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| - I wanted to love this place, especially when I heard about the pies.
Being an urban dweller, I thought this place out in the country that boasts Amish cooking would be a true "farm to table" experience. Instead, it was institutional food. This is what you will be eating if you don't plan for your retirement.
My first clue should have been the huge parking lot with not a single horse or carraige. Like going to a Chinese restaurant full of non-Asians, this is not a good sign.
Upon entry, you are in the bakery section. I was disappointed to see grocery store bakery style frosted sugar cookies in Hallowe'en shapes, but they turned out to be the only seasonal food in the place. The pies looked good and included unusual flavors, such as grape and bumbleberry (a combination of berries). More about pie later.
To get to the dining area, you have to walk through a very dated and tacky gift shop. Think "I love my dog" doormats and other generic gimcrack. No locally made crafts or postcards of the area. Really sad.
The table has stacks of promotions on it, including an ad for the peanut butter spread that is made not just with sugar and corn syrup, but also with marshmallow cream. Guess it takes three kinds of sugar to get it right.
Our server was very nice and efficient, about the only good thing I can say for this place. As others have noted, the menu is full of rules. Not that I wanted to take home anything from the salad bar, share a meal, or order from the kids menu, but it seems inhospitable. Your dinner choices are meat and starch, with the exception of the 1970's salad bar and the "vegetable of the day" which my father ordered (corn). It was right out of a can. In a restaurant surrounded by farms.
Because it was so cold in the restaurant, I ordered hot tea (they didn't mess that up) and a cup of the soup of the day - cream of brocolli. It should have been called cream soup. Or maybe bowl o' hot cream. It was yellow and flavorless, with a few confetti specs of brocolli, so thick with cream that it was able to hold my spoon standing straight up in the middle of the cup.
I appreciate that they offered me a smaller portion of the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, even though I don't qualify for the senior citizen section of the menu. I think the waitress violoated Mary Yoder's Menu Code by doing that.
My dinner was served lukewarm and covered with generic brown gravy. If they must serve mediocre food, could they at least manage to serve it hot? To their credit, the potatoes were "real" rather than instant. The meatloaf was OK, but again, not hot.
I shoud not have ordered dessert, but I had been looking forward to the pie for two days. Huge disappointment. My first clue should have been that they offer at least 30 different pies. No way to do that without cutting every possible corner. Another bad sign was that they distinguish between "peach pie" and "fresh peach pie."
I ordered the raspberry cream pie because I've never heard of it and I love all things raspberry. It was not a slice of pie at all, but vanilla pudding with raspberry pie filling (out of a can, I'm sure) dumped on top. Fortunately, I had requested no whipped cream, but I was not able to finish it. The waitress explained to me that she "made" the pie to order by putting the raspberry over the pudding. Oddly, she didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with that, or with calling it pie.
I felt so uncomfortably full that I had to ask my father to drive and I went to bed as soon as we got home (9:30).
This whole place feels like a chain restaurant you would find at a freeway exit and patronize out of desperation. There is nothing ethnic or regional about it. The only authenticity is that it is a genuine example of what is wrong with America, especially the Midwest.
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