The nearly century-old hot dog shop, Boulevard Drinks — with its yellow-and-orange window across from the Journal Square PATH station — will serve its last franks from its walk-up window next month. The retro favorite serving dogs often less than $2 will shutter on November 30, owner Victor Victoratos told NJ.com, but it’s not the end: Boulevard Drinks plans to reopen early next year across the street, in roughly 500 square feet inside the Journal Square Transportation Center, Jersey Digs reports.
Victoratos has signed his side of the lease and is waiting on the Port Authority to sign theirs, he told PIX11. He expects to open in February or March, according to NJ.com. In the meantime, he suggested a Boulevard Drinks hot dog truck could serve Journal Square while the stand is closed. Boulevard Drinks will join a row of transit-hub tenants that includes Jollibee and Taco Bell.
Boulevard Drinks has been in operation since 1937. This spring, Victoratos told NJ.com that he held a lease through 2034, but the landlord ordered him out by the end of May. The lease, signed with the previous owner, did not survive the building sale. He kept the window open into the summer while his lawyers fought the eviction, per Hoboken Girl. In May, Mayor James Solomon and Councilman Tom Zuppa pledged to keep it in the neighborhood, Hoboken Girl reported.
The original location sits on the site of a mixed-use redevelopment the Jersey City Planning Board approved earlier this year. Developer Nasser Freres plans a 55-story tower at 2859–2873 Kennedy Boulevard with 840 apartments, 84 of them affordable, and a ground-floor Whole Foods, Jersey Digs reports.
Boulevard Drinks serves a straightforward menu of hot dogs, cheese dogs, chili dogs, and sausages, plus fruit punch, piña coladas, and other drinks at throwback prices. “No visit to this part of Jersey City is complete without one of the franks served at this venerable hot dog window, right across the street from the PATH station,” former Eater critic Robert Sietsema writes on his Substack. “Get it with mustard and ‘chili’ — really, an oniony Greek meat relish.”
Dining and Cooking