![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogBecause they kinda look like lemons, now, don't they?
Eleanor had a bad day at work yesterday. Not as bad as some people I know (/obscurereference), but bad enough for her to phone home around 4 and request a Night Out.
Birthdays and anniversaries and other Special Days get special venues. For this kind of night, we do Frank's.
Frank's Sunny Italy, on Delaware just north of Hertel, is as close as this town has ever come for us to being the Cheers-like oasis Where Everybody Knows Your Name™. Only they don't, but you feel like you're with family anyway.
I found myself reminiscing last night that we discovered Frank's, ages ago, almost by accident. One of Eleanor's coworkers from the late 90s had recommended a fancier Italian place on Kenmore Avenue, but it was closed on whatever day we tried it out; a helpful neighbor pointed us toward Delaware to the bigger and friendlier place across the street from Scime's (a virtual lookalike for Tony Soprano's now-nonexistent porcine hangout) and we've never looked back, or further.
Frank's has never had the local fame of Chef's or the panache of Marotto's or the true paisan cuisine of a half dozen other Italian places within a two-mile radius. But it kicks Olive Garden's ass eight ways to Sicily, and best of all you can walk into Frank's on a Sunday night at 6 with no rezzie and get instant seating, instead of being confined to a General Mills subsidiary's parking lot with a pager and eighteen facelifted grandmas for half an hour.
We never stopped chatting with our waitress. She'd served us before, I remembered, and even recalled previously talking with her about her daughter who, I didn't remember, is now the same 16 years of age that Em is. She was attentive and fun and worth the price of admission alone.
Ah, but the food. Those aforementioned stuffed shells for me, in a red sauce to die for. Veal marsala for the missus (shut up, they already killed the meat, okay?) in its own wine-based marinade. Even a side of chicken fingers to bring home to the absent (yet pissed we wouldn't delay our dinner until she could come) daughter.
The whole tab? Less than a third of an equally scrumptious tapas dinner for just two of us in our own neighborhood less than a month before.
-----
It's places like this, we need. Early last week, I'd returned to another of them, equally comforting, with an even more impressive pedigree for me.
I wrote about this one here, the last time I was there, four years ago. That entry didn't do nearly enough justice to that eatery which is very different, yet just as important, in my mouth and memories.
Hal's Deli is an Ithaca institution. It's been downtown since the 60s, surviving a round of urban renewal that relegates it to a dull 70s storefront surrounded by one-way streets, then coming back after a devestating fire, and even pressing on after the death of its eponymous owner a few years after I graduated.
When I was there, though, it was home. It was a block away from the newspaper, and Sunday nights, especially, were nights to bring the first drafts of stories and mockups of pages to a big table in the back to work out over overstuffed sammiches and chocolate egg creams. Our newspaper was fiercely independent of the University administration, enough so that we refused to apply for recognition as an official Student Organization- so when we needed to book an on-campus auditorium for our semiannual recruiting sessions for new staff members, the approved group for that purpose was named "Hal's Pals," in honor of our home away from home on Aurora Street.
Twenty-seven years after I left town, it's still home. I detoured through Ithaca after finishing business in Binghamton last Monday, getting to the register moments before the noon lunch crunch. Jackie greeted me; she's Hal's daughter, and even though she Doesn't Know My Name™ either, I've known her to have been working there since she was probably my daughter's age. Her brother Mike is behind the deli counter as he probably has been since the Carter Administration. And their mom Sandy, slowed and with a mean brace supporting one arm, is still cleaning the two cafe tables out front and tallying the tabs behind the register, as she's been doing, probably, since before I was in kindergarten.
Jackie asked me, as she did everyone that came in, do you need a menu? Of course I don't. I'm having a Number Eight on rye and a chorklit egg cream. She and Mike must've raced to see who could put out their product first: she, working the fountain combining three simple ingredients as nobody on the planet can (none of which is egg, or cream), he, assembling the triple decker in record time with everything, including the toothpicks, tasting exactly as I remember them. And all for less than the cost of the Express Lunch™ at the soon to be defunct Uno's that's near you, and near me, and near just about everybody.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Eleanor had a bad day at work yesterday. Not as bad as some people I know (/obscurereference), but bad enough for her to phone home around 4 and request a Night Out.
Birthdays and anniversaries and other Special Days get special venues. For this kind of night, we do Frank's.
