Primanti Bros. Move In on Elwood's

As you may have heard, Elwood's Dixie Bar-B-Q in Delray Beach, the long-running biker-bar/barbecue joint, where Elvis sightings were about as common as the tramp stamps on the shapely behinds of the female patrons -- is closing. There are a lot of heartbroken funkabilly and hot sauce lovers wandering around listlessly over this news. If ever there were a fixture, it was this 16-year-old gas-station turned rollicking party: I spent many a night there in the old days when I still stayed up past 10 p.m.

And speaking of staying up past 10 p.m....it turns out the outfit taking over Elwood's is another old haunt of mine, Primanti Bros. of Pittsburgh. When I lived in PGH, Primanti's was THE place you gravitated to after clubbing, to eat what is probably the most disgusting sandwich ever invented (pictured above). They've expanded from their first store in the Pittsburgh's strip district and now have two outlets in Fort Lickerdale, but the Elwood's venue is slated for a different concept entirely. I don't know if they'll be serving their famous sandwich, which was most notable for the french fries piled between two sheets of sticky white bread. Even back then, when I was far short of being a food snob and thoroughly wasted every time I ate one, that sammy didn't always taste so hot. So I sort of hope they WON'T be.

Anyway, the new owners are spending $2 million to turn Elwood's into Johnny Brown's Burgers, Wings, Ribs & Classic Rock (Johnny Brown was the name of Addison Mizner's pet monkey, BTW. Go figure). They say they're scheduled to open in October.