OOPS! All MCLs!

Over the past year, I’ve done a lot more cooking for myself and my partner than I ordinarily would have otherwise. The food that we would eat that we didn't cook was delivered either through a drive through or at our doorstep by a delivery driver. While food procured in this manner served to scratch an itch for dining out, there was a clear dearth of emphasis on food presentation and freshness. It was in pursuit of a memorable presentation of freshly prepared food that I planned a stop at an MCL cafeteria on my recent trip through Indiana. I didn’t even plan on writing about that MCL meal because I had previously covered a different MCL in Ohio, but Uncle Alligator, patron deity of broken restaurant chains, had other plans for me. 

My original plan was to stop by Powers Hamburgers in Fort Wayne, the final location of a family owned chain of slider stands in Michigan and Indiana, on my way out to Terre Haute where I would eat at both Taco Casita, and a local MCL. I also planned on stopping by Miami Grill (aka Miami Subs) in Fort Wayne to see if that location had reopened since it announced a temporary closure last year. When I arrived at Powers Hamburgers late on a Saturday morning, I found the building dark and unoccupied during what should have been its operating hours indicated by both a sign on the door and Google. (The latter still shows the business as operational almost two weeks later, so I’m hopeful that Powers Hamburgers hasn’t closed for good.) 

"Eat here, get gas" is the wittiest caption I can come up with. 

Since Google had been wrong about Powers being open, I thought it was at least possible that they had also been wrong about the Miami Grill across town being closed, so my next stop was the Marathon gas station that shares space with the Midwest’s only Miami Grill. Unfortunately, I found in that case, Google had been correct. While signage was still in place, the restaurant had clearly been closed for quite a while. Disappointed, I sulked away. It was as I was driving past the mom and pop restaurant that now occupies what was until recently the last operating Azar’s Big Boy, that I decided I needed to formulate a new plan that would get me out of Fort Wayne. 

Much like a hermit crab, Top Notch Diner has moved into the discarded shell of the dearly departed Azar's Big Boy. 

While they have shrunk by 50% or so in recent years thanks to being predominantly located in or near shopping malls, the 13 unit cafeteria chain whose full name is “MCL Restaurant and Bakery” still has a strong presence in central Indiana. I decided that I would use my new found free time in the Hoosier state to experience a few different MCL locations to get a better feel for what they had to offer in terms of food and experience. Despite a few shortcomings, I looked back fondly at the one meal I had experienced previously at a Columbus area MCL, thanks in part to a lifelong love for old school cafeteria dining. Feeling ever hungrier, I plotted a course to Muncie, Indiana’s imaginatively named Muncie Mall, home of an increasingly rare mall-based MCL location. 

The Muncie MCL is located just inside a portal back to 1994. 

Meal #1 

Location: MCL Restaurant and Bakery Muncie Mall, Muncie, Indiana (One-time home of Norville Barnes, fictional inventor of the Hula Hoop) 

Order: Stuffed chicken, corn on the cob, coleslaw, deviled eggs, blueberry muffin, macaroni and cheese, coconut cream pie, Diet Mountain Dew

A disused MCL takeout counter

I arrived a short while later, driving into the mall parking lot, past the empty shell of what had once been a Sears. I parked, and walked through the once grand, but now decaying 1990s facade of the mall entrance with more than half of its doors marked “Out of order,” though it’s not clear if this was due to deferred building maintenance or social distancing measures. A non-operational MCL takeout counter greeted me nearly immediately as I walked into the mall. I found it curious for MCL to not be offering separate takeout service given the current climate. I shrugged and walked on to the main restaurant entrance, which looked like a residential house that was in the process of being birthed by the very mall that surrounds it. 

This mall has a house in it. 

Good luck breaking through to the other side with these doors. 

After dinner, some kids from Gertie's granddaughter's school are going to sing for us. 

