Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [168]
If you are far away and seriously crave this superb, super ice cream (as is the case for many St. Louis expatriates), Ted Drewes is equipped with dry ice to mail-order its custard anywhere you need it.
Ohio
Al’s Corner Restaurant
545 W. Tuscarawas Ave.
330–475–7978
Barberton, OH
L Mon–Fri | $
Cruising around a strange town or city, whether or not we find a place to eat, we often wonder about great restaurants that we may not have noticed and blithely drove past. That might have been the case in Barberton, for Al’s Corner Restaurant doesn’t look too intriguing from the outside and we had Barberton chicken on our minds. But we were guided here by infallible Akron food authority, Jane Snow, and the moment we walked in, we knew we had hit Roadfood paydirt.
The immaculate storefront luncheonette, open only for weekday lunch, is a treasure-trove of blue-plate Hungarian meals at blue-collar prices. Service is cafeteria-style. Step to the right when you enter where one of the servers will show you what’s to eat, put it on a plate, and then a tray. Dine either at a table or the long U-shaped counter in the center of the room.
Lunch specials, at well under $10 each, include the likes of chicken paprikash with dumplings, pierogies, cabbage and dumplings, and Al’s sausages. The sausages are made down the street at Al’s Quality Market, and they are stupendously delicious: taut, muscular, and oozing savory juices. Jane, whose father was a Hungarian epicure and taught her well, declared the paprikash to be one of the best she ever ate: creamy with a real paprika punch, the chicken falling-off-its-bone tender. The only problem we had was deciding which starch to eat more of: the dumplings are buttery and satisfying; the mashed potatoes are…buttery and satisfying, too!
Balyeat’s Coffee Shop
131 E. Main St.
419–238–1580
Van Wert, OH
BLD (closed Mon) | $
Outside, a lovely neon sign advertises “Young Fried Chicken Day and Night.” Good as the chicken is, it is just the lead item on a menu that is an honor roll of mid-America square meals. Balyeat’s is the place to sit down for a plate of roast pork or roast beef, cooked that morning, served hot and large, with piles of mashed potatoes and gravy. Sauerkraut and sausage is on the menu every day but Friday, and you can usually count on a choice from among barbecued ribs, meat loaf, and liver and onions. If mashed potatoes don’t ring your chimes, how about the fine alternative, escalloped potatoes?
Ahh, dessert! Pie is king in this part of the world, and Balyeat’s pies are pastries to behold. There are cream pies, fruit pies, custard pies, and pecan pie, but our personal favorite is the one known as “old-fashioned pie” (OF pie). It is like custard, but tawnier, and with a sort of layered effect that happens as its cream rises to the top. It is pure, simple culinary synecdoche for Balyeat’s Coffee Shop.
Blue Ash Chili
9565 Kenwood Rd.
513–984–6107
Blue Ash, OH
LD | $
The way to order chili in Cincinnati is to build a plate, layer by layer. It is, for instance, possible to order merely a dish of spaghetti (traditionally, the bottom layer) or a bowl of chili (the meat sauce that usually goes atop the spaghetti. You can get a dish of only chili and spaghetti, or you can get a three-way (chili, spaghetti, and cheese), four-way (chili, spaghetti, cheese, and raw onions), or five-way (add beans). You can even get a five-way, hold the onions, extra cheese. The possibilities are nearly endless, all the way up to what the menu lists as a gallon of chili (to go, we assume!) for $20.
A layered plate of three-to five-way is a beautiful thing. The chili meat is dark and resonant, not too spicy but with complex character, and the spaghetti noodles are always fork-friendly: not overly long, and squiggly enough that they stay on the tines of a fork with virtually no slippage.
Good as the chili is at Blue Ash, we think of this Naugahyde-and-linoleum eat-place