Jo Jo's, on Smallman Street, a block east of Benkovitz Seafood and on the south side of the sidewalkless street, makes no effort to get your attention. If you notice it at all, the impression is industrial, maybe auto parts. Wrong. Step inside on the weekend to find a space filled with not quite enough booths to seat everyone who wants to be there. The owners, husband and wife Robin and Frank Mannetti, have been going to finish the interior walls but haven't gotten around to it. All their time is taken keeping the place clean and getting the customers fed. The kitchen runs the length of the west wall. It goes full tilt. On the flat top is a mountain of home fries. Beside the stove are stacks of egg cartons. Crisp bacon slices, 6 inches deep, rest where they will keep warm. The staff members in red T-shirts dart around, working their stations.
Eight of us met at Jo Jo's for breakfast recently, all women. There was the predictable protestation of calories, cholesterol and portion sizes before we dug in and ate our way through several orders of buttermilk pancakes, bacon on the side, scrambled eggs, crusty home fries, omelets with delicious fillings (like spinach and white cheese) and buttered toast, gulped down with an ocean of coffee from thick-lipped mugs. No fresh fruit complicates this menu. When the bill came, it was $40. For Karen, who never neglected us and filled our coffee cups before we could ask, we rounded the bill to $50. Jo Jo's keeps a.m. hours. Pittsburghers in the Strip for the night life and working stiffs delivering to the docks head here. The restaurant is open seven days a week, from 11 p.m. to noon, Saturday and Sunday; Monday through Friday, it closes at 1:30 p.m. For information: 412-261-0280.
Having been given the strength to proceed, we left the restaurant and crossed the street to Benkovitz Seafood, where Ray Rice was waiting to start our tour. There are some faces you just like seeing, and Ray's is one of them. It means everything is under control. Every year, Nancy Hanst and I offer the Arthritis Foundation a fund-raising tour of the Strip. Elin Roddey bought it this year for herself and five friends. They were Gail Campbell, Louise Hartman and Nancy Zappala, like Elin, from Squirrel Hill. Helen Posner was there from Point Breeze. Billie Feist lives in Shadyside. It was the driveway of her house that was used in the movie "Wonder Boys."
Ray is director of operations for Nordic Fisheries, the Benkovitz parent company. It was he who introduced us to Joe Benkovitz, son of the owner, president of the company. An English literature instructor, and maybe because of it a great storyteller, Benkovitz sat us down around a conference table and briefly outlined the company's early history in the Hill District and how it happened to locate in the Strip.
In 1968, on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, representatives of the community came into the store, located between two others in a complex of three. It was announced that all were to be torched, but out of consideration for the highly regarded Benkovitz uncle, Morris, tenants would be given two hours to remove papers and property. They got out, having no place to go. A friend offered them space on Smallman Street. Moving once, they have been in the area ever since, and the business has expanded to serve the wholesale trade as well as retail.
This tour of Nordic Fisheries was like a trip through an aquarium, except that everything was packed in ice rather than swimming in water. We saw a swordfish as big as a bathtub, fresh tuna with flesh the color of prime beef, mahi-mahi, yellow pike, sea bass, salmon and halibut straight from Alaska's icy waters, and we traveled with the fish to the cutting room where a skilled team of men, wielding very sharp knives, cut the flesh from the bones. We learned from John O'Hara, the federal sanitation inspector whom Nordic Fisheries voluntarily contracts to have on the premises, what effort and manpower are devoted to keeping the premises clean and safe. For the tour, we were required to wear hats and white coats and walk our shoes through a sanitized water bath.
Just so we would know what to do with the fish with whom we'd been keeping company, sales manager Annette Richardson provided each of us with a cookbook and a cedar wood plank for grilling or roasting fish fillets. Both are available for sale in the retail store. Evelyn Benkovitz gave each member of the tour a gift certificate for a celebrated fish-sandwich lunch.
My daughter and I often spend Saturday mornings in the Strip. Before returning to the States two years ago, Ani lived in Prague, then Warsaw and finally Moscow. She says the Strip reminds her of Europe. She likes the markets, schmoozing with purveyors and the small-town pleasure of bumping into friends. I like that, too.
We often start our day at La Prima Espresso Co. (205 21st St. and Penn Avenue), where you sometimes have to elbow your way to the counter through a house packed with Italians speaking in the mother tongue. I like the latte, which nobody makes better. Ani likes the cappuccino. We both like the sugary, cinnamony puff-pastry twists made at Il Piccolo Forno, the bakery connected to the coffeehouse.
This morning, instead of the coffeehouse, our destination was the roasting operation on the Pittsburgh Produce Terminal, 20th at Smallman, where La Prima roasts the coffee it uses and sells to both the retail and wholesale trade. Visitors are welcome. Owner Sam Patti met us and with his associates, John Notte and Marianne Bonidie, explained the options involved in roasting fresh products that come from such exotic places as Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Kenya, Sumatra, Ethiopia and Costa Rica's Doka estate. At La Prima, the emphasis is on precisely roasted beans and secret blends that will produce a cup of coffee worthy of the staff's struggle for the best.
Shrimp De Jonghe
Nancy Hanst's favorite.
2 pounds shrimp, cooked
2 cloves garlic
1/4 pound butter
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 1/2 teaspoons chopped tarragon
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
Pinch each mace and nutmeg
3/4 cup fine bread crumbs
1/2 cup dry sherry
Peel garlic and mash with a fork. Work it into the butter and gradually add herbs and seasonings. Work in crumbs and sherry. Arrange cooked shrimp in buttered, individual ramekins and top with butter mixture. Bake in a 450-degree oven for 5 to 8 minutes or until just hot and bubbly. Makes 4 servings.
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