Scranton PA, Culinary Wasteland

“We didn’t come here for the food.” I say this to myself over and over like Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz. “We didn’t come here for the food”. Say it enough times and it almost makes up for how horrible the food I had over the weekend in Scranton was, almost.

Well, we didn’t come for the food. We, and by we I mean my wife’s family, go to Scranton every spring for a visit. Her family is from Scranton; Dunmore actually, though an outsider would be hard pressed to tell the difference. We stay in the local Holiday Inn, go to a Red Barons baseball game, take a guided tour down memory lane, my father-in-law’s memory, and this year we had the unfortunate addition of scattering my mother-in-law’s ashes in the cemetery.

We’ve got six little kids in tow, ranging in age from 8 to 2, so we have to consider them when picking places to eat. Also, most of the family does not share my food obsession. They think I’m a food snob; maybe they’re right. Still when I think about what we ate this last weekend it’s a wonder the locals don’t starve to death.

We started Friday night at La Trattoria, 522 Moosic St. (570)961-1504, a red sauce joint whose claim to fame is all you can eat pasta. Eat 2 lbs. of spaghetti with meatballs in a sitting and not only do they give you the meal for free, they give you a meal a month free for a year. You don’t even have to eat the meatballs they told me, or the salad that comes with every entrée, you can take those things home. Just power down those 2 lbs. of spaghetti with a sauce so sickly sweet as to be the food equivalent of maudlin and you can come back 11 more times for more of the same. I’ll pass. Best thing about this place is the neon sign on the roof which spells out “Rasta Man” instead of Pasta Man. Maybe if you smoke enough weed you could eat those 2 lbs. of pasta.

What’s up next? A bad breakfast buffet at the Holiday Inn, 200 Tigue St., Dunmore, (570)343-5171. Now, we had this coming. We’ve eaten here before and the food is never any good. The hotel is convenient and the kids love the indoor pool. Just don’t look around too closely, as my brother-in-law said the place is on its last leg.

Best meal of the weekend? No doubt here, it was hot dogs at the Red Barons game. Now this wasn’t good ballpark food, the hot wings I got were cold and those hot dogs weren’t the kosher dogs I would get at a Yankee game but they did have decent beer on tap and the people at Lackawanna Co. Stadium go out of their way to treat you well. They just opened a “party deck” over the left field fence and they were serving up carved roast beef, ham or turkey sandwiches for $7, too bad I found this after I’d eaten those wings and a dog.

What was the worst meal of the weekend? No doubt here either, Coopers Seafood House, is a landmark and is almost always packed. The décor is a mix of Scranton photos from years gone by, Americana kitsch and various marine life scattered about the restaurant in drawings or hanging from the wall. Where else will you find a cardboard cutout of Captain Kirk pointing you towards the restroom in the same room with a giant whale? The place has a certain charm, I guess but the food is awful and expensive. Scranton, land locked northern PA. Coal mining town and seafood restaurant don’t seem like a natural mix, do they? I had fish and chips thinking it was a safe bet. I was wrong.

All was not lost, however. Just before heading for home we stopped at the Krispy Kreme, 511 Moosic St. right across from La Trattoria for some doughnuts. I’m a big fan. I ate my jelly filled glazed doughnut as we pulled into our driveway. It was good to be home.