Road Tips

Casa! Ristorante - Fort Wayne, IN

Out in Fort Wayne for a day-long seminar with our biggest account, we had invited a recording studio mastering engineer from Nashville to help out with the presentation.  After finishing the seminar, packing up and getting everything ready to ship back to our warehouse, I said it was time for a beer and some food.  Both my colleague from Montreal and our friend from Nashville were up for that.  Since my colleague is a vegetarian, he's always up for pasta and I remembered a place that we had passed a couple nights previously that I wanted to try out.  That evening we went to Casa! Ristorante.  

Tom Casaburo grew up in Highland, NY, located just across the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie, about halfway between New York City and Albany.  After high school, Casaburo joined the Marines and had a 3-year stint in the armed forces.  After getting out of the Marines, Casaburo enrolled at Saint Peters College (now Saint Peters University) in Jersey City, NJ on the GI Bill and got his English degree.  Soon after he got out of college, Casaburo joined the FBI and was sent to Fort Wayne in 1968.  In 1972, Casaburo was hired as Fort Wayne's first Director of Public Safety, a post he held until 1976.

It was a chance meeting at a local bar with St. Louis-native Jimmy D'Angelo where Casaburo started to get an idea about opening an Italian restaurant in Fort Wayne.  It turned out that D'Angelo's cousins Vince and Joe Cunetto ran an Italian restaurant in St. Louis - Cunetto House of Pasta - using recipes handed down by their maternal grandmother who was also Jimmy D'Angelo's grandmother.  

After Casaburo resigned as the public safety director, Casaburo and Jimmy D (as he was known) went to St. Louis to learn the recipes from D'Angelo's cousins.  After immersing themselves in the kitchen and learning the made-from-scratch recipes from Grandma D'Angelo, the two went back to Fort Wayne to open their restaurant.  Casa Ristorante Italiano opened on Coldwater Road in 1977 and it was an immediate hit with the local populace.  

Pictured right - Tom Casaburo, Sr.  Photo courtesy Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

A second Casa location opened on Fairfield Road in 1980.  It was considered the flagship location for the Casa Restaurant Group in the early 80's.  The original Coldwater Road location closed and moved to a new spot on Parnell Ave. in the late 80's just across from Memorial Coliseum.  The Fairfield Road location closed in the early 90's, but was replaced by the restaurant on W. Jefferson in 1993.    

In 1993, Jimmy D decided to retire and Casaburo bought his shares.  Casaburo's sons - Tom, Jr. (known as T) and Jim started working at the restaurants as pre-teens, both busing tables and helping with kitchen prep.  In 1996, the Casaburo family opened their third restaurant on Fort Wayne's north side in 1996, and a fourth location opened on the northeast side of the city in 2002.  When Tom Casaburo, Sr. and his wife, Sharon, decided to retire to Florida, the two sons took over the business with Jim designated as the managing partner. 

It was the W. Jefferson location that we went to that evening.  Located on the main road into the heart of Fort Wayne from the southwest side of the city, it was about a five minute drive from our hotel.  (see map).  Going into the restaurant, we were greeted by someone at the host counter near the front door.  The man asked if we wanted to sit in the lounge.  It was a pretty big lounge with a three-sided bar.  Had I been dining by myself, I would have probably sat at the bar.  But the lounge was pretty busy and we decided to take a table in the dining room. 

On the way back to the dining room, we passed a large brick oven they've used since the early 90's to make their wood-fired pizzas.  The tile work and cowling on the brick oven was similar to the front of the fireplace in the lounge.   

We were led back to a table in the dining room.  The dining area was brightly lit with colorful paintings of old Italy on the walls.  A large flower decoration was the centerpiece of the room.  

After we were seated, we were given menus to look through.  And after a bit our server for the evening - Adreyn  - came by to greet us.  He asked if we had been to Casa! before and we told him that we were from out of town.  He asked where and I pointed at my colleague and said, "Montreal."  Then pointed at our friend and said, "Nashville."  And then I said, "And I'm from Iowa."

Adreyn perked up.  "Where in Iowa?"  I told him that I was from Davenport.  He said, "I grew up in Clear Lake!"  When I told him that I grew up in Newton, he was even more surprised.  Adreyn turned out to be a great guy and was really attentive and helpful during our visit.  

It was a pretty full menu in terms of pasta, sandwiches, appetizers, salads, and entrees such as rotisserie grilled pork chops, a grilled salmon filet, chicken parm, and filet tips kabobs.  But in terms of beer and wine offerings, it was a pretty short list.  There wasn't a lot of craft beers on the menu, but they did have Peroni on tap.  Each of us signed up for one each.  Later in the evening, I got a glass of the Catena Malbec they had available.  

None of us had eaten lunch, so we were pretty hungry.  I let my colleague and our friend pick what they wanted to start out with for appetizers.  My colleague got the bruschetta - it turned out to be a "construct-your-own" style of bruschetta.  A plate of toasted baguette slices was brought to the table with a cup of chopped tomatoes and basil leaves mixed with olive oil.  I thought it was a bit strange, but went along with it.  I thought the bread with the tomatoes and basil were very good, but my colleague - who I've found during our time together is a bit of a bread snob - didn't care for the bread.  (He makes his own bread at home.)

But after having what our friend ordered, I didn't worry about the bruschetta.  He ordered the garlic knots - bread dough tied into small knots, then deep-fried and served in a bowl of garlic butter topped with Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley.  These were outstanding and very decadent in terms of being a healthy choice.  I had 3 of the garlic knots and completely forgot about the bruschetta to my left.  

They had a lot of choices for pasta dishes including baked pasta dishes such as eggplant Parmagiano, lasagna, and large pasta shells stuffed with a combination of three different types of cheese.  Regular pasta dishes included a fettuccine alfredo, meat-filled tortellini in an herb-butter sauce, penne pasta with sausage and pepperoni slices, and a seafood linguine.  One of the specials that evening was a spinach fettuccine in a cream sauce.  I could add chicken or shrimp to the dish.  I seriously considered that.

Our friend went with the penne bianco - it featured Italian sausage, mushrooms and spinach mixed with penne pasta in a Parmesan cream cheese sauce, then topped with provolone and mozzarella cheeses and baked.  When Adreyn put the dish in front of our friend, he exclaimed, "Oh, man!  That's a lot of food!  How am I going to finish all this?"  

He certainly made a dent in the dish, though.  He said it was extremely rich with the creamy Parmesan sauce and the provolone and mozzarella cheese on top of the penne pasta mixture.  But he also said that it was very delicious.  When he threw in the towel, Adreyn asked if he wanted a to-go box.  Our friend said that he didn't think it would travel very well back to Nashville.    

My colleague was happy to see that Casa! Ristorante had a significant vegetarian part of the menu including spinach lasagna, cheese-stuffed ravioli, pasta and marinara sauce, and cavatelli pasta with mushrooms and a choice of another vegetable. He thought about getting the pasta primavera, but he ended up ordering the risotto Alberto, sans the grilled chicken breast that came with the dish.  It featured wild mushrooms, zucchini, yellow onions and asparagus simmered in a rich stock, then mixed with arborio rice in a creamy white wine sauce and Parmesan cheese.  He thought it was good - not great - but he was happy that he got it.    

I was in somewhat of a quandary.  I really thought about the spinach fettuccine special they had that night.  The fettuccine carbonara was also interesting to me, as was the meat-stuffed ravioli.  And the meat-filled tortellini was another thing that I was thinking hard about.

When Adreyn came to me to give him my order, I was stuck.  "All good choices," he said after I told him what I was looking at.  "Let me suggest something that's one of our more popular dishes."  He then told me about the Lasagna Carne Amante.  "It's sort of like a 'meat-lovers' lasagna," he told me.  It was a large block of their lasagna only with Italian sausage, pepperoni, prosciutto and sliced meatballs.  It's topped with their house meat sauce and a cheese blend before it's baked in the oven.  I thought, "OK - that sounds like a challenge!"  

The meat-overload lasagna was just that - thick chunks of Italian sausage and sliced meatballs, spicy pepperoni slices, and thin-sliced imported prosciutto mixed in with lasagna noodles, a thick layer of cheese and a thick and hearty meat sauce.  It was just a lot of food.  I was able to finish just over half of the chunk of lasagna in the dish before I declared I was done.  Adreyn also asked me if I wanted to take what was left with me.  Had I lived locally, I probably would have.  But A) I wasn't certain a to-go box would fit in my hotel refrigerator; and B) I had a 5 hour drive back to Iowa the next day and I didn't have anything that I could keep it cool in.  

My colleague from Montreal was sort of neutral about Casa! Ristorante.  We had gone to another Italian restaurant in Fort Wayne - Salvatori's - last year and he seemed to favor that place over the other ones we had been to on subsequent visits to Fort Wayne.  But I thought what I had at Casa! Ristorante was very good, and our friend from Memphis thought what he was also way above par.  I can't say enough about our service from Adreyn that evening - friendly, efficient, just a great guy all around.  While my colleague might not want to go back to Casa! Ristorante any time soon, I'd have no problem heading back there on a future visit to Fort Wayne.  

Zianos Italian Eatery - Fort Wayne, IN

During a trip back out to Fort Wayne to do a couple days of seminars for our largest account, my colleague from Montreal wanted to go out for some Italian food.  We had gone to Salvatori's, an Italian restaurant with six locations in and around Fort Wayne, on a previous visit.  (Click here to see the Road Tips review on Salvatori's.)  I suggested we take a look at some other Italian restaurants around the area.  I found a couple that weren't too far from our hotel and I did a mental coin-flip and settled on a place called Zianos Italian Eatery for dinner that evening.  

George Rongos grew up in the small village of Polykerasos, Greece and immigrated to the U.S. in 1954.  He ended up in Fort Wayne where relatives from Greece had moved to years before.  George was 18 when he got to the U.S. and couldn't speak English.  On top of that, George wasn't properly schooled in his home country and couldn't read or write in his native Greek language.  

Less than a year after George got to Fort Wayne, he got a job at a steel mill that was just west of the downtown area of the city.  George willed himself to learn how to speak, read and write the English language and turned out to be a quick learner.  In 1965, he married a Greek girl - Eleni - who had also immigrated to the U.S.

Just across from the steel plant was a small grocery store - Joe's Grocery.  George would go into Joe's Grocery on a regular basis and would half-jokingly say that he was going to own the place one day.  When Joe died in 1985, his widow wanted to sell the business.  By this time George Rongos had over 30 years in at the steel plant and was eligible for retirement.  George and Eleni bought the grocery store with an eye on changing a few things up.  

George and Eleni were frustrated that a grocery store in Fort Wayne didn't have some of the basics needed for traditional Greek cuisine.  They would go to Chicago to buy the foods and ingredients for the recipes Eleni had brought from Greece.  But they also realized that there wasn't a place that offered ingredients for Mexican food, for Middle Eastern food, for Eastern European food, and for Northern Africa cuisine - cultures that had settled in Fort Wayne in the 1950's, 60's, 70's and into the 80's.  

George would go to food purveyors in Chicago and buy all different types of international foods for his clientele.  If someone would come in and ask for something, George would do some investigating and would find a distributor who sold the item.  George's Grocery eventually turned into George's International Market.  

Pictured right - Eleni and George Rongos.  Photo courtesy Salsa Grille Facebook page.  

Eleni and George had five children - Judy, Mike, Jimmy, Chris and Jerry.  All five children worked in the grocery store growing up with the parents instilling an ethic of hard work and attention to detail into each of their kids.  When George and Eleni decided to retire from the business in 1997, Chris and Jerry Rongos took over the business from their parents.  That same year, George's International Market moved to its present day location just south of downtown Fort Wayne.  (Chris and Jerry Rongos eventually opened a fast casual Mexican restaurant - Salsa Grille - attached to the grocery store.  Using ingredients sourced from George's International Market and making their own line of various salsa, Salsa Grille became a popular destination.  There are now five Salsa Grille locations in the greater Fort Wayne area.)  

Jimmy Rongos got into the property investment business and became a partner in Liddell Investments, a Fort Wayne-based property management firm.  Some of the properties Liddell Investments owned were restaurants and night clubs.   In 2009, Jimmy took the plunge into the restaurant world opening Zianos Italian Eatery.  The restaurant became a local favorite for their family-friendly offerings at an affordable price.  Today there are three Zianos Italian Eateries around Fort Wayne.

The original one is on Covington Road on the city's southwest side.  This is the one that my colleague and I ended up when we went to Zianos for dinner.  (see map)  It's located on the corner of a strip mall just off Jefferson Ave, the main road into central Fort Wayne from that side of town.  It's not a big place on the inside and pretty generic looking in terms of the overall atmosphere.   We noticed a lot of people coming in to pick up "to-go" orders, including pizza.  The place seemed to be popular with families.  

We took a seat at a table on one side of the restaurant.  Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Abbi.  After leaving us a couple menus, she came out a big later with a plate of complementary bruschetta for the table.  We both ordered a couple Peroni beers they had on tap to start out.  The bruschetta was very good and a nice start to our experience at Zianos.  

Looking through the menu, I was sort of taken aback by the pricing.  Not that it was outrageous, just the opposite.  It appeared to be a great value up and down the menu.  Appetizers such as baked ravioli, meatballs with mozzarella and marinara sauce, and garlic cheese bread were all under $7.00.  A small house salad was $2.99, pizzas started out at $10.49 for a 10" size, entrees such as chicken marsala, tilapia Florentine, and fettuccine alfredo with shrimp were all priced under $15.00, and pasta dishes such as spaghetti & meatballs, Fontanini sausage and peppers with penne pasta, and lasagna were all under $11.00.  And each night during the week there's a special meal offered that comes with a meal for $9.49.  No wonder it was a popular place for families!  

My colleague is vegetarian and Zianos had a handful of options on the menu including the pasta primavera shown below.  It was served to him piping hot as you can easily see the steam rising from the plate.  It featured a mixture of fresh broccoli, cauliflower and mushrooms with penne pasta in a white wine butter sauce.  My buddy said that the veggies were cooked perfectly with a bit of a crunch and weren't mushy at all.  He said his meal was a spot-hitter.  

I ended up getting the meat (ground pork/beef) filled ravioli topped with a marinara sauce.  Along with the meal, I got a glass of the Seaglass Pinot Noir.  Grated parmesan and fresh herbs were sprinkled on the top.  I didn't really expect much from the looks of the dish, but from the first bite all apprehension went out the window.  The marinara sauce was tangy and a bit sweet, the pillowy ravioli were easy to cut and the meat inside the ravioli had a great flavor.  I was more than impressed with what I ordered and how well it tasted.  

And on top of that, it was all a great value!  Two beers, a glass of wine and two pasta dinners set us back just under $60 bucks with taxes and a nice tip for Abbi who was on top of things for us during our visit.  It's no wonder families gravitate toward Zianos Italian Eatery because of the great value of the food they serve.  The place is a little generic in atmosphere, but the food more than makes up for the bland surroundings.  We were both more than happy with what we got and did I mention that Zianos was a great value?  That's something you don't exactly see in restaurants these days.  

Black Dog Pub - Fort Wayne, IN

My colleague from Montreal and I were out in Fort Wayne earlier this year to do some training sessions and we had spent a good portion of the day setting up for the trainings.  We had some running around to do to pick up some items that we would need for the presentations and to ship the products back to our warehouse in Montreal after we finished the next evening.  My colleague is a vegetarian and I have to be cognoscente of his dietary needs when we're together.  But it turns out that he can pretty much find something on the menu at any place we go to.  After our last stop, it turned out there was an Irish pub not too far away from us.  A beer and a bite of food sounded good for the both of us, so we drove a short way to the Black Dog Pub.

Brothers and restaurant veterans Jeff and Dave Hamilton established the Black Dog Pub in 2002 and it quickly became a neighborhood favorite for people living on Fort Wayne's west side.  The restaurant is located in a strip mall near the corner of W. Covington Rd. and Getz Rd., not far from where Getz and W. Jefferson Rd meets up.  (see map)  

We were able to find a parking spot just down from the Black Dog Pub in the lot for the strip mall.  There was a shaded patio area in front of the brick facade building, but it was a very hot day and there was no way that we'd want to be seated outside.

There appeared to be two doors into the Black Dog Pub and we took the one on the right.  That took us into the lounge area.  It featured a bar on one side of a well lit room with green and white checkerboard tile on the floor.  The opposite side of the bar featured some booths and high-top tables.  The bar area was an interesting mix of blue collar workers, duffers just off the golf course, older people enjoying an early evening drink and young ladies who looked like they just came from the office.

We found the last booth that was open in the dining room next to the bar.  The dining room was also well lit and had a faux brick wall on one side with flatscreen televisions on the walls.  My colleague was keen to watch some of the replay of the Euro 2024 soccer match from earlier in the day that they had up on one of the screens in the bar.   He was able to get someone to turn the channel to the game on one of the televisions near where we were seated.

Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Ciera.  She dropped off a couple food menus for us to look over and there was a beer menu on the wall.  They had about 20 different beers and ciders on tap at Black Dog Pub.  I wanted to get one of the hazy IPA's they had listed from a brewery in Indianapolis.  Ciera went and checked on that and she said that they were out of that beer.  I then asked about the IPA that GnomeTown Brewery in downtown Fort Wayne makes for them.  Well, they were out of that!  I ended up cutting my losses and got a pint of the Two Hearted India pale ale from Bell's Brewery out of Kalamazoo, MI.  My buddy ended up getting the same thing.  

The menu at Black Dog Pub isn't all that dissimilar to other pub-style restaurants.  Appetizers, soups and salads, sandwiches, burgers, wraps and entrees such as ribs and an 8 ounce beef tenderloin filet were prevalent on the menu.  They also had pizza and calzones on the menu, as well as submarine sandwiches.  

My colleague went with the Beyond Burger with a plant-based patty that I've actually wanted to try at some point (but have been too chicken to order).  He said that the Beyond Burger's are pretty good, but he doesn't get them all the time because of how highly processed they are.  "Even though they are vegetarian, they aren't all that good for you if you have one more than once a week," he said.  The things I learn from a vegetarian.  

