2025 Midwest Roadfood Trip (Part One)

This blog was begun in 2021 so that I’d have public cyber space on which to recreate and save the trip reports that were permanently lost when the roadfood.com message board on which I posted them went defunct. It fairly quickly morphed into something else, but those reports are still available here along with a few later additions detailing weekend jaunts my wife and I have taken since ‘21. 

Yet we hadn’t gone on the sort of week-long food-and-sightseeing-themed vacations we used to take annually – usually to the Midwest – for too long. That finally changed last week when we drove to southern Wisconsin with stops in northern Ohio and Indiana along the way. 

The occasion that prompted the trip was my upcoming 60th birthday. I spent several months doing online research and planning our food stops, eventually deciding on a theme of nostalgic eating at restaurants that have been around since the early to mid 20th century and coming up with a seven-and-a-half day itinerary that included just a few non-food related activities to supplement my gluttonous impulses. Unfortunately, the final two meals didn’t pan out for reasons I’ll get into later. That will result in this report being presented in three parts instead of the originally planned four.

With those introductory remarks out of the way, I’ll jump into our first day of travel, Sunday, which saw us driving from our home near Philadelphia to Cleveland’s western suburbs. Of course, we had to stop for lunch along the way, and as is nearly always the case when driving to the Midwest or Pittsburgh, that stop occurred at the Summit Diner in Somerset, Pennsylvania. 

The Summit opened for business in 1960 and is the absolute vision of a mid-20th century American diner. They’ve been providing my wife and I with a welcome break from driving on the nearby Pennsylvania Turnpike for as long as we’ve been married.

More often than not, we opt for breakfast when eating there, and this occasion was no exception in spite of it being lunch time when we arrived.

My wife ordered scrambled eggs with home fries and toast, while I went for a pair of over-medium eggs with sausage patties, hash browns and toast. The Summit has been making their sausage in-house for as long as I’ve been going there and probably a lot longer than that. It is divinely flavorful and just rugged enough to provide a pleasant chew. They go great with the diner’s expertly made hash browns. 

Pie has always been one of the main reasons to stop at the Summit Diner. It’s one of their calling cards, although their selection is not what it used to be in the pre-covid days, when they were a 24/7 establishment. They now close at 3 p.m. daily. 

There were four or five flavor options and I chose coconut cream, which I hadn’t had there for many years. As is always the case with the Summit’s cream pies, it came topped with a tall layer of light meringue. 

The filling had a pudding-like consistency and a nice, but not overpowering coconut flavor. While I wouldn’t put it up there with the best coconut pies I’ve eaten, it was enjoyable and hit my pie-seeking spot. 

Our next stop after polishing off our pie was our final destination for the trip’s first day – Cleveland’s western suburbs. My wife has many relatives in the Cleveland area and a group of her aunts and uncles met us for dinner at an old burger joint I’ve wanted to try for nearly as long as I’ve been interested in roadfood – Bearden’s in Rocky River, Ohio. 

They’ve been serving up burgers, fries and shakes since 1948 and still have a classic look inside, even if they’ve evolved from a full-service restaurant to having customers place their own orders on monitors at their front counter. 

I first discovered Bearden’s around the turn of the century on the early food blog, Holly Eats, which is still online in spite of its founder’s passing some years back. We tried visiting them during our first trip to Cleveland together in 2006, but they were closed on that occasion. Nineteen years later, we finally made it inside the door. 

Bearden’s is known by some as the home of burgers topped with peanut-butter, and I decided to take the opportunity to try one, along with added bacon. It’s likely that Elvis would have ordered the same thing had he eaten at Bearden’s. 

I also thought I had ordered a vanilla malt, but either I failed to properly click on the malt option or they used too little malt for me to taste it. And I managed to sample fries and onion rings ordered by others in our dining party. 

My first bite of the peanut-butter and bacon topped burger was a doozy. The bacon had an extra smokey flavor that actually mixed extremely well with the meat and peanut butter. Unfortunately, some subsequent bites included the sweet pickles that also came with it. Those did not compliment the burger’s other ingredients. If I ever go back to Bearden’s, I may repeat that burger order, but get it without the pickles. 

