Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [58]
Beyond the spiedie, Sharkey’s serves Eastern European fare made by experts: holupkis (stuffed cabbage rolls) are the work of Larry’s sister-in-law, Marie. Around Easter and Christmastime, the menu features homemade kielbasa sausages. And you can always count on buttery pierogi filled with seasoned mashed potatoes.
Sharkey’s is a local institution to which families have come for generations. Old-timers know to enter through the back door rather than the front. Here, you walk into a dark dining room outfitted with ancient wooden booths and long family-style tables formed from pushed-together dinettes. Between courses, the young folks get up to play a few lines on the old Tic Tac Strike game, a pre-electronic diversion that seems at home in this historic tavern.
Shortstop Deli
204 W. Seneca St.
607–273–1030
Ithaca, NY
Always open | $
Any hearty eater who attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in the last four decades knows about Hot Truck, the mobile food wagon that invented French bread pizzas in the early 1960s. As served from the campus truck starting every night at 11:00 P.M. during the school year, these fusions of pizza and submarine sandwich are piled with ingredients, then baked open-face until the bread is shatteringly crisp, the cheese bubbles, and the meats sizzle.
The Hot Truck’s hours are extremely limited, which is why we love the Shortstop Deli, to which proprietor Albert Smith and his son Michael have brought Hot Truck cuisine. More a big convenience store than a sit-down eatery, the Shortstop features shelves of snack foods, countless varieties of coffee, and a counter where you write your own order for Hot Truck. There are no tables or chairs, just some concrete benches outside the front window where it is possible to bring your wrapped sandwich and your cup of soda (ten cents with a meal!) and dine al fresco.
The pizza subs are made on loaves of Ithaca Bakery French bread, and they range from the basic PMP (Poor Man’s Pizza), which is nothing but bread, sauce, and cheese, to the extravaganza known as a Suicide (garlic, sauce, mushrooms, sausage, pepperoni, and mozzarella). These sandwiches have inspired a language all their own. For example, a Triple Sui, Hot and Heavy, G and G is a full Suicide with a sprinkle of hot red pepper, three extra homemade meatballs, extra garlic, mayonnaise, and lettuce (G and G = grease and garden, i.e., mayo and lettuce). An Indy includes link sausage, pepperoni, onion, sauce, and cheese, hot and heavy. A Flaming Turkey Bone (which contains no turkey and no bones and is not served on fire) includes chicken breast, tomato sauce, cheese, onions, extra hot and heavy, plus “spontaneous combustion” (double-X hot sauce).
Ted’s Jumbo Red Hots
2312 Sheridan Dr.
716–836–8986
Tonawanda (Buffalo), NY
LD | $
Ted’s began as a horse-drawn hot dog cart in Buffalo in the 1920s. It became a permanently anchored hot dog stand under the Peace Bridge in 1927, and opened as a bigger store on Sheridan Drive in 1948. There are now eight Ted’s in western New York, and one in Tempe, Arizona, but the one to which we always want to return is Ted’s of Tonawanda. It’s modernized since 1948 and is as clean and sanitary as any fast-food franchise, but the hot dogs are something special.
Sahlen’s-brand frankfurters, available regular, foot-long, or jumbo, are cooked on a grate over charcoal that infuses each one with pungent smoke flavor and makes the skin crackling-crisp. As they cook, the chef pokes them with a fork, slaps them, squeezes them, and otherwise abuses them, thus puncturing the skin and allowing the dog to suck in maximum smoky taste.
As the dogs cook, you must make some decisions. In consultation with a person behind the counter known as “the dresser,” you decide how you want to garnish your tube steak. The stellar condiment is Ted’s hot sauce, a peppery-hot concoction laced with bits of relish. You also want onion rings,