When in Massena: Doing as the Canadians do

Massena — I think I've been to just about every restaurant in Northern New York over the years, but I've never been to Tombino's.

I've driven past it before. The parking lot is always full, many of the cars bearing Canadian license plates.

With a name like Trombino's, you'd expect it to offer a good selection of Italian stuff. And since customers will come from across the border, a good hour drive round trip, whatever they serve, we figured they must be doing it right.

The parking lot was full, so we parked on the street. True to form, about every other car was from Canada, not just in the lot but on the street, too.

The smell of fryer grease greeted us as we approached the building. And right next to the front door, at eye level in the window, was a sign with large bold letters reading "Cook Wanted — experience helpful but not necessary."

Inside, our first impression was: "What are all these people doing at a Friday afternoon happy hour?" Because it was only Wednesday.

Our second impression: 'What kind of frat party have we walked in on?" Because everyone in the room was eating pizza and chicken wings and had a pitcher of beer in front of them. Except they were all 40 or 50 years old.

And most were dressed like they were at a college frat party. Shorts. T-shirts. Beer logo baseball caps.

It's a seat-yourself type of place, but we were a little hesitant after reading a sign on the wall: "Do not seat yourself unless your entire party is here."

We were all there, so we grabbed one of the old Formica-top tables that pretty much went with the rest of the decor. Old floors. Old walls. Old ceiling.

Our waitress, young gal, dropped off menus and silverware service wrapped in paper napkins. She told us that it was "draft daze" night, $1 off pitchers, so we went for it, a pitcher of Yuengling for $4.95.

It took a long time to sort though the menu. Appetizers. Salads. Sandwiches. Cold subs and hot subs. Wraps. Pizzas with basic toppings or pizzas with specialty toppings. Wings with seven different sauces. Pizza and wing specials. Nightly specials. Burgers and dogs. Beer and wine. Dessert.

Dinners too. We understood lasagna and haddock under that category, but hot roast beef sandwich and hot dogs?

Over our bargain pitcher of beer, we formulated our "When in Rome" game plan: Appetizers. Wings. Pizza.

There wasn't an appetizer that wasn't deep-fried. And practically every one of them you could get anywhere else in the world. Except Canada, I guess.

French fries, french fries with gravy, french fries with gravy and cheese, mozzarella sticks, zucchini sticks, popcorn chicken, chicken fingers, breaded mushrooms, breaded cauliflower, breaded jalapenos, pizza logs and more.

We tried two relative newcomers to the list of fried faves: corn nuggets and onion petals.

Corn nuggets were interesting, a spoonful of creamed corn the size of a ping-pong ball with standard breading, deep-fried. Onion petals were onion rings in a different shape, like small rose petals, standard breading, deep-fried.

The corn nuggets were OK by themselves. The onion petals needed something.

We asked for ranch dressing. It took a long time, but it finally arrived at the table, held securely in its little plastic container, compete with the lid marked "R" with a big black marker.

Actually, the ranch dressing helped the chicken wings that arrived at the same time. We ordered the minimum quantity of wings, seven, with medium sauce. There was a choice of regular or crispy, crispy being left in the fryer longer. Crispy for us, please.

The wings might have been crispy, but we couldn't tell the difference. They were average, at best. And where was the celery and blue cheese dressing that usually comes with wings? I know they're add-ons at some places, but we weren't offered.

So the ranch dressing came in handy.

I guess if you're a regular, ordering a pizza from their menu is probably easy. For us, it wasn't. There are 10 types in five sizes available with nine toppings or eight specialty toppings.

Cheese pizza, supreme pizza, combination pizza, spaghetti pizza, garlic chicken pizza, Polynesian pizza, vegetarian pizza, calzonizza, Buffalo chicken pizza or barbecue chicken pizza.

Thin crust, regular crust or thick crust.

We ordered three different single-size (9 inch) pizzas: spaghetti, veggie and garlic chicken. You then choose from toppings suggested in the menu for each pizza.

We asked our waitress to decide on the toppings. We figured she'd know the most popular ones, the ones she sees ordered most often, saving us lots of guesswork.

The only thing we specified was that each pizza be one of the crust options, thin, regular or thick.

She was totally not prepared for this. She was for sure more prepared to just take our order and deliver it to us.

So we suggested if she was, like, not able to deal, she work with the cooks and come up with three pizzas they make most often.

As it turned out, our pizzas really weren't very good. They all seemed to have the same basic stuff on them — onions, peppers, blah sauce and cheap cheese on flat, tasteless shells.

The spaghetti pizza had spaghetti on top and what looked like a minuscule amount of ground beef underneath. Wouldn't you think someone would have thought to throw some meatballs on it?

The vegetarian pizza was so flat and the toppings were mulched so fine, it was hard to figure out exactly what they put on it. Mushrooms, we think, in addition to onions and peppers. It looked like it had been cooked yesterday and warmed up.

Garlic chicken was the best of the three. Identifiable pieces of chicken with jarred garlic flavor actually made this pizza taste like something. Not great, just something.

Three different crusts? Didn't look like it to us. Our server confirmed our suspicions: "We didn't think you'd like the thick crust, so we only gave you thin and regular."

It was nearly 8 o'clock and we'd been there two hours. An hour earlier the place had just about emptied out, but was now filled to capacity, and service — to our table at least — was virtually nonexistent.

We had intended to sample the desserts, but if we'd stayed there much longer they'd have had to bring sleeping bags to our table.

Food for three and a pitcher of beer came to $44. I guess the price is right. But the food is wrong.

All those Canadians must be on to something. Have they outlawed Fryolators and pizza ovens in Ontario and we didn't hear about it?

They must have had a serious case of withdrawal while the International Bridge was closed during the summer.

In the restaurant's defense, the "Help Wanted" sign in the front window was a good indication that they might be short-staffed the kitchen. And even though the bar and dining area are relatively small, our waitress sure could have used some additional help.

But as a sagacious restaurant owner once told me, "You only get one chance in the restaurant business ..."

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Trombino's Restaurant

181 Center St.

Massena, NY

764-1388

www.themenuz.com/ny/massena/Trombinos.html

Pizza, wings, fried food and beer

Open weekdays at 11 a.m., noon weekends

Closed Tuesday

Rating: 1 and one-half forks