Road trip! One of my favorite things about making a long trip is getting to stop for food. Of course, I’m usually cranky and tired when driving and will often be the first to suggest we just plow on through. But every now and then I do relent and stop for a bite, and it’s these times I find hidden treasures in the landscape. Take my college touring time during high school. I and my then girlfriend, along with her father, traveled throughout New York to find our perfect college. One particular trip had us traveling to Rensselaer near Albany, and because my girlfriend’s father allowed me to drive he wanted to stay off the thruway.
So we traveled down what was then Route 17, and has since become I-86, stopping for a brief moment in Binghamton, NY. Not far off the highway we pulled into the parking lot of what looked to be a ramshackle establishment. No glowing signs to tell you where you were, no pretense at all. I had no idea what we would find inside, but I was not surprised to discover extremely old and slightly uncomfortable booths. Or the table top bowling game that uses a puck, and has a tendency to not work quite right as the puck slides under the “pins” rather than pushing them up as intended.
This is Sharkey’s, established in 1947, and regarded by some as the birthplace of the spiedie. A distinctly regional dish – I certainly haven’t seen it elsewhere, and my wife had never heard of the treat – the spiedie is quite simple. You take chicken or pork, marinate it in a special sauce, skewer it on long metal skewars, and then cook over a grill. It’s served with a slice of soft Italian bread that the customer uses to grip the meat and pull it off the skewer. Eat and enjoy. Spiedie’s are not elegant, and can be a little dry (I recommend a little butter on the bread if you so require), but what they do contain is some of the tastiest chicken you’ll ever come across.
I’ve eaten spiedies on a few occasions since that trip over a decade ago, but I hadn’t returned to Sharkey’s. Fast forward to my life with the wife, who has heard me talk about spiedies on at least fifteen occasions. I had the idea two days ago to make the one hour trip down to Binghamton and show her my first spiedie. She was all for it, and rather than waiting for Sunday it was decided work would be “skipped” and we’d trek down for lunch on Friday.
I won’t bore you with the details of the trip, which would consist of me listening to podcasts and her reading those Stephanie Meyer vampire books. We pulled off of I-81 onto Route 17 to take the first exit into a little residential area of Binghamton. Sharkey’s is a 1 minute ride off the highway, and after surviving a harrowingly steep hill we turned a corner to see the telltale ramshackle building I remembered. The little tavern is so steeped in its own history that I’m pretty sure the only thing that was different is a few of the wall paraphernalia. The Quick Draw screen was the same, the booths as worn out and uncomfortable as before, and the table top bowling game still stood in the middle of the main dining area. It was surreal in a way I couldn’t convey to my wife.
I decided we’d sit in the same booth I had sat all those years ago, and since Sharkey’s is an informal place we simply took our own seat. The only waitress on, this was a very quiet afternoon lunch with us and one other table seated when we arrived, walked over and handed us our menus and took the requisite drink orders. Kelly glanced at the menu, perhaps perplexed that they served far more than just spiedies. She asked me what she should get, and I said: “Why would we have driven all the way down here to not get spiedies?”
A minor problem did arise in that Sharkey’s also offers the equally wonderful City Chicken. When our waitress, Linda, came back over for our orders I called for one spiedie for the wife and two for myself. She asked if I meant three City Chickens, as that was the day’s special. I promptly said nope, just the spiedies please. Now immediately upon her departure I realized I had wasted a good opportunity to give my wife a diverse selection of road food. “Go find her and change the order,” my wife suggested. Nah, I had made the commitment. Besides, City Chicken is another reason to come back and visit.
The spiedies at Sharkey’s are still the best I’ve ever had, and I wondered if my memory was greater than the reality. So with a little trepidation that Kelly would spit the offending food in my face I gripped onto the skewers and pulled the meat off. The first bite soothed and relaxed me as the familiar flavors exploded in my mouth. Oh so damn good I thought. My wife took her first bite and it appeared that I had not lost favor with her. The spiedies were indeed as great as I remembered.
For those who don’t know what a spiedie is I’ll break it down: it’s that perfectly simple and quaint dish that is so unassuming you can’t understand why they are good. They are, in fact, the quintessential example of the perfect road food. Something you’re likely to never find anywhere else and yet there’s nothing exotic about them. Anyone can have a spiedie, there are no magic ingredients that only grow in the Central New York area. In fact, variations on a kabob sandwich exist in thousands of forms.
We ate, we enjoyed, we took some pictures and we left. That part was the most disappointing because I felt after the years of hype there should have been a parade or some fireworks. Then again, such spectacle would go against all that the spiedie stands for. Great food fast when you’re on your way somewhere else.
Photos by Kelly West
