Phillip’s Coney Island

I have been to this place before and thought the food was alright even if a bit overpriced but I would suggest if youare looking for a great hotdog i would suggest going to dirty franks on north fourth st. Now as for yesterday. i noticed that this business is now part of the café courrier delivery service and i thought i would give them another try. The only thing is I am allergic to onions so i made a call to verify whether or not i could eat their coney sauce before placing an order through café courrier. I was informed that the owner of this business feels so self important like he is gordon ramsey or something that he would not confirm nor deny that their are onions in his coney sauce and if i have an allergy that it is best i not eat in his restaurant because his recipes are secet. Seriously!!! If his recipes are that great where are the cameras and reality show. In this economy i think he needs to get off his high horse and put his customers first before his misplaced pride.

What am I missing here? I had high hopes for a reasonable approximation of a Flint, MI style coney dog. That being a flavorful, relatively dry, slightly spicy all meat chili on a natural casing hot dog with onions, mustard and a non-​obscene (Skyline) portion of cheddar cheese, if that’s your thing… a proud tradition of that state up north. (Coneys are from Michigan, not New York’s Coney Island. deal with it)
What was I served at Phillip’s? I get a sad, ironic, colorless, lifeless, flavorless, caseless (mushy) dirty-​water hotdog on a cheap bun with onions, mustard, cheese-​wiz (!) and what looked and tasted like boiled ground beef. This is what I imagine is served in the Thumb Correctional Facility on Coney night.
How this place has persisted since the Eisenhower administration is beyond me.
Another thing, apparently this place is not affiliated with the Franklinton Phillip’s (which claims to be the only one). In a day and age when Monster Cable can sue Monster Laundromat, Bait and Tackle 3 miles west of the Slaussen Cutoff near Alna, ME for diluting their brand image, how does this happen? Someone name Phillip is gonna take my damned Faveroo coupon, or there is gonna be trouble.

I stopped in here today after 4 hours of walking around town for a class assignment that I’m pretty sure will be the death of me. I was grumpy, tired, hungry, and just needed to sit down for a few minutes.
I got a coney dog with onions and a coke. It’s hard to mess up a fountain drink, so this review is mostly for the coney dog. Which was, admittedly, very nice. It was around $ 2, nice and meaty, and had just the right amount of onion. Really hit the spot, and it was cheap– which is hard to find in the Short North. If I had to compare them, I’d say I like the dogs at Dirty Frank’s better, but this gets points for convenience of location.
The place itself is pretty nice too. It’s small and friendly, in an old-​town diner kind of way. I chatted with the guy at the counter, who said it had been around for a long time. Not sure if that’s the case, but I can believe it.
Overall, thumbs-​up. I’ll stop back in next time I need a bite to eat.

Yuck. One time I went here thinking it was going to be the same as Phillip’s in Franklinton.
It’s not.
The hot dogs are not that great (IMO), service is slower, and I just can’t get on board. Pass.

This place has pretty good food but it’s saving grace is that it’s just cheap. I had their daily special which was a coney and a bowl of pretty good vegetable soup for $ 4.05. There’s no where else in the Short North that you can eat for $ 4. The soup as I said was good, although it could have been warmed up a bit. The coney was so so. A decent dog but the chili wasn’t as good as Skyline’s.

This place really hits the spot when you want some classic American fare. I have no idea how a place this time-​warped and unchanging sits in 2011 in one of the highest-​rent sections of the Short North (especially after Michael’s had to close), but I love that it does. Meat-​topped hot dogs can be a contentious subject, depending on what your preferred style is, but, having spent time both on the East Coast and in the Cincinnati-​sphere-​of-​chili-​influence, I really dig these dogs for having a best-​of-​both-​worlds thing going on. They’re not coneys in either the sense of what you’d get from Nathan’s or what you’d get from Skyline, but are, instead, something in between what you’d get from a Sabrett cart and a Cincy-​chili joint. The sauce they use is much more heavily spiced than what you’d get out East, but, at the same time, is spiced in a different way, and is much less runny, than what you’d get in the Queen City.
Prices are WAY cheap. Coneys are less than two bucks, even with cheese. The burger is exactly what you want and expect from a diner burger (and is $ 3!), and the fries are KILLER. The fries I got are not the crinkle-​cuts pictured, but, instead, are traditional cuts, and are deep fried until they are browned, and have an amazing crisp-​outside-​mealy-​inside texture. Also, as Matthew B. said, the coffee is awesome.
Go here! Fight the gentrification of the Short North!

Once again being from Brooklyn, New York I was not really impressed with the Coney’s here. I mean they are like on the verge of Cincinnati Chili here. That is what it should be called. The hotdog was great. No Complaints there. Just the chili. Otherwise the service was good.

This is a solid little hole in the wall place. The gyro was unusual, with American cheese in it, but tasty with good tangy Greek sauce. Their chili is pretty plain but it good, hot and spicy, and the grilled cheese is very flavorful. The waitperson was polite but not extremely friendly, but on the whole this is a good, cheap place to get diner fare for lunch.

Today I found out I’m on the verge of bronchitis. Great.
So, I self-​prescribed a lunch that didn’t require a microwave. It was just Phillips Coney Island, but still, a step up from my norm.
I had never been to Phillips before. I was hoping they’d have veggie dogs. They don’t. But they do have veggie gyros. I asked what came on the veggie gyro, thinking I was about to try some imitation lamb and feeling a little nervous about it. The waitress informed me it was lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cucumber sauce. And… what else? That’s it. I was already there, so I settled. She talked me into getting the special, meaning my gyros would come with fries. I was happy to add a little nutritional value to my meal. The special cost me $ 5.45. (Sidenote: This is a cash-​only establishment.)
Then I spotted the Pepsi machine, with a tray full of beautifully crushed, crushed ice. I get excited about crushed ice. I’m pretty sure we had something going in a past life. I added a small Pepsi to my order and sipped away on my slushy drink while I looked around, noticing, for the first time, the rest of the clientele.
I didn’t feel like I was on High St. Phillips was definitely more inviting than it looked from the outside. The crowd looked like they were from Mayberry, complete with a Barney Fife security guard of some sort. It was his first time there too. There were art prints on the red and white walls and community publications on the freshly wiped counter. I thumbed through an Outlook Weekly while I waited.
I hadn’t been waiting long when a half-​bent man somewhere between being middle-​aged and old, brought a greasy brown bag out of the kitchen and gave me a sideways glance. ‘You look like my niece (or maybe neighbor),’ he said. ‘What’s your name and your middle name?’ I thought asking for my middle name was a bit odd, but I told him I’m Morgan Danielle. I think he was pretty satisfied with that because he rewarded me with a one-​tooth smile and tottered back into the kitchen.
When I got back to my car over in Goodale Park, I broke into the bag to dig out my fries. The fries and the gyro were wrapped in tinfoil, which kept them piping hot. I was a little bummed when I realized I hadn’t asked for salt or ketchup, but I found a vat of ketchup in the bottom of the bag along with two packets of salt. Hooray!
The fries were crisp, thick-​cut crinkles. They were damn good. The gyro had way too many tomatoes on it for my liking. I trashed most of them, and that made things a bit better. The cucumber sauce was the highlight of the meal. It was thick and creamy, possibly the best I’ve had, but it still didn’t save the veggie gyro. I don’t think I’ll be buying one of those again. But I’ll probably be back for the awesome fries and slushed soft drinks.

While I still wonder to this day how a place like Phillip’s Coney Island that doesn’t accept plastic has managed to stay in business in the Short North, you certainly won’t hear any complaints out of me. If you remember to bring cash, you’re in for quite the treat: heaping, overloaded Coney-​style hot dogs that put even the most gluttonous of American diners to shame. That is, if there were any around in this über-​trendy neighborhood. This place is truly one of a kind: fattening, overblown, terrible-​for-​you decadence that could offend a vegetarian from miles away. And only two blocks down the street from a gay dance club and a Segway dealership. The food here is dirt cheap and will rarely put a dent larger than $ 6 in your wallet, which more than makes up for the inconvenience of not accepting credit cards. You may not give them too much credit for what they do, as it’s rather hard to mess up a Coney dog. To their credit, however, the gyro that I had a week ago when I decided a Coney might not be the best pre-​workout lunch was excellent as well. It make look obscure and uninviting from the outside, but the diner feel on the inside is a rare treat that perfectly compliments the classic food here. Come one, how can you say no?

Coney Island is an awesome diner. It’s one of those old timey diners where you can drink coffee and read the paper in the morning. But not so old timey that it’s dirty and past its prime. Sometimes I just pop in to grab a drink and a lung full of cool air conditioning on my way down the street. Last time I did that, not only did I cool off, but I learned a lot about menopause from Oprah. There is no end to what Coney Island can provide.

One of the pleasures of my adolescence was the discovery of Coney Island style wieners. There’s just something about those little hot dogs covered in meat sauce and onions. Something that says, «Matthew, eat until you go cross-​eyed.» With the prices at Phillip’s, the voice inside me may win yet.
I can’t say for certain how varied the menu at Phillip’s is. I’ve had their Coney Island wieners (yum), their french fries (yum) and their coffee (yech! love it!). The place has the laid-​back, watchin’-TV feel of a truck stop that’s permanently stuck in the moment just before the dinner rush. No one has to hurry. Beautiful.
Let me tell you, I don’t truck with the idea of putting chili on a hot dog and calling it a Coney. That crap’s a chili dog, and you ain’t fooling me with your gibberish. Phillip’s has the real deal, and if you’ve never had a true Coney Island dog then you owe it to yourself, your descendants and the memory of your ancestors to boogie on over and receive the Good News. Just remember to bring cold, hard cash– no plastic accepted.

I’ve driven and walked past Phillip’s Coney Island for years without ever giving it a second thought. I’ve shrugged anytime someone suggested eating there. My boyfriend ended up eating there before I did, and then wouldn’t stop talking about how satisfying it was.
So finally one day when I really needed some comfort food, I made my way over to Phillip’s Coney Island for lunch. Two dogs covered in coney sauce and onions with fries and a drink for some ridiculously small price, $ 5.00 maybe?
Our waitress was straight out of a clich diner. Old, sweet, and talked non-​stop. She kept our drinks (and ears) full and made sure that everything tasted great.
Keep in mind that they don’t accept credit card, so stop at an ATM before dining.