Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [60]
“Ordinary” omelets are jumbo, too, stuffed with giant hunks of fresh vegetables and/or your breakfast meat of choice. For many visitors, DeLuca’s is an opportunity to indulge in one of the really outrageous breakfast items, such as the chocolate chip hotcake sundae, which is a stack of pancakes choc-a-bloc with melted and melting chocolate chips, topped with ice cream and strawberries. We are especially fond of blueberry French toast.
DeLuca’s is open for lunch as well as breakfast, with a nice menu of hamburgers, cold-cut hoagies, and such square meals as meat loaf or pork chops with potatoes. Milkshakes are served in bright metal beakers…and topped with a dab of whipped cream.
Expect to wait for a seat at peak mealtime hours, especially on weekends, when Pittsburghers throng to the Strip on a kind of eaters’ holiday. For us, the choice place in DeLuca’s is at the counter with a good view of the short-order chefs flipping eggs and hotcakes at lightning speed.
Dutch Kitchen
Exit 36W off I-81
570–874–3265
Frackville, PA
BLD | $
The Dutch Kitchen is really convenient. It always seems to be just where we need it to be when hunger strikes south of the I-81/I-80 junction. It is a big, friendly place, a former dining car (still intact inside) to which has been added a whole dining room that is decorated to the max with country crafts, speckleware, homily plaques for kitchen walls, and souvenirs of Pennsylvania.
As for the food, it’s wonderful. Start with the salad bar, which goes way beyond ordinary salad ingredients with a spectacular array of vegetables that reflect co-owner Jennifer Levkulic’s Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. Here are breathtaking pickled vegetables, seriously dark apple butter, chow-chow, beets, beans, and fresh-baked bread to add to your plate of real daily roasted turkey, hearty bread filling (aka stuffing), genuine mashed potatoes (with an occasional reassuring lump in the smooth, swirly spuds), and gravy.
The Dutch Kitchen is a traditional diner, and it is possible to stop here for bacon and eggs in the morning or a nice hamburger or sandwich at lunch, but we are always drawn to such hearty traditional dishes as smoked pork chops, turkey croquettes, and a stupendously good potpie with homemade noodles, chicken and turkey, potatoes and vegetables. One of our favorite daily specials is a stew of ham, cabbage, and potato sided by a block of brown-top corn bread nearly as sweet as cake. For dessert, of course, we choose shoofly pie, this of the wet-bottom variety: crustless, with a ribbon of molasses at the bottom and a faintly eggy thickness to the crumbly coffee-cake top.
Enrico Biscotti
2022 Penn Ave.
412–281–2602
Pittsburgh, PA
BLD | $
One of the fringe benefits of coffee’s ascendance in recent years is the discovery of biscotti, the firm Italian cookie that dunks so well. Alas, like coffee itself, there are a lot of lame versions around. While biscotti are supposed to have a good crunch, too many simply feel stale. We didn’t even think we liked them…until we visited Enrico Biscotti Co. in Pittsburgh’s historic Strip district. Here baker Larry Lagattuta makes them by hand using the finest ingredients, turning out such flavors as anise-almond, apricot-hazelnut, and pineapple-vanilla with white chocolate.
Attached to the bakery is a European-style café where you can eat individual-size brick-oven pizza, torta rustica, soup, or a “big fat salad.” Here too is the espresso machine, as well as a handful of tables both inside and outdoors in a sort of makeshift patio along the sidewalk. We know of no nicer place to start the day with strong coffee and biscotti or to have a leisurely lunch of expertly made true-Italian food. Bring your own wine.
The Family Diner
302 Main St.
717–443–8797
White Haven, PA
BLD | $
Interstate