I had seen a pizza going out to another table and that's what I ended up getting - a small (10") thin-crust with sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms. I'd had a big salad for lunch earlier in the day and this was really all I needed to eat.  It was a tad overcooked and there was a dearth of sauce on the pizza, but other than that it was fine.  Not the best I've had, but it was still good.   

The Black Dog Pub was fine for what it was.  My old neighbor would have probably hated the place because he's the kind of guy (full Irish) who rails against restaurants or bars who go into a strip mall, put up an Irish flag in the corner, and call themselves and Irish pub.  And in this case, he's probably right.  About the only authentic - or near authentic - thing they had on the food menu was fish and chips.  No shepard's pie, no bangers & mash, no corned beef & cabbage - none of that was found on the menu at Black Dog Pub.  But what they did have to offer was fine for pub fare.  It worked for us that evening.  

Rise 'n Roll - Fort Wayne, IN

We were doing some training at our account in Fort Wayne recently and my colleague suggested that we go get some donuts for the staff.  One of our former colleagues used to bring donuts in for the staff when he called on them years ago.  I texted him and said, "What's the name of that place that had the good donuts here in Fort Wayne?"  Seconds later, he texted back, "Rise 'n Roll."  I had just driven by Rise 'n Roll earlier that day and I noticed the sign on the front of their building.  The next morning, we went over to Rise 'n Roll to pick up a bunch of donuts.  

Orvin and Viola Bontrager ran a cedar cabinet shop in Shipshewana. a small Amish community in far northern Indiana about 20 miles from Elkhart.  Viola had a family recipe for donuts that had been passed down through generations which included a cinnamon/sugar donut and a caramel-frosted donut.  Orvin asked Viola, "Why don't we combine the two?"  The cinnamon/sugar-caramel donut was born and Viola began to sell them and other baked goods from her front porch in Shipshewana in 2001.  

It wasn't long before word of Viola's amazing donuts and baked goods got out and people flocked to her house to buy up all the donuts and pastries she had to offer.  They moved their baking operation to the basement of the cabinet shop which didn't have electricity or refrigeration.  Everything was made by hand including mixing the ingredients - made with no preservatives, cutting the donuts and storing them on racks that would be sold later in the day.  

Business got so good that the Bontragers were forced to move to a baking/retail facility about 7 miles away in Middlebury, IN in 2004.  That facility also did not have electricity, gas or any modern technology and no preservatives were included in the recipes that expanded to candy crunch, apple fritters and peanut butter-filled danish.  Busloads of tourists would converge on the Rise 'n Roll location in Middlebury on any given day.  

In 2009, a non-Amish family made the Bontragers an offer they couldn't refuse and purchased Rise 'n Roll with an eye on expanding the business via franchising.  The new owners kept Orvin Bontrager on the payroll as the company's quality control director.  

The first thing the new owners did was to build a bigger bakery outside of Middlebury along US Highway 20.  This facility brought Rise 'n Roll into the modern world with industrial mixers, large refrigeration units, and a donut maker that pushed the donut rolls out rather than having them hand cut.  The consistency of the donuts changed, but Bontrager made sure that the recipes were tweaked to carry on the traditional Amish flavors that made the Rise 'n Roll donuts so famous - still without using preservatives!

To get the word out, Rise 'n Roll and started to do pop-up shops in South Bend, Chicago and Indianapolis.  The cinnamon/sugar-caramel donuts were by far the favorites of people in the urban areas and they quickly gained the nickname of "Amish Crack" donuts.  Of course, the people involved with Rise 'n Roll didn't like the term for their delicious donuts, but decided that they couldn't really do anything about it.  

In the spring of 2016, Orvin Bontrager left Rise 'n Roll and along with his wife and another lady they opened an Amish gift shop - Rise 'n Shine - located about a mile-and-a-half north of Rise 'n Roll.  The ownership group for Rise 'n Roll used a corporate headhunter to find their next director of the bakery and found him in Russ Crawford, a graduate of the baking sciences program at Kansas State University and the American Institute of Baking.  

After a stint working for Donut (Doughnut) Corporation of America - the company who made the mixes for chains such as Krispy Kreme, Donutland, and Dunkin' Donuts - Crawford was overseeing the operations of the bakery and deli locations for a chain of grocery stores in North Carolina.  When the opportunity to come to Indiana to work for a real bakery came about, Crawford didn't hesitate.  Rise 'n Roll had grown to a 20,000 square foot bakery with over 60 Amish or Mennonite workers cranking out donuts, pastries and candy crunch pouches starting at 12:30 a.m. six days a week.  Crawford was instrumental in coming up with new mixtures and toppings for the donuts and pastries.  

Rise 'n Roll franchises began to pop up around the state of Indiana with Phil Reiman opening the first Fort Wayne Rise 'n Roll location in the late summer of 2014.  The Rise 'n Roll bakery would bake the donuts and pastries in the early morning hours and trucks would deliver them to the franchises in places as far away as Indianapolis, nearly 3 hours from Middlebury.  Most of the franchises offered baked goods and Amish-made gifts and crafts, while others offered deli sandwiches for breakfast and lunch.  Today, there are 15 Rise 'n Roll locations mainly around northern Indiana.  

We pulled up to the Rise 'n Roll location on West Illinois Road west of downtown Fort Wayne around 8:00 a.m.  (see map)  (There is a second Fort Wayne Rise 'n Roll on the city's far north side.)  I didn't really know the drill about getting donuts and I tried to see if I could order in advance on their web site, but it didn't give me the option.  It turned out that I didn't have to worry about that as there was no line to get donuts.  

There were three ladies - all cheery and effervescent in their demeanor - behind the counter that day.  My colleague had eaten the "Amish Crack" donuts before and said that our former colleague would just get nothing but the cinnamon sugar/caramel donuts.  But looking through the case, I saw a lot more donuts that I wanted to try.  

They had a lemon cake donut, a blueberry cake donut, powered sugar donuts, caramel frosted donuts, maple bars, caramel frosted creme-filled danish, and other assorted donuts and pastries that looked delicious.  My mouth was watering just looking at all the fresh baked goods they had to offer.

I figured we were going to get about 75 to 80 guys to come to our training sessions and I knew that not all would be walking in early in the day.   Still, it's tough to say "no" to a good donut at any part of the day.  I ended up asking the ladies to give us an assortment of 5 dozen donuts.  We took a dozen and a half of the cinnamon sugar/caramel donuts, but had the ladies pick out three-and-a-half more dozen donuts including the caramel frosted donuts, the lemon cake donuts and some of the frosted bars.  My colleague fancied the powered sugar donuts and we got three of those.  All in all, we walked out with about $85 bucks worth of donuts, pastries and other baked goods.

We had a couple folding tables in our training room and I used one to put the donuts on.  I had to have one of the caramel frosted donuts to start out.  Oh, my GOD - it was one of the best donuts I ever had!  The caramel frosting was sweet and smooth, and the donut was light, airy and almost melted in my mouth.

I knew that if I had another donut, I might have gone into a sugar coma.  As people started to come in for the training sessions, more and more of the donuts started to disappear.  Then, some genius came in with a plastic knife and cut one of the caramel frosted donuts in half.  What a great idea!  I didn't have to eat a full donut - I could cut off portions and try them that way!

I did that with the lemon cake donut and the blueberry cake donut.  Both were very good with a bit of a crunchy outer shell.  I wondered why Rise 'n Roll didn't combine the lemon and blueberry cake donut together.  

Of course, I had to try some of the cinnamon sugar/caramel "crack donuts".  Now, a couple bites of that almost sent me over the edge.  I swear that I started to get hives on my arms because I was having a reaction to the sugar overload I was experiencing.  The donuts were very delicious and almost sinful to eat.  

As the day wore on, I noticed something - nearly all the other types of donuts other than the cinnamon/sugar and caramel donuts were gone.  At one point, all we had left were 10 of the "crack donuts" (out of 18 that we originally got) and two of the three powered sugar donuts that my colleague had requested.   He looked at the box with the remaining donuts, sort of laughed and said, "I guess I was the only one who likes the white donuts!"  We surmised that these guys probably have access to the cinnamon/sugar and caramel donuts all the time from other people bringing them in for trainings that they wanted to try other flavors.  

At the end of the day, we had 3 of the "Amish Crack" donuts left.  My colleague offered them to the crew that was sent in to help us tear down and pack up our equipment.  The two young ladies and the young guy on the crew were more than eager to finish off the remaining donuts - even at 4 p.m. in the afternoon.  My colleague said, "Wow, man!  When you ordered five dozen donuts, I was like, 'Really?  Five dozen?'  But you were almost spot on!"  

The Urban Dictionary has an entry for Rise 'n Roll's cinnamon/sugar and caramel donuts - "Amish Crack".  It's a name that Rise 'n Roll's ownership/management group has embraced as a loving tribute by their fans and customers.  While the cinnamon/sugar and caramel donuts could be called addicting, it turns out that Rise 'n Roll has so much more in terms of donuts, pastries and other baked goods that I think surpass and possibly eclipse the "Amish Crack" donuts.  Now that I know about the allure of Rise 'n Roll, I'm sure I'll be stopping by again and again on trips out to Fort Wayne.  

 

Salvatori's - Fort Wayne, IN

My colleague from Canada and I were in Fort Wayne last year for some trainings at our large account there.  He's a vegetarian and I try to be mindful of that when we're together.  But since we've worked with one another pretty closely for over a year now, I've found that many restaurants have vegetarian options in their menus - especially Italian restaurants.  He told me one time that he eats quite a bit of pasta when he's at home because it's quick to make and you can add vegetables to it pretty easily.  I was in the mood for Italian food and he heartily agreed.  We ended up going to Salvatori's on the far west side of Fort Wayne.  

If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know that I don't like to go to national chains, but I will try regional chains if they're concentrated in one area.  And that's the case with Salvatori's.  It turned out that there are now six Salvatori's in northeast Indiana with the first one started in the Fort Wayne suburb of New Haven in 2006.  

Sam Leto III came from a family who introduced pizza and other Italian dishes to Fort Wayne when his Italian immigrant grandfather opened Leto's Pizza in the mid-60's.  Sam Leto III's father Salvatori, Jr. - also known as Sam, Jr. -  became a Fort Wayne policeman working his way up to deputy chief of the force.  While law enforcement was his life,  Sam, Jr. still harbored a dream of having his own pizza place after he retired.  That dream came true in 1984 as he opened Sam's Place not long after he retired from the force.  However, an illness forced him to sell the business in 1985 and in the spring of 1986 Sam Leto, Jr. passed away.  

Sam Leto III got into the restaurant business on his own when he opened the Mid City Grill in downtown Fort Wayne.  But he wanted to pay homage to his father and grandfather as he had a stack of family recipes that were handed down from his Italian ancestors.  In November of 2006, Leto opened Salvatori's on the far east side of Fort Wayne in New Haven.  A second location on the southwest side of Fort Wayne opened in July of 2012.  

Sam Leto III and his wife Angelina continued to run the two locations of Salvatori's until they sold the restaurant to Panos Bourounis and Alex Valdez in December of 2018.  Bourounis was already a restaurateur owning the popular Cosmos House of Pancakes in Fort Wayne for over 20 years.  Valdez had stints working in Italian restaurants during his career.  

Under Bourounis and Valdez, Salvatori's has expanded to six locations - a 3rd location opened in the town of Auburn, IN just north of Fort Wayne during the height of the pandemic in 2020.  The 4th Salvatori's - this one on the north side of Fort Wayne - opened in March of 2021; and the 5th location opened on the far northeast side of Fort Wayne in April of 2022.  And in May of last year, the 6th Salvatori's opened in Warsaw, IN about 40 miles west of Fort Wayne.  Prior to the opening of the Warsaw location, Jeremy McClain joined Bourounis and Valdez as a partner.  

It was about a 10 minute drive from our hotel to the Salvatori's on West Illinois Road.  (see map)  Salvatori's calls this their Southwest Fort Wayne location, but - to me - if I look at the location on a map, it's more due west from downtown Fort Wayne than southwest.  Since it's located in a strip mall, there's plenty of parking for Salvatori's, a Mexican restaurant next to Salvatori's, and the other businesses in the mall.  

Going inside Salvatori's, we found a large dining area up front.  It featured a vaulted ceiling with faux barn board walls with tables and booths throughout the dining area.  It wasn't busy when we got in there around 7 p.m., so we were able to be seated right away.  The hostess took us to a table toward the front of the dining area near the windows that looked out into the parking lot.  

Usually, a restaurant has the bar area up front.  But Salvatori's bar is just past the main dining room.  The lounge area had a small dark wood bar with a faux-tin ceiling giving it a 19th century feel.  It must not have been a popular spot as I went past the bar twice and never saw a bartender, nor did I see anyone seated in the lounge area.  

Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Chelsea.  While we checked out the menu, she asked us if we needed anything to drink.  We both ordered Peroni beers to start out and I ended up getting a glass of the Silver Palm cabernet to go with my dinner.   

The menu featured mainly pasta dishes, both tossed and baked.  Nowhere on the menu were steaks or chicken entrees as I see at a number of Italian restaurants.  They did have a chicken parm on the menu and you could add chicken or shrimp to some pasta entrees, but that was it.  Salvatori's also had sandwiches including a caprese chicken sandwich, an Italian beef sandwich, and the Maria - pepperoni, ground Italian sausage, salami, and ham topped with a marinara sauce with a mozzarella cheese.   Salvatori's didn't have pizza on the menu, but they did have calzones.  And they also had Italian baked rolls with a choice of barbecue chicken, Italian sausage, ground beef or Italian beef with green peppers and onions.  

The appetizer part of the menu featured mozzarella-filled breadsticks, mussels in a marinara sauce, a shrimp scampi appetizer with a marinara/cream sauce, and something they called a "3-meat Cuscino" - Italian sausage, meatball, and pepperoni with marinara and mozzarella baked into what looks like a cushion of pizza dough.  (Cuscino translates from Italian to English as "cushion".)  

My colleague was sort of hungry and he wanted an order of the garlic cheese bread.  There were three pieces of the garlic bread - and I thought it was a little expensive for what he got ($8.29).  And it looked more like it was part of a cheese pizza rather than bread with cheese and garlic on it.  .  Marinara sauce came on the side.  My colleague offered me a piece and I took the smaller of the 3 slices.  And I have to say that it was very, very good.  It was loaded with garlic, the crust was chewy, and the cheese pulled away from the crust like a pizza.  

They have a number of salads on the menu including a blackened salmon caesar salad.  I started out with a regular house salad consisting of a blend of romaine and iceberg lettuce, chopped carrots, red onions and tomatoes topped with shredded mozzarella and a house-made vinaigrette dressing.  The salad was fine, nothing special, but a nice start to my meal.

My colleague was fighting the onset of a cold and he asked Chelsea if the cook could prepare a pasta primavera with loads of raw garlic.  He's into homeopathic remedies for illnesses and studies have shown that raw or an aged garlic extract can help fight colds.  And man, did it ever smell like garlic!  The pasta primavera was tossed with sauteed vegetables over a bed of ziti tube pasta.  He said the pasta primavera was excellent.   

I thought about the linguine with clams in a garlic butter sauce, but I ended up getting the beef-filled ravioli.  I always seem to get ravioli when I go to Italian restaurants - I know.  But I like meat-filled pasta, but my wife doesn't.  We make Italian at home a lot, but we don't have ravioli or tortellini filled with beef or Italian sausage because my wife doesn't care for it.  That's why I get it when I go out for Italian food most times.  

But there was something a little strange with this beef-filled ravioli - they tasted sort of doughy, like they hadn't been cooked long enough.  It wasn't rubbery like it had been cooked too long, it had a distinct consistency of raw dough.  The marinara sauce was sweet and had a bit of a zippy flavor.  It was just disappointing that the ravioli pillows weren't up to snuff.  

While my colleague thought his pasta primavera at Salvatori's was excellent, I wasn't too happy with my ravioli.  The marinara sauce that they make in-house was very good, but they needed to cook the ravioli longer to get rid of the doughy taste and consistency.  We certainly couldn't complain about the service Chelsea showed us that evening, she was accommodating for any request we had all through our meal.  Salvatori's was comfortable, but also somewhat sort of cheesy with its decor.  I have no idea if there are better Italian restaurants in Fort Wayne, but Salvatori's was just OK for what it was.  

Happy Gnome - Fort Wayne, IN

I was out in Fort Wayne calling on our largest account and hosting a training session.  My colleague was flying in from Montreal later in the evening, so I was on my own for food that evening.  It had been awhile since I'd been to a brewpub in Fort Wayne, a city that has many very good brewpubs.  I found one in the downtown area that I wasn't familiar with - The Hoppy Gnome.  It had a fun name and sounded like a good place to get a beer and some food, so I headed there for dinner.  

James Khan grew up on the southeast side of Fort Wayne and on the advice of his high school counselor he went to Purdue University to study electrical engineering.  After 3 years, Khan decided to move back to Fort Wayne to finish his schooling at Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne (Now Purdue-Fort Wayne).  After graduating, Khan took a job with an engineering firm in the city, but also took a part-time job as a food runner/bus boy at the brand new Biaggi's Italian restaurant.  Within a month, Khan was promoted to server.  

Khan was still working at the engineering firm, but was thinking more and more about the restaurant business.  When Biaggi's offered him a chance to enter their restaurant management program, Khan jumped at the chance.  He left the engineering firm and started as a manager trainee at Biaggi's for a paltry $8 dollars an hour.  

Pictured right - James Khan. Photo courtesy Input Fort Wayne

Khan eventually made it to be the assistant managing partner at Biaggi's in Fort Wayne, but it was a phone call from an area restauranteur that put him on the path to owning his own restaurants.  

Doug Wood and his wife Patty had just taken over BakerStreet, an upscale steakhouse on the city's north side.  The Woods had met while both were working at the Cork 'N Cleaver for a number of years and took over the fledgling BakerStreet restaurant less than a year after it opened.  They were looking for someone with restaurant managerial experience and turned to Khan.  Khan wasn't certain he was up for the task, but the Woods offered Khan the position of managing partner of BakerStreet.  In 2009, Khan left Biaggi's and became a part-owner in BakerStreet.  

In 2014, Khan and partners Lysa Pelkington and Chad Kyle bought out the Woods and started a corporation - ObiCai Restaurant Group.   In 2015, the trio began to develop a new restaurant, a bistro/brewpub with a focus on taqueria-style foods.  

