Myself and three friends recently spent a Saturday eating our way around Dayton. We'd planned four food stops, which soon enough turned into five, seriously challenging the reliability of our taste buds (along with the limits of our stomachs).
First up: the Hamburger Wagon, a sidewalk set-up that deep-fries slider-sized burgers, in a wok, in lard.
They were good! and like no other burger any of us could remember: no particular shape, with a hint of sausage taste, and a subtle crunch to the meat's exterior. We told the owner how much we liked them and he insisted we had to hit another Dayton burger institution, Voltzy's (Saturday being slaw-dog day and all). So off we went and soon found ourselves at a business so funky it made the Burger Wagon seem like a conventional restaurant.
Voltzy's is actually a trailer in an otherwise empty lot. This is a shot of the back of the place (with as close as they have to an actual sign):
The front nominally faced the street -- or would if it wern't completely obscured by another building under construction. Voltsky himself was there, swore a lot, and seemed genuinely interested in our food excursion. While we were all glad we'd made the detour, none of us were especially impressed with either the burgers or the slaw dogs.
On to lunch #3 at Troni's Pizzeria, which has garnered many raves on these boards. Except for the sausage, sliced like salami, it didn't strike me as particularly New York in style, but it was awfully good pizza -- and very pretty:
We ordered the sauce listed on the menu as "home-style" (or "old- fashioned"?), which was essentially roughly sliced tomatoes on top, rather than sauce underneath. Great crust, top ingredients, a solid pizza.
After a visit to the Air Force Museum, we drove out to Young's Jersey Dairy, the only restaurant all day that I'd been to before.
A wonderful scene, as always, and great ice cream.
Dinner was at the Pine Club, where the one-hour wait for a table actually came as something of a relief: We were able to give our stomachs a little break, as well as have a drink and bask in the Pine Club's 1940s glory. What a place! Nothing on the restaurant's exterior prepared us for how perfect it looked inside.
Dark and clubby, neat square booths along the walls and down the middle of the room, great looking bar around the corner. We had come for their celebrated burgers and, while I could tell it was a good burger, I'm afraid I could not tell just how good at that point of the day, with three other burgers, pizza, ice cream, and a couple drinks already palling around inside me. Even so, we all agreed it was the most fun stop of the day and I made a personal vow to return later in the year to try their steaks. All told, another excellent trip.
<message edited by Train on Sun, 07/5/09 6:56 PM>
