

215-572-9780

Green recommends this Glenside roadhouse for its solid bar food and cool, retro vibe — especially on Rockabilly Sundays, with a live band and no cover.

Elkins Perk

7905 High School Road

Elkins Park

215-635-3909

A homey neighborhood coffee house across the street from the Elkins Park train station. While it's nothing out of the ordinary, "it ain't Starbucks," the iconoclastic Green says approvingly.

Rolings Bakery

7848 Montgomery Ave.

Elkins Park

215-635-5524

A rare Delaware Valley purveyor of authentic Flatbush bagels. "They're super chewy. You have to like that chewy thing," Green advises. "But they're very, very good."

SGS Paper Co.

1 Rices Mill Road

Wyncote

215-884-5791

Along with balloons and 40th-birthday-ware, this off-the-beaten-path party-supply store — in a warehouse near the train tracks — carries a worthy selection of foil chafing dishes and paper goods for entertaining, Green says. "It's a cool place." She especially likes the cake supplies, including doilies and corrugated cakeboards. *