I found the restaurant’s interior similar to what I had encountered in Ohio; elegant but sedate decor befitting a nursing home or funeral parlor, along with a serving line with the day’s specials written on a chalkboard. My favorite thing about cafeterias is the way that food is presented in the serving line, all the offerings of the day freshly prepared, looking bright and vibrant. In addition to being good marketing, it makes a cafeteria meal feel premium and like an event, a welcome experience after a long hiatus from such culinary events. Having fasted since early in the previous evening I was quite hungry, and I left the serving line $20 poorer but with an overloaded tray to show for it. As I found a seat, I recalled an old Vaudeville joke I heard  on a tape of Abbott and Costello bits I’d listened to as a kid. “Marriage is like eating at a cafeteria, take what you want and pay for it later!” I began to ponder if as a never-married 35 year old I’d internalized that pernicious bit of misogyny from my childhood, but my server interrupted my anxiety spiral by plopping salt and pepper shakers down on my table and asked if she could bring me anything else. I requested some butter for my corn, and she replied, “No problem at all,” repeating the phrase again when I thanked her upon her return with the requested condiment. With every subsequent thank you from me following drink refills and clearing of empty plates, she repeated the same “No problem at all” to the point where it began to lose all meaning. I wondered if it was a company mandated alternative to “You’re welcome” in the vein of Chick-fil-A’s vaguely sexual “My pleasure,” but mercifully, I didn’t hear it from any other MCL staff for the remainder of the trip. 

My view of the serving line; I'm intrigued by the burgers stewing in their own juices in the foreground. I'll have to give them a try next time. 

Largely, the food was a welcome reprieve from the year of squashed burgers, soggy fries, and warm salads I’d just experienced. The stuffed chicken tasted like the essence of Thanksgiving, though I’d swear the gravy wasn’t as orange at the MCL I’d visited in Ohio. The coleslaw and deviled eggs tasted just like the ones my Granny Nova Scotia Actionsdower made on the regular, though her devout faith compelled her to call them “Dressed eggs.” The corn on the cob was sadly room temperature, but it was clear it was freshly prepared. If insufficient temperature is the price I have to pay for some bone-in corn that has never seen the inside of a freezer or microwave, it seems worth it. The mac and cheese was passable, as it was the last time I got it at MCL. No mac and cheese will ever surpass Morrison’s Cafeteria, yet I find myself chasing that dragon with every cafeteria I visit. The blueberry muffin was clearly also prepared from scratch and contained actual whole blueberries. Coconut cream pie is one of my go-to desserts, and I’m not exaggerating when I say MCL’s is the best I’ve ever had. It’s sweet coconutty filling and light meringue topped with just enough toasted coconut led me to finishing the whole thing though I was already very full. I left, laden with the best meal I’d had in months and the assurance that my presence was “No problem at all.” The closed Powers Hamburgers and Miami Grill I’d encountered that morning felt like distant memories. It was going to be a good trip after all. 

A movable feast, you know, because of the tray. 

Meal #2 

Location: Meadows Shopping Center, Terre Haute, Indiana (Birthplace of Scatman Crothers) 

Order: Small Cobb salad, hot roll, strawberry shortcake, sweet tea

The exterior of the Terre Haute MCL matches the brutalist aesthetic of the rest of its strip mall neighbors...
 

...but the dining room is pleasant enough

I had a touch of deja vu from my previous stop in Muncie as I arrived at the enclosed strip mall housing the Terre Haute MCL, driving past a recently closed Stein Mart that had once been the one of the shopping center’s anchors. I walked straight into the MCL serving line feeling not especially hungry, less than three hours after my giant meal at the Muncie Mall MCL. I picked up only a beautiful looking bestriped Cobb salad that came with three little cups of dressing handed to me on a separate plate, an individual portion of strawberry shortcake, and a hot yeasty roll. I'd like to take a moment to talk about the roll in particular. 

All the pretty salads. 