Just before the new brewpub was opened, Kyle left the group to become the executive chef at Parkview Health in Fort Wayne.  Khan was able to convince Peter Shuey to return home from Southern California to take over as the head chef and director of operations for BakerStreet and the new brewpub.  The name for the restaurant came about from a late night session with partners, managers and employees over what to name the new brewpub.  It was almost called the Hoppy Dragon until Khan found out that Shuey liked gnomes.  The Hoppy Gnome moniker stuck and the brewpub/taqueria opened in July of 2015.  

In 2016, ObiCai Restaurants opened their third location - GnomeTown Brewing Company - a burger-centric brewpub that also allows people to come in and brew their own beers.  And in 2018, Khan and his group opened Proxima, a Latin-inspired restaurant in downtown Fort Wayne that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. (As a side note - Lysa Pelkington left the company in 2019 to spend more time with her growing family.) 

The Hoppy Gnome is located at the corner of E. Berry St. and the southbound lanes of US Highway 27 in downtown Fort Wayne.  (see map)  It's located on the street level of the Anthony Wayne building that Khan helped develop into restaurant, retail and condominium space in 2014.  

I was able to find a parking space across the street from the brewpub near the stately Allen County Courthouse.  The courthouse is an impressive structure and would rival some state capitols that I've seen during my travels over the years.  

 

Working my way past the outdoor patio dining area along Berry Street, the entrance of the Hoppy Gnome takes you in to a large lobby that serves as a central point for both the Hoppy Gnome and the in-house brewery, GnomeTown Brewing Company.   There was a large mural on the wall in the lobby that was sort of a flow chart of different types of ingredients that led to different styles of beer.  

 
GnomeTown Brewing Co. maintains their own brewpub restaurant about 3 blocks away from the Hoppy Gnome, but this location is what is known as a "Brew-On-Premises" brewery that allows budding home-brewers to come in and learn about the brewing process from GnomeTown Brewing's brewing engineers.   The GnomeTown facility is the only "Brew-On-Premises" site in the state of Indiana.  

The brewing room allows people to come in and discuss the kind of beer they'd like to make, then pick out the ingredients and participate in the brewing process.  The large brewing room also has tables and benches along with a small bar area where amateur brewers can invite friends and family in to try the beer once it's finished.   

To the left of the lobby area is the entrance to the Hoppy Gnome.  It was a large space with floor to ceiling windows along the west and south walls of the restaurant.  The architecture of the restaurant was sort of what I would call modern industrial with exposed ductwork in the ceiling with concrete pillars standing at various points around the dining area.   

Wooden cubicles around padded booths were the focal point of the dining area with heavy duty wooden tables with metal chairs throughout the room.  A large window allowed patrons to look into the kitchen area.  For as much wood, concrete and glass in the dining area, it was surprisingly not loud in the place.  

The dining area was about half full when I got in to the Hoppy Gnome, so I asked the hostess if I could eat at the bar.  She said, "Sure!" and she led me to a seat at the bar.  Three or four people were already seated at the bar and there was a WNBA basketball game on the television.  

The bartender that night was a guy by the name of Park.  It's an unusual name as I've only known one other guy by the name of Park.  This Park told me that it was a family name through generations.  He placed a menu in front of me and asked what I wanted to drink.  In addition to their beers from GnomeTown Brewing Co. on their beer menu, the Hoppy Gnome also features a number of craft brews from such regional breweries such as 3 Floyds, Founders, Half Acre, and Fort Wayne's Junk Ditch Brewery.  

He had a couple hazy IPA's on the menu - GnomeTown's Prescription New England IPA, and the Mister Fahrenheit NE IPA from North High Brewing out of the Columbus, OH area.  I really liked the Prescription hazy IPA and ended up getting a pint of that.  

While tacos are a big part of the menu, they had a number of other interesting items on the menu.  Actually, a few things got my attention as I was looking through the menu including the buttermilk fried chicken tenders (I don't know, I was sort of in a chicken tender mood that evening), the flank steak with cilantro chimichurri was another thing that caught my eye, as well as the seafood gumbo.  The only thing that nixed the gumbo for me was that they put breaded and fried shrimp into the gumbo at the Hoppy Gnome.  They also had a peach/habanero-glazed carnitas sandwich that jumped out at me.  

But the tacos were very interesting to me.  They had well over a dozen different types of tacos including a Thai meatball taco, a slow-braised pork belly taco and a smoked-jerk chicken taco.  They also had a number of vegetarian taco options including a beer-battered fried avocado taco, a sautéed mushroom and garlic aioli taco, and the "Boom Boom Pow" taco that had crispy chickpeas in a chipotle honey glaze and jicama.  

The great thing about order tacos at the Hoppy Gnome is that they'll allow you to order just one of whatever style instead of 3 of just one style some other places make you order.  That allowed me to try smoked brisket taco, the pan-seared cod taco, and the "Lambda, Lambda, Lambda" taco - braised lamb in a coconut-curry sauce with a cilantro-lime crema topped with a diced cucumber salad on top.  

Unfortunately, Park came back with the bad news - they were out of the lamb tacos that night.  Somewhat crestfallen, I looked at the menu one more time and was back into a quandary - the pulled carnitas tacos sounded good, as did the carne asada taco with the salsa verde.  And they had a slow-cooked short rib taco that sounded delicious.  I ended up getting the pulled carnitas taco.

I have to say that it probably didn't matter which taco I chose as each one of the tacos were outstanding.  From left to right:  The fish taco - "The Ocean Called..." - featured pan-seared cod chunked up and topped with green cabbage, fire-roasted salsa, sour cream, an avocado slice and finished with fried fresno chile rings.  The coolness of the sour cream was a great balance to the spiciness of the other toppings.   

In the middle, the pulled pork came with a creamy Carolina barbecue sauce topped with a smoked jalapeño slaw.  It had a bit of a bite, but I didn't think it was all that spicy.  It was probably the weakest of the three in overall flavor, but not that it was bad - far from it.  It's just that there were a lot of flavor explosions in each bite of the other two tacos.

The third taco - on the right - was the applewood-smoked brisket topped with a chipotle-cherry salsa, and finished with fried scallions.  The brisket was tender, juicy and full of flavor.  The chipotle-cherry salsa had that great balance of heat and sweet, and was a great combination with the brisket.  

My colleague from Montreal got in later that night and the next day we had some time for lunch before we were to set up for our training session.  I told him about how great the tacos were at the Hoppy Gnome the night before and the number of vegetarian options on the menu.  "That sounds good," he said.  We ended up going back to the Happy Gnome for lunch.  That trip, I got the short rib barbacoa taco and the carne asada taco with the salsa verde.  Both were absolutely fabulous.  My co-worker got the Thai peanut rice noodles in a spicy thai peanut sauce with bulgogi marinated tofu.  Chopped red onions, red bell peppers, carrots, cilantro and scallions were mixed in.  "Wow," he said before he took a large gulp of his beer.  "This is really good and it's really spicy!"

In a city with a lot of very good to excellent brewpubs, I have to say I have a new No. 1 in my book.  The Hoppy Gnome had outstanding tacos, some great beers - both their own and from other regional breweries - and a great atmosphere with great service both times I was there.   They have a "made-from-scratch" kitchen that allows patrons to add or subtract items from entrees, sandwiches and tacos.  It's a great place for vegetarians and the tacos I had were simply excellent.  The Hoppy Gnome should be the first place you want to try for a brewpub in Fort Wayne and then go from there to some of the other excellent brewpubs in the area.  

Junk Ditch Brewing Company - Fort Wayne, IN

Since my largest account is located in Fort Wayne, I've been spending some time in the city.  Fort Wayne has a very vibrant micro-brewing community and I've had the pleasure of finding some good brewpubs in my trips out there over the years.  On this visit to Fort Wayne, I found one that I had not been to before - Junk Ditch Brewing Company.  

Unlike many brewpubs who got their start from home brewers, Junk Ditch Brewing Company actually started in a food truck.  Andrew Smith and Dan Campbell started up the Affiné food truck in 2012 offering customers made-from-scratch specialties made with locally sourced ingredients.  A couple years later, the duo became a trio when business partner Jack May came into the picture.  May was a chef and had an extensive culinary background as a line cook, sous chef and a butcher.  The group had talked about doing a restaurant at some point and thought about something that would be beer-centric with a farm-to-fork sustainable prix-fixe menu.  

Along with Jack May, his wife Grace Kelly May became a big part of the project.  Grace Kelly May was an artisanal baker and classic pastry chef who had moved back to Fort Wayne after working in restaurants all over the U.S.   She was in the process of opening her own bakery - GK Baked Goods.   She would provide the new brewpub concept her husband and their partners were working on with the buns, breads and other baked goods.  GK Baked Goods opened in 2015, the first restaurant under the Affiné Hospitality umbrella.  

For their brewpub, the group found a nearly 100 year old building - which abutted up to Junk Ditch Creek - that initially was a paper company, then later became a slaughterhouse before becoming a warehouse in later years.  The building needed a lot of work, but it was perfect for the plans the group had for their brewpub.   After an extensive renovation of the building, which included the destruction of the second floor to give the dining area more of an open space, Junk Ditch Brewing opened in July of 2016.  

It was around 6:30 when I pulled into the parking lot at Junk Ditch Brewing.  (see map)  The problem was that there was an outdoor gathering with live music and food trucks (including the Junk Ditch Brewing truck) that was going on in the green space next to the brewery.  The parking area was packed and I had to search for a spot.  I finally found one - next to a dumpster that was used by a Jamaican restaurant and a convenience store next to the brewery.  Not the most optimal spot, but at least I found something close to the brewery.  

Inside Junk Ditch Brewing the dining room was open and airy with distressed wood accents along the short walls with distressed wood table tops and banquet seating.  The original beams that held up the second floor were exposed with multi-color stained wood panels highlighting the area above the bar area.  The dining area wasn't all that big, seating - maybe - 70 people at capacity.  

I took a seat at the bar and was greeted by the bartender whose name was Gage.  He looked like a guy who would be named Gage - actually, he looked a lot like the actor Chris Evans.  But he was a nice guy and was very helpful with any of the questions on the beer and food that I had that evening.  

The beer menu at Junk Ditch varies through the months.  4-packs of 16 ounce cans and growlers are available for people who want to drink their beers at home.  They have most of the usual suspects in the different styles of beer available year round with different varieties from time to time.  The hazy IPA that they had on tap that evening was called the Idle Enterprise.  It was...., well, it was OK.  Not the best hazy IPA I've had, but certainly not the worst.  The beer had a rich hoppy flavor with a bit of a citrus backing.  

The food menu also changes seasonally and with availability.  Burgers and sandwiches are usually fixed in terms of being on the menu on a daily basis.  Small plates such as fried Brussels sprouts and falafel bites were available as appetizers.  The Cubano sandwich made with a GK Baked Goods ciabatta along with locally sourced ham and braised pork carnitas sounded good - good enough that I briefly considered it before I realized that I was in Fort Wayne and not South Florida.  And the burgers they had - especially mushroom/Swiss burger - sounded good.  But I had a burger the night before and I really didn't want another one that evening  

Two of the specials they had that night both sounded appetizing.   They had a chuck roast with gnocchi in a pureéd sauce made with gochujang (a spicy Korean paste), brown butter and a slow-cooked egg topped with chopped fresh scallions and sesame seeds.  The other was a gluten-free chicken breast cooked in a fish sauce and caramel glaze.  It came with rice and finished with sesame broccoli crowns, pickled onions, crispy shallots, sliced radish and micro greens.  

I had to have Gage help me in my choice that evening.  I told him what I was thinking about and it was really down to the chuck roast gnocchi and the chicken and rice.  "Oh, go with the beef and gnocchi," he said enthusiastically.  

And I'm glad I did.  The chuck roast beef was tender and pulled apart easily.  The gnocchi was good, but the sauce - oh... my... GOD!!  The sauce had a bit of a spicy bite, but overall it was excellent.  It was thick and full of flavor.  I told Gage that they really needed to serve it with bread to dip into the sauce.  I mean, it was all I could do from putting the bowl up to my mouth and slurping down the rest of the sauce once I had finish the beef and gnocchi.  If I had a spoon, I would finished the sauce off like a soup.  It was just amazing.  

Fort Wayne has so many very good brewpubs that it's getting to the point that you really can't go wrong with any of them.  It's like each one of them steps up their game when a new one comes on line.  And the meal I had at Junk Ditch Brewing Company was just outstanding.  The hazy IPA I had was fine, but the meal was pretty memorable.  It's sort of hard to find, but if you ever make it to Fort Wayne, a visit to Junk Ditch should be on your list.     

 

Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brew - Fort Wayne, IN

Out visiting dealers in Fort Wayne a few weeks ago, one of my dealers was telling me about a new barbecue place that had opened up down the road from them.  "Actually, it's not new," he explained to me.  "But it's a new location for them."  He gave me directions to Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brew on N. Maplecrest Road on the north side of Fort Wayne.  (see map) 

It turns out that they people behind Shigs in Pit BBQ are the same guys who founded Mad Anthony's Brewing Company in Fort Wayne nearly 20 years ago.  (Click here to read about Road Tips' visit to Mad Anthony's.)  Todd Grantham and Jeff Neels were old college roommates who got together with Blaine Stuckey to open Mad Anthony's in 1999.  But it turned out that in addition to brewing beer, Grantham got his kicks smoking meats.  He met a like-minded local guy, Stefan Kelley, who was a networks services manager for a local software company in Fort Wayne.  Grantham and Kelley entered a local barbecued ribs competition in 2005 naming their team "Shigs in Pit" - a takeoff on the Midwestern phrase "pigs in shit" (as in "happy as pigs in shit").  When they won that competition, they caught the bug and decided to enter other contests around the Midwest.  

Grantham and Kelley enlisted Jeff Neels to go to their first Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event in Madison, IN and picked up a sixth place finish for their smoked chicken.  Knowing that they could do even better, the group invested in commercial traveling smokers and took off for barbecue competitions around the country.

Pictured left - Jeff Neels, Todd Grantham and Stefan Kelly. Photo courtesy Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. 

Shigs in Pit eventually won eleven Grand Championships and five Reserve Grand Championships in KCBS-sanctioned events in addition to a number of other awards they gathered at other rib contests around the country.  Shigs in Pit have also been invited to participate in two of the largest barbecue contests in the nation - the American Royal in Kansas City and the Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational in Lynchburg, TN.  

Of course, like many other successful barbecue competition teams, the group decided that they needed to let the public try their award winning smoked meats.  Along with their Mad Anthony's partner Blaine Stuckey - and with the blessing of Kelley - Grantham and Neels opened the original Shigs in Pit barbecue in 2012 at the corner of Fairfield and Taylor just south of downtown Fort Wayne.  (see map)  

The success of the original location meant that they could easily sustain two locations in the city.  They found a lot along N. Maplecrest Road and built a stand-alone building from the ground up.  They opened Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brews - featuring many beers on tap that were brewed at Mad Anthony's - in the summer of 2017.

It was around 1:30 p.m. on a cold, gray day when I made it into the north side Shigs in Pit location.  The was plenty of parking around the front of the building.  A young guy was attending to the smoker that was attached to the front corner of the building.

I found an open and expansive seating area when I went inside.  Barn boards were on the facade of the front counter while corrugated tin wainscoting lined the half walls that partitioned the dining area.  

There was a small two-sided bar also with a barn board facade underneath the bar.  Flat-screen televisions hung from a barn board overhang above the bar.  They had over 20 beers on tap from Mad Anthony's Brewing Company.  

Out back behind the place was a large concrete patio with a number of lights hanging above.  It was large enough that it could possibly double the amount of patrons the restaurant can serve in the warmer months.  More parking was available behind the restaurant, as well.   

The drill at Shigs in Pit is order at the counter, they give you a number on a table pole, you find a seat and they bring your food out to you.  The menu for both dining in and carry out was on the wall behind the counter with a window that looked into the kitchen along the back wall.  (Shigs in Pit also has an extensive menu for catering events such as receptions, parties, corporate events or reunions.)  The meats featured at Shigs in Pit included Indiana-raised St. Louis-cut pork ribs, pulled pork, chopped chicken, smoked ham, smoked turkey, and jalapeño cheddar sausage, as well as brisket and burnt ends for a $1.00 upcharge.  All the meats could be made into sandwiches, but they also had gourmet sandwiches such a smoked ham Creole po' boy sandwich, a smoked turkey sandwich with a cranberry mayo with cheddar cheese and bacon, and the "Big Shig Pig" which featured smoked bologna, pulled pork, pimento cheese and topped with creamy cole slaw.  

After I ordered up my lunch, I was told that I could get my beer over at the bar.  (They rang me up at the front counter, but alerted the bartender that I would be coming over to get the beer.)  I got an Ol' Woody pale ale that I'd had before on a previous visit to the Mad Anthony Brewing Co.  I found a seat at a table near the bar, and set my table pole with my number affixed to the top of it.  They had some pretty good music playing that day - some good blues that varied from the likes of Peter Green (a founding member of Fleetwood Mac), Chicago's Lil' Ed and Blues Imperials, and classic blues from Willie Dixon, and Freddie King.  

I had about a 10 minute wait before they brought out my lunch order.  I got the ribs and brisket combination.  I also ordered a side of their fries and a side of their interesting sounding green chile mac & cheese.  A slice of garlic bread came with the meal.  The lunch was served on a small metal tray on top of a piece of wax paper.  

They had three different types of barbecue sauce to go along with the smoked meats at Shigs in Pit.  They had a tangy sauce that was vinegar-based.  I usually shy away from vinegar-based sauces, but this was actually pretty good.  Their original barbecue sauce was a sweet molasses and smoky sauce, while they had a "hot" sauce that was basically the original sauce with a hot pepper mixture added.  I thought it was very good.  

The ribs had a rub on the outside that gave the meat a bit of a spicy kick.  But it was far from overpowering.  I'd have to say that I liked the combination rub they used.  But the ribs, themselves, were very dry.  It was like they had either cooked them too long, or had left them in a warming pan too long.  The meat on the ribs was tough and chewy.  The couple of good bites that I was able to get were very good.  But the ribs were just too tough for my tastes.  Even with putting sauce on the ribs didn't help that much.

