Woody’s Towne Cafe

Breakfast out for us has, for years, meant Mastoris Diner in Bordentown. We still love Mastoris but we’ve discovered another choice breakfast spot nearby: Woody’s Towne Cafe in Allentown (that’s the small town in New Jersey, not the city in PA).

Allentown, NJ is the kind of town people generally refer to as “quaint,” which makes it unusual in this part of New Jersey. It’s not a tourist town by any means, just a pleasant little place with a healthy Main Street, which is where you’ll find Woody’s, owned by Donald “Woody” Wood. Woody’s is precisely the sort of town cafe one hopes to find in a town such as this: a counter fronted by a row of stools, flyers advertising bake sales taped to the wall, a scattering of tables filled with local regulars, including one table reserved for Grumpy Old Men, extremely friendly waitresses who make you feel right at home…

We’ve only been here for breakfast, and the breakfast menu is limited to the basics — well, the basics for New Jersey, which means you’ll find pork roll and scrapple among the breakfast meats. Here’s the thing, though: everything tastes unusually good. Especially noteworthy are the hashes — corned beef or sausage — made fresh in-house, and the Woody Roll. And, if you are interested in stoking up for the day, the popular Dog Pile, which includes extra large portions of meat, potatoes, toast, and three eggs, will do the trick.

What’s a Woody Roll? It’s a big, soft, yeasty roll that Woody bakes fresh each day. One waitress described it to us as made with pizza dough, and that may be, but it’s softer than any pizza crust we’ve ever tasted. For breakfast, they toast it on the grill before lavishly brushing it with melted butter, and it’s well worth the 50 cent supplement to replace your ordinary toast.

As we said, we haven’t been here for lunch yet, but what we’ve seen go out to other tables looked very tempting. Besides the burgers and hoagies and cheese steaks, our eyes are drawn on the menu to the chicken, ham, and egg salads, all homemade. There are a bunch of Woody Special sandwiches, all served on Woody Rolls, and the Big Don Platter is a double burger topped with Russian dressing, fried onions, and cheddar, served on Texas toast. We’ll report back, of course, as soon as we pay them a lunchtime visit.

There are no desserts on the menu, but that matters little, because we recommend a stroll down the block to Swal Dairy for a dish of dense and creamy homemade ice cream.