Best Little Hot Dog on L.I.

To prepare for his Friday pilgrimage, Herb Schmertz goes to the Grand Central Deli at 10:30 A.M. and gets "two turkey sandwiches on rye with tomato, no mayo, and an apple." He leaves two hours later, stopping just before the Midtown Tunnel for a cherry Italian ice, and then again at Howard Johnson's, Exit 64 on the L.I.E., for an orange sherbet. It's no wonder that he sometimes has to pull over for "a fifteen-minute nap. ' '

Most people wait till they get to Grace's Famous hot-dog stand, just off Exit 70 on County Road 111. Her all-beef Boar's Head franks are the Hampton celebrity's hot dog of choice. "I wouldn ' t go if it weren ' t for Gracie's, ' ' declares Bruce Jay Friedman. "They're about the best hot dogs I've ever had," says food critic Craig Claiborne. Grace Amond figures she sells about five hundred ninety-five-cent hot dogs on summer Sundays, versus about two hundred on weekdays. This is the fifteenth year Grace has fed hungry commuters from her roadside trailer. The secret of her success? "Being friendly and carrying a decent product."

The lone dissent comes from writer Nora Ephron. "Grace's is all right in a pinch," she says, "but it's nothing compared to the little lady in the yellow truck at Exit 57 off the L.I.E." Ephron insists on kosher hot dogs, and the ones at Exit 57—"Honestly, we almost died when we tasted them"—have "hot red-pepper flakes in them."