In my original MCL post, I took them to task for not serving hot bread. I realized after eating at the Terre Haute MCL that the bread products on the serving line are merely for display. If you tell the person working the line which of the displayed bread items you want, they’ll reach into a heated drawer on the wall behind them and pull out a hot but otherwise identical example of your selection, and hot MCL bread is vastly superior to cold MCL bread. (If anyone from MCL is reading this paragraph, please consider it my retraction and sincere apology.) It was this realization and guilt related to my unfair criticism that was occupying a significant portion of my brain’s processing power as I autopiloted my body toward a seat this time around. 

A light (second) lunch 

An equally pleasant but less repetitive server again interrupted my overly analytic introspection and brought me my salt, pepper and butter. A distaste for bleu cheese usually prevents me from ordering Cobb salads, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a stripe of shredded cheddar on top of MCL’s offerings instead. The freshly cooked bits of bacon, chicken, and hard boiled egg also adorning the top of the salad were perfectly cooked, and the Christmassy colored stripes of green onion and tomato served to balance the flavors and textures nicely as well. As I picked up my first few forkfuls, the salad did what good Cobb salads do, and exploded all over the table, throwing bits of saladly flotsam and jetsam about the immediate vicinity. In retrospect, I should have placed the plate holding the little cups of pleasantly citrusy vinaigrette dressing under the bowl to catch the errant salad chunks. The strawberry shortcake was not what I was used to. I grew up eating a runny, chunky sauce made of chopped and slightly mashed strawberries and sugar over a dense, dry, not terribly sweet biscuity “cake.” MCL’s take on strawberry shortcake is a slice of sweet and soft white cake that bears no resemblance to an American biscuit covered in a sauce of unmashed sliced strawberries in a bright red syrupy glaze. It was drastically different than the strawberry shortcake I’m used to, but was no less good, and the carefully placed dollops of homemade whipped cream on top leant itself well to the elegant but approachable image MCL has cultivated for itself. Having had all the mildly fancy MCL food I could handle for one day, I hunkered down for the night in Terre Haute, preparing for a third and final MCL stop the next day. 

Meal #3 

Location: MCL Restaurant and Bakery in what looks like a large house just outside of the Merchant’s Square Shopping center, Carmel, Indiana (Carmel is *probably* named after the way unpretentious people pronounce “Caramel.”)

Order: Freshly carved ham (topped with hot cherries for some reason), broccoli and cheese sauce, more corn on the cob, ambrosia salad, devils’ food cake, sweet tea

To borrow a Mr. Delicious-era Rax slogan, "MCL, You can eat here!"

A mild to moderately fancy interior

Like the first freestanding MCL I visited a couple of years ago in Ohio, the Carmel, Indiana location would have been easy to miss were I not seeking it out specifically. It incongruously stands near a shopping center newer and more vibrant than the last two in a building that simply looks like a big brick house uprooted from a posh subdivision and dropped among various trendy and equally posh retailers. The only apparent exterior signage is a vague MCL logo plastered on only one side of the building. To the average passerby, the location would barely register as a business, and would not be at all recognizable as a place that serves food. Once I was through the parking lot that has the appearance of a paved-over residential lawn and past the large, inviting front porch I was inside the building. I was greeted by the least mild, mildly fancy MCL interior I’d encountered on the whole trip, and a serving line just opening up for the day. 

A good cafeteria puts the desserts early in the serving line. You're more likely to pick one up before selecting your entree. 

Ham, cherries, and the like. 

For what are as likely as not to be deep seated psychological reasons, I was craving ham that Sunday morning on the drive in from Terre Haute, and I was happy to see ham being carved on the serving line after I had picked up a bowl of ambrosia salad. Much to my surprise and delighted confusion, the woman carving the ham asked if I wanted cherries on it. Morbid curiosity compelled me to respond in the affirmative, and a ladleful of what looked like, and essentially was hot cherry pie filling was dumped on my freshly carved ham slices. I selected cheesèd broccoli and another corn bone as my sides. I found no one manning the bread station, and now knowing better than to grab a display bread item, my social anxiety compelled me to forego bread entirely rather than beckoning to an employee working the line. I corrected my unfortunate carbohydrated deprivation with a slice of devil’s food cake that:

If black forest cake is chocolate cake with cherries, does that mean Black Forest ham is meat to be ham with cherries?

