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While the interior may be modern, the hot-dog cookery is timeless. New Way griddle cooks slim, non-kosher franks and slips them into soft, warm buns. The fundamental dressing formula is a trio of mustard, diced onions, and a finely textured beef sauce that has a peppery tang. It is a small package, costing all of $1.15, and we observed that big guys ordered them by fours or sixes. Take-out customers come in for dozens.

Hot dogs are the claim to fame, but there’s a small menu of other items, too: char-cooked burgers, a Philly cheesesteak, fried fish and chicken, and a Greek salad. For a quick lunch not far from the New York Thruway, New Way is an easy detour.

Parkside Candy

3208 Main St.

716–833–7540

Buffalo, NY

LD | $

This gorgeous 1920s-era confectionery is ringed with cases all around the perimeter of the room displaying creams and chews, truffles and cordials, clusters, dixies, and barks all made in the candy factory just behind the store. Best of them all is that Buffalo favorite, sponge candy, a chocolate-coated, spun-molasses wonder that is like no ordinary bonbon. It literally melts in your mouth, creating a delirious harmony of chocolate and molasses. In the room where candies are displayed are little ice-cream-parlor tables, where you can order from a menu of fountain delights that range from frappes, parfaits, and sundaes to the lovers’ indulgence, Old Granada Special, which is eight scoops of ice cream, four toppings, and two varieties of toasted nuts under a mountain of whipped cream, served with two spoons.

There is a short sandwich menu, too, but we’ve never tried it. The aroma of chocolate when we walk in the Parkside door is a siren’s call.

Patsy’s

2287 First Ave.

212–534–9783

New York, NY

LD | $

New Yorkers think nothing of picking up a slice of pizza for eating on the go. Patsy’s is the Italian landmark in the midst of Spanish Harlem where street slices were first served back in the 1930s. To this day, customers stand around on the sidewalk outside or lean on an open-air counter facing First Avenue wolfing down slices of elegant pizza.

Whole pies are served at tables and booths inside. While all sorts of toppings are available, we like the most basic tomato-cheese combo: easy to hoist slice by slice, built on a marvelous fragile crust with charred spots all along the edge that have the smoky flavor that only a coal oven delivers. Two versions of plain cheese pizza are available: fresh mozzarella, with thin pools of creamy sliced cheese spread out within the microthin layer of tomato sauce, and regular mozzarella on which saltier, slightly oilier shredded cheese is spread evenly all across the surface. They both are built upon that marvelous wafer-thin charcoaled crust.

Patsy’s is a true destination restaurant, way uptown in a place that is not exactly “restaurant row.” It’s ancient, going back to 1933 when Pasquale Lancieri first opened for business, and it has the well-aged character of a neighborhood restaurant that hasn’t changed even as the neighborhood around it has. We were especially charmed by waiter Victor, who advised us that in his opinion, “98 percent of the pizza places in New York aren’t worth walking past.”

Phil’s Chicken House

1208 Maine Rd.

607–748–7574

Endicott, NY

LD | $

Phil’s Chicken House was opened some forty years ago by Phil Card, who learned his skills at Endicott’s Chicken Inn. His folksy wood-paneled restaurant is decorated to the hilt with country-crafty knickknacks (souvenir plates, angel statuettes, lighthouse miniatures) and it attracts customers that range from local families to well-armed state police SWAT teams (who practice marksmanship nearby).

As you might guess by the name of the restaurant, the featured attraction here is chicken—slow cooked and relentlessly basted on a rotisserie until the skin is glazed gold and the meat drips juice. The breast meat is velvet soft; thighs and drumsticks pack a roundhouse flavor punch; and wings are