The story below is an excerpt from our Sept./Oct. 2015 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, view our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Among the delights: a storied sundae, a Florentine mother’s lasagna, and a festival of apples.
The Scoop on the Jo-Jo
Within a couple of blocks on Queen Street in downtown Martinsburg, West Virginia, you can find a 1950s bottomless-coffee-cup diner, a pharmacy that still delivers and makes egg salad sandwiches, the tastes of Hong Kong, hand-crafted chocolate truffles, and the flavorful cooking of Florence, Italy.
Martinsburg was our headquarters for a culinary tour of West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, a trip that also included Berkeley Springs, Shepherdstown, Charles Town, and Harpers Ferry.
In Martinsburg, we met the mayor, the personable George Karos, who fills prescriptions and oversees the marble-topped soda fountain at Patterson’s Drug Store, in business since 1926.
Karos started there as a delivery boy in 1940, and the work at Patterson’s inspired him to complete a pharmacy degree at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. In 1980, he bought the drug store with a partner and then took sole ownership five years later.
While Martinsburg’s most notable agricultural product is the apple, its most popular treat is the Jo-Jo, a sundae made with melted peanut butter, marshmallow cream, vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.
The Jo-Jo can be traced back to the drug store’s original owner, James Patterson. Contemplating what to call the new sundae, he and pharmacist Ted Frankenberry settled on the name of Frankenberry’s adored dog, Jo-Jo.
“A few years ago, I got a phone call and the person asked me if we still make them,” Karos says. “He then told me he wanted 75. And not until the next year! They were for a class reunion. He called me closer to the time, and all his high school classmates had Jo-Jos.”
Patterson’s Drug Store
134 South Queen Street,
Martinsburg, West Virginia
304-267-8903;
pattersonsdrugstores.com
Florence on Queen
Francesco Visone, a native of Florence, Italy, believes that the best food is peasant food. And the menu at Martinsburg’s Casa Visone Italian Bistro is testament to that belief. The first item on that menu is pasta fagioli, with cannellini beans in a basil-flavored tomato sauce.
Francesco and his wife Eva are a welcoming presence on Queen Street and claim all their customers as part of their “Italian family.” Covering a wall of the restaurant are photographs from both sides of their family. Among them is a shot of Amelia Visone, Francesco’s mother, who never visited the United States but whose presence is strongly felt in her son’s restaurant.
Amelia’s lasagna isn’t on the menu all the time, but when it’s featured as a special on the Casa Visone web page, Eva says customers call ahead to reserve a plateful.
Like George Karos, Francesco Visone has been in the same business all his life. His first job was delivering fruits and vegetables for a Florentine produce shop when he was six, earning 10 cents a day for the family income. He went on to work in some of Florence’s most famous restaurants and continued his career in Washington, D.C., after arriving in America in 1976.
The Casa Visone menu is filled with classic Italian favorites like veal piccata and veal saltimbocca. A popular appetizer is fresh asparagus with prosciutto and cream sauce.
As Francesco likes to say: “The recipe book was written 2,000 years ago by the Etruscans. I simply follow their wisdom.”
Casa Visone Italian Bistro
120 North Queen Street,
Martinsburg, West Virginia
304-260-9294; casavisone.com
An Asian Pioneer
Peking was the first Chinese restaurant to open in the Martinsburg area. It remains a downtown fixture. The menu is classic Chinese: sesame chicken, Peking steak, Mongolian beef, and a staff recommendation, the Triple Delight, with beef, chicken, shrimp, and vegetables.
A collection of “Exotic Polynesian Drinks” includes the rum-laced Flaming Volcano and a Piña Colada served in a plastic coconut.
Mike Chan, the original owner, still comes by every day to shake hands, says his niece, server Pien Tung. “He knows everybody.”
The current owner, Erwin Wong, says the restaurant serves authentic Chinese food despite the Germanic sound of his first name.
Peking Chinese Restaurant
139 South Queen Street,
Martinsburg, West Virginia
304-263-6544
Articulate Chocolatiers
Inside Martinsburg’s 1935 McCrory’s Five and Dime building is a candy wonderland. DeFluri’s Fine Chocolates is owned by Charlie and Brenda Casabona. He has a master’s degree in radio and television criticism from Ohio University. She is a master’s degree graduate in econometrics from American University in Washington, D.C.
It was the chemistry of chocolate that first interested this truffle-making economist. “I love how the ingredients interact and react in certain ways,” says Brenda. “What really spurred me into experimenting—I used to make fudge as a kid. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. That got me interested in reading about cooking temperatures and how they affect texture and the end product.”
Then came the art—the flavoring, the presentation. All of it, in Brenda’s case, is self-taught. The master’s-degreed chocolatier explains that candy-makers traditionally ran ice cream businesses in the summer, before air-conditioning came along. DeFluri’s business has its seasonal peaks, but it is open year-round, selling delights like passion fruit truffles. Each piece of chocolate is crafted, decorated, and inspected by individual chocolate makers.
DeFluri’s Fine Chocolates
130 North Queen Street,
Martinsburg, West Virginia
304-264-3698; defluris.com