Frank's Sunny Italy, on Delaware just north of Hertel, is as close as this town has ever come for us to being the Cheers-like oasis Where Everybody Knows Your Name™. Only they don't, but you feel like you're with family anyway.
I found myself reminiscing last night that we discovered Frank's, ages ago, almost by accident. One of Eleanor's coworkers from the late 90s had recommended a fancier Italian place on Kenmore Avenue, but it was closed on whatever day we tried it out; a helpful neighbor pointed us toward Delaware to the bigger and friendlier place across the street from Scime's (a virtual lookalike for Tony Soprano's now-nonexistent porcine hangout) and we've never looked back, or further.
Frank's has never had the local fame of Chef's or the panache of Marotto's or the true paisan cuisine of a half dozen other Italian places within a two-mile radius. But it kicks Olive Garden's ass eight ways to Sicily, and best of all you can walk into Frank's on a Sunday night at 6 with no rezzie and get instant seating, instead of being confined to a General Mills subsidiary's parking lot with a pager and eighteen facelifted grandmas for half an hour.
We never stopped chatting with our waitress. She'd served us before, I remembered, and even recalled previously talking with her about her daughter who, I didn't remember, is now the same 16 years of age that Em is. She was attentive and fun and worth the price of admission alone.
Ah, but the food. Those aforementioned stuffed shells for me, in a red sauce to die for. Veal marsala for the missus (shut up, they already killed the meat, okay?) in its own wine-based marinade. Even a side of chicken fingers to bring home to the absent (yet pissed we wouldn't delay our dinner until she could come) daughter.
The whole tab? Less than a third of an equally scrumptious tapas dinner for just two of us in our own neighborhood less than a month before.
-----
It's places like this, we need. Early last week, I'd returned to another of them, equally comforting, with an even more impressive pedigree for me.
I wrote about this one here, the last time I was there, four years ago. That entry didn't do nearly enough justice to that eatery which is very different, yet just as important, in my mouth and memories.
Hal's Deli is an Ithaca institution. It's been downtown since the 60s, surviving a round of urban renewal that relegates it to a dull 70s storefront surrounded by one-way streets, then coming back after a devestating fire, and even pressing on after the death of its eponymous owner a few years after I graduated.
When I was there, though, it was home. It was a block away from the newspaper, and Sunday nights, especially, were nights to bring the first drafts of stories and mockups of pages to a big table in the back to work out over overstuffed sammiches and chocolate egg creams. Our newspaper was fiercely independent of the University administration, enough so that we refused to apply for recognition as an official Student Organization- so when we needed to book an on-campus auditorium for our semiannual recruiting sessions for new staff members, the approved group for that purpose was named "Hal's Pals," in honor of our home away from home on Aurora Street.
Twenty-seven years after I left town, it's still home. I detoured through Ithaca after finishing business in Binghamton last Monday, getting to the register moments before the noon lunch crunch. Jackie greeted me; she's Hal's daughter, and even though she Doesn't Know My Name™ either, I've known her to have been working there since she was probably my daughter's age. Her brother Mike is behind the deli counter as he probably has been since the Carter Administration. And their mom Sandy, slowed and with a mean brace supporting one arm, is still cleaning the two cafe tables out front and tallying the tabs behind the register, as she's been doing, probably, since before I was in kindergarten.
Jackie asked me, as she did everyone that came in, do you need a menu? Of course I don't. I'm having a Number Eight on rye and a chorklit egg cream. She and Mike must've raced to see who could put out their product first: she, working the fountain combining three simple ingredients as nobody on the planet can (none of which is egg, or cream), he, assembling the triple decker in record time with everything, including the toothpicks, tasting exactly as I remember them. And all for less than the cost of the Express Lunch™ at the soon to be defunct Uno's that's near you, and near me, and near just about everybody.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 07:15 pm (UTC)by the way, i am about a month behind in thanking you for the birthday wishes!! you're the only friend on my list who does a special thing for b-days and i just LOVE it. i think last year might have been the first year i got a Birthday Mention, and it made me so happy. i loved it this year as well. :) thanks for being a pal!
and in keeping with the leaping from topic to topic theme i've got going on in this comment, i was SHOCKED to see that emily is 16. how long have we been reading each other? because i thought she was a YOUNG teen. time flies!