weekend in scranton

Listen: we're not going to sugar-coat this for you. You deserve better than that.

Scranton did have a culinary heritage that P was actually looking forward to seeing again. And it burned down days before our visit. That meant our first meal in town was not a chili-covered hot-dog lovingly prepared on an old, Greek man's arm, but rather a bland lunch from Perkins. And man was it packed at lunch time. This is the sad thing about Scranton; it still has a handful of family-run places hanging on in the crumbling city, but most of the population flocks to the clusters of chain restaurants and malls that have sprung up around it's perimeter.

Scranton was once a booming city with beautiful downtown buildings (funded by the local coal industry) and earned its nickname as the "Electric City" for having the first electrified streetcar in the nation. The city still has one of the largest St. Patrick's Day parades in the country, but today its main claim to fame is its association with the American version of The Office. Mind you, the show is only set in Scranton; it's not filmed there. We did however see a nicely painted diorama celebrating the show's characters in the mall. We didn't see much else.

Things picked up on Sunday night when we went to one of P's childhood favorites, a seafood restaurant shaped, yes, shaped, like a pirate ship. P did not always have gourmet tastes, but he knew an awesome concept when he saw one. Cooper's Seafood has sadly covered over most of the ship-shape with a new "lighthouse" bar & gift shop, but you can still glimpse the tentacles of a giant octopus strangling a sailor just behind. The restaurant is filled with Hollywood bric-a-brac and a lot of local memorabilia and city history - where better for A to be introduced to Scranton's glorified days of yore? We didn't get to sit in the room with the model train that runs around the ceiling (P was crushed), but we did sit in a room that looked an awful lot like the Museum of Natural History. Since the atmosphere was the real draw at Cooper's, we won't get into too much detail with the food. A did sup on a surprisingly delicious crab bisque; though this may be less than surprising given how much cream and butter was likely in the soup.

The gustatory pleasures of the next day were considerably greater than the first. In the morning, P's grandmother offered us some church fundraiser Welsh cookies, perhaps one of the better culinary contributions of Wales. Resembling tiny currant-studded pancakes, they tasted more like raw cookie dough. As eating cookie dough together is one our great marital joys, this felt like a second honeymoon.

After trips to visit two of P's grandparents at the cemetery and a few more car-loops around the city, we ended up at one of the remaining family restaurants: Sibio's. The service left something to be desired, but the food was remarkably tasty Italian-American fare. A ordered the stuffed eggplant - mounds of creamy ricotta rolled in thin strips of eggplant. What would you expect to be on the side? Mashed potatoes and broccoli, of course. P's plate of rigatoni swimming in garlicky olive oil and peppered with spicy sausage, raab, and white beans was equally delicious. On the way out, we heard our waitress threaten to kick one of cooks in the face, so we were glad to escape, having eaten our fill.

Even though the hot dog counter had burned down and a lighthouse obscured the former pirate-ship seafood house, the penultimate Scranton meal remained. Old Forge pizza, from the so-called (by its inhabitants) "Pizza Capitol of the World," almost defies description and nowhere does it better than Revello's. The crust is like a dried-out foccaccia, the sauce is neon red and slightly tangy, and the cheese (oh, the cheese) is a sticky mess that clings to your front teeth with every bite. Needless to say, it's more than the sum of it's parts. This pizza is wildly addictive and, even as we write this, we long to return to Scranton if only for one more slice. We both feel determined to recreate this delicacy, but the cheese remains elusive. Our best guess is that it's mostly white, processed American.

As we boarded the Greyhound that evening, P's grandmother climbed on board to make sure we took the one remaining, greasy pizza slice, sandwiched between two paper plates. Though we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it (after a tray-and-a-half at Revello's), the smell comforted us all the way back to the New York.
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Cooper's Seafood House - 701 N. Washington Ave, Scranton, PA
Sibio's - 1099 Quincy Ave, Scranton, PA
Revello's Pizza - 502 S. Main Street, Old Forge, PA
And, for when it reopens: Coney Island Texas Lunch - 100 Cedar Avenue, Scranton, PA 18503