Jay's Famous Hot Dogs (Austintown)

Most of the places we consider fine dining are considered fine because of the good food, or the great service, or the fancy setting. To those people, Jay's Famous Hot Dogs is somewhere to pass over and avoid, a sad little restaurant on a busy thoroughfare, one dull pebble among a million glittery gems and glass baubles.

But to do so would be to miss out on a part of Youngstown culture, a place known not for being fancy, but for being plentiful, inexpensive, and anonymous.

Jay's sells food by the bag, has six sizes of fries (small, medium, large, super, giant, family), and prices so good you won't believe your eyes.

Beloved and I rolled in after visiting a local tattoo parlor, and I ordered up a Gyro platter and large fry, while she ordered up a cheese burger and fries. The food was greasy and plentiful, the kind of thing you could easily see a factory worker picking up on his lunch break, or kids picking up on the way home from a football game.

The whole milieu of the place was that of a bygone era, someplace left, ever so slightly, in the past. The menu, the hand-drawn signs, the lack of a restroom, the tiny booths - it was a place geared for a time different then our own, a place more amenable to accidents and misfortune, that demanded an ounce of stoicism on the part of the people in it, from the workers to the patrons.

I view Jay's as being like going to an industrial Colonial Williamsburg, a view of the past that can't be found at any perfectly prepared fast-food joint or flawless diner. It's the kind of place where i expected to hear disco or to see some greasers walk in, their hair slicked back, their white shirts bulging with muscle while their cars rumbled quietly outside, belching out leaded gas fumes and the sound of Buddy Holly.

Go give it a shot, it's nestled right off Route 11 to the right, next to a Marc's and a straight shot into the heart of Youngstown. And when you eat there..think of the history, think of the past, and how some things don't change - and shouldn't.

I give it 5 stars.