The brisket, however, was very good.  It was moist, tender, and had a great smoky beef taste.  I found that I didn't need to put much - if any - barbecue sauce on the brisket as it was very good on its own.  

The fries were thin cut and fresh, but I didn't concentrate too much on them.  I was sort of surprised they didn't have baked beans as an option for sides, but they did have some something that caught my eye - green chile mac & cheese.  I ordered that for my second side, but what I thought I was getting and what I got were two different things.  I thought that the mac & cheese would be topped with a green chile sauce, but it appears that they just put chopped green chiles in the mix.  I mean, it was all right.  But I was expecting something completely more Southwest in a culinary nature.  

While I didn't care for their dried out ribs, I thought the brisket at Shigs in Pit was very good.  I should have tried the pulled pork, but I have a funny feeling that I'll be back there at some point.  The beer selection from the Mad Anthony's Brewing Company was wide and varied giving beer lovers a chance to have about any style they wanted.  It was a nice place on the inside, open and airy; and the played some very good blues music over the sound system.  And while I thought their sauces were also very good, I just wish the ribs wouldn't have been so tough and chewy.  

Nick's Kitchen - Huntington, IN

I love restaurants that have a great back story and some history behind them.  In the state of Indiana, they take their grilled pork tenderloin sandwiches very seriously.  Between Iowa and Indiana, those two states have the market cornered on seriously good pork tenderloin sandwiches.  One place in Indiana claims that it was the first place to sell breaded pork tenderloins, dating back to 1908.  That place - Nick's Kitchen in Huntington - is one of the more famous places to eat in Indiana and definitely a destination.  After calling on a couple of accounts in Fort Wayne, I took the side trip to Huntington to try one of Nick's tenderloins.

Nick Freienstein was one of seven children in his family, born in 1876.  In 1888, he dropped out of school to work at a cigar factory in Huntington.  Over the next dozen plus years, Nick held a number of jobs around town including at a local grocery store and at a local confectionery shop.  In 1904, he decided to be his own boss and he started to push a hamburger cart around the downtown area of Huntington.  In addition to burgers, Nick would take pork cutlets, bread them and fry them for sandwiches.  Nick's burgers and pork sandwiches were so popular that he had to move to a lean-to structure under some stairs to satisfy the masses who kept trying to find him on the streets of Huntington.

After four years of working under the stairs, he amassed enough money to open a restaurant in what is now the present day location of Nick's Kitchen.  He now had a full kitchen to make his burgers and pork tenderloin sandwiches and he was able to sort of refine how he made the sandwiches.  A story I read involved his brother, Jake, who lost the fingers on both hands due to excessive frost bite.  It turned out that Jake was the one who was in charge of breading the meat at Nick's and he found his stumped hand were perfect to pound the pork cutlets to make them more tender.  It was sort of the precursor to more modern methods of tenderizing the pork for tenderloin sandwiches.  

In 1929, Nick sold his interest in the restaurant to two local men who ran it for a number of years, selling it in the early 50's.  That owner of Nick's Kitchen sold his interest in 1969 to Gene Drabonstot, a local Huntington man who worked for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad.  Along with his wife, Peggy, the Drabonstot's renovated Nick's Kitchen and decorated the walls with a number of railroad-themed pictures.  Their five children - two sons and three daughters - all worked in the restaurant at one time or another.  

In 1981, Gene retired from the railroad and a year later he bought the old Clydesdale Inn in nearby Roanoke and renamed it Nick's Junction.  By 1989, he was transitioning out of the restaurant business and began to travel the country with Peggy pulling a vintage Airstream camper.   His daughter, Jean Anne Bailey, and her husband Kenny now run Nick's Kitchen, with Gene's son Jim with his wife Dana running Nick's Junction.  Gene's daughter Nancy Bonebrake, and her husband Jim, went out their own and opened Nick's Country Cafe in an old Mexican restaurant location in downtown Huntington in 1992 before moving to their current location on the outskirts of Huntington in 1996.   (Gene Drabonstot passed away eight years ago at the age of 80.)  

Nick's Kitchen is located on N. Jefferson Street in downtown Huntington.  (see map)  I was able to find parking just down the street from Nick's and went in around 1:30 that day.   The well-lit diner featured wood-paneled walls with old photographs of Huntington and rail yards, as well as a model train in a glass case on the wall near the ceiling.  

The place was about half full and I took a seat at a booth along the wall and took a look at the menu they had sitting on the table.  Even though Nick's Kitchen is famous for their pork tenderloins, they also serve breakfast items, and at lunch they also have pulled pork sandwiches, a prime rib sandwich, panini sandwiches, soups, salads and Nick's famous house-made pies.  

I ordered up a tenderloin with onions and pickles (mustard was available on the table).  My waitress wanted to know if I wanted fries or house-made onion rings, but I thought the sandwich would be enough.  It was served to me open faced with a good number of sliced onions on the top with dill pickles on the side.

The thing I immediately liked about the tenderloin at Nick's is that is was thin, but it wasn't the size of a hub cap like you'll find at some places.  I prefer a battered tenderloin over a breaded one, but the breading was light and it didn't have that dry bread taste to the bite.  The tenderloin was very good - it was cooked perfectly giving it a nice juicy texture, easy to chew with a great taste.  It was one of the better pork tenderloin sandwiches I've had.

A lot of times I've found the signature food at somewhat historical restaurants don't quite live up to the hype.  I can easily say that isn't the case with the pork tenderloin sandwich at Nick's Kitchen.  It wasn't heavily breaded, nor was it over cooked with the texture of leather.  This was a very good pork tenderloin that rivaled some of the best ones I've ever had.  Nick's Kitchen is definitely a destination, unless you're already in the Fort Wayne area.  But I'd say to make the trip to Huntington to give their tenderloin a try.  You'll be glad you did. 

Naked Tchopstix - Fort Wayne, IN

Visiting a couple accounts in the Fort Wayne area this past winter, I decided to stay in the city because of blowing snow and poor visibility across the route I was going to be heading in Northern Indiana.  I like to stay at the Hilton Garden Inn on the city's southwest side and across the parking lot is a sushi place called Naked Tchopstix.  My colleague Simon told me that he had eaten there a couple times and he called it "just all right."  I've eaten at a Naked Tchopstix in Indianapolis and thought it was very good.  (Click here to see my entry on that Naked Tchopstix.)  I walked across the parking lot on that blustery evening to see if I would agree or disagree with Simon's report that their sushi was "just all right".

David and Maggie Lee opened the first Naked Tchopstix in Indianapolis in 2003 featuring sushi and Pan Asian food - primarily Korean food.  In addition to the Fort Wayne location, the Lee's run three Naked Tchopstix in Indianapolis including one at the Indianapolis International Airport, and one in Newport, KY across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in the Newport on the Levee entertainment district.  

A number of other fellow travelers from both the Hilton Garden Inn and the adjoining Homewood Suites were in the restaurant when I walked in around 6:15 in the evening.  There's a bar area to the left as you walk into the place and the sushi bar is part of the main dining area at Naked Tchopstix.  Music played in the dining room were 50's and 60's standards from big band crooners and female jazz singers such as Bobby Darin, Sarah Vaughan, Steve Lawrence and Carmen McRae.   

I parked myself at the sushi bar and my server for the evening, Jaclyn, dropped off a menu for me to look through.  I ordered an Asahi beer to enjoy in the meantime.  The only problem was that it took nearly 10 minutes for Jaclyn to get the beer back to me.  She appeared to be the only server working the half-full dining room.   

Even with all the Pan Asian food on the menu, I was there for the sushi and I immediately ordered up a spicy tuna roll and a spicy salmon roll from the sushi chefs behind the counter.  Both sushi rolls both had a very pronounced cucumber taste.  I don't mind cucumbers but they used rather large pieces of cucumbers in the rolls that overpowered whatever taste of the spicy tuna or salmon that I could discern.  The rolls were "just all right".

I ordered up some sushi pieces - smoked and regular salmon, maguri tuna, and hamachi yellow tail.   The sushi came out on a platter that was adorned by a plastic Bonsai tree.  I kind of laughed at the presentation because the plastic tree took up a 1/3 of the plate.  

And the sushi was, well, it was also "just all right".  The smoked salmon was fine, as was the tuna.  I mean, it wasn't bad sushi, but it didn't knock it out of the park in terms of taste and quality.  And something was really salty in either the rolls or the sushi.  I don't know if it was the wasabi or maybe the soy sauce was extra salty.  But as I don't eat much salt in my diet, I found the salty taste to be very pronounced and somewhat disappointing.  I drank a lot of water that evening thanks to the salty nature of the food.

Sometimes Simon can be very critical when talking about restaurants he's been to.  There have been times when we've eaten together where I thought the meal I've had was pretty good and he would tear apart some aspect of the meal.  But most of the time we're pretty much in cahoots with one another in our assessment of meals.  And I'll have to say that Simon was spot on with his "just all right" observation on the Fort Wayne Naked Tchopstix.  It certainly wasn't as good as the one I was at in Indianapolis and somewhat disappointing overall.  

Bravas Burgers - Fort Wayne, IN

Always on the lookout for new places to eat while I'm on the road, while in Fort Wayne recently I found an article in Fort Wayne Monthly magazine regarding a new place called Bravas Burgers that grew from a hot dog street cart to a food truck to a brick-and-mortar gourmet burger restaurant south of the city's downtown area.  I decided to go find the place for lunch while I was there.  

19-year-old Bo Gonzalez was a recent drop out of music school sitting around with some friends one night trying to figure out what to do with their lives.  While they were making homemade tacos Gonzalez came up with an idea of doing a street cart selling tacos outside bars at night.  But he found out that it was not practical to have a taco cart due to the proper storage of different types of meat and toppings.  

Still obsessed with the idea of having a street cart food business, Gonzalez then switched directions and decided to do hot dogs.  While living in Chicago before moving back to Fort Wayne he was inspired by Doug Sohn, the owner of the now-closed Hot Doug's gourmet hot dog joint in Chicago.  In Gonzalez view, Hot Doug's did only one thing and they did it right.  After moving back to Fort Wayne he truly missed the concept of doing only one thing and doing it well.  He was confident that he had a winning idea and he opened his hot dog food cart in the summer of 2011.  

It was an unprofitable summer for Gonzalez - he considered selling six hot dogs a "good day" - but he did garner a bit of a following for his hot dogs topped with eclectic items.  One of the toppings was a home-recipe "Bravas" sauce that he got from his Spanish-native father which was a bold (the English word for Brava) spicy tomato-based condiment that was used as an every day topping in Spain.  He ended up naming his little business Bravas and after the first season he decided to run it like a real business.

Pictured right - Bo Gonzales.  (Photo courtesy WBOI.org) 

Gonzalez had gotten some help from his parents to start his business, but then went to a bank to get a line of credit to help cushion any monetary needs for his second season. The second summer went so well that - with the help of his sister Becky and some of his friends - Gonzalez started to make money in his little venture.  It was then that he decided to buy a food truck and up the food ante a bit by selling Spanish-inspired tapas dishes.  

Gonzalez and his friends took a road trip to West Virginia to pick up a used food truck they found for sale on the Internet.  Once it was back in Fort Wayne they fixed it up to their specifications, placed nice signage on the sides and went out to the streets of Fort Wayne to feed the masses.    

But people in Fort Wayne didn't seem to care for his tapas offerings as they continued to order the gourmet hot dogs from the food truck.  Gonzalez tried a new concept, having "burger nights" when the food truck would be parked outside a local music club serving burgers along with the hot dogs.  The burgers that Gonzalez and his crew made became just as popular, if not more popular than the hot dogs, frequently selling out on any given evening.  It turns out that cold Indiana winters made his food truck a seasonal business, Gonzalez decided that he wanted to open a restaurant that focused on burgers and would provide income year round.  

In the fall of 2014, Gonzalez found a building on Fort Wayne's south side that used to house a pizza joint.   The building - over 80 years old - wasn't very big and had all the elements in place for a restaurant.  Bravas Burgers opened in early December of 2014.  In addition to running his new restaurant, Gonzalez plans on having the food truck show up outside popular bars and at area events in the summertime.

Gonzales has surrounded himself with friends who have some culinary skills, as well.  His head chef is Fort Wayne native Zach Croy who got his culinary degree at the prestigious New England Culinary Institute and who previously worked at the outstanding Joseph Decuis in nearby Roanoke, IN.  (Click here to see my entry on Joseph Decuis.)   And the friend who was with Gonzalez the night he came up with the original idea for doing a street food cart, Ted Doal, is a line cook and sort of a "jack-of-all-trades" for the burger joint.  

I pulled up in front of Bravas Burgers on Fairfield Ave around 12:45 p.m.  (see map)  There was limited parking on the street, but I found a larger parking lot behind the building next to Bravas.  There's a narrow walkway on the north side of Bravas building that led to the front of the business.  

The little place was packed with people when I first went in.  The seating options were a dozen wooden picnic tables - that's it.  Artwork with burger themes and a number of framed articles on Bravas were on the light blue painted walls.  I also got a minor kick out the BurgerTime video game that stood along the north wall of the place.  The little spot had a laid-back and very casual vibe - a vibe that I thoroughly enjoyed.  

The menu was on the wall next to the counter where you order your food.  In addition to their main burgers - The Classic with lettuce, tomato, fried onions and a jalapeño remoulade; the Bravas Burger topped with chili, fries, provolone cheese and Bravas sauce; and the PB burger topped with housemade peanut butter, white cheddar cheese, bacon, pickled sweet peppers and mayo.  

Bravas also offers a number of specialty burgers that change on a monthly basis or upon the availability of locally-sourced ingredients.  Some of the specialty burgers that day included a gruyere cheese burger; a burger topped with molé sauce; a burger topped with Fontana cheese and a tomato jam; and a burger called "The Slow Jam" that had a caramelized onion jam, maple dijon mustard, and brie cheese along with pickled apple slices on top.  

I was sort of surprised after the fact that they didn't have any of their gourmet hot dogs on the menu, but they did have one of their more popular tapas dishes - patatas - on the menu.  Patatas are white potatoes cut into small wedges, deep fried in oil, then topped with the spicy Bravas sauce.  You could get them plain, with the Bravas sauce, or "poutine"-style topped with gravy and Wisconsin cheddar cheese curds.  

But I was there to try the burger and I ordered up the Classic burger.  The young lady behind the counter asked me if I wanted cheese and bacon on the burger.  Well, absolutely!  For now, Bravas Burgers only offers soft drinks - including Mexican soda pop - for drinks, but Gonzalez is hoping to get a liquor license to serve craft brews made in some of the local breweries around Fort Wayne.  I just had a glass of water that I poured from an urn along the wall to go along with the burger.  

By the time my burger was ready, a picnic table came open.  While not the most comfortable form of dining, the picnic tables were sort of a unique touch.  It turns out that the picnic tables were locally made by a 17-year-old carpenter who worked on his project for Bravas after school and on the weekends.  He did a good job, I'll have to say.  

The burger was served on a small metal tray on wax paper.  A side of very fresh, crisp and very good potato chips came with the burger.  To keep the bun on the top, a small plastic sword held it in place.  

The bun - which is locally baked for Bravas Burgers by Zinnia's Bakehouse - was slightly grilled and was light, puffy and airy.  Cheese was oozing off the burger and chopped lettuce was falling out before I could even have my first bite.

As I took my first bite and savored the flavor of the burger, I instinctively went, "Mmmmm..."  Bravas uses three different types of beef for their burgers.  They trim the beef in house, cut them into cubes and salt cures the beef for a couple days.  They then grind the beef themselves so it's fresh everyday.  The burger had a bold flavor, was very juicy and extremely flavorful.  The bacon Bravas uses on their burgers comes from Ossian, a specialty meat packer in Fort Wayne.  A hint of a spicy taste from the jalapeño remoulade came through, but it wasn't overpowering.  Even though it was a five napkin burger from the juicy nature of the burger and all the great toppings, the bun stayed together very nicely, as well.  This was simply a great burger.   

I can't say enough about the burger I had at Bravas Burger.  The back story alone of the entrepreneurial spirit Bo Gonzalez and his friends has shown in going from a budding idea, to running a street cart, to getting a food truck and then getting a brick-and-mortar location in four years is inspiring in many ways.  Having a great burger is just the icing on the cake on what will undoubtedly be a great future for Bravas Burgers.   

Don Hall's Old Gas House - Fort Wayne, IN

I was out in Fort Wayne seeing one of my dealers late last year and I had some time to kill before I had the appointment.  It was just after the noon hour and I decided to go get a burger somewhere.  Doing a quick search for burger joints in Fort Wayne, I found that I wasn't far from a place called the Stadium Bar that had good ol' juicy flat-grilled burgers.  When I pulled up in front of the Stadium Bar, it wasn't there.  It had closed.  I wasn't far from downtown, so I went to Plan B - a burger at Henry's was highly recommended.  I pulled into the parking lot next to Henry's, walked up to the front door and realized that they didn't open until 4 p.m.  Somewhat exasperated, I decided to just cut my losses and head over to a place not far away that I tried to get into late one evening a year or so ago - but they had closed for the evening - Don Hall's Old Gas House.  

The Don Hall's restaurant group is well known in the Fort Wayne area.  I had a meal at Don Hall's Factory last year (click here to see that entry) and it was pretty good.  Don Hall passed away just before Don Hall's Factory opened up and his family continues to run the restaurants and catering service in the Fort Wayne area.

Don Hall's Old Gas House is located along the St. Mary's River in downtown Fort Wayne.  (see map)  It shares the same building as the Don Hall's Japanese restaurant Takaoke.  The building that houses both the Old Gas House and Takaoke was, indeed, an old gas factory in the 19th century.  Fort Wayne's street lights in the mid-1800's were lit by artificial gas manufactured in the plant.  When the surrounding area of NE Indiana was found to have vast reserves of natural gas in the 1880's, the artificial gas factory shut down.  The building was used a brewery for a number of years before Prohibition was enacted in 1919.  

