Viewers across the U.S. Monday night got a visual taste of something all Western New Yorkers can be proud of — their food.

Pizza Junction has been dishing up famous stingers, pizza and wings at 1269 Erie Ave. since 1972 — when gas was 55 cents per gallon and U.S. troops were still withdrawing from Vietnam.

On Monday, images of PJ’s General Manager Ryan Fleckenstein alongside TV host and renowned chef Guy Fieri dominated all but a few minutes of Monday night’s nationwide airing of the cable channel’s popular show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.”

Fieri seemed, well, more than satisfied with the results.

Cheering erupted more than once as customers and a few local dignitaries sat watching the broadcast around 10 p.m., amidst lots of free pizza and wings and even a live band performing for the occasion.

On screen, Fieri said things like “Oh look, you can feed a small country with one bite,” after tasting the specialty Beef on Weck pizza.

As he watched Fleckenstein make a batch of special horseradish sauce used to make the pie, at one point he quipped, “just give me a soup bowl of that and a crouton.”

Fleckenstein said it was by far the most exposure the restaurant has gotten in its nearly four decades in business.

“I mean, other than winning Pizza Fest four times in the past five years,” he said.

His parents still own the business, though he has served as manager on and off for about five years. About a year ago, he returned from a job as kitchen manager at the Studio Diner in San Diego, Calif.

To be sure, winning at pizza is no easy task in this area, where so many quality pizzerias exist.

The Junction’s recipe for success has had a way of finding them after all these years.

Start with 39 years’ experience serving quality food and add an online store now shipping pizzas all over the country each week. Simmer it all down to 200 satisfied customers who wrote to Food Network executives last year and, the result: Viewers far and wide get to savor the result.

Beef on Weck, stuffed peppers and other Buffalo-area favorites were presented to cable viewers across the country, as themes of several of the restaurant’s award-winning pizzas.

“There was a tremendous amount of support from the local crowd,” said Sean Wilczak, a stakeholder in the business. “They called on us, we entertained the invite for them to come here and this is what it led to,” he said.

In all, about 29 hours of filming in and around the restaurant was condensed down to the roughly 10 minutes aired Monday.

Producers have said business often spikes as much as 300 percent at eateries featured on the show.

“One of the producers said a little bit on the lower side but right up there,” Wilczak said. “It might be a person in West Seneca or it might be a person in Toronto who never heard of us. It’s great advertisement.”

But the business has already begun expanding.

Fleckenstein said the idea to start taking pizza orders online at www.thepizzajunction.com started when a friend asked him almost a decade ago to consider the idea, already a common practice by other Buffalo favorites like LaNova and the Anchor Bar. A flash freezing technique is used to help the food make the trip, sometimes thousands of miles.

“I said, well, I guess I could and it just took off from there. We’re shipping approximately 30 orders a week, which is up from before where we shipped about 30 orders a month,” he said.

Wilczak said a sheet recently went as far as El Segundo, Calif., using the flash freeze process.

“The guy said it tasted like it came from just down the road,” he said.

Aside from that innovation, there’s a menu that’s evolving as well.

Former waitress Shirley Hauck said Pizza Junction was always known for stingers, wings and pizza, but that she remembers it was the pear salad, of all things, that was flying out the door one summer a year ago.

Though she admitted it was the chicken wings she loved most, the salad, with it’s refined gorgonzola and candied walnuts atop baby greens goes a long way to describe culinary feats not always synonymous with Western New York, but loved all the same.

Former North Tonawanda Mayor Larry Soos and his former secretary Gregg Schnitzer, Council members Eric Zadzilka and Nancy Donovan were present to help celebrate a local success story.

“I think it’s great any time we can promote any kind of local business and it comes out on a national scene,” Soos said as he sat eating with family and friends. “The more the better.”

Soos, for years owner of Soos’ Cafe on Oliver Street, said the culinary tradition throughout the Buffalo area extends beyond the pizza and wings it’s famous for.

“I think people on the outside should realize we have some great diversity in this area, ethnic diversity, especially in the food business,” he said.

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.