The fries and onion rings were excessively greasy, while my vanilla “shake” was extremely good – and extra thick – in spite of the absence of malt flavor.

On the way out of Bearden’s, I snapped the following photos of their staff and menu from much earlier days. 

After dinner, we adjourned back to the home of my wife’s uncle Jack and aunt Katie for conversation and more dessert. I had already had pie and a shake that day and was super full, but I couldn’t resist sampling the family specialty – cherry-nut cake – which uncle Jack had made, along with her aunt Cathy’s blueberry and – yes – coconut-cream pie. The latter was unquestionably superior to the slice I had earlier that day at the Summit Diner. The coconut filling was lighter and had a better flavor. There was also a beautiful cheesecake made by aunt Katie, but I was simply too full for cheesecake on top of everything else. Unfortunately, the photo I took of it turned out blurry.

After checking out of our hotel Monday morning, we headed further west toward our lunch destination – Nick’s Kitchen in Huntington, Indiana, which is slightly southeast of Fort Wayne. 

Nick’s opened in 1908. Its first owner, Nick Freienstein, is known as the creator of the breaded pork tenderloin (BPT), a hugely popular dish usually ordered as a sandwich in Indiana, Iowa and other spots in the Midwest. And the version of it served at Nick’s is still widely regarded as being among the best. 

While I’ve had a few BPTs during past Midwest trips and wasn’t blown away, I had never tried one from Nick’s, and decided to rectify that unfortunate situation. 

As is the case at most places that serve BPT sandwiches, the one I ordered at Nick’s came on a hamburger bun that was much smaller than the meat that it held. As big as this one may appear in the below photos, it’s by no means among the biggest I’ve seen. 

But it was definitely the best tasting and juiciest I’ve tried. In fact, this was the first time I truly understood what all the fuss was about regarding BPTs in the Midwest. It was absolutely delectable. 

The other calling card of Nick’s Kitchen is – you guessed it – pie. In particular, they are known for serving one of the best renditions of the state pie of Indiana – Sugar-Cream. I was fortunate to have a slice of this wonderful pie during a previous visit to Nick’s many years ago. Here is a somewhat blurry photo of that slice. 

Unfortunately, that old photo will have to do, as Nick’s was out of Sugar-Cream pie by the time we arrived for lunch. In fact, they only had two flavors of pie left and neither interested me. 

So we left without dessert and decided to check out Huntington’s main drag. After walking no more than a block, we stumbled onto what appeared to be an outdoor movie set in front of the Huntington County Courthouse. It may have been a student production, but we enjoyed watching them at work for a little while. Whatever scene they were filming involved a pickup truck pulling a couch on wheels with a sheriff’s car in not-so-hot pursuit.

Between the filming, which resulted in part of downtown Huntington being closed off to traffic, road construction and a seemingly never-ending freight train, getting out of Huntington and to our hotel for that night in Fort Wayne was a bit of an adventure, but we eventually managed. 

Our dinner Monday evening was at one of the nation’s oldest hot dog establishments, Fort Wayne’s Famous Coney Island, which first opened in 1914 and has been operated by the same family since 1916. 

We grabbed a table along the wall and enjoyed the classic interior until a server came over to take our order. 

I played it simple and ordered two Coney Island-style hot dogs, which come topped with a flavorful meat sauce that isn’t exactly chili, along with mustard and chopped onions. My wife opted for one of those and a bowl of baked beans.

She was happy to have me help her eat the beans and we agreed that they were unlike any other we’ve ever tried. The sauce was very thick, while the flavor had a fruity accent and a bit of sweetness, but not as much as is typically the case with baked beans. They were quite good.

The hot dogs themselves were nothing special, but they combined beautifully with the standard toppings for a very nice overall flavor and texture.

I hadn’t initially planned on having dessert at Fort Wayne Coney Island, but they do serve pie and I decided to get a slice in light of having missed out on our planned dessert during lunch at Nick’s Kitchen. I went for peach, which came with a crumb topping and was enjoyable, if not among the best I’ve had.

It’s been my practice to occasionally buy a hat at the restaurants we visit on roadfood trips, and I decided to grab one of those that were displayed on the wall across from our table. On our way out, I also snapped a shot of one of the counter men putting together a row of Coney Island dogs.

