By Michael Wexler
Exit: 10
The Skinny: With all the talk of fine dining these days, some people forget about what we might call "not-so-fine-dining." Jersey was founded on not-so-fine-dining. As a youth, I remember places like Greasy Tony's and Texas Wieners. Once, while driving to the Menlo Park Mall, I almost got clipped by an 18- wheeler when I tried to pull into Frank's Newark-Style Hot Dogs.
New Jerseyans have long risked their lives for bad food, but perhaps none as noteworthy as the Jersey egg sandwich.
Enter Rob "Gin" Ginniger -- friend from high school, humanitarian -- a good man with a tragic flaw: He was addicted to the Jersey egg sandwich.
One day, my friend Connell got his hands on a Bentley and picked up me, Chud and Gin. The mission: Go to the White Rose System (Route 27, Highland Park) and break "The Gin Man's" own egg-sandwich-eating record.
As we walked in the door, cooks Jimmy and Manny half-nodded as we took our seats at the bar. When Gin ordered a quintuple egg and cheese, nary a head turned. Everyone was trying to keep his composure knowing that history was on the line.
The first bite was tentative, but Gin gained traction, devouring half the sandwich with slippery ease. He began to struggle at the three-quarter mark, but this was not Gin's first egg-and-cheese rodeo.
He sweated and burped through all the yolk. Then, bite by excruciating bite, he stuffed the final, doughy piece into his pallid craw. Cheers erupted as we piled on our comrade and wrapped him in blankets and cold cloths.
Gin was prepared for the grand crowning when, suddenly, a truck driver in a New Jersey Devils hat slowly turned toward us from the opposite counter. In his hand was a sandwich that made Gin's look small.
"Excuse me, sir," I said to the large, unshowered man. "Might I inquire as to what that sandwich is?"
With barely a grunt he replied: "Octuple egg and cheese."
A despondent Gin collapsed as we whisked him outside to the safety of the Bentley. Clearly, this was not his day to shine at the egg-and-cheese-athon.
And as we drove down Route 27, The Gin Man throwing up out the window and Connell blasting Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," I was sure I was in a movie -- or just experiencing the kind of ordinary day that you can have ... only in Jersey.