Massillon, Ohio, where the past comes alive

If you know anything at all about Massillon, Ohio, it is probably that it is a football powerhouse-- specifically high school football. Adjacent to Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it is so high school football-crazed that a documentary,Go Tigers, was made about its obsession.

All of which has exactly nothing to do with what lures me to Massillon every year, an old movie festival called Cinesation, at which the archives who preserve our film heritage show off whatever old movies they've been working on lately. How old? Well, 13 of them were silent... going back as far as 1915... and the newest was from 1953. (In Technicolor IB. If you know what that means, you should go too! Anyway, if you want to know more, you can read my whole report here.) Although there's a movie connection in that Dorothy and Lillian Gish grew up there, basically it's in football-mad Massillon for no better or worse reason than that the Lions Club offered the fest the use of their theater (which also goes back as far as 1915). A couple of years ago, as we were leaving the theater after 14 hours of old movies, we found the entire town, it seemed, standing in the middle of the street, waiting for the team bus to get back from the big game. Thus did two obsessed subcultures silently pass each other in the night.

Anyway, while one is in Massillon strictly for the movies, one must eat. By now I have pretty much explored everything there is to be had in Massillon within a short distance of the theater, and while there are places I return to with a certain comfiness, I have yet to find anything in Massillon I would actually recommend to another LTHer. Still, in the interests of mad completitude, I herewith offer a dining guide to Massillon:

BREAKFAST

The surprising bummer is that Massillon does not have a great little breakfast place where all the locals go. Or they do, but it's called Bob Evans. I heard good things about breakfast at a place called Menches Bros., but lunch was semi-dire, as related below. A friend and I visited the Elks' Club or the VFW or some such place last year, and had perfectly decent breakfast amid the standard 1960s restaurant trappings (wild west-shaped wooden chairs, amber colored water glasses, paper placemats with a gold frame around the sides, etc.) though the sight of people smoking, drinking and watching cable news at 8 am was depressing, a little too much like my grandmother's house for comfort. The only place I've found with anything resembling atmosphere is an independent coffeehouse that opened (possibly just this year), offering assorted coffees, teas, scones, bagels, etc. The woman who runs it was quite friendly, but then, everybody in a small town like Massillon is dialed up to about 8 or 9 on a big city-dweller's friendliometer.

Chit Chat Coffee Shop
115 Lincoln Way East
(330) 833-0795

LUNCH/DINNER

One popular restaurant/bar is called Kozmo's-- and yes, there he is as you enter, Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld, or rather actor Michael Richards, who as soon as they plastered his name and image all over the place, went and got himself in a racial scandal. Kozmo's had a different name the first year I went-- perhaps O.J.'s, or Baretta's-- but whatever the name, it serves perfectly adequate American food, and better burgers than another celebrity-name-ripped-off place nearby, Rockne's. However, after two meals there, I rebelled and insisted that we find somewhere else.

Menches Brothers, in the same strip mall as Rockne's, has a decent salad bar but the turkey wrap I got to go with it was just depressing-- plastic tortilla, dead turkey and bacon in it, flavor-subtracting lettuce, mayo. It was like eating the food in a child's play kitchen.

I have no idea if there are actual Italians in Massillon but there are definitely Italian restaurants. Across from the theater, on Massillon's quaint main strip, is Smiley's, the kind of place where everybody goes on game night for 1950s style pure Italian-American. It's exactly what you think it will be, the pastas are all cooked al sogge, the pizza comes in a paper bag with a map of Italy and an image of the Leaning Tower on it, the waitress acts harried when there's more than four people in the place and is usually borderline rude, except when she's well over the border. The past comes alive on the screen in Massillon and believe me, it comes with a salad or soup at Smiley's.

After visiting Smiley's once every year I decided to give a different place I spotted a try this year-- a more modern-looking Italian restaurant called Collucci's. Was it, in Big Night terms, the Primo and Secondo to Smiley's Pascal? Ha. If anything, its supper club atmosphere-- how do you open a new restaurant with that elderly aunt ambience, anyway?-- was even older than Smiley's high school pizza joint feel, and the pastas, at least, were standard issue packaged ravioli and so on, covered with "Greg's special homemade pasta sauce," which is reputed to be a five-generations-old recipe, with no mention of the issue of Better Homes and Gardens from which great-great-grandma got the overly sweet, pure Italian-American style recipe in the first place. Yet if the pastas will probably be given a wide berth in the future, I might hit Colucci's again for a steak, it looked like they probably do that pretty decently for a small town price.

Finally, believe it or not, there's sushi in Massillon. Okay, I wouldn't go near such a thing. But there's a Japanese-Korean spot where we had perfectly okay Korean food, or at least an Ohio imitation of it, called Lee's. No charcoal at the table-- they actually brought a kind of electric hot pot to the table-- but it made a nice break from burgers and rubbery pasta.

The night I got back from Massillon, I went straight to TAC Quick.

Kozmo's Grille
37 1st St SW
Massillon, OH 44647
(330) 832-8807

Rockne's Massillon
155 Lincoln Way W
Massillon, OH 44647
(330) 833-8800

Menches Bros of Massillon
235 Lincoln Way W
Massillon, OH 44647
(330) 832-6200

Smiley's Ristorante & Pizzeria
27 Lincoln Way E
Massillon, OH 44646
(330) 832-3388

Colucci's
716 Lincoln Way E
Massillon, OH 44646
(330) 833-8606

Lee's Korean BBQ & Japanese
45 1st St NW
Massillon, OH 44647
(330) 830-1300