Tuesday’s drive took us from Fort Wayne to South Bend, Indiana, with a stop in the beautiful town of Goshen along the way. Goshen is home to a pair of absolutely classic old soda-fountain-luncheonettes. We would return on our way back home to check out the South Side Soda Shop. But for Tuesday’s lunch, we met up with one of my online roadfood friends, Rocky, at the Olympia Candy Kitchen, which dates back to 1912 and sits in the heart of downtown Goshen and across from the Elkhart County Courthouse. 

While they are known for ice cream, the Olympia Candy Kitchen also serves breakfast and lunch at their counter and rear seating area and offers an abundant selection of sandwiches and salads for the latter. 

Rocky ordered a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, which he has spent years eating and judging at various spots around Indiana, much as I have done with cheesesteaks in the Philly region. He seemed to enjoy it, but I didn’t get the sense it was an elite BPT. 

In light of all the heavy eating I had already done on this trip and planned to do in the coming days, I opted for a relatively light lunch of bacon, eggs and cheese on an English muffin and was quite happy with it. 

While my wife sometimes struggles to find something up her alley at places like this, the Olympia Candy Kitchen menu included a couple toasted sandwiches featuring olives as a main ingredient that I correctly expected to interest her. She went for a stuffed olive sandwich, which included a lot of sliced olives and a mayo-based sauce. It wasn’t something I’d eat, but she liked it. And she washed it down with none other than a lime phosphate. 

Rocky also encouraged us to sample the fries he ordered. 

Naturally there needed to be some ice cream consumed before we left the Olympia. I had mentioned what would turn out to be an unfulfilled desire to have a turtle sundae during this trip while eating our lunch. That must have touched a nerve in Rocky because he ordered one. It looked sensational. 

There was a little sign on one of the walls promoting the fact that they had lemon ice cream on hand. I decided to take advantage of that and ordered a lemon milkshake – a first for me. It was outstanding, with a wonderfully balanced flavor that was neither overly sweet nor tart. 

After finishing lunch, we moved on to South Bend, Indiana, where our first stop would be the Studebaker National Museum. Studebaker was based in South Bend for over a century before closing during the 1960s. 

Although I’m not generally a car enthusiast, I’ve enjoyed classic car museums in the past and loved what I saw at this one. 

They had everything from horse carriages – some of which had been used by 19th century presidents – to automobiles made throughout the first 60-plus years of the twentieth century to military vehicles from the two World Wars. The photos here are just a small sampling of what we saw.  

After checking into our hotel, our next stop was the South Bend Civic Theatre, where old friend Bill acts and works. He kindly offered to give us a behind-the-scenes tour. We were also joined by Bill’s wife and another long time friend, Maureen, and their daughter Cailin along with her family. 

We checked out the control and musicians’ rooms at the top of the main theater, went on stage, and also got to see the costume room. They were working on a play that includes a diner set, which fit in perfectly with our trip’s theme. 

Maureen and Cailin, along with the latter’s young daughter, joined my wife and I for dinner after the theater tour. Unfortunately, the only two old restaurants in South Bend that interested me aren’t open Tuesdays, so I had to veer from our script and choose a more modern establishment. While browsing menus online, one that jumped out at me as having very good options for both my wife and I was the Crooked Ewe Brewery and Ale House, which sits alongside and presents excellent window views of the Saint Joseph River.

The menu had to be scanned on our phones and wasn’t available to photograph, but it can be viewed here. It features a nice mix of barbecue and vegan options, making everyone at the table happy. I was the only one who went for smoked meat. 

My wife and Cailin ordered bibimpap, while Maureen had a vegetarian poke bowl, and I opted for a quarter-pound each of smoked brisket, pastrami and pulled pork shoulder along with a side of fries made with beef fat. 

The ladies all seemed fully satisfied, while I enjoyed the fries and the flavor of all three meats, although the brisket and parts of the pastrami were just a little on the dry side. 

That’s going to do it for part one of this trip report. I’ll be back with part two, which will feature our two days of eating and a little more sightseeing in Wisconsin, either later this week or early next week. 

For those of you wishing to read the rest of this trip report:

Part two

Part three