In 1958, Don Hall - who owned a popular drive-in restaurant on Fort Wayne's south side - bought the building to turn it into a supper club/fine dining establishment.  He put in a bar on the east side of the building and named it the Gashouse Saloon.  In the 1970's, Hall placed a statue of Charles Louis Centlivre, one of the brewing pioneers of Fort Wayne, on the corner of the roof of the Gashouse Saloon.  Centlivre was the founder of the Old Crown Brewery, a long time brewing facility that began in the 1860's and lasted until the early 70's.  Old Crown beer was a staple in taverns in and around Fort Wayne from the end of Prohibition until when the brewery shut down in 1973.   Centlivre is depicted with a foot on top of a keg of beer, looking toward where his old brewery once stood on the west bank of the St. Joseph River just north and east of Don Hall's Old Gas House.  The statue was commissioned by the Old Crown Brewing Co. and stood in front of the brewery.  Once the brewery shut down, Hall got the statue to continue to pay tribute to one of the first brewers in what was a long history of breweries in Fort Wayne in the 19th and 20th centuries.   

It was in the Gashouse Saloon where I parked myself at the bar that afternoon.  A rather sassy and funny bartender was working that day and she came over to greet me and to give me a lunch menu.  Her banter with many of the people in the bar area told me that she would be fun to be around.  

The bar area was nice and cozy featuring a three sided bar, a couple three booths and a number of tables.  This is the point in the story that I tell you that the pictures that I took at Don Hall's Old Gas House, well, they vanished off my computer.  I had pictures of the bar area as well as the main dining room that was a step up next to the bar.  I found this picture of the dining room on the Internet.  I understand the dining room went through an extensive remodel a few years ago to restore the mid-1800's look to the room.  The place seemed to be very popular with the older crowd.  A large table of 70-ish women were having what looked like a club meeting in the dining room.  

The lunch menu at Don Hall's Old Gas House is pretty extensive.  It features burgers, sandwiches, soups (including a shrimp and sausage gumbo) and salads.  They have a smattering of some of the dinner entrees in reduced sizes for lunch appetites.  Through the week, the Old Gas House features $8.88 daily lunch specials that include lasagna, meat loaf, brisket and stuffed chicken.  

The first thing I saw I saw at the top of the burger part of the menu was their Chicago burger - a 10 ounce black angus burger served on an onion bun.  For $8.50 you can pick three toppings including six different types of cheese, grilled onions, jalapenos or roasted red peppers.  Since I had my heart set on getting a burger at the first two places I stopped, I decided to go with my old standby burger topped with Swiss cheese, mushroom and bacon.  For $8.50, I thought it sounded like a pretty good deal.

I also got a side to go along with it.  Fries, baked beans, mac & cheese and cole slaw were some of the choices.  They also had something like Hall fries and I asked the bartender what the story was on those.  "The story is they're basically homemade potato chips," she said.  "And you get a bunch of them."  I ended up just getting fries. 

Now is when I really wish I hadn't lost all those pictures of Don Hall's Old Gas House.  This was a big-assed burger.  The onion bun was soft and fresh.  The burger was thick and juicy.  The Swiss cheese was running down the side of the burger patty.  The sauteed mushrooms were thick and very tasty.  This was one of those burgers where I went, "Mmmmm..." at the first bite.  

The fries were just all right - they were typical fries, not skinny, but not like steak fries.  This was a big burger with a lot of mushrooms, a couple slices of thick bacon, and a lot of cheese on it.  Along with the very tasty onion bun, this was a stellar burger and I was going to concentrate on it and not worry too much about the fries. 

Like I say, it was an outstanding burger at Don Hall's Old Gas House.  Looking through the dinner menu made me want to go back and have a nice meal there on a future visit to Fort Wayne.  But the burger at Don Hall's Old Gas House would be worth another visit any other time.  And I thought it was a very good value.  Two for two for meals at Don Hall's properties is a pretty good record so far.

Don Hall's Factory - Fort Wayne, IN

I was back in Fort Wayne a few weeks ago calling on accounts.  I had planned on taking one of my dealers out to dinner, but he had to beg off due to family commitments.  I was staying on the north side of Fort Wayne and was looking for a restaurant that was close to the hotel.  I found a place called Don Hall's Factory that sounded interesting.  Plus, it was less than a five minute drive from the hotel.  

Don Hall's Factory is one of 11 restaurants under the Don Hall umbrella of restaurants with 10 locations in Fort Wayne and a location in the Indianapolis suburb of Castleton.  But not all the restaurants are the same.  They range from diners to supper clubs to a Japanese restaurant.  Don Hall's restaurants also feature three catering divisions.   

Don Hall was a meat purveyor who envisioned a more mobile society after the end of World War II.  With the ease of transportation to get to supermarkets - along with refrigerators becoming a modern convenience for most people - Hall realized that the days of his neighborhood butcher shop were numbered.  Hall owned forty acres on the south side of Fort Wayne and it was his dream to build a drive-in restaurant on that land.  On the day after Thanksgiving in 1946 Don Hall's Drive-In opened fulfilling Hall's dream.  

Through the years, Hall opened or acquired six more restaurants before he decided to build his signature restaurant that paid tribute to the numerous factories that either used to be in Fort Wayne or were still in existance at that time - Don Hall's Factory.  Tragically, Don Hall passed away five days before it opened.  His four sons carried on with the Don Hall name and continued to grow the company's roster of restaurants.  Each Don Hall restaurant is managed by either Don Hall's sons or his grandsons.  

It was around 8:30 p.m. when I got into Don Hall's Factory on Coldwater Ave., just south of E. Washington Center Road on the north side of Fort Wayne. (see map)  There's a faux factory chimney out front with a fake flame coming out of the top of it.  I've since found out that some locals view the chimney as a big phallic symbol.  

I didn't know if they quit serving at 9, but the hostess told me that they stopped serving at 10 p.m.  I had my choice of sitting in the bar or in the dining room.  The bar had a few people in it, the dining room did not.  I decided to sit in the dining room.  The hostess took me to a booth along a wall.  A number of photographs of old Fort Wayne factories were on the wall.  

 
The dining room was warm, cozy and inviting.  The booths were spacious and comfortable.  Tables in the middle of the carpeted room had four thick-padded high-backed chairs around them.  Wooden cross-beams on the ceiling gave it a very elegant look.  It looked like it probably catered more toward families and older diners who ate early in the evening.  

My server for the evening, Ashley, came over to greet me.  She asked me if I wanted anything from the bar and I asked her what kind of beer they had on tap.  She said, "Well, we have a lot of things...,"  her voice trailing off.  She then said, "I know we have a new beer, Kona something-or-other."

Kona?!  As in the Kona Brewing Company?  I immediately perked up.  Another place that had Kona beers on tap!  The Big Wave Golden Ale continues to be my go-to beer.  I asked which one they had, hoping it would be the Big Wave or even the Longboard Lager.  She excused herself to go look at the tap to see what it was.  When she came back and said it was the Kona Koko Brown.  I was somewhat crestfallen with that news - the Koko Brown has a coconut taste to it and I don't care much for coconut.  I asked her if they had a pale ale on tap and she said that they had a Trainwreck Ale from the Mountain Town Brewing Company out of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.  I said I'd just take that.  It wasn't a pale ale, but more of an amber ale.  It was almost too sweet for me, but it worked.  

As I looked through the menu, I noticed that the background music was playing an interesting mix of music.  The music went from 50's crooners to 80's blues to 60's soul to 40's jazz.  Ray Charles was followed by Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was followed by Dean Martin, who was followed by Marcia Ball, who was followed by Dinah Washington, who was followed by Randy Jacobs and the Boneshakers, who was followed by Louis Armstrong, who was followed by...  Well, you get the idea.  I could have just sat there listening to the music the rest of the evening.  

Steaks, seafood, pork chops and chicken were the staple items on the menu.  Don Hall's Factory is most known for their prime rib that is served with a housemade creamy horseradish sauce.  It had been quite sometime since I'd ordered prime rib and the prices seemed to be reasonable.  A 12-ounce cut of prime rib was listed as $18.95 on the menu.   

But they also had a lot of steaks from strips, filets and ribeyes on the menu.  They had a sirloin strip steak that featured a peppercorn sauce made with five different types of cracked pepper.  When Ashley came back to take my order I asked her if I could get the five peppercorn sauce on a New York strip - rare.  She said that would be no problem.  For good measure, I got a side of sauteed mushrooms to go along with the steak.  I also got a side with the meal and I was stuck as to what to get.  I asked her what she recommended and she immediately said, "Oh, I love the mac and pepperjack cheese.  The pepperjack gives the mac and cheese a little kick."  I ordered that.  And I also got a salad, so I went with the wedge salad.  Ashley cheerfully said, "I'll get that started for you!"

The wedge salad came out with a basket of fresh baked bread.  Ashley asked if I wanted any cracked pepper with the salad and I said, "Oh, boy.  You bet.  Lots of it please." 

As she was grinding the pepper onto the salad, she said, "Yeah, I like a lot of pepper, too."  The wedge salad had a generous amount of a chunky blue cheese dressing on it with small crumbles of real bacon and two tomato wedges.  I like the tomato wedges rather than chopped tomatoes on a wedge salad.  Along with the fresh bread, the salad was very good.   

  Not long after I finished with my salad, Ashley brought out the five peppercorn strip steak.   I was rather dismayed to see that they had added a butter spread across the top of the steak, all but obscuring the five peppercorn sauce.  Then upon further investigation, it appeared that they had left OFF the peppercorn sauce.  What they made me was the Cabernet New York strip with the horseradish butter spread.  I sort of sighed and thought about sending it back.  But it was late and I didn't feel like waiting any longer.  Besides, I was the last customer for Ashley that evening and I was getting the idea that she wanted to get out of there sooner than later.  

A small crock of the mac and pepperjack cheese with  was on the plate with the steak and a rather large portion of sauteed mushrooms was on small plate - much larger than I imagined.  But they were really good and I made a significant dent in them.

The steak - even though it wasn't how I ordered it - was all right enough.  I was hoping to get the spicy, peppery taste of a peppercorn sauce, but I got something that resembled a creamy horseradish with a ton of butter sort of taste.  I like butter - who doesn't? - but it was almost too much on top of the steak.  It really masked the overall taste of the steak.  It was cooked probably more medium-rare than rare, but that was fine.  I wasn't going to bitch at that point of the night. 

Yeah, Don Hall's Factory was fine.  I would have liked to have gotten the peppercorn sauce on the steak, but it didn't work out.  Ashley was attentive and on top of things, except for making sure that they put the peppercorn sauce on the steak.  But all in all, it was a pleasant enough experience at Don Hall's Factory.  Pleasant enough that I wouldn't turn down another visit at some point.  But there's a couple other Don Hall's locations that I'd like to try first. 

Mad Anthony's Brewing Co. - Fort Wayne, IN

On a recent trip to Fort Wayne to see a couple dealers, I had the chance to stop into the city's first brew pub - Mad Anthony's Brewing Co. - for lunch.  I was told by a couple of the locals that the food was just "all right" and I have to admit that while I'm not fond of many of the Mad Anthony beers, I think they're serviceable beers that are all right to drink.  But I still wanted to give Mad Anthony's a try at some point.  

The concept for Mad Anthony's began in 1995 when friends Todd Grantham - a homebrewer - and Blaine Stuckey - who had restaurant experience working for Chili's and local Fort Wayne music bar/pub Columbia Street West - got together to work on a plan to open their own brewpub.  It took three years before the pair found a place in which to put their brewpub, a funky restaurant called the Munchie Emporium.  Taking over the restaurant and turning it into a brewpub was no small task, so Grantham called an old college buddy, Jeff Neels, to come in and help run the operation.  

Eventually, the brewpub was brewing 2,000 barrels of beer annually. And because it went over so well, they began to expand into other smaller markets near Fort Wayne.  The Mad Anthony's location in Auburn - about 30 miles north of Fort Wayne - opened in 2003.  A location in Warsaw - an hour west of Fort Wayne - opened in 2006.  And a fourth Mad Anthony's opened in Angola in extreme northeast Indiana in 2012. 

Mad Anthony bought a building to house a 15,000 barrel-capacity brewing facility and they began to bottle their beers for distribution throughout Indiana.   During the course of their history, Mad Anthony's has brewed up to 50 varieties of annual and seasonal beers.  As I said, I've bought some of their beer on trips to liquor stores in Indianapolis over the years and I thought they were just all right.   

It was around 1 p.m. when I pulled up the original Mad Anthony's location at the corner of Broadway and Taylor just south and west of downtown Fort Wayne (see map).  Mad Anthony's is named after Fort Wayne's namesake, Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne, who got his nickname - Mad Anthony - for his fiery personality.  (Some pundits after the war was over thought that Wayne got his nickname for reckless and wild behavior.  History has proved Wayne to be more of a disciplinarian - a somewhat sadistic disciplinarian as you look back.  So maybe he was somewhat "mad" using the parlance of the times.)  The original Fort Wayne, a garrison built during the Northwest Indian Wars that escalated after the Revolutionary War, was named for Wayne who was named by George Washington as the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army to lead troops in the uprising.  That's how Fort Wayne got it's name.  

We're gonna have a test on this later in the week...

There's a parking lot in the rear of the Mad Anthony's, but it's not very big.  I had to wait for someone to pull out before I could get a slot or I would have been driving around looking for parking on the street near the brewpub.  There's two different areas of Mad Anthony's.  The main dining room (pictured below) featured the main bar area, a stage area for music, a number of industrial restaurant-style tables and chairs and a handful off booths along the windows.  The brewing tanks were visible in a window next to the bar.

The back room (below, left and right) was kind of a kitschy collection of signage, stop lights, faux graffiti on the ceiling and similar tables and booths in the much smaller space.  The back room was more cozy and lighthearted.  

 
I took a seat in a booth in the main dining area up front.  The main dining room was about half full and starting to wind down from the lunch rush.  After a short wait, I was greeted by Tiffany, my server for this visit, who dropped off a menu.  She asked me if I wanted anything to drink and I took a quick look at their beer list.  I settled on the the Oktoberfest that they still had available on tap, even though it was deep into November.

The menu at Mad Anthony's is typical of most brewpubs - appetizers, soups and salads, sandwiches (including wraps and pita sandwiches) and they also have "gourmet" pizza served in a pan.  They had a pineapple pizza, a jambalaya pizza, and something called the "Lagasse" named after famed chef Emeril Lagasse that featured ham, bacon, Italian sausage, red onions and tomatoes.  The pizzas weren't cheap - the lowest priced medium specialty pizza was $15.49 with prices going up to near $24 for a large.  

They also had a couple pasta dishes including a jambalaya fettuccine, as well as entrees such as pork tenderloin medallions, traditional bangers and mash, and something called Tacos Montezuma - smoked pulled pork, sauteed onions, roasted whole jalapenos and cilantro.  That sounded pretty interesting to me.

They also have something called Mad Anthony's Un-Wraps - it's a 10" thin piece of crust with assorted toppings on it.  They had one that was topped with pepperoni and sausage, mozzarella and provolone cheese, with a tangy sauce.  Ooo... That was interesting.  The Jambalaya Un-Wrap featured sausage, shrimp, diced tomatoes and what they called "a million spices".  It was topped with a three cheese blend and it came with a side of a housemade jalapeno tartar sauce.  The was even more interesting.   

I began to focus on the sandwiches.  I was getting a little burned out on burgers - and they did have a lot of burgers on the menu - so I thought a change of pace was in order.  They have a Cuban sandwich on the menu, but I've never found a Cuban sandwich outside of Miami that comes close in taste.  I didn't want to chance it with the one at Mad Anthony's because I knew I'd be disappointed.  

They also had a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich - you gotta have one if you're in Indiana.  There was also a reuben sandwich that I thought about, as well as the Club Brew, Mad Anthony's club sandwich that featured ham, turkey, bacon and melted Swiss cheese.  

When Tiffany came back to take my order, I decided upon getting their version of an Italian Grinder - spicy capicola, Genoa salami and pepperoni topped with mozzarella cheese - sort of how I make my Italian sandwiches at home.  They then top it off with lettuce, tomato slices, red onion slices and Italian dressing.  It's served hot on a toasted hoagie roll.  I also got a choice of a side with the sandwich.  I had a choice of red beans and rice, pasta salad, cole slaw or cottage cheese.  For an upcharge, I could get fries or onion rings. I ended up going with the red beans and rice.  

As I was waiting for my sandwich to come out, a couple seated near me had both ordered Un-Wraps.  It was evident from their conversation that the young lady had ordered an Un-Wrap before.  The man with her - it may have been her father - was completely confused as to eat it.  "How am I supposed to eat this," he asked in sort of a angry tone.  "Do I pick it up?  Do I use a knife and fork?"

Her basic answer was, "Yes.  However you want to eat it."  Actually, the Un-Wraps they'd ordered looked pretty good.   

The sandwich came out to me a little later on, about 15 to 20 minutes after I ordered.  It was a basically a six to seven inch hoagie with the Italian meats, cheese and veggies.  It easily cut it in half with a regular knife.  

The outer part of the bread was soft and chewy, but crunchy inside where it was toasted.  The meat had that great Italian spiciness that I look for when I pair capicola and pepperoni slices with salami.  The meat was piled high it was a substantial sandwich.  For a basic Italian sandwich, it was very good.

The red beans and rice, however, were a major disappointment.  They were rather bland and boring. Some Tabasco would have helped liven the red beans and rice up a bit, but Tiffany was busy with other tables and I couldn't get her attention.  That was OK, though.  I was concentrating more on the sandwich and it turned out that the sandwich, alone, was fine enough.  

Their Oktoberfest beer was similar to other Mad Anthony beers I've had in the past.  Competent, but a little bland in taste.  As I said, the beers are serviceable, but they don't knock my socks off.  The Oktoberfest had little carbonation and had a slight malt flavor to it.  Not the best Oktoberfest I've ever had and definitely down the list of Oktoberfest beers I've tried.  

Well, other than the beer, my first experience at Mad Anthony's Brewing Company was a pleasant one.  The surroundings and ambiance were nice, Tiffany's service was fine, as well.  Even though it was I pretty much what I expected from a brewpub of this type, I enjoyed the sandwich and thought that I'd like to try an Un-Wrap at some point.  If you're looking for a brewpub experience in Fort Wayne, Mad Anthony's is worth the stop.  

