Dining Out: Tasty Treet is all tastiness, no frills

YANKTON, S.D. — Every town should have a Willert's Tastee Treet.

Actually, let me amend that. Any town I'd want to live in should have something like Willert's Tastee Treet, a little hot dogs-and-shakes place that's been there about forever in my husband's hometown of Yankton, S.D.

As I ate my coney dog, chili dog, onion rings, shake at Tastee Treet the other night, I was thinking about the places in Utah that are its equivalent.

There's Burger Bar in Roy. Peach City up in Brigham. Woody's in Murray. Kirt's in North Ogden. I'm talking about places that have been around so long, they've become part of how a town defines itself. The kind of places you take for granted, like they'll always be there.

And they always will, as long as people keep coming out and supporting them. On the night our family visited Tastee Treet with my in-laws, several locals dropped in to the teensy dining space, as well as a couple who were just passing through town, saw the place and thought it looked interesting.

It does, at that, with an unassuming white-painted exterior, blue counter, half a dozen dusty-pink barstools, photos of past Tastee Treet workers and a linoleum floor that's seen a lot of feet pass over it.

There's some major air conditioning keeping the muggy night air at bay, indecipherable music playing somewhere and, from the back, the rich and slightly menacing sound of gallons of oil frying up classic American fast food.

There's a standing special at Tastee Treet: For five bucks — and they have to be bucks because they don't take checks or credit cards — diners can enjoy a "Tastee beef sandwich," fries and their choice of a malt, shake or float. The Tastee beef sandwich is otherwise known in these parts as a tavern, or a loose-meat sandwich, or even a "maid-rite," after a chain of restaurants that specializes in them.

In Utah, we call 'em sloppy joes, though this version comes sauced with little but its own juices and the sweetness of the onions with which the beef is cooked. That lets diners use ketchup, mustard or both to goop up their sandwiches. My father-in-law had the special and seemed to enjoy every bite.

Hot dogs, rather than burgers, are prominently featured on the Tastee Treet menu, though there's a column of sandwiches as well. My younger kids had hot dogs plain and topped with a nice spicy chili with plenty of beans, while my husband had a foot-long chili dog.