A. Granny Nova Scotia would certainly not have approved of, for reasons including not limited to the name, as I’ll be discussing shortly. 

B. Conjured the millennial cultural touchstone that is that one scene in the movie, Matilda. You know the one I mean, assuming you were born in the last couple decades of the previous century.  

Once I’d found a suitable seat and requested the usual accouterments from my server, I was pleasantly surprised to find that cherry pie filling pairs well with ham. The salty, sweet, and sour flavors played nicely together, even more so than a more conventional pineapple ham topping would have. I suspect that cherry-topped ham is some dated semi-fancy presentation that has fallen by the wayside everywhere other than the marvelously dated and semi-fancy MCL. Thankfully, the corn was actually hot this time around, and tasted just as fresh as it did in Muncie. The broccoli tasted like broccoli, and unfortunately, what appeared to be a made from scratch cheese sauce had little flavor and didn’t adhere well to the surface of the broccoli stalks and buds. I was surprised to find the ambrosia salad had yogurt in it rather than the more customary whipped cream, or dare I say, Cool Whip. It was a pleasant enough side dish and palate cleanser, but less of a dessert than I was expecting. Then again, the ham was more of a dessert than I was expecting, so it all evens out. The devils food cake made me forget about the less than perfect side dishes. It was perfect, moist and rich with a made from scratch chocolate icing. It was the kind of cake that you want to use as a pillow, gradually devouring it as you nap, having the sweetest dreams of your life, dreams that would cause you to exclaim, “My pleasure!” even if you don’t work at Chick-fil-A. What I meant to say is that it was good cake, and I take back everything bad I ever said about MCL’s baked goods, and for that matter most of the bad things I’ve ever said about MCL in general. 

This trip made me realize that I love MCL. It’s a close second to Morrison’s in the pantheon of broken cafeteria chains, and the closest thing I can get to Morrison’s without taking another trip to the last operating one at the far end of Alabama. I drove home knowing I had made the most of a weekend on the road, even if it didn't go exactly as planned. I even stopped in Fort Wayne on the way home for some ice cream at my favorite Zesto to show the city I harbored no hard feelings toward it as the result of my thwarted weekend plans. 

The mad scientist L.A.M Phelan's gift to Northeast Indiana

My newfound love for MCL has led to me planning a stop at the Kettering, Ohio MCL on my upcoming trip down I-75 to Kentucky, and I’m not even planning on writing about it, unless that stop leads me down the rabbit hole of visiting every operating MCL, which knowing my proclivities, I’m very likely to do eventually. In the meantime, if you ever find yourself hungry in Central Indiana, the suburbs of Columbus or Dayton, Ohio, or in Springfield, Illinois, a slightly anachronistic and well above average meal awaits you at a nearby MCL. Do yourself a favor and check them out. 

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Enjoy Every Sandwich

You didn't think I'd forget Big Boy Month, did you?

A few weeks back I was inundated with messages and comments from readers, friends, acquaintances, frenemies, and enemies about a video the noted YouTuber, author, and Vlog Brother Hank Green had uploaded to the YouTube channel he shares with his brother, John. He discussed at length their childhood meals at the local Rax restaurant and segued those memories into a discussion of an ad campaign for the fast food chain that was launched shortly before their 1992 bankruptcy. I had long been aware of Uncle Alligator, the Rax mascot geared toward the youngest Rax customers, but I had never heard of Mr. Delicious, the plaid suit wearing middle-aged character associated with the chain’s final pre-bankruptcy ad campaign. Mr. Delicious was the antithesis of the avuncular cartoon gator that adorned Rax kids meal bags and molded plastic drink bottles. Mr. Delicious was instead meant to appeal to adults looking for a grown up, dare I say, stylish fast food experience. Amid the Rax bankruptcy, Mr. Delicious faded into obscurity as quickly as he appeared, and he likely would have been largely forgotten were it not Hank Green’s video.

