El Pancho Villa Steak House
West Hazleton, PA (1978)
This restaurant is a few years before my time, but my dad still speaks very highly of it to this day. It opened 40 years ago today and was where my dad worked when he was 19 years old and home from college for the summer of 1978. He loved their fried chicken and their enchiladas.
This place didn't stay in business for very long, but it's not in a great location. You have to be traveling northbound on Route 93 to be able to turn into a very small restaurant cove to get there. There's an intersection that's pretty close by, but it's just far enough from the intersection to make it impossible to make a left turn from Route 93 South to get in there, so you have to go pretty far down the road and make a U-Turn on a five lane highway to get back to the point where you can turn into their parking lot, which is not at all ideal. That spot is now home to a bagel shop and a Pizza Hut.