Ziffle's Rib Bar - Fort Wayne, IN

I recently put on a new dealer in Fort Wayne, IN and I was in town to do some training for the staff.  I always like to treat the sales guys to dinner after having to listen to me for a couple hours.  When we finished up, I asked where they wanted to go.  One of the guys brought up J.K. O'Donnell's, the fine Irish pub in downtown Fort Wayne.  (Click here to see my entry on J.K. O'Donnell's.)  But it was about a 20 to 25 minute drive from the dealer's location to J.K. O'Donnell's.  Someone asked if I liked barbecue, because there was a very good barbecue place about a quarter mile away.  I asked back, "Do they have beer at this barbecue place?"  One of the guys explained that they did, but it wasn't as an eclectic mix of beers that are featured at J.K. O'Donnell's. Always up for something new in my travels, I suggested we go to the barbecue place.  About five cars got in a mini caravan and pulled up to Ziffle's Rib Bar in a strip mall at the corner of State Street and Maplecrest Rd. in northeast Fort Wayne.  (see map)

Ziffle's Rib Bar celebrated their 25th year in business in 2012.  I'm guessing Owners Todd and Marcia Dennis have a good sense of humor as they probably named their rib joint after the pig, Arnold Ziffel, on one my favorite television shows growing up (well, and still to this day), Green Acres.  The name on their restaurant juxtaposed the "e" and the "l", but I think I caught what the Dennis' are trying to do.  And because of the pig theme to their restaurant, all the barbecue items on their menu are pork based - no beef or chicken barbecue items (although they do have oven baked chicken with barbecue sauce on the menu).

Ziffle's Rib Bar also has pizza on the menu, along with a number of sandwiches, salads, and appetizers.  But one of their biggest sellers are their Ziffle-style fries.  They season their French fries in a combination of 10 herbs and spices and they're a big hit.  Ziffle's goes through a ton of cut potatoes for their fries in a week.  

It was just passed 8:30 when we walked into the place.  They quit serving at 9, but they have a bar area in the back that stays open later for drinks.  The person who greeted us said we had our choice of sitting in the dining area (below left) or in the bar area (below right)  (Pictures courtesy Yelp.com) 

 
Since we figured we'd have a few beers with our meal, we ended up taking a table in the back corner of the bar.  The tables in the bar and in the dining room were similar - heavy wood and comfortable seating.  After getting a menu and ordering up some beers, I took a gander at what I wanted to order that evening.  

For a barbecue place, Ziffle's is pretty lean on offerings.  They had ribs, rib tips and pulled pork sandwiches.  You could get a whole slab of ribs, a half slab of ribs or a quarter slab of ribs.  I like to have a little variety of barbecue when I try a place and they didn't have any type of a sampler platter because, well, it was just ribs.  I asked the waitress if they had pulled pork without the sandwich and she said, "No, not really."  Then she said that I could get the rib snack - a quarter slab of ribs - to go along with the pulled pork sandwich.  "A lot of people do it that way," she explained.  OK, I'll do that, too.  She asked me what kind of sauce I wanted and I asked if I could get the medium sauce with hot on the side (they also have a mild sauce available).  

With the sandwich I got a side of the Ziffle-style fries, but before we even ordered one of the guys ordered up a basket of the Ziffle's Fire Fries - basically French fries with a hearty dose of cajun seasonings and cayenne pepper.  They came out to the table after we had ordered they definitely had some zing on them, for sure.  They certainly got my attention when I had a few.  

All of us ordered barbecue with the exception of one of the guys who ordered a dozen and a half of the Ziffle's deep fried chicken wings smothered in hot barbecue sauce.  He told me, "My dad thinks these are the best wings in the world.  I don't know if I've found wings at any other place that are as good as these."  

My pulled pork sandwich and my rib basket were placed in front of me.  The pulled pork was served open faced on a hoagie bun with the potato chips underneath.  The pork was slathered in some of their medium sauce.  (No extra sauce was available on the table.)  

 
The ribs consisted of four meaty bones, also bathing in some of the medium sauce.  The medium sauce was a little sweet, but not too hot.  I had a small tub of the hot barbecue sauce on the side and while it did have a hotter, more peppery taste, it wouldn't be classified as a "burn-your-face-off" sauce.  

The pulled pork was very good - I ate it plain without the bread.  The pulled pork was tender and flavorful, but the barbecue sauce really hid the true taste of the pork.  I should have asked for the sauce on the side for both the pulled pork and ribs.  But it was still very good.  

The meat on the ribs was a tad tough to chew, but had a nice smoky flavor.  The meat pulled off the bone rather easily and some parts of the ribs were a little more tender.  Quite honestly, I couldn't find much to complain about with either the ribs or the pulled pork - other than maybe offering a sampler with both.  

One of the guys offered me some of the Ziffle-style French fries.  I can see why they're so popular.  The seasoning on the fries had a nice zesty taste and the fries had that nice crunchy outer shell with a moist potato filling.  I dipped some in the hot barbecue sauce and I lamented that I should have gone that route for a side.  

We finished up our meals and sat around and had a couple more beers talking business until around 10 p.m.  Like I said, I couldn't find much to complain about my meal at Ziffle's Rib Bar.  The service was good (we had the server running back and forth quite a bit between the kitchen and the bar for us - she got a nice tip), the restaurant was clean and welcoming, and the food was very good.  It may not be the best barbecue I've ever had, but for Fort Wayne, IN, I'm sure it's one of the best around.  While J.K. O'Donnell's would have given us a wider variety of food and beers to choose from, I was very happy with my barbecue at Ziffle's Rib Bar.  (Photo at right courtesy Yelp.com) 

 

Oley's Pizza - Fort Wayne, IN

On a couple previous visits to Fort Wayne and taking the drive out to the wonderful Joseph Ducuis restaurant in nearby Roanoke, IN (click here to see my entry), we've passed a pizza place along U.S. Highway 24 south and west of Fort Wayne by the name of Oley's Pizza.  Last summer during a dinner party at Joseph Decuis with some people from Sweetwater, one of the largest mail-order/Internet pro music dealers in the nation, I asked a guy and his wife about Oley's.  They both gushed about the place.  "Oh, yeah.  Oley's is the real deal," the guy told me.  His wife said she wouldn't eat any other pizza in Fort Wayne.  "And that's a problem," he explained to me.  "We live about 25 minutes away from Oley's on the north side of town."  While in Fort Wayne recently to meet with a consumer electronics dealer I've been working with, I decided to try out Oley's which was only a couple miles down the road from my hotel.

The original Oley's Pizza was opened in 1980 by Stephen "Oley" and Carol Olinger in the small town of Ossian, IN, directly south of Fort Wayne.  The Olinger's had visited Chicago on a number of occasions and wanted to bring the taste of Chicago-style pizza to the Fort Wayne area.  After opening their first restaurant, they developed a "double-crust" deep pan style pizza using a homemade sauce made from three different types of tomatoes with low citric acid, a blend of four cheeses, sausage that was sourced from local meat purveyors and cooked daily with Oley's special blend of Italian spices, and a special homemade pizza dough made with four different types of flour, malt powder, natural honey, fresh yeast, and extra virgin olive oil.  

Over the years, Oley's grew to multiple locations and some franchises were sold in Indiana and Western Ohio. Today, there are two Oley's in the Fort Wayne area - the "original" family-owned Oley's on Highway 24, and an Oley's Pizza Shoppe on North Coliseum Blvd. owned by Jim Parnin.  Steve "Oley" Olinger died in 2006 and his son, Kevin, took over the family operation.  

When the couple from Fort Wayne was telling me about the original Oley's, the woman said, "There's an Oley's that about 20 minutes from our house on the east side, but it's not the same as the one on Highway 24."  They both said the original Oley's is better than the franchise Oley's in Fort Wayne.   

I was staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Wayne for the evening and it had been a long day.  I thought for a moment about heading downtown to find a place to eat before I decided to drive the short distance down the highway to Oley's Pizza.  It was a two minute drive from the hotel to Oley's, situated at the corner of Homestead Rd. and U.S. Highway 24. (see map) 

There's ample parking in front of the building which is in a sort of mini strip mall with a couple empty spaces.  I saw the "Open" sign in the window and found a door to walk in.  To my surprise, I walked into the kitchen at Oley's.  Actually, it's also the area where people come to pick up "to-go" orders.  There are two swinging doors behind the counter and that takes you into the dining room.  

Walking through the dining room at Oley's, I found the main entrance down a hallway between the dining room and the bar area.  The bar area featured a small bar and a handful of booths and tables.  A boisterous bunch of middle aged women were at a six-seater table in the bar and they were pretty loud.  I decided to go back to a booth in the dining room to try and escape their cackling laughter.  

The dining area had sort of a cozy and warm atmosphere.  High back booths were along the north and west walls with a handful of sturdy wooden tables and chairs in the middle.  Can lighting gave off a subtle glow in the room.  I took one of the booths and it wasn't long until my server for the evening, Karmen, showed up with a menu for me.  She asked if I wanted anything to drink and I ordered a Bud Light in a bottle.  She came back moments later with an 18 oz. bottle of Bud Light and a frosty mug.  That was a nice surprise and a nice touch.  I poured the beer into the glass and took a drink.  There was some sort of weird taste in the glass.  It tasted sort of like a detergent that hadn't been fully cleaned out of the glass.  I figured my taster was probably off, but the second glass that I got when my pizza was served had the same taste.  Oh well - at least the glass was clean and cold.

In addition to pizza at Oley's Pizza, they also feature a number of appetizers, oven baked submarine sandwiches, Italian food entrees such as lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, and spaghetti dishes, and even barbecued ribs.  Well, they aren't really barbecued, according to the menu, but baked in a homemade barbecue sauce.   

I pretty much knew that I was going to get a pizza, but the only question was what size.  They have four sizes at Oley's ranging from small to extra large.  The only problem is that they didn't list the size of the pizzas in inches.  They had about a dozen specialty pizzas on the menu, but none of them really tripped my trigger.  A couple of them, I think I said, "No way!", out loud.  One of them was the Bulldog Steak and Cheese pizza.  It's basically Oley's Philly steak sandwich on a pizza, with the dough basted with a homemade creamy mayo sauce, topped a blend of their cheeses, Philly-style steak, green peppers, onions and red peppers.  Then they put A1 steak sauce on top of all that!  Ugh!  

Then there was the chicken club pizza - the sauce is a blend of ranch dressing and Oley's homemade house dressing.  Then they add their cheese blend, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and finally chicken and bacon.  Nooo!!!!  That goes on a sandwich!  Not a pizza!  

Karmen came back around and I asked her how big a small pizza was.  She said, "10 inches.  A medium is 12 inches."  I thought a small would do me fine, so I ordered my usual sausage, mushroom and pepperoni.  A thin crust, not the double crust they're famous for.  She asked, "What kind of sausage?"  

Oh!  I get my pick between the Italian sausage and the American sausage.  Karmen said the Italian sausage was a little more spicy than the American sausage.  "It's basically the same sausage," she explained.  "Only we add some spices to the Italian sausage to make it a little more zesty.  It's not all that spicy, though."  Of course, I took the Italian sausage.  

When Karmen brought my pizza out, I was ready to eat.  It was late - around 8:45 in the evening and I was hungry.  I noticed before the pizza came out that there wasn't any parmesan cheese on the table - only shakers of red peppers and dried oregano.  However, the parmesan cheese was delivered with the pizza sitting in the middle in a small container.

At first look, the crust looked thick, but it was just the rolled up edges that made it look that way.  The base of the crust under the toppings was thin.  The Italian sausage was in small chunks, but not ground up like Quad City-style pizza.   

Pulling the first piece off the pan and putting it on my plate showed a pool of grease under the pizza on the pizza pan.  And my first bite yielded a wonderful flavor of the combination of the cheese, tangy sauce, mild Italian sausage, and the spicy pepperoni.   The mushrooms - although called "fresh" in the menu - looked like they may have come from a can.  Not a deal breaker, for sure, but I didn't think they were fresh.  The bottom line question that I ask myself about any pizza I have - "Does it taste good with a beer?" - and the answer was "Absolutely!"  It was a very good pizza.    

Because the topping were so heavy on the pizza, I was able to finish four slices and asked Karmen for a box to take the remaining two pieces back to my hotel for breakfast in the morning.  When she came back, I asked her how many Oley's were still around.  She said, "Well, the one on Coliseum and this one are the only ones that I know of.  I went to the Oley's on Coliseum a while back to give that one a try and it's not the same as our pizza. I like our pizza better."  I told her that I'd heard that from some other people in Fort Wayne.  

I will have to say that Oley's was a great value.  The bill with tax came to $16.50 - that was for the pizza with three toppings and two 18 oz. beers.  The beers were $2.75 each.  Thank you very much!  I signed the tab at an even $20 bucks with the tip.  I tried to get a couple pictures of the bar area and the kitchen before I left, but it turned out that I had a grease smudge on the lens of the camera on my phone and the pictures came out blurry when I downloaded them on my computer.  Oh well.  One of the hazards of having an excellent pizza from Oley's, I guess.  I can certainly see why the locals think Oley's Pizza is the best Fort Wayne has to offer.  (Picture courtesy The Pizza Fan.com)

Powers Hamburgers - Fort Wayne, IN

An icon of Fort Wayne eateries sits in a little art deco building built previous to World War II just across from the U.S. Northern Indiana District Federal Courthouse - Powers Hamburgers (see map).  This little hamburger shop was once part of a small regional empire of hamburger joints that rivaled White Castle in their style, size and taste.  I was told by a sales person at Sweetwater Sound that I had to try Powers Hamburgers at least once.  On a recent visit earlier this summer to Fort Wayne, I stopped in for a burger (or two) for lunch. 

Back in the years before World War II, White Castle out of Kansas led the charge of small hamburger shops that popped up over the nation's landscape featuring small burgers cooked - or steamed - on flat grills.  This phenomenon also gave rise to the White Manna (or Mana) burger shops on the East coast.  In Dearborn, MI, four brothers who grew up in Northeastern Indiana - Leo, Clell, Harold (aka Jim) and Dale Powers - built a hamburger shop from the ground up on their own.  Their little stand - Powers Hamburgers - was a hit for the workers and their families at nearby auto plants.  In 1938 - three years after the opening of the first Powers Hamburgers stand - Dale Powers had moved to Port Huron to open a second location.  Soon thereafter, Dale opened locations in Grand Rapids.  

Leo Powers had decided to move back to Northeast Indiana and he opened the Powers Hamburger location near the downtown area of Fort Wayne in 1940.  A second location was opened in an industrial area in 1947.  At the height of their popularity, between 15 to 20 Powers Hamburgers stands were in business in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.  

In 1980, Leo Powers passed the business along to his son, Rolin.  Rolin opened a third Fort Wayne location in 1983, but it didn't prove to be as successful as the other two and it closed in 1989.  Along about that time, Rolin Powers was diagnosed with cancer and he died about a year later.  His sister, Marilyn Penick, took of the two remaining Powers Hamburgers in Fort Wayne and ran them until she sold them to 28-year-old Michael Hall in 1999.  Hall had been the accountant for Penick and Powers Hamburgers and wanted to learn the business from the inside out.  Penick liked him so much that she encouraged him to buy the business from her - the only non-Powers family member to own a Powers location.  

After Hall took over, he closed the second location in Fort Wayne in 2004, but continues to keep the tradition alive in the original Fort Wayne location.  Other than some structural improvements and new signage for the building, some tweaks to the menu (pictured right), and the hours (they used to be open every day, 24 hours - now they're open through the week at 5 a.m., 6 a.m. on Saturdays; and close at 10 p.m. Monday thru Wednesday, and at midnight Thursday thru Saturday), Hall has kept everything pretty much the same.  

Powers Hamburgers weathered a small storm about four years ago when plans to build a complex of mixed-use buildings comprised of a new baseball stadium, condos and hotels, as well as a convention center threatened the building.  Initial plans had the block on which Powers sits to be an open lot to be used for future development.  But a campaign by local Fort Wayne residents made city planners back off on their idea saving the last and only Powers Hamburgers stand in existence.  

There's a parking lot next to Powers Hamburgers that is probably too large for the number of seats they have in the place.  The small counter wraps around and seats about a dozen people.  There's a small booth in the back next to a back kitchen/prep area.  The grill is located on the north side of the building that looks out onto the corner of W. Brackenridge and S. Harrison streets.

Knowing that it is usually busy during the lunch rush hour, I waited until the middle of the afternoon before I stopped into Powers Hamburgers to try a burger.  I took a seat at the south end of the counter, getting a good glimpse of what goes on behind the counter.  The menu is located on the wall above and behind the counter.  In addition to their "slider" burgers, Powers also serves breakfast until 10:30 including eggs, omelette's, egg sandwiches and something called the "garbage plate" that has eggs, hash browns, meat and cheese added to it.  They also have coney dogs, chili, and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches on the menu.  But most of the people are going for the burgers.

I ordered two with grilled onions.  The burgers are hand-pattied and made to order - at least mine was. It could be when they get into a rush they just make a bunch of them up as a lot of people buy them by the sackful - just as they do at White Castle. (And, good God, don't ever mention White Castle in Powers Hamburgers!)  In fact, while I was there a couple people came in and bought eight or ten at a time to go.  

The burgers are smashed into the grill with a spatula and they cook very fast.  They serve the burgers on Aunt Millie's buns - actually they're more like dinner rolls.  Aunt Millie's main bakery and corporate offices are not far from Powers Hamburgers.  And they do make damn fine rolls and buns.  

The burgers were topped with copious amounts of grilled onions which kind of had a chargrilled-burnt taste to them.  I wasn't certain that I liked them with the grilled onions as even with a little bit of mustard on the top of them I couldn't really taste the burger meat.  I mean, it tasted all right - the burger was a little small and thin, but it wasn't misshapen or skimpy like the ones I encountered at the Cozy Inn in Salina, KS. (Click here to see my entry on that place.)  Yeah, I could see how a person could eat 6 to 8 at a time.  

I made short work of my burger and I asked the counter guy/grill cook to make me one more without the onions. I wanted to see if I could get a better taste of the meat.  On hindsight, I should have gotten a double because this one was also pretty thin and with not a lot of meat.  The great tasting Aunt Millie's bun overpowered the overall taste of the burger meat.  Next time - double burgers.  