Mr. Delicious, Rax pitchman and Steve Higgins lookalike. 

Mr. Delicious, and obscure restaurant mascots in general were on my mind as I was brainstorming how I could best observe Big Boy Month in a time when travelling long distances and eating in restaurants are both inadvisable, if not impossible. Earlier this year, seemingly in response to the chicken sandwich craze that Popeye’s sparked, the Michigan shard of the shattered Big Boy empire revived one of the Big Boy brand’s own obscure mascots to be the face of their entrant into the suddenly crowded premium chicken sandwich market. Dolly, the namesake of the new sandwich, was once a character who appeared with Big Boy in the eponymous Big Boy comic books that were once handed out to the youngest Big Boy patrons. I don’t recall ever seeing a Big Boy comic book anywhere but the odd antique shop or vintage comic book store in my three odd decades as a human being and occasional Big Boy customer, but Dolly was ripe for rebirth nonetheless, likely because she could be resurrected cheaply without having to pay any artists or lawyers to create or license a new character. 

Dolly, holding her namesake sandwich in the traditional Big Boy pose.

I have somehow managed to avoid eating a Popeye’s chicken sandwich as well as its many analogs save for an occasional Chick-fil-A in my weakest moments when my desire for greasy poultry and pickle slices on a bun outweighs my distaste for the bigotry of the brand’s owners. As for Popeye’s, It’s not politics, but poor service that has kept me away. I’ve visited Popeye’s locations all over the country, but I’ve never been to one I would describe as “Clean” or “Well-run.” Add a drive-thru line that stretches out of the parking lot and down the block, and it’s been more than enough to make it easy for me to resist the allure of a Popeye’s sandwich. 

My complex feelings about premium chicken sandwiches had been the back of my mind for weeks when I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and happened upon a post by Tuckey’s Big Boy in Tecumseh, Michigan, where I had a very pleasant meal last fall, announcing that they had both online ordering and curbside order pickup. I immediately saw this as an opportunity to give the Dolly chicken sandwich a try and to get out of the house for the couple of hours it would take me to drive to Tecumseh and back, so as soon as I had the time, I got out my phone, navigated to the only slightly glitchy online ordering platform and put in a late lunch order. I’ve lately passed my free time exploring the back roads of Southeast Michigan, and I plotted a semi-circuitous route of my favorite semi-scenic, semi-paved thoroughfares to take me to Tecumseh. 

I pulled into the empty Big Boy parking lot at 1 PM on a Friday, two days into a three-week ban on inside dining issued by the governor. The governor’s order had little effect on me. I haven’t eaten in a restaurant since March, opting instead for takeout and DoorDash orders, but the sudden decline in business resulted in Tuckey’s Big Boy cutting back their hours to offer only dinner four days per week. On the days they were open for lunch, there didn’t appear to be much of a rush of takeout customers, at least there wasn’t a rush when I was there. I pulled into one of the four empty parking spots marked for curbside pickup, and called the restaurant. I informed them I had placed an online order, and the voice coming through my phone informed me that it would be right out, an assurance offered without asking for my name or order number, implying that mine was the only pending online order. A masked Big Boy employee emerged from the restaurant’s front door a minute or two later with my bag of food, which I promptly took before driving around to the back of the restaurant to eat in my car. 

My exact words upon receiving this bag were, "Ohhh Boy! Big Boy®"

I like my slaw cole, my TV loud, and my transmissions manual. 

Eating this sandwich in my car is in my top 5 best experiences of 2020. 

