When Alexander Jozsa Bodnar bought the building at the intersection of Second Avenue and Hazelwood Street in the Hazelwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1988, it was a hoagie shop. Before that, it had been a pizza shop, a shoe store and a tobacco shop, among a handful of other things.

Now, that building houses Jozsa Corner, the only place within 60 miles of Pittsburgh that serves Hungarian food. It is quite nondescript. The structure shows the wear and tear of the many years it has stood as a cradle for various businesses.

Bodnar, 70, does his cooking in a small kitchen area that contains a large stove behind a bar. Here, patrons can find him hard at work, surrounded by an extensive collection of pots, pans, cooking oils and spices. The aroma of langos, a Hungarian fire bread that Bodnar likes to serve as an appetizer, fills the air.

Frank Miller, who has been Bodnar’s close friend for years, occasionally serves as co-chef at Jozsa Corner.

“No one makes homemade bread anymore like him,” Miller said.

For years, Bodnar has gone against the flow in the restaurant business. The ethnic food in a home-styled setting for around $20 per person ($15 for students) is hard to find anywhere else. Although the operation is still largely a one-man show, he has recently enlisted Miller to help in the kitchen. “I’m still learning, you never can not know enough,” the new cook admits.

Jozsa Corner is not really a restaurant at all. The business still operates on a call-ahead only basis — customers can’t just show up and expect to be served. Bodnar requires people to call ahead so he can plan what he will serve ahead of time. Jozsa Corner has no opening and closing hours, but it is usually filled most weekend nights.

Past the bar through a narrow doorway lies a homey dining room, which contains two long tables covered by tablecloths, an array of pictures and artwork on the wall (some of which are Bodnar’s original work), and a grand piano in one corner. The family pictures and photos that adorn the walls and the sound of ethnic Hungarian folk music playing on an old CD player make customers feel like they are in a host’s dining room.

Here in this dining room is where guests get to enjoy the mouth-watering Transylvanian cuisine that Bodnar places on the table. Meals are served on disposable dishes, but this will soon be forgotten after tasting the food.

So what’s on the menu at Jozsa Corner? Well, really, whatever the cook feels like making. One night it might be homemade sausage, homemade bread and chicken paprika. The next night it can be langos, Hungarian goulash, haluska and crepes.

Bodnar, a native of Budapest, Hungary, provides an ethnic, homestyle environment centered on Hungarian folklore. In order to truly capture this aspect, he runs his restaurant more like a home kitchen. The stout Bodnar explains with typical jolliness what happened as he traveled back and forth between his native country and the U.S.

“When I came back [to America], I started cooking, and I got involved in a folklore group called the Hungarian Ethnic Group of Western PA. That’s when I decided I liked cooking and kept on doing it,” Bodnar said.

The langos, a type of fried bread made from risen dough and dusted with garlic salt, is usually served first. This is often followed up by a soup of some variety — usually Bodnar’s specialty, chicken vegetable peasant soup. Haluska, a common Eastern European dish typically attributed to the Polish culture, is a guest favorite in the dining room. Bodnar balances flavor and texture to give his haluska a Hungarian identity.

If not the best dish served at Jozsa Corner, the Hungarian goulash is at least the most memorable. Bodnar’s version of goulash consists of beef chunks mixed with flavorful sauerkraut and topped by a generous gob of sour cream, which guests often like to mix in evenly with the rest of the dish.

The last dish is usually an assortment of fruit and chocolate crepes. The food Bodnar serves is almost solely carbs and proteins, so guests rarely leave on an empty stomach.

At Jozsa Corner, each course is separated by a short break, each varying in duration. During these breaks, Bodnar will talk to his guests about a variety of topics, including food, religion and his origins in Hungary.

Bodnar may even tell the story of how he carved a bullet out of his own leg after Soviets shot him while fighting in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

“I, myself, had more guts than brains,” Bodnar acknowledged about his days as a revolutionary.

It certainly was more than just guts that got him to where he is today. Bodnar is a master chef whose knowledge of food comes from years of experiential learning from various influences. After the revolution, he fled Hungary and landed in England, where he noticed something peculiar about the cuisine.

“They boil the hell out of everything,” he proclaimed, “and everything was tasteless.”

When he came to Pittsburgh in 1957 at the age of 15, he found good food and a thriving Hungarian community. These traditions slowly faded as the city began to decline industrially.

Interestingly, Bodnar “always went back to grandma.” When he returned to Hungary after the revolution was over, he learned the real secrets of authentic Hungarian cooking, along with his own love of serving food. And his passion is obvious at Jozsa Corner. Just don’t get him started talking about food — he’ll go on all night.

Bodnar claims he “grew up” in the Pittsburgh area after coming here as a young man.

“He was 30 years old and still growing,” his good friend and frequent visitor John Kerekgyarto said jokingly from his seat at the bar. Not surprisingly, Bodnar attributes his growth to the abundance and richness of American food.

When Bodnar came to the United States for the second time, he was a grown man. For the next few decades, he made a living in graphic arts and advertising until the industry fell into decline in the ’80s. He then bought the building in Hazelwood in order to open a restaurant and a resource for the local Hungarian community. Bodnar now has a wife and family.

Once a revolutionary, always a revolutionary. One would be hard-pressed to find a place quite like Jozsa Corner these days. But at 70 years old, Bodnar puts no unnecessary burden on his shoulders. He does hold one special event, Hungarian Night, every second Friday of the month. Guests that come on this night are invited to sing folk songs and even speak some Hungarian with Bodnar and his friends.

Jozsa Corner has withstood difficult economic times in a tough neighborhood. The economically depressed, crime-ridden Hazelwood area is by no means conducive to business. In fact, most businesses packed up and moved away a long time ago.

Bodnar, on the other hand, has been in business for about 25 years. As one of his many favorite sayings goes, “Whatever seems difficult will take a while, and whatever seems impossible will just take a little longer.”