New Jersey Legend Nears 60 Years of Service

Wayne, N.J… Wayne-based Falls View Grill, which operates five locations in Northern New Jersey well known for its Hot Texas Wieners, is in the midst of remaking its menu, introducing a new lineup of fresh soups and salads and is embarking on expanding its school and day care luncheon program as well as its catering business.

Now in its 15^th year of operation by brothers Bill and Bob McEntee, Falls View Grill has direct ties to the first Hot Texas Wieners introduced in Paterson in 1920. Falls View refers to the Great Falls in Paterson, the site selected by Alexander Hamilton for America's first industrial city and the locale of the first Texas wiener – a deep-fried hot dog on a bun with mustard, diced onions and a special chili sauce with a secret recipe.

Today, Falls View Grill is a family business operation which markets hundreds of thousands of Thuman's hot dogs and over a hundred thousand pounds of prime potatoes annually. But this is not the hot dog stand of days gone bye. Falls View Grill restaurants are casual, clean and family-oriented. Its motto is "fresh, fast and friendly." A whopping 15-20 percent of its counter sales are in credit card transactions, despite the fact that a customer can have a complete meal for under $6.

"We offer the finest and freshest ingredients which are cooked to order," explains Bob McEntee. "Our menu items are never prepared ahead of time and left under heat lamps or microwaved. Our breads and buns are delivered daily to our locations. Our hamburgers are made from fresh 100 percent pure beef – never frozen. Our produce is fresh and our American cheese is the real thing – not process. We do everything the old fashioned way –from scratch. We like to say, 'One bite…and we gotcha.'"

The centerpiece of Falls View Grill's menu is the time-honored Texas wiener, served plain or "all the way." The latter means the hot dogs are deep-fried in zero trans-fat vegetable shortening, topped with spicy mustard, chopped onions and the distinctive chili sauce. The McEntee brothers, long-time admirers of the Paterson-born Texas wiener, bought a dilapidated Pequannock restaurant and converted into its first location in October, 1994. They also convinced Chris Betts, who had co-founded, with his brothers, the Falls View Grill in Paterson in 1949, to sell them the secret sauce recipe and come out of retirement long enough to oversee their "all the way" wieners. In 2009, the name Falls View Grill will mark its 60^th anniversary.

McEntee says the sauce includes ground beef, tomatoes and onion, as well as an array of spices, including cayenne, cinnamon, allspice and cumin. But the percentage of each is still secret. "I create the initial spicy sauce mixture myself," he explains. "Then, the sauce is made in our central commissary, so all five locations are using the same product. Our customers love it so much; we sell a lot of containers of chili sauce to go. Anything on the menu can be on a take-out order."

Mindful of customers' cost- and diet-consciousness, McEntee has reshaped the Falls View Grill's menu to include gourmet soups created daily. The 12-ounce servings include chicken noodle (a signature item), broccoli/cheese, vegetable, New England clam chowder and baked potato.

Salads now play a bigger role on the menu. They include: a Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad; a Classic Salad (with field greens, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, cucumber and Balsamic vinaigrette); Fantasia Salad (lettuce, blue cheese, crushed walnuts, Mandarin oranges and fat-free raspberry vinaigrette; and a Greek salad (lettuce, tomatoes, feta cheese, red onion, pepperoncini, aged olives and Greek dressing).

"We are offering delicious alternatives, including wraps, salads and soups," McEntee explains. "In today's economy, many families are turning away from the posh tablecloth restaurant to a casual, friendly and non-budget-busting setting. We offer a wide range of quality offerings for all ages, from kids to seniors. Kids' meals, for example, include French fries, a drink and dessert with any of the entrees – grilled cheese or hot dog. Other popular items include hamburger or chicken nuggets. We offer quality you can taste."

Popular favorites include the quarter- and half-pound hamburgers, hot roast beef and gravy, Philly cheese steak, cheeseburgers, New York rib eye steak, Taylor ham and cheese and assorted chicken entrees. Hot and cold beverage choices encompass soft drinks, creamy milk shakes, milk and coffee.

Falls View Grill prepares thousands of hot lunches for schools and day care centers at reasonable cost. McEntee says the most popular items are nuggets, hot dogs and hamburgers. Each meal comes individually packed with French fries and is prepared just before delivery. "We can customize any program to fit a school's needs," he says. "We expect to be expanding this facet of the business in the months ahead."

Catering is another service provided by Falls View Grill. The company has catered events from corporate parties to bar mitzvahs to backyard BBQs and picnics. It even catered an event with the Rainbow Room in New York City.

It has self-contained units equipped with kitchens, electricity, fryers, refrigeration and the accoutrements to serve complete meals for everything from a Little League team party to a large corporate event.

The McEntees employ about 75 full- and part-time staff as its locations, which are open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Those sites are: 25 Newark-Pompton Turnpike, Pequannock; 578 Route 46, Totowa; 85 Route 94, Vernon; 186 Ramapo Valley Road, Oakland; and 900 Route 3 West, Clifton. Employees are trained in the most advanced techniques of sanitary food handling. In addition to adherence to municipal and state health inspections, Falls View Grill has its own, even higher, standards that are rigidly enforced.

This sophisticated operation is light-years away from the creation of the first Texas Wiener almost a century ago, but it continues to carry on the tradition of serving satisfying food at reasonable prices.