In addition to the Dolly sandwich I ordered, I also requested coleslaw, coconut cream pie, and mandatory fries came with my sandwich as is customary at Michigan Big Boys. I’m happy to report that the various sides and desserts were far from the worst I’ve experienced at a Michigan Big Boy, but the sandwich was the main event. Just like Popeye’s chicken sandwich, the Dolly is offered in mild and spicy variations. I opted for the mild version, not out of an aversion to spicy food, but due to the novel fact that the mild Dolly is topped with tartar sauce, perhaps inspired by Frisch’s, the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky contingent of the remnants of the Big Boy chain that tends to put tartar sauce on everything. The first bite of the Dolly made it abundantly apparent what all the chicken sandwich-related hoopla has been about. It’s not an exaggeration for me to say it was the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten, thanks to the presence of a thick and juicy fried chicken breast, and the perfect amount of tartar sauce and pickles that have a subtle spicy, tangy flavor that remind me of some flavor I experienced in better times, perhaps decades ago, but can’t quite place. The brioche bun, while trendy, was also the perfect delivery device. Its dense crumb held up well to the briny pickle chips and tartar sauce that had lost its viscosity once it came into contact with hot chicken. Best of all, the Dolly is a sandwich that can be experienced without strings attached. As far as I know, the Big Boy brand carries no political baggage comparable to that of Chick-fil-A, and the worst service I've experienced at a Big Boy is better than the best I've had at a Popeye’s. The Dolly stands as a great chicken sandwich, uncomplicated by the unpleasantness of the world around it.  

Standard issue Michigan Big Boy fries...

...and coconut cream pie

An individual more talented than myself once offered the advice to enjoy every sandwich, and that chunk of wisdom is on my mind as I recall eating that Dolly chicken sandwich in my car while parked behind the Tecumseh, Michigan Big Boy. In a time with relatively few bright spots, something as simple as eating a really good sandwich stands out more than it usually would, and serves as a reminder that every sandwich, every small, simple pleasure is worth savoring and enjoying, especially when pleasant, normal, experiences are in short supply. But it was the ritual surrounding the sandwich, the drive to an obscure corner of the map, snapping the surreptitious photos, and indeed, writing this very blog post that have the fleeting, subtly spicy tang of the semi-recent past, and hopefully also the not too distant future when I can again travel wide and far to experience the surviving locations of the broken chains. 

With the conclusion of Big Boy Month comes Raxgiving, a day set aside to support the broken chains. I won’t make it to a Rax this year, but I plan on supporting a broken chain restaurant or two that are closer to my home. I encourage anyone reading this to support their local restaurants as well, whether or not they be associated with a broken chain, provided that you can do so safely.  

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New Boy in Town

Big Boy as a brand has lacked a single cohesive identity for the majority of its existence. Between the myriad regional franchisees, each with their own quirks, and the brand's transition from a drive-in to a full service restaurant chain in the 1960s, the Big Boy brand means different things to different people depending upon where they grew up and when. Marriott tried and failed to make Bob's Big Boy a lasting national brand in the 1970s when the loose association of regional Big Boy chains began to fall apart, but for all the instances of divergent and convergent evolution that compose Big Boy's history, one could argue that the smart move would have been to enter the fast food market.

Big Boy was just becoming a well-established brand when Ray Kroc was defining American fast food culture with the ideas he borrowed from the McDonald brothers, and over the next couple of decades, it became clear that fast food was more than a passing fad. In that time, most Big Boy locations had transitioned from drive ins to full service restaurants just in time for the ever-growing fast food chains to move upmarket from the 15 cent, 1.6 ounce hamburgers that helped establish them, and seemingly the logical progression was to double up the meat and place it on a three piece bun. Seemingly every burger chain and countless mom and pops all had their own Big Boy-inspired double deck burgers in the '60s and '70s, and whether you were eating a Big Shef at Burger Chef, a Big Scot at Sandy's, a Club Burger at Carroll's or a Big Mac at McