I had read on Chowhound that there was a quiet buzz about this Johnny's Snack Bar place on Almon Street. Googling it up, I find it is right around the corner from Vivo, which, if you have read earlier posts, you know I am not in love with. I cannot ever remember noticing this place.
So went there for supper there tonight. The first thing you see is signs telling you there is free parking for a Johnny's customer across the street in the Forum parking lot. Inside, Johnny's looks like any other old diner in the city. Sagging booths, round mushroom stools along a bar, and some tables with what I seem to recall were actually red and white chequered tablecloths, but don't take that as gospel, I may have hallucinated it.
The Menu was on the table. One per table. Specials handwritten on a small piece of paper proclaimed chopped beef and pan fried haddock as the specials. There were some older people, Greek, I think that is the language they were using, sitting chatting with the cook, who was standing over them.
The waitress, who is closing in on 60, was at our seat pretty quickly to see what we wanted to drink. Alas, the milkshake machine is broken, so my first choice is relegated to a later visit. But will there be another visit?
I decide to order what is, for me, THE TEST, when in a place like this. They have Fried Chicken on the menu. Normally, this ends up being a deep fried frozen very salty breaded product. One of those that looks like the batter was applied by an automobile undercoater. I figure that if I get real fried chicken, I have found a place to rely on. L orders the sausage dinner.
In a fairly short time, I have my answer. Three big pieces of fried chicken are lined up side by side on my plate separating my fries (unfortunately, these are of frozen origin) from what looks to be homemade coleslaw and some cranberry sauce. And they are real. Some of the chicken is missing bits of the very simple batter. It is not too salty. It is crunchy in some places and not in others. Gee whiz, Granny, that's fried chicken! Now before you get too excited, I think it had been perhaps baked or precooked a bit and then fried up for me, because some of it was a bit dry, but it was not some industrial food product.
The fries had probably seen the inside of the Florenceville Factory, but they were cooked about as good as frozen gets. The waitress casually tossed some Heinz Ketchup packs at my plate on her way by. I ate all the chicken, and half the fries, most of the cranberry and all the coleslaw.
L's sausages were very brown on the outside, but she said they were not overcooked, and were tasty (I never got to steal any...). Her mashed potato was very good, creamy and light.
Things had happened so fast (you haven't seen me around fried chicken before) that we had time for a dessert. Not wanting to completely ruin things, I had to ask what the "Cream Pie" on the menu meant. Seems it meant, at least for today, Coconut Cream. That falls into my list of 50 greatest weaknesses. So I order a piece. It was homemade, the crust being a bit like my Mom's, the filling not as rich as I am used to, but very coconutty, and the topping was a whipped cream, but I think from a can or container. I don't think it was synthetic, I am pretty sure it came from a cow.... The pie was very good. I'd have had more, but I let L eat along, which is a way to ensure you're not going to get as much as you thought you were.
So, yes, it's a diner. No pretensions whatsoever (unlike the place around the corner that I have given up on). I just can't believe I had never noticed it before. It is almost like one of those twilight zone things. read about it on the net, sure you never saw it before, and, there it is, a 5 minute walk from your house.
Oh, and the cost of the meal, that included a Coke, water, fried chicken platter, sausage dinner, and coconut cream pie, was $19.50 tax included, plus grat.
I plan to return, probably for breakfast. They do a good cheap B&E, and they have cinnamon toast!
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