Dave’s Diner, smothered hot dogs, and rethinking ‘eatery’

We usually drive through Manlius on the way to somewhere else. That’s not a knock on Manlius, just a function of how we get to Wegman’s in Dewitt and to Syracuse. 

It does have a great little movie theater, and some swans. Those are good things. The mayor had to pay a $100 fine after he admitted to breaking his own village’s recycling laws by swiping returnables from residents’ bins. Twice. That’s weird, and somewhat entertaining.

I do wonder if I would pay the village more attention if its school district was called Manlius-Fayetteville and not Fayetteville-Manlius.  Probably not.

Today, Manlius was our destination as we drove to Dave’s Diner for breakfast with our aunt from the ‘cuse. It was my first stop at the diner, which is on Route 173 just west of the turnoff for Route 92. The diner was hopping at 10 a.m.

Dave's Diner in Manlius

Dave’s turns out to be a good stop for a morning repast. A full menu, including all sorts of waffles and toppings. Plentiful portions and reasonably priced. I can’t say anything struck me as unusually good or charming or noteworthy, but on the other hand nothing was bad or overpriced or suspect. Pretty solid all around.

A few news nuggets:

– Friend J wrote to tell me that next time I am in the Glove Cities region I need to venture into Gloversville and try New York Lunch. He highly recommends the smothered hot dogs, a signature item the place has been serving for at least 60 years.  If you are a hot dog fan it seems like you need to visit New York Lunch and then drive to the Hot Dog Hut Cafe just down the road in Johnstown. Which restaurant would win the hot dog derby? Hmmm…

– A new restaurant is set to open in Hamilton: Royal Indian Grill. The owner of the Broad Street establishment runs similar restaurants in New Hartford, Clinton, and Dewitt. We eagerly await its opening and will let you know how we fare. We have eaten at the Clinton restaurant and enjoyed it thoroughly. Wonderful tandoori chicken, chicken curry, and naan bread.

– Roger’s Market in Hamilton closed some time ago. It was a wonderful place for deli sandwiches and microbrew beer selections. It has been purchased and renamed Hamilton Eatery. Not quite the most imaginative of names, is it? For some reason when I saw that name I immediately thought of its polar opposite in naming conventions: the Squat and Gobble restaurant on Route 5 in Vernon. 

If I was going to name a restaurant, I’d lean more toward the Squat and Gobble type moniker than anything with the word eatery in it. That makes it sound like a place that serves cream corn with open-faced sandwiches made with Wonder bread and Heinz canned brown gravy, followed with blue Jello for dessert, or better yet, blue Jello with fruit chunks in it.

Which, now that I think about it, was my Mom’s signature dish during my formative years, at least toward the latter part of every month when my Dad, the Con Ed foreman, was getting paid monthly and we’d start to run out of money around the 20th or so.

I’m sure the Hamilton Eatery will be nothing like any of that, and we wish the new owners, Fabius natives who had been living in Colorado, nothing but the best.

Atmosphere doesn’t always tell a restaurant’s full story

A restaurant’s atmosphere is not mission critical,  as maybe you can tell by the restaurants and diners I tend to visit, but it can be an important factor on how well I enjoy a dining experience.

My family and I were driving around the city of Johnstown, about 45 miles west of Albany, last Friday in search of somewhere to eat. We were stopping in the Fulton County seat before driving a couple more hours the next day to visit Middlebury College in Vermont.

In Johnstown, one of the “Glove Cities,” we drove by the interesting-looking historic Union Hall restaurant on Main Street, but passed it by. We had scoped it out beforehand, and it was a little pricey for what we wanted that night. 

The other downtown restaurants were closed, except for the Hot Dog Hut Cafe, which I could not coerce Wife L and Daughter B to try.  The other place Wife L had read about was Romana’s Italian Kitchen, and we decided to look for that one. My Spidey senses were tingling when we found it because it was at the end of a strip mall that also housed a Chinese buffet and a Dollar Tree store, which I detest just a little less than Dollar General stores that also sell cheap crap from China.

The cool “atmosphere” factor at Romana’s is the dude pictured at right. I know that is not saying much, but it did spark some conversation as we slid into our booth and took in the drop-ceiling and rather pedestrian appointments. But, boy, was the food awesome, shoving the atmosphere into the backseat and out of the conversation.

I had a wonderful special — Chicken Florentine. It was supposed to be chicken medallions but it was really four good-sized chicken breasts sautéed with fresh spinach, chunks of tomato, and feta cheese, all  served on top of perfectly cooked angel hair pasta. It was a real treat, and I could not come close to finishing. I wish I had not eaten as much of the pedestrian salad as I did, and of course I had trouble passing up  the warm delicious Italian bread.

Wife L ordered the steak special, which was a N.Y. strip with a bleu cheese sauce. The steak was tender and had a wonderful flavor, and the bleu cheese was a perfect accompaniment. Her side dish was pasta with the restaurant’s red sauce, which Wife L reported was OK but nothing spectacular.  Daughter B had wonderful plate of chicken and broccoli over linguine, cooked with olive oil and garlic. A great dish with subtle flavors.

We made up for the lack of atmosphere at Romana’s the next morning when we ventured into the Miss Johnstown Diner, which is downtown on Main Street. It’s old. It’s a dive. It was missing the seat from one of its counter stools and a couple others seemed to be barely hanging on. I loved it.

It was busy as a bunch of bicyclists were refueling before heading east to Saratoga Springs, the final leg in a bike ride that started in Niagara Falls. Amazing.

A mother and daughter tag team were busy taking care of all of us and apologizing for the wait, which was minimal.  I loved eating blueberry pancakes in this narrow throwback to another time before McRib sandwiches and Whoppers even existed. These were the places you’d stop during a road trip to enjoy a homemade meal at reasonable prices. You still can! 

Our tab for three breakfasts? $12.21. Granted, Daughter B only had one pancake, but c’mon. That’s crazy. Crazy good stuff.

Miss Johnstown Diner