At 11 South Main Street in the small village of Manchester, Jack's Kitchen is the kind of place you either know about or you don't — and the people who know about it tend to guard it jealously. Gold for Best Salad in 2022 and Silver for Best Cheap Eats in 2024 represent a combination that should not surprise anyone who has eaten here: the food is genuinely good, the prices are genuinely low, and the portions are genuinely generous.

Manchester sits between Canandaigua and the Thruway, a town that most Finger Lakes visitors blow through on their way somewhere else. Jack's Kitchen is the reason to stop. The salads — yes, salads at a cheap eats spot — are substantial enough to work as a full meal and creative enough to earn that Gold award against every restaurant in the region. The rest of the menu follows the same philosophy: fresh, well-prepared, priced to make you wonder how they keep the lights on. This is not fast food dressed up as casual dining; it is honest cooking at honest prices.

For a region where a winery lunch can easily run $25 per person before you have ordered a glass, Jack's Kitchen is a corrective. It proves that some of the best food in the Finger Lakes is not on the wine trail at all — it is in a small-town kitchen on South Main Street, served by people who care more about feeding you well than impressing you. That is a rare thing, and the FLX Finest voters have noticed.