George’s Coney Island

Worcester can do battle with any town in New England to claim the mantle of diner capital, but the crown jewel of Massachusetts’s second biggest city is a hot dog joint. Like many of the best restaurants on this site, George’s Coney Island provides a secondary service as a time machine. Stepping into this spectacular functioning museum piece is to be surrounded by the mid-20th century, weathered by decades of wear and tear and love but nevertheless seemingly frozen as it was when the restaurant was first established.

Many similar places retain their spectacular neon signs in front – and to be clear, George’s has a particularly impressive one, multicolored and sporting a hand gripping a hot dog dripping with neon-yellow mustard, the Citgo sign of Worcester – but have long since given in to remodeling the interior. And technically George’s did just that. But that remodel happened in 1938 and the room’s deco stylization remains unchanged since then. Along the left hand side is a long counter with steam pans, griddles, and order stations. Its back wall is ornamented with various local sides like Wachusett potato chips, Table Talk pies (or housemade apple cider donuts), and a giant jar of excellent new pickles. The wood booths that take up the bulk of the space are worn and studded with illicit personal carvings. It is a dark, almost cloudy interior, as if you are gazing into the restaurant’s past.

The food might be beside the point in most establishments like this. But this is central Massachusetts, so you know if a hot dog restaurant has been in business this long they are going to know what they are doing. George’s serves an unsurprisingly classic dog on a hinged roll rather than the region-typical split-top. The dog itself comes from Kayem, a local hot dog empire which also supplies the Red Sox with their Fenway Frank, but in execution they are much closer to their cousins in Rhode Island’s “system” establishments – not surprising considering the nod to New York in both names. The dog is grilled but the buns are steamed, one tucking modestly into the other. The result is a squishy exterior with just enough chew to match the dog’s yielding charred plumpness. Draw a cartoon picture of a hot dog, imagine what it would taste like, and you’ll have a pretty good chance of approximating George’s.

When you order a dog here, you are going to want their version of the Works (which they also call “up” rather than “all the way” as in Rhode Island), adorned with their “secret recipe” chili, mustard, and diced white onion. But a second dog would not be a bad idea, and this is a particularly good vehicle for neon relish. Don’t forget a side of housemade beans and a pickle – you might want to try their mac and cheese but ymmv on its nostalgic value as a soft and mild version of the dish. Another difference from Rhode Island: no coffee milk here, only chocolate.

George’s Coney Island is a minor miracle of American culture, a restaurant that has managed to survive and thrive without changing in a town that has evolved greatly since its Greek-American owners bought it near the beginning of the Great Depression. Yet after visiting it’s easy to see why they continue to be successful. There’s pride in the food they are putting out and a reverence for tradition and the simple pleasures of what they serve and where they serve it. You can taste it in the food and you can see it in the unfailingly kind and enthusiastic servers that take your order. If they can tell it’s your first time, or you bring in someone who has never been, it’s as if they found out you had never had a hot dog (or beans, or a pickle…) before. It’s the feeling of serving American history of the finest kind, and they do it for just $2.95. ■

About George’s Coney Island

Kayem was started by a Polish immigrant that began selling sausages and other meat in his butcher shop in Boston in 1909. They moved to Chelsea in 1970 and became the official Fenway Frank in 2009. The specific Kayem dog served at George’s is a skinless, so it lacks the “snap” you might expect from an old-school place, but the char from the grill elevates the yielding texture.

Opened in 1918, George’s is certainly one of the oldest continually operating restaurants in Massachusetts. While there was a full-service luncheonette there prior to George’s, Catherine and George Tsagarelis transformed it into the Coney Island in 1929, charging five cents per hot dog (though the secret chili recipe allegedly came with the shop from the prior owner). In 1938, the couple renovated the interior, and as noted above it’s mostly unchanged from that version of the restaurant. As noted on the website, the neon sign’s hand, the current version of which was installed in 1951, is modeled after a photograph George took holding a hot dog. It has been restored twice, once in 1975 and then again just a few years ago. 

While the shop is named after George, he passed in 1980 and the business has mostly been run by the women of the Tsagarelis family. Catherine ran Coney Island for decades, passing in 2000, and was helped at the shop by her only daughter Joanna, who passed in 2019, and her husband, a Greek Orthodox priest. Katheryn Tsandikos, Catherine’s granddaughter, co-owns the shop now and has run it for decades.

One of the distinctive and restaurant-approved aspects of George’s is the abundance of carvings that cover the decades-old wooden booths. There are so many from nearly 90 years of delinquent use that it would probably be difficult to find a spot to add your name if one were so inclined. ■

George’s Coney Island official website

The Telegram and Gazette on George’s at 100