I can't say that Powers Hamburgers were outstanding, but they were far from being "just average".  I'm sure it's one of those tastes that the locals grew up with and crave when a Powers hamburger calls their name.  But for the history of the place, the way that you literally go back in time when you enter that building, and the tradition of making the burgers the same way they have for over 70 years, Powers Hamburgers is a must stop if you're ever in Fort Wayne.   

Coney Island Wiener Stand - Fort Wayne, IN

While in Fort Wayne late last year, I was talking with one of the sales guys at Sweetwater, a large pro music equipment and instrument dealer who we do business with, about unique places to eat around Fort Wayne.  He was telling me of a little hot dog shop in downtown Fort Wayne that had been open for nearly 100 years - Coney Island Wiener Stand.  He raved about the chili dogs at the place. Since I love a good chili dog, I made a note of it. On a recent trip to the area to meet with a potential new dealer, I stopped at Coney Island and had lunch.

This history of Coney Island dates back to 1913 when it first opened its doors (some accounts have it opening in 1914).  A large contingent of Greek Macedonian immigrants had come to Fort Wayne to find a better life in the early 1900's. Many of them opened restaurants in the area.  Thanks to the 1904 Lousiana Purchase Exposition, commonly known as the St. Louis World's Fair, the wiener on a bun was suddenly one of the most popular items for Americans to eat. Three of those immigrants, Harry Dorikis, James Samaras and Stilos Papas came up with the idea to open a wiener grill in downtown Fort Wayne.

Three years later, one of the three orginal owners sold his portion of the business to Vasil Eschoff, a Macedonian immigrant who came to the United States without his family.  Vasil Eschoff worked at the restaurant for 14 years before he brought his family to the United States.  I understand that was a common practice among Greek Macedonians to come to America alone, then send for their family once they got established during the early 20th century. 

The remaining two original owners eventually sold their interest in Coney Island to Jack Geroff and Russell Litchin and moved back to Greece.  Eschoff and Litchin eventually bought out Geroff and continued to work in the restaurant each day over the next 30 plus years.   

In the late 50's, failing health forced Vasil Eschoff out of the business.  His son-in-law, Russ Choka (pictured at right), also a son of Macedonian immigrants, took over Eschoff's portion of Coney Island.  Choka had married Eschoff's daughter, Helen, a dozen years prior.  Two years later, Russell Litchin left the business and turned his portion over to his son, Chris.  

Russ Choka worked at Coney Island every day, seven days a week, for the next 40+ years.  There were stories of how he would open the restaurant in blizzards just because he had no reason not to be there.  Choka was the longtime face of Coney Island and his son, Michael, came into the business at a young age to help out.  Cancer took Michael's life in 1993 at the age of 42 and his sister, Kathy, and their brother, Ron, stepped in to help out.  Russ Choka was said to have a gruff exterior, but had a heart of gold.  He mentored a number of young kids during the years he worked behind the 16 seat counter at Coney Island.  Kathy Choka said that her dad was the only father figure that many of the Coney Island employees had in their lives.  

Sadly, in December of last year, Russ Choka was climbing the stairs at his house to go to bed one Friday evening and his heart gave out.  "This is the way he would want to go," Kathy Choka told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette after her father's death.  "He didn't suffer."  

Kathy Choka took over her father's part of the business and continues the tradition of Coney Island today.  "It's all about the continuity," Kathy Choka told the local newspaper. "The product is not going to change."

The hot dogs at Coney Island are grilled on a flat grill located by the front window that looks out onto West Main Street in downtown Fort Wayne (see map).  Between 1500 and 2000 hot dogs are cooked on the grill on a nearly daily basis at Coney Island.  They steam the buns at Coney Island and the bun steamer is just behind a glass partition next to the counter where there's a food preparation area.  

The restaurant, itself, is in a long narrow building with tables on one wall opposite the counter.  Old pictures of Fort Wayne from years ago along with some whimsical signage adorn the walls.  The stools at the counter look like they are the original ones from when the place first opened years ago.  Even there is a front door to the place, a number of people use the backdoor entrance to go through the small kitchen in the back to the dining area of the restaurant.  It's one of those things that only the locals know it's all right to do.

The menu at Coney Island is pretty basic.  Along with hot dogs, you can get burgers, chili, baked beans, homemade pie and chips.  Their baked beans must be pretty good as they had those available for carry-out in either a bowl-size or a pint-size container. I took a seat at the counter and knew I was going to get a couple Coney Hot Dogs - basically chili dogs. - with onions.  

A young girl came over to greet me and I ordered up two of the Coney Hot Dogs from her - with onions. I was hoping the ginger Altoids I had in my car would kick in before I had to meet with my prospective dealer later in the afternoon.  I got a glass of water to go along with the meal.

It didn't take long at all for a couple coney dogs to be placed in front of me.  The dogs and buns were long and narrow, not very big at all.  Three of these would have been fine with me.  It had a layer of their homemade Greek style chili with a ribbon of mustard underneath a copious amount of fresh onions.  From the first bite, I liked the taste immensely.  They reminded me of my long-time favorite hot dog shop in Sioux City, IA - George's No. 1 Hot Dog Shoppe.  The chili had no beans in it and had a wonderful and flavorful spice to it.  It wasn't a hot spicy taste, just a nice smooth complimentary taste that went will with the grilled taste of the hot dogs.  I do like a good flat-topped grilled hot dog.  It's tough to beat a good steamed hot dog, but the taste of the old grill at Coney Island was clearly evident on their hot dogs.  The steamed buns gave them a nice light and chewy taste. It was simply an outstanding hot dog.  

I did have my meeting at my prospective dealer later in the day and they did agree to carry some of our products.  I had to do an event at Sweetwater the next day and I had planned on telling the guy from there about my visit to Coney Island.  Shockingly, I found out that he had passed away from leukemia a month before.  Now each time I come back to Fort Wayne, I'll have to stop at Coney Island and have a couple three coney dogs in his memory.   It's plain to see why they've been in business for nearly 100 years.  Coney Island is one of those great little slices of Americana in the heartland of the U.S. 

J K O'Donnell's - Fort Wayne, IN

During a trip to Fort Wayne to do a presentation for the staff at Sweetwater, one of the largest dealers of products for professional and amateur musicians in the nation, my colleague Simon set up a get-together for some of the sales staff at an Irish bar called J K O'Donnell's.  He'd taken some of the staff there before and they were sequestered in a partyroom where they had a fixed menu of appetizers and entrees.  Oh, and unlimited beer.  Simon got it set up for another night of food and beer when we were there just before Christmas last December.

Downtown Fort Wayne is not unlike many mid-sized Midwestern communities that has suffered from an economic downturn over the past 10 to 20 years.  With an urban flight of both people and businesses, store fronts have closed up, people are living away from the center of cities, and downtown areas have become ghost towns after 5 p.m.  A number of business people saw the need for a revitalization of the downtown area and one of those men was Scott Glaze, the owner of a company that made medical grade wiring in Fort Wayne.  Glaze traveled often for his job, both across the United States and to foreign countries.  He was struck at how some similar sized cities had a downtown area with shops and restaurants that he didn't find in Fort Wayne.  He wanted to begin a renaissance of the downtown area, but knew he couldn't do it alone.  

Glaze got a group of what he called "crazy entrepreneurs" on board for his vision of a downtown revitalization in Fort Wayne.  He knew it wouldn't happen overnight, but he had to help get the ball rolling in regard to bringing the downtown back to a vibrant destination.  Along with his wife, Melissa, Glaze wasn't certain if he wanted to open a retail shop or a restaurant for their part of the revitalization project.  They just knew they wanted to do something. 

It was during one of his trips to Castlebar, Ireland to a facility that worked with his company, Glaze found himself in a quaint Irish bar that he fell deeply in love with.   The Irish pub gave him the inspiration to open an authentic Irish pub in Fort Wayne.  Along with partners Dennis and Jeremy Rohrs, and managing partner Kim Jacobs, the Glaze's opened J K O'Donnell's in August of 2007.  Two years later, they expanded into a building beside the business and made that an overflow/party room with extra restrooms.   

The main dining room consists of a quaint three-sided bar with a highback bar area that goes from ceiling to floor centered in the middle of the room.  Regular tables and high tables like you'd find in an Irish pub were throughout the room.  You have to walk through the dining area to get to the party room in the back corner of the restaurant.  

Simon had invited about 25 of the top Focal Pro loudspeaker salesmen to the little soiree that snowy evening.  Like before, he settled on a number of appetizers and a fixed menu for dinner.  As many of the Sweetwater people made it into the room, the appetizers were brought in and a waiter went around taking drink orders.  

The beer list at J K O'Donnell's is pretty extensive with a mix of domestic and imported beers.  They had a number of very good Midwestern microbreweries to choose from including the Three Floyds brewery out of Munster, IN.  (Click here to read about my visit to the Three Floyds brewpub.)   For my first beer of the evening, I went with a Three Floyds Alpha King pale ale, a very forward and hoppy pale ale that I like to drink from time to time.  

The appetizers were set on a table and they consisted of chicken wings, an artichoke dip served with toasted bread slices, homemade potato chips (that were way over-cooked) and Simon's favorite - fried pickles.  Here's a picture of Simon taking a bite into the fried pickles at J K O'Donnell's.  Quite actually, the fried pickles were the highlight of the appetizer spread with the artichoke dip a close second.  The fried pickles weren't dill spears like you normally will see with that type of appetizer, but rather dill chips covered in a beer batter that was very tasty.   

I had finished my Three Floyds Alpha King and decided that while I was in an Irish pub, I'd better get an Irish beer.  I ordered up a Smithwick's the second time around.  But when the waiter brought it to me I found it to be very flat.  So much so that I didn't even finish it.  I got the waiter's attention and told him that I wanted something else.  I ordered up a Bell's Two Hearted pale ale and stuck with that the rest of the evening.  

The fixed menu we had that evening had a number of items off of J K O'Donnell's regular menu including fish and chips, Irish stew, an authentic corned beef and slaw sandwich, as well as a corned beef and cabbage entree, and bangers and mash.  Actually, Simon had talked up the Shepherd's Pie before we got there and I was disappointed to not see it on the fixed menu.  Even though both the corned beef and cabbage and the corned beef and slaw sandwich sounded good, I ended up ordering the Irish stew which was the closest thing to Shepherd's Pie without the mashed potatoes on top.  (A late arriving Sweetwater person actually ordered the Shepherd's Pie.  Had I known I could have done that, I would have.)

Our meals began to show up and a couple people at the table I was seated at got the fish and chips (below left).  The fish looked a little dark and both people said that it was a little overcooked.  Like the homemade potato chips, the fish was darned near burnt from the fryer on the outside.  It was like the oil in the fryer was too hot and they should have taken the fish out a minute earlier.  The fish was a little rubbery, it was reported to me by those who had it, probably from the overcooking.  

My Irish stew was actually pretty good.  It was thick and hearty with a very robust taste.  It had large chunks of all-natural beef along with a potpourri of vegetables in a dense gravy/broth.  A side house salad came with the Irish stew that went well with the meal.  A guy at a table next to me got the corned beef and cabbage.  And while it did look very good, I was overly happy with my Irish stew.  It was a good "stick-to-your-ribs" meal on a cold winter evening in Fort Wayne.  

Many of the Sweetwater gang began to filter out before 9 a.m. as they had a 7 a.m. sales meeting the next morning.  I settled up the bill with the waiter and it was actually pretty reasonable for the amount of food and drinks that we had.  I'd have to say J K O'Donnell's did a fine job in capturing the essence of an authentic Irish pub with the food, the extensive beer list and the decor throughout the place.  The wait staff was quick and efficient, and it was a pleasant evening all around.  Simon does these little parties from time to time when he comes out to Fort Wayne to deal with Sweetwater.  Now that I've been indoctrinated into the Sweetwater culture I'm sure I'll be back to J K O'Donnell's at some point quaffing a few beers and hopefully getting the Shepherd's Pie.   

Cork 'N Cleaver - Fort Wayne, IN

Back in the 1960's, a number of - what was then - upscale steakhouse chains popped up across the nation offering good food in a wholesome family atmosphere. If you're over the age of 40, you probably remember Stuart Anderson's Cattle Company, Mr. Steak and Boar's Head, to name a few. All of those companies have gone out of business years ago, but one steakhouse name from the 60's that I do remember is Cork 'N Cleaver. It turns out there's still a Cork 'N Cleaver in Fort Wayne, IN and when I was out there with my colleague, Simon, for a presentation at Sweetwater we had dinner there one evening.

The first Cork 'N Cleaver opened in 1964 in the Phoenix area offering high quality steaks, seafood and chops in a casual and cozy Southwestern ranch-style setting. The concept was so popular that there were soon well over 80 locations in over two dozen states. In the mid-70's, the Chart House restaurant chain bought the Cork 'N Cleaver brand. Changing food attitudes spelled the demise for many steakhouse restaurants like Cork 'N Cleaver and the beginning of the end of many of the locations happened in the 80's. Chart House began to close Cork 'N Cleaver locations beginning in the early 80's and by the early 90's there were just three locations left - Fort Wayne, Evansville, IN and Kalamazoo, MI. (The original Phoenix location is still open, but was not part of the chain.)

In 1994, a young executive for Chart House restaurants, Wally Seward, bought the remaining three Cork 'N Cleaver locations from the corporation and moved his family from Daytona Beach to Fort Wayne. Quite seriously, that had to be both a cultural and climate shock for the Seward family. But Seward believed in the Cork 'N Cleaver concept and wanted to keep the name going. After all, he got his start in the restaurant business with Cork 'N Cleaver.

Wally Seward - pictured right

In 1975, Seward was a student at Jacksonville University in Florida when he took a job working at the local Cork 'N Cleaver location as a server. It was there where he met his future wife, Ellen, who was a hostess at the restaurant. Over the years, both Wally and Ellen earned promotions that took them to a number of Cork 'N Cleaver locations working in many levels of capacity. When Chart House bought the Cork 'N Cleaver restaurants, Wally became a Cork 'N Cleaver restaurant manager at locations in Kansas City and Orlando, then became a regional manager in Atlanta and in Cincinnati before becoming the V-P of Operations for Chart House at the young age of 34. He was 41 when he moved his wife and their three young kids to Fort Wayne.

Unfortunately, Wally Seward tragically passed away in 2007 at the very young age of 53 leaving Ellen and his son, Josh, to run the restaurant. Josh had gone to college to learn restaurant management so he could follow in his father's footsteps. He just didn't think that he was going to have to run the restaurant sooner than later.

I had picked up Simon at the airport earlier in the evening and we were at the hotel figuring out where we wanted to go eat dinner. It was a Sunday night and we knew that most restaurants wouldn't be all that busy - or we ASSUMED they wouldn't be that busy - so we didn't bother making reservations anywhere. When we finally decided to go to Cork 'N Cleaver, a restaurant Simon had eaten at before during his previous visits to Sweetwater, we took off for the 15 minute drive to the steakhouse. When we pulled into the parking lot at the location along Washington Center Road (see map) we found a very packed lot full of cars. I said to Simon, "Maybe we should have made reservations."

We went inside and found that it was, indeed, packed. The hostess told us that it would be a 10 to 15 minute wait, which wasn't that bad. I said to her, "We figured that on a Sunday night we wouldn't need reservations."

She sort of snottily replied, "We strongly suggest reservations at all times." It was like I was just talked down to by a maitre d' at a high-end Chicago or New York restaurant rather than some 20-something part-time hostess at a restaurant in Fort Wayne.

When we were finally seated, it was in one of the myriad of dining areas throughout the Cork 'N Cleaver restaurant. We were near the salad bar and in kind of a high traffic area. There seemed to be a lot of birthday celebrations going on in the restaurant involving families. And there also seemed to be a number of older people dining in the restaurant.

Our server for the evening, Pamela, greeted us and sat down the menu for that evening. It was literally engraved on a meat cleaver, not a sharp meat cleaver, but a real meat cleaver. It featured, of course, steaks and seafood, along with chicken and pork entrees. The only problem is that only one person could look at it at a time as there was just one. I wasn't certain that I liked the clever cleaver concept (I just couldn't wait to write that).

Pamela asked us if we wanted to start out with an appetizer and Simon said that he fancied the seared tuna with wasabi - six one-ounce pieces of sushi grade tuna, seared rare, drizzled with a wasabi sauce and served with kimchee cabbage and ginger. OK, that sounded good to me, as well.

While we were waiting for the tuna to show up, I looked long at hard at the cleaver menu to figure out what I wanted to get that evening. I definitely wanted a steak and the first thing that popped up on my screen was the Pepper Steak - a 14-ounce New York strip that is rolled in cracked peppercorns and marinated overnight. (They didn't say what it was marinated in.) However, it was served on a bed of grilled onions and topped with a brown sauce. (It didn't say what kind of brown sauce, so I figured it was just a gravy.) It sounded good except for the onions and the sauce.

They also had prime rib on the menu and I hadn't had prime rib in a long, long time preferring to eat more lean cuts of beef when I've gone out. But the 10 oz. prime rib sounded pretty good that evening.

Simon had his eye on the coffee-encrusted filet. He remembered that I had the coffee-encrusted filet at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill restaurant in Vegas earlier this year. "You didn't like it, if I remember," Simon said.

I said, "I don't know if it wasn't that I didn't like it as much as I was disappointed that we had a fixed menu and what I really wanted to order that night wasn't available." Actually, it was pretty good.

Pamela came back with the seared tuna appetizer and asked if we were ready to order. I pretty much had made up my mind to do the pepper steak, but I wasn't sold on the grilled onions and the sauce on top. I asked if I could just get the regular New York strip rolled in the cracked peppercorns, then grilled. She said, "Well, the regular New York strip isn't marinated overnight." I asked if I could get the Pepper Steak without the onions and the sauce on the side and she said, "Sure!" Then she asked, "Would you like sauteed mushrooms to go along with it?"  I couldn't say no!

Simon ordered the ground coffee filet with some rice pilaf. Pamela asked if we wanted any other sides and she made some suggestions including garlic mashed potatoes with crab meat. Oooo... That sounded good. I ordered that for Simon and I to share.

The seared ahi tuna appetizer was quite good, actually. It was served with both soy-sauce and a sort of honey-mustard sauce along with the kimshee. We both got three pieces each and it was a nice start to the meal. The tuna was very flavorful and delicious. It was a very good start to the dinner.

Along with the meal, we got Cork 'N Cleaver's "award winning" salad bar. I had forgotten my phone back at the hotel, so Simon did the honors of taking pictures of the meal for me. He tried to do his best in capturing the essence of the salad bar, but the back lighting was just too intense. The salad bar was really nothing special above and beyond any type of salad bar I've encountered at any similar steakhouses. The most notable exception was the sweet raspberry vinaigrette dressing that I got. Simon was just amazed. "I can't believe you got that dressing," he exclaimed. "It was more like raspberry jam!" It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't get it again if I went back. Simon got the homemade creamy bleu cheese dressing for his salad and he said it was good.

Pamela came back to pick up our salad plates after we were finished and let us know that our steaks were coming shortly. I ordered up two glasses of the Franciscan cabernet for Simon and I to enjoy with our meal. She brought them out the just before our steaks showed up on the table.

When our steaks came out, we were ready to eat. My steak wasn't covered in peppercorns the way I had envisioned it to be when I ordered. But it was rare with a cool center when I cut into it. I still don't know what they marinated the steak in, but it was pleasant enough to the taste and the meat was very juicy. I dipped a couple pieces of the steak in the brown sauce I had off to the side and I'm glad I didn't get it on top of the steak. While it wasn't bad, it would over overpowered the taste of the steak and I'm glad I decided to just get it on the side.

Simon poked at his steak and cut into it to make sure it was rare enough for him. He took a bite and said, "This isn't coffee. This is pepper." He sort of shrugged his shoulders and decided to eat it as is. It, too, was a perfect rare with the cool center. He was happy with what he got.

The sauteed mushrooms were a good complement to the steak, but the highlight of the meal had to be the garlic mashed potatoes with the crab meat. It was absolutely fabulous. I put it in between Simon and I and we took turns dipping into the potatoes and crab meat. The crab meat was chunky and you could easily taste it in the mix. I said, "You know, this is so stupidly easy to make at home. I don't know why I haven't made this before."

It was a lot of food and I had trouble finishing my steak. I don't know if it was from the meal or what, but I had some gastric uncomfort for the next couple of days while we were in Fort Wayne. I finally began to feel better around noon a couple days later. The steak was so large and so rich that it probably aided in my discomfort.

I can see why people in Fort Wayne flock to Cork 'N Cleaver. The service was very good, Pamela did a fine job in taking care of us. The food was good, definitely above average. I've had better steaks at other places, but the steak I had at Cork 'N Cleaver was tasty enough, although there was a lot of fat on it and it got tough to cut in some places.  But you could get that anywhere.  The atmosphere at the restaurant was fine enough, relaxing and inviting. I'm sure I'll be coming back out to Fort Wayne at some point and while I may not go out of my way to go have dinner at Cork 'N Cleaver, I could see myself going back for a good meal.   

Joseph Decuis - Roanoke, IN

One of the great things about my job is that my boss allows me the opportunity to eat in some fine restaurants from time to time. While I usually will try to find a good burger, a juicy steak or a great pizza, when the opportunity arises to eat in an exquisite restaurant I'm not one to turn it down. I had the recent opportunity to do just that at a Creole gourmet restaurant in the small town of Roanoke, IN - Joseph Decuis.

Roanoke is located about 10 miles away from the southwest side of Fort Wayne, about halfway between Fort Wayne and Huntington. (see map) Roanoke is not unlike many of the hundreds of small towns across the Midwest that have fallen on hard times over the years. Once a thriving small town in the 1800's and well into the 20th century, the advent of cheap transportation and changing buying habits allowed for people to bypass the retailers and merchants in the small town for the "big city" of Fort Wayne. Many buildings in downtown Roanoke stood empty for years before a revitalization program in the 1990's began. And spearheading the renaissance were the Eshelman's - Pete; his wife, Alice; and Pete's brother, Tim.

Pete Eshelman was a minor league pitcher in the New York Yankees farm system in the mid-70's. A shoulder injury cut short his baseball career after a couple of seasons, so the Williams College graduate took a job in the front office of the Yankees working under the enigmatic George Steinbrenner. It was while working for the Yankees he discovered two important things that would affect his life. The first happened to be the concept of insuring sports and entertainment companies for long term contracts that they needed to take out on athletes and performers. The second discovery was a young aspiring actress who lived next door to him in Greenwich Village - a Denison College graduate who majored in theater and film, his future wife Alice.

Pete and Alice Eshelman - pictured at right.

The Eshelman's lived in Boston and New Orleans before a business opportunity found them settling in Roanoke in 1986. It was in the basement of their house in 1989 that American Specialty Insurance was formed along with Pete's brother, Tim, a finance man with a background in insurance. American Specialty Insurance describes themselves as the industry leader when it comes to insuring both professional and amateur sports organizations, teams and leagues, motorsports organizations, and entertainment entities such as amusement parks, casinos, convention centers, special events and horse tracks.

Whenever a client would come to town, the Eshelman's would cook dinner at their house. Quickly deciding that entertaining clients in their home with three young children was difficult, they bought the old bank in Roanoke and set up a small entertaining area complete with a kitchen and dining room. It was there that many of the deals that made American Specialty Insurance one of the top insurance companies of its type in the world were consummated.

Word got out that there was this private dining place in Roanoke that was in the old bank that served hellaciously great food. In 2000, Alice Eshelman decided to open the Cafe Creole using recipes that were passed along within the family way back from ancestors who lived in Louisiana just after the Louisiana Purchase. One of those ancestors was a man by the name of Joseph Decuis. The Eshelman's eventually changed the name of the restaurant to Joseph Decuis (pronounced by the locals as De-KWEEZ, but the probably more authentic pronunciation, courtesy of my French-Canadian colleague, Simon, is De-KWEE). In fact, the logo for the restaurant is the actual signature of Joseph Decuis on his Last Will and Testament dated 1822.

The original executive chef at Joseph Decuis was Lisa Williams. However, since 2005 Aaron Butts has headed the kitchen operation at the restaurant. Butts started his career when Cafe Creole opened in 2000 as a line chef, but worked his way up through the ranks by showing his prowess not only in his culinary skills, but his management skills, as well. Located at the back of the main dining room in the original bank building, the kitchen is open and you can easily see Butts and his crew working on dinners for the patrons.

I happened to be in Fort Wayne working with my colleague, Simon, who heads the Focal Pro loudspeakers division for our company in North America. Our largest pro account is Sweetwater located in Fort Wayne. If Sweetwater was a restaurant or a grocery store, they would garner an entry on Road Tips just by the shear level of professionalism the company exhibits and how they present themselves within the professional music industry.

We were there to demonstrate to the Sweetwater sales staff and others who work there a high-end audio system consisting of a pair of the $180,000 dollar Focal Grande Utopia EM loudspeakers driven by a pair of Devialet D-Premier integrated amplifiers. The system was set up on the stage of Sweetwater's own 220 seat theater, a state-of-the-art facility that features custom-designed lighting, video and sound. (If you click on the picture, you can see the thin amplifiers laying on the stage with the speaker wire running to the loudspeakers.) Even though Sweetwater doesn't have the authorization to sell these speakers, we felt it would be good to expose the staff at Sweetwater as to what high-end esoteric audio is all about. And Focal and Devialet are certainly both leaders in high-end audio.

After packing up the system after a day of sound demonstrations, Simon suggested we go out to Joseph Decuis for dinner. It was only a 10 minute drive from our hotel and even though there was a light snow falling, it was an easy drive down a four-lane highway. My GPS took us right to the front door of Joseph Decuis. (See map) On the way, Simon had made reservations via Open Table on his smart phone. I've used Open Table a couple of times and I should probably use it more when I travel to larger cities. We walked in precisely at 7:15 p.m. The hostess sort of recognized Simon from previous visits (he's been there probably more than a half dozen times during his travels over the past couple of years to Sweetwater) and Simon saw that Aaron Butts was cooking in the kitchen. "Good," he said as he turned to me as we walked to our table. "Aaron is in the house!"

Joseph Decuis' culinary philosophy centers on the concept "farm to fork" meaning that they primarily use local organic grown beef, pork and chicken - some of it coming from their own farm, Heritage Farms. It's there that the Eshelman's raise Wagyu beef for their restaurant. Long considered the finest type of beef available for steaks in the world, Heritage Farms raises their Wagyu beef in an all-natural and humane fashion that they learned from the legendary Wagyu beef pioneer, Mr. Shogo Takeda. Joseph Decuis is the only restaurant in America that raises their own Wagyu beef for consumption at their dining establishment. Joseph Decuis also uses about a dozen other local organic farms to get vegetables, fish, cheese and humanely raised veal. There's even a Michigan City, IN farm they use to get caviar from salmon and whitefish from Lake Michigan.

We were seated in the atrium room just off the main dining room and kitchen of Joseph Decuis. It was the Christmas season and a brightly lit tree was the center piece of the room. Simon and I took a table along the wall and were given menus to look through. Simon's eyes lit up when first glanced at the menu. He said, "Oh, God. They have the Lobster Carbonara!" It's an appetizer and they take chunks of lobster meat, mix it with homemade Orecchiette pasta - kind of little round discs of pasta - then add homemade and cured pancetta with locally grown chanterelle mushrooms. They top it with a spinach style Swiss chard and then finish it off with homemade Sambal, a somewhat spicy pepper based sauce found in Southeast Asia. It was no wonder Simon was jumping up and down in his seat when he was describing it to me.

Our server for the evening, Nancy, came over to greet us. She looked remarkably like my wife's and my good friend Marcia Schroeder. Other than the long hair, she could have easily been Marcia's long-lost sister. She asked if we wanted anything to start out for a drink and Simon was already perusing the wine list. He said we were going to order some wine and we'd probably just go with that.

Simon told me, "The French wines on this list are cheap. Here's a 1999 Chateau Simard for $50 bucks!" I don't know French wines at all and when I asked if that was a good price, Simon replied, "It's a GREAT price!" 

He let me look through the wine list at some of the Californian and South American wines they had that I was familiar with. The prices on those wines were a little high and I wouldn't have felt comfortable ordering something like that at those prices. I said, "Well, if the French wine is good and at a good price, let's just go with that."

The menu at Joseph Decuis changes periodically and one thing they did not have on the menu that evening was any of their locally farm-raised pork. I had seen that on the menu on line when I first looked up Joseph Decuis after Simon was telling me about it. (We had gotten into Fort Wayne on a Sunday night and we were considering going there that evening, until I found that they're closed on Sunday's.) The Wagyu beef strip steak was not a consideration at $75 bucks a pop. But they had a few other things that caught my eye.

They had osso bucco that evening, served with a butternut squash polenta with pan-fried brussels sprouts and chanterelle mushrooms. Simon told me, "The key to these things are the chanterelle mushrooms. They're just great."

Simon was telling me about the "Chef's Tasting" on the menu. For $90 bucks a person, Chef Aaron picks out the menu he wants to make for the table that evening and pairs each course with a wine. Simon was telling me about the time he came out with Bob Muller from Dangerous Music, known for their D-Box that is used in many high-end recording studios, and Fab Dupont, a New York-based writer, producer and mixer with whom we work closely with Focal Pro loudspeakers. Simon said that they sat down and almost immediately the first course with a glass of wine came to the table. Simon inquired, "What's this?"

Fab told him, "Oh, when I made reservations earlier, I told them we wanted the Chef's Tasting tonight." Simon told me that everything was outstanding.

Seafood and fresh fish seemed to dominate the menu that particular evening. Since the restaurant is based upon a Creole theme, they had a Creole black grouper etouffee on a bed of dirty rice and spinach. It was either that or the osso bucco. But Simon was also pushing the Massachusetts pan-fried diver scallops. "Heavenly," he described them as being.

When Nancy came back to the table to take our order, Simon immediately said, "Well, I need to get the lobster carbonara appetizer." I asked if it was big enough for two, Simon gave me a dirty look. He said, "Well, two could share it, but it's so good that I won't let you have any of mine."

I looked at Nancy and said, "We'll take two..."

Simon ordered the osso bucco and I took the Creole black grouper etouffee. For a good measure, I also wanted to try a small bowl of the "Gumbo du Jour" which that day was a homemade seafood gumbo.

Being that each item on the menu is made from scratch, the time between courses can be pretty long. That was OK as we weren't going anywhere in a hurry. It was great to relax with a little wine and conversation after listening to music all day long. Simon was telling me that some of the online reviews from people about Joseph Decuis weren't very flattering. He said that some he read were really ripping the place for slow service, overpriced food and not being a good value. I said, "This place is in the middle of farm country. I know those people. They probably heard about the place, thought they'd come here and get a steak and side of potatoes with a salad bar like any number of steakhouses or supper clubs throughout the Midwest. Then they see the only steak on the menu is $75 bucks and the other food is this eclectic, high-end fare that they have no idea what it is. They order something and decide they don't like it. This isn't the kind of place for those kind of people."

Simon told me, "I have no doubt that if this restaurant was anywhere other than this small town, like New York or Chicago, it would get at least one Michelin star." Simon has eaten in enough excellent restaurants that he would know.

Nancy and another server brought out our lobster carbonara. They sat the bowls down in front of us at the same time, another high-end restaurant custom. The lobster carbonara was - in a word - outstanding. At the first bite we both took, I looked at Simon and he looked at me and we immediately began to laugh. It was so friggin' good! The chopped chanterelle mushrooms were everything Simon said they'd be - they were plump, had an almost meaty consistency, had a great taste to them. Yes, he was right. The key was the mushrooms. But you couldn't overlook the big chunks of lobster along with the Sambal sauce they had. It wasn't all that spicy and had more of a taste like a spicy marsala sauce. And the pancetta had a nice somewhat smoky flavor to it, but it was very salty. So much so that I was drinking a lot of water to quench my thirst the rest of the night.

After we finished the lobster carbonara and about 10 minutes after our pasta bowls were removed, my seafood gumbo came to the table. It had large chunks of seafood swimming in a smoky broth, topped with a dollop of steamed rice and chopped green onions. It was very good. I offered a bite to Simon and he said that it was very good, as well. I can't say that it was the best gumbo I've ever had, but it was up there.

About 20 minutes after Nancy took my gumbo bowl away, two other servers brought out the Creole black grouper etouffee and Simon's osso bucco. Of course, the presentation was exquisite. Simon's meal was placed in a large rimmed bowl and featured a nice size chunk of veal shank with the center-cut bone rising as the centerpiece of the meal surrounded by the polenta, brussels sprouts, fingerling carrots, sliced potatoes and, of course, the chanterelle mushrooms.  

My Creole black grouper etouffee also sat majestically on the plate, with large chunks of seasoned grouper covered in an etouffee sauce sitting on top of the dirty rice and the cooked spinach. From the first bite, we both began to laugh again - it was just outstanding.

We traded bites of our meals. Simon gave me a chunk of his osso bucco and it was moist, juicy and overly flavorful. He said that he thought my grouper was pretty good, too. He told me, "I think the best osso bucco I've ever had was that place out in Vegas (Panevino). But this comes close." 

He also said, "You know, I don't really care for polenta, but this stuff (butternut squash polenta) is very good!"

Quite honestly, after the lobster carbonara and the seafood gumbo, I could have easily stopped at that. But the Creole black grouper etouffee was so phenomenal that I couldn't stop eating. I was full as the food was very rich, but I couldn't let an smidgen of this dish go to waste. It was truly magnificent.

Finishing off our wine after the meal, Simon and I were savoring the remnant taste of what we had. When Nancy dropped off a dessert menu, I groaned. Simon had been raving about the Caramel Pot de Creme all day long. He even said that it was so good that one time when Fab Dupont and he were there with some other people, Fab came up with a song for the dessert. I told Simon that I'd share some with him, that was until I saw something that popped out at me from the menu. It was a seasonal dessert consisting of a Pumpkin-Mocha creme brulee with a tiny layer of chocolate at the bottom of the dessert bowl. I said, "Oooo... Now THAT sounds really good."

Simon said, "You want to get that? We can get the pot de creme the next time." Geez, I hope there is a next time for me.

And it was as good as advertised. The caramelized mocha topping was thick and Simon and I were laughing as we were trying to break through to the pumpkin creme brulee. The taste was exquisite. I'd never had pumpkin creme brulee before and while the pumpkin spice wasn't overpowering, it sort of lingered on the tongue after each bite. And at the bottom of the dessert cup was the shallow layer of chocolate. It was just exceptional.

After dinner and after we paid the bill, we took a short tour of the restaurant. In addition to the atrium and outdoor seating in the summertime, they have the main dining room (below left) where you can easily see into the kitchen as they prepare your meal. It's small and cozy, but no one was seated in there that evening.

On the side of the restaurant opposite the atrium is an addition the Eshelman's bought to expand the restaurant into the building next to the original old bank building. (The Eshelman family have restored 15 buildings in downtown Roanoke to be used for their businesses. I believe this building used to be an auto parts store.) This dining room is more of an art gallery with works of art painted by a local artist, Tim Johnson, who now lives in France. In this dining room was the bar area for Joseph Decuis. Nancy came over and was telling us about some of the artwork, one of which was a sketch of Joseph Decuis sitting with his wife on a horse drawn wagon.

Simon said, "Hey, look in the vaults!" They had two old bank vaults that they kept their wine in. One of them had been turned into a wine humidor. It was a brilliant and interesting use of space in the old bank. The original doors were still on the outside of the vaults with glass doors inside one for the humidor.

I know I've been accused by some of being wordy in a handful of my posts, but the length of this one is justified considering the experience I had at Joseph Decuis. It's amazing that you'd find this type of fine dining in a small town in northeast Indiana. The food, the service, the atmosphere - everything was top-notch. I'm slowly getting more into the pro sound side of things for our company and I know I'll have more opportunities to come back to Fort Wayne to work with Sweetwater in the coming months. I just hope I have the opportunity to once again dine at Joseph Decuis at some point down the road. 

 

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