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Fill 'er up at Johnny's
By WILMA NORTON © St. Petersburg Times, published May 30, 2001 Over the years, we've found great food in some of the most unlikely places: a strip mall in Appomattox, Va., a little roadside joint in Unadilla, Ga., a storefront cafe in Leamington, Ontario. So when we spotted a restaurant/gas station with an enticing name on 28th Street, we had to try it. It's nothing to look at. It's a regular Amoco station on one side of the building. The restaurant half has a handful of old brown vinyl booths and a couple of small tables, plus a few counter stools. You pay the same person whether you are buying gas, food from the restaurant or corn chips from the rack. The tiny restaurant has a huge menu, loaded with sandwiches, pizzas (including one with spinach and feta), calzones, gyros and dinners of all sorts. But we never got to the menu. The hand-lettered sign with the daily specials grabbed us. We ordered a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy ($5.25), the barbecue ribs with french fries ($5.45) and the stuffed pepper with mashed potatoes ($4.25). We also had a choice of salad, cole slaw or soup with each entree. We went with one of each of the homemade soups of the day: bean, beef vegetable and chicken noodle. There were some things about the food that we didn't like: All three meals came with bland, frozen mixed vegetables on the side; the sauce on the stuffed pepper was greasy from the hamburger, a couple of the ribs had dried out. But the homemade soups were as good as any we've found. The white bean soup was thick, with tiny chunks of ham and carrots. The chicken noodle was rich, with wide, thick noodles and pieces of fresh celery and carrots. The beef noodle also was hearty with fresh vegetables. An open-face hot turkey sandwich is one of life's guilty pleasures. Before I ordered, I double-checked that this one would have real turkey, not turkey roll. It was real turkey all right, five or six big slices of turkey breast on top of white bread. The gravy included bits of fresh parsley. The mashed potatoes were authentic, too, whipped just right. The stuffing in the pepper was a good mix of hamburger, rice, tomatoes and seasonings, the grease aside. The ribs were plentiful, slathered in a sweet barbecue sauce. Most of them were tender, but it was obvious that a couple had been too close to the warmer for too long. The place was a bit slow the Saturday we were there. The people who wandered in while we waited all seemed to know the cooks and waitresses, a sign that this is a neighborhood kind of place. Johnny's Mediterranean Pizza and Restaurant3001 28th St. N St. Petersburg Phone: (727) 323-3919 Hours: 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon.-Thur.; 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Sun. Consumers: Two adults and two children What we got: Stuffed pepper dinner, barbecue rib dinner and hot turkey sandwich dinner, homemade soups What it cost: $16 Time it took: 10 minutes Pay with: Cash or credit cards
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490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
