Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [209]
Olde Towne Restaurant
126 N. Main St.
316–947–5446
Hillsboro, KS
BL Tues–Sat. D Fri & Sat, Sun supper | $$
In a big old limestone building on Main Street in downtown Hillsboro, Olde Towne Restaurant really is olde! Located in what was built in 1887 as the town’s bank (with a vault in the basement), it served for many years as an egg factory where women candled, sorted, and crated eggs. Lower-story décor includes vintage egg crates made of wood as well as antique farm implements and a mural of old Hillsboro showing the great yellow bank building.
Olde Towne is the one nice restaurant in Hillsboro, and so it has a menu with something for everyone, from sandwiches, soups, and hamburgers every day at lunch to an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet on Friday nights and a Saturday night Low German smorgasbord. Hillsboro is the heart of America’s Mennonite community, and many of today’s three thousand citizens descended from Germans who came to the USA (some via Russia). One of those who upholds the culinary heritage is Linden Thiessen, proprietor of Olde Towne Restaurant, and a man who makes a point of serving such melting-pot dishes as verenika (cottage cheese dumplings), zwiebach bread, and beet borscht as well as locally made German whole-hog sausage and slow-smoked beef brisket reminiscent of Texas Hill Country cuisine (where many of the original settlers were German). Dessert measures up to grandmotherly standards and includes an array of cream pies, bumbleberry pie, hot fruit cobbler, and elegant cream puffs.
Porubsky’s Grocery
508 N.E. Sardou Ave.
785–234–5788
Topeka, KS
L Mon–Thurs | $
For a half a century, customers have been coming to the dining room at the side of Porubsky’s Grocery store to eat cold-cut sandwiches and chili (the latter during cold-weather chili season only—October to March). Curiously, no coffee is served for the simple reason that this is an eat-it-and-beat-it type of establishment where few midday customers have long lunch hours to while away sipping coffee. Regulars include a large blue-collar crowd as well as Kansas politicians and other public figures whose autographed pictures, inscribed with praises of the place and the family who has run it since 1950, line the walls.
The sandwiches are fine, but it’s the extras that make lunch worth a detour off Highway 70. The most famous of the extras are Porubsky’s pickles. These big, firm disks, which start as dills but are then infused with horseradish, mustard, and hot peppers, are guaranteed to snap your taste buds to attention. They are a favorite complement, along with crumbled saltine crackers, atop a bowl of Porubsky’s chili.
Note: Lunch is served only Monday through Thursday. The Porubsky family likes to keep the store aisles clear on Friday and Saturday to make way for deliveries as well as for local residents who come to shop for groceries.
Nevada
Louis’s Basque Corner
301 E. 4th St.
775–323–7203
Reno, NV
LD | $$
We ate at Louis’s Basque Corner on our first trip across the USA in the early 1970s. At the time, Louis’s was only about five years old—Mr. and Mrs. Louis Erreguible, who had only recently come to Reno from southwestern France, were ebullient hosts in their new-world dining room. After supper, we walked out utterly inspired, thinking that someone really ought to be writing about marvelous local restaurants in unlikely places across the country. We’ve been writing about such restaurants ever since, and Louis’s Basque Corner continues to serve what Mrs. Erreguible described long ago as “simple food cooked to perfection.”
By average-American-meal standards, the food at Louis’s is far from simple. What you eat at the long, family-style tables are copious feasts that start with soup, salad, bread, and beans, then move on to a plate of beef tongue, paella, oxtails, lamb stew, or Basque chicken. That’s the first course! After that comes the serious eating: an entree of sirloin