Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine

Sustenance in Steelton: Marla’s Place is basic, very basic, but the food and service will make you feel at home.

Screenshot 2015-04-29 00.44.58The menu at Marla’s Place, in downtown Steelton, is an 8.5-by-11 sheet of printer paper, folded slightly askew of the centerline. On one side is a stock photo of a china table setting. On the other are pictures of yellow-toned food—fried chicken, cornbread muffins, mac ‘n’ cheese. The cash register, plain gray, sits on an open counter next to a stack of other people’s business cards.

Outside, across S. Front Street, a set of ornate stone steps leads up a steep hill to what used to be the train station. Marla shares her block with a municipal building, a vacant People’s Bank, a tattoo parlor and the local office of state Rep. Patty Kim. The road is a thoroughfare for cargo trucks, one of which, Marla suspects, was behind the destruction of a sign that used to hang from her exterior wall. The soundtrack during a lunch there recently was the snort of diesel engines and the rattle of passing freight.

The staff, all family, work as volunteers. During my visit, an hour ahead of the average lunch break, the atmosphere was of unharried hospitality. Marla’s sister, Lenore, sat at a nearby table in a hairnet, rolling up plastic cutlery in napkins. Her brother-in-law, Jack, strode out of the kitchen now and then to field questions on his cooking history.

Marla was born in Buffalo, N.Y., where she worked as a nurse for 25 years. The restaurant had its beginnings in her daughter’s Harrisburg home, in the form of big family dinners and meals for fundraisers. When Marla decided to relocate, her daughter scouted for storefronts and settled on the spot in Steelton, the former site of a burger joint and, before that, an insurance company. “A lot of people had told us it wouldn’t last that long, because the places only stay here two months and then they’re normally gone,” said Marla, who celebrates her one-year anniversary this month.

The menu is mostly home-style cooking—ribs, fried fish, potato salad, rice and gravy, coleslaw, peach cobbler and sweet potato pie. There’s also jerk and curry chicken, pizza and hot wings. Marla likes to be accommodating. Customers are often surprised, she said, to be asked if they want light or dark meat, chicken breast or thighs. Meats come one of four ways: fried, barbecued, baked or smothered. Entrees, ranging from $9 to $13, come with two sides, and first-time customers, whom she calls “Marla’s virgins,” get a free soda with their meal.

The restaurant has a broad-stroke kind of cuisine—sunshine to a downtown bistro’s laser show. Jack, one of the chefs at Marla’s and a cook since 1979, describes his resume as “quantity cooking.” He’s worked in kitchens at Denny’s, Bob Evans and a Buffalo steakhouse, at the farm show and the Hotel Wyndham, and as a cooking instructor at the county prison. My meal, smothered pork chops with sides of collard greens and mac ‘n’ cheese, came in a Styrofoam tray.

Yet, on a bitterly cold winter day, there was nothing quite so perfect. The rich gravy, the juicy pork, the sweet and bitter greens—they sank in the belly and stuck to the ribs, and warmed me as I drove home in the snow.

Marla’s Place is at 2 S. Front St., Steelton. For more information, visit www.marlas-place.com, see their Facebook page or call 717-939-6914.

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