Howard Johnson's
1551 Broadway at 46th Street, Manhattan
City
life can be pretty weird. You spend your whole life in some dumb town in the
middle of America, hating the prefab commercial dullness of it all. You spend
years working and saving until you can finally get away to the big, unique,
soulful city. Only to realize one night, after all these years, that you're
sitting in exactly the kind of place you couldn’t wait to get away from. Big
case in point—Howard Johnson’s.
That’s right. As in the fried-clam-slinging roadside diner with the orange roof. Rumor has it that there are less than a dozen of the once-rampant restaurants left in the country. And one of them, it turns out, has been sitting right here in the middle of Times Square since 1959. (Oh, the stories those walls could tell.) For those of you who didn’t grow up next to some Interstate in the middle of nowhere, I can’t adequately explain this fried, Formica monster. (But for a nice rant on the magic of the old-school HoJos, check out Hojoland.) Suffice it to say that, while the food, decor, and unassuming air are pure Akron, the prices here are one-hundred-percent Times Square. And unlike most, this HoJos has a tiny airport-style lounge in back, with a bar, a couple stools, and just enough space left over to squeeze a band in the back corner. Which, on Thursday nights, is exactly what they do.
The result is a David Lynch movie waiting to happen, as bands bang away just yards away from the booths full of confused tourists and exotic theater folk chowing on chicken fried steaks. It’s definitely something to see, but take my advice: unless you like paying double digits for a rubber hamburger and a bottle of beer, do your serious eating and drinking at home first, then come here, nurse your $6 drink for the night, and ponder just how far your life has really come.
phone: 212-354-1445