Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [62]
Last we looked, the price of one was seventy cents! So you can have two hot dogs, dressed, of course, the Jimmy’s way, with mustard, onions, and pickle spears, along with a bag of potato chips and a Coke or chocolate milk, for under three dollars. If you’ve got a big appetite, you might want three or four hot dogs, but even if you and a friend indulged in five apiece, you could still walk out with change from a ten-dollar bill.
Want something other than a hot dog and chips? Too bad, because that is the extent of Jimmy’s menu. There is no extra charge to kibitz with members of the Apostopolous family, who have run the joint, without changing a thing, for decades…and who have perfected the art of freezing and overnight-shipping their beloved weenies to ex-Eastonites desperate for a taste of home.
Note: There are no seats. Business is take-out only.
Jim’s Steaks
400 South St.
215–928–1911
Philadelphia, PA
LD | $
Opened in 1939, Jim’s is Philadelphia’s second-oldest cheesesteak shop (after Pat’s), and it’s definitely the sharpest looking with its deco black-and-white tile décor.
It’s a very popular place, which is a good thing, because your wait in line will provide ample time for deciding how you like your steak garnished—“wit’” or “wit’out” (onions), and whether you want the standard Cheez Whiz or optional American or provolone. The wait in line also takes you past the back of the store where an automatic slicer produces heaps of rosy-colored beef ready to be fried.
The steaks are made by hacking up the meat on the grill (with onions, preferably!) so it becomes a kind of onion-flavored steak hash. If you get sliced cheese, it is layered in the roll before the meat and melts underneath it. Whiz is ladled atop the meat. Pizza sauce and peppers are optional condiments. The bread is excellent, the fried onions are appropriately slippery, and the optional hot peppers are breathtaking. Have a Dr. Brown’s soda on the side, and you’ve got a cheap-eats meal to remember.
JoJo’s Restaurant
110 24th St.
412–261–0280
Pittsburgh, PA
B&L (from 11:00 P.M. to just after noon) | $
A word of warning about JoJo’s hours: although its motto is “Breakfast Served All Day, Every Day,” what that means here in Pittsburgh’s produce market is that it is open from 11:00 P.M. until noon. The schedule is made to jibe with that of truck drivers who haul produce up from the South and arrive shortly after midnight. They unload their reefers (refrigerated trucks) then come for the JoJo Special, an impossibly overstuffed three-egg omelet containing peppers, onions, mushrooms, provolone and American cheese, bacon and/or sausage and/or ham, plus a spatula-load of hot fried potatoes. Unless you have the appetite of Gargantua, consider this plateload a meal for two. French fries are popular, too, ordered on the side of a meat loaf sandwich in lieu of home fries, and frequently served underneath a blanket of dark brown gravy.
JoJo’s is located at the far end of Pittsburgh’s Strip District (where the all-night produce market thrives), and it gets mighty colorful at the counter and long tables of this former gas-station café about 2:00 A.M. As the music clubs close and truckers arrive to conduct business at the produce terminal a few blocks away, the late and early shifts come together to eat huge breakfast omelets cooked in individual skillets and served with pre-buttered slabs of Italian toast.
While the majority of JoJo’s customers are sober, responsible folks who simply happen to be out late at night, chances are good you will meet a handful of, shall we say, eccentric types who drink too much. One superfan of the big omelet very carefully and precisely explained that he comes to the restaurant every morning about four for the purpose of drinking a JoJo omelet after eating beer all night.