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The Best, To Be Frank

Tribune photo by Julie Busch

Mel Lohn's humorous interaction with his customers is one of the things that makes his diner different than other fast-food joints.

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By RICH SHOPES, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 29, 2007

Updated: 12/29/2007 12:14 am

TAMPA - Mel's Hot Dogs is hard to miss, with its red awnings and wiener mobile, a converted Volkswagen Beetle, parked out front.

Inside the red-and-white cottage at East Busch Boulevard and 42nd Street, the decor is '60s diner with red vinyl booths and chairs.

A wall-sized menu of 24 specialty dogs, burgers and sandwiches, including the Mel's My Way Hot Dog, loaded with chili, cheese, grilled onions and grilled peppers, tempts customers who line up at lunchtime from the door to the counter.

They come from all over the Tampa Bay area, but many show up after a day at Busch Gardens, just a couple blocks down Busch Boulevard, and get hooked.

"After one visit, they're regulars," owner Mel Lohn says.

Weiner memorabilia is scattered everywhere: newspaper clippings, cartoons and snapshots of customers with Mel's bumper stickers and T-shirts at the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, or even a research station at the South Pole.

There are plenty of American soldiers. In one photo, a G.I. sports a Mel's T-shirt while seated on a throne that once belonged to Saddam Hussein.

"Here's my favorite," says Lohn, pointing to a photo of a camel with a Mel's bumper sticker.

Mel's has been expanding its memorabilia collection for years. Back in the early '70s, Lohn was a saxophone player who traveled from gig to gig.

He landed in Tampa and noticed, despite growing numbers of transplanted Midwesterners, that nobody was serving the "Chicago-style" beef hot dogs of his youth, on steamed poppy-seeded buns and loaded with onions, tomatoes, celery salt, dill pickles and electric-green piccalilli relish.

Mel's opened July 3, 1973, in the last surviving structure at Henderson Field, a World War II-era Army Air Forces base. Lohn made $99 his first day of business, more than as a saxophone player, and decided to forge a career on Chicago-style hot dogs.

Mel's has gone through numerous ups and downs ever since, including a truck that plowed into the dining room in 2001. Nobody was hurt and the restaurant kept selling its signature dogs.

"I was giving hot dogs to police and firemen," he says.

Asked to explain its longevity, Lohn won't point to any one thing.

Partly it's the food, he says, the fact Mel's adheres to the same ingredients used at hot dog stands across Chicago so the food has an authentic taste that takes people back to their childhoods. Also, he says, the restaurant, with its red awnings and wiener mobile out front, just isn't like other fast-food joints.

"Look around," he says.

Old-timers point to Lohn himself, and in particular, his corny jokes. Even Lohn concedes they can border on the obnoxious, but his customers keep coming back.

One of his favorite jabs: Lohn insists ties not be worn inside the establishment. He's joking, of course, but Lohn can deliver his dress-code warning with such a deadpan some customers take him seriously, at first anyway.

"If a bunch of guys with ties come in and there's a new guy with them, they'll put him to the front of the line just to see what happens," Lohn says.

Virginia Lohn, his wife and business partner, can only cringe: "It's so embarrassing. Sometimes I just want to hide."

Mel Lohn seems to take pleasure at this.

Embarrassing or not, many old-timers wouldn't have it any other way. Rodney Dann, a 72-year-old tugboat business owner, says he comes for the Fire Dog, a quarter-pound beef sausage with cayenne pepper, brown mustard, grilled onions, bell peppers and "hot sport peppers."

He likes the food but also says he's not sure he would make his twice-weekly pilgrimages if the Lohns weren't behind the counter.

"It wouldn't be the same," Dann says. "You know the people there and they're all nice people. It's not like a regular fast-food place."

Sadly, Mel's might not be around much longer.

Lohn put the restaurant up for sale this past summer and is hoping to have it sold by next summer. Lohn, 61, said he and his wife want to retire to a lake house in Tennessee.

He's had plenty of bites from prospective owners, but none have come close enough to his $2.4 million asking price. He knows Mel's is worth it and his customers, lined up from door to counter, seem to agree.

"It's an original type thing," said Linda Cibrone of Tampa, who's been coming to Mel's for more than 20 years.

"It's clean. I like the way it's run, where it sits, the atmosphere. You can sit and eat and not feel like you're getting shoved out the door. And any time you're here, he's here," she said, referring to Lohn, who works the cash register and counter six days a week.

Lohn and his wife say their hands-on business style is one reason Mel's has stuck around so long, but it's an exhausting job. Until a year ago, one or both worked seven days a week. Last fall, Lohn decided to take Sundays off to catch a breather, a huge reversal given his 7-days-a-week routine since 1973. The idea stuck and Lohn says he hasn't looked back.

The restaurant is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday. It's open Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Lohn doesn't insist the restaurant continue after it's sold, though. For all he cares, Mel's can become a gas station, a car wash or corner bar. He's not sentimental, even if his customers are.

"This is a business," he says. "If it stays Mel's that's great, but that will be up to the new owner."

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633 or at rshopes@tampatrib.com.

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