Ahead of the Intel rush, Uncle Johnnie's restaurant feels right at home in Johnstown
Ahead of the growth anticipated with Intel's chip-manufacturing plant in Licking County, the Columbus-based owners of Local Cantina, South Village Grille and the Rossi have staked out space in Johnstown for their newest restaurant.
On a two-block downtown stretch of South Main Street, they joined eight separate real-estate offices.
Uncle Johnnie's is there, though, to serve the Johnstown of today as much as the Johnstown to come.
“I grew up in Johnstown. What’s happening is scary for a lot of people,” bartender Jasimine Donnelly said during a recent Thursday happy hour as she mixed a berry spritz: gin, strawberry puree, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice and sparkling wine.
More: Prim Mason restaurant coming to Gravity in 2024
Fitting in from the start
Uncle Johnnie’s, she said, fits in while at the same time offering something new. It fills a family-dining gap that has existed between the higher-end Ghostwriter Public House a few doors down and the carryout pizza and drive-thru fast-food all over town.
Orange Umbrella Restaurants opened Uncle Johnnie’s in January, but the restaurant feels like it’s been there a while. Not that it feels old; dark wood floors and tables are polished to a high gloss, and its first floor is minimally decorated with mirrors instead of crammed with dusty corner-bar tchotchke.
One of the only pieces of nostalgia is an old horseshoe discovered during a previous renovation of the building at 65 S. Main St. It led to the names of the two most previous tavern tenants: The Old Horseshoe and The New Old Horseshoe.
It’s familiarity, not decor, that makes Uncle Johnnie’s feel lived in. A half-hour drive from Downtown Columbus and a 10-minute drive from New Albany, it fits comfortably on a small-town central Ohio Main Street. The tavern already has drawn in groups of regulars with three-hour happy hours and Saturday night live music on the second floor.
The Uncle Johnnie's name comes from a Mansfield restaurant, Uncle John’s Place, which has been in Orange Umbrella owner George Tanchevski’s family since it opened in 1971. It also pays homage to Johnstown High School’s Johnnies mascot.
New twists on old favorites
Orange Umbrella excels at putting new twists on pub food standards. Its 13 local Local Cantina restaurants offer free chips from serve-yourself vats — no chance of judgment! — but the taco menu swerves from traditional ground beef and carne asada to tempura shrimp, barbecue pork and teriyaki chicken. South Village Grille in German Village uses ground short rib to make its hamburgers and serves a hot fish sandwich (tempura-battered cod, chili oil, and bread and butter pickles) in addition to its hot chicken version.
More: Time to vote in the second round of the Best Pizza in Columbus
Uncle Johnnie’s General Manager Chris Burdulis said the company’s newest restaurant continues that culinary philosophy.
Burdulis came up with the chicken, bacon, ranch pizza himself awhile ago and lobbied for its inclusion on the menu. It’s topped with Alfredo sauce, grilled chicken, bacon, red onion, a five-cheese blend, bell peppers, jalapeno ranch and sweet chile sauce.
“We tried to do a lot with the pizza to make it not like anything else in Johnstown — to make it better than anything else in Johnstown,” he said.
A cheeseburger pizza is topped with Alfredo sauce, ground beef, sausage, cheese, garlic, tomatoes and dill pickles. The pepperoni pizza comes with hot honey for $1 extra.
Other pub-food tweaks include coleslaw as a topping for the graffiti burger, which was on the menu at a former Tanchevski-owned restaurant of the same name; grilled tomatoes, peppers and onions on a fried bologna sandwich that uses three thin slices of lunchmeat instead of one thick slab; and Italian sausage and peppers tossed with the pasta and red sauce on Johnnie’s spaghetti.
Bright cocktails, single-barrel selections
The Uncle Johnnie’s cocktail menu features other lemony drinks, such as the Johnstown jam (bourbon, lemon and a mixed berry syrup). The bar’s single-barrel liquor selections include Buffalo Trace bourbon, Knob Creek rye whiskey and a Corazon tequila aged in a bourbon barrel.
If you like a specialty cocktail — and if you don't, you need to rethink your choices in life — start off with the bright, bubbly berry spritz from the bar. The sparkling wine adds fizz but keeps the sweet puree from taking it to soda pop territory. At $9 and $10, drinks seem reasonably priced.
Foodwise, the fish and chips is a good choice. The beer batter is simple but well-seasoned, and the thick pieces of cod don't get overcooked. Also, Burdulis has a right to be proud of that chicken-bacon-ranch pizza. It's a whole lot of toppings, but they all work well together. And although it sounds like there might be too many sauces, they work well together; the sweet chile adds just enough sweet and heat.
With farms, fields and few houses between New Albany's outskirts and Johnstown's city limits, the drive on Route 62 might seem like a haul right now. But take a look at all the for-sale signs (I counted 22 in a seven-mile stretch) and you'll realize it soon could look like Polaris Parkway or any other suburban, commercial stretch of roadway.
The newest place in Johnstown might soon be one of its old standbys.
If you go
Where: Uncle Johnnie’s, 65 S. Main St., Johnstown
Hours: 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays.
Happy hour: 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays
Contact: www.unclejohnnies.com
[email protected]Instagram: @dispatchdining
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Uncle Johnnies pub offers diners pizza, burgers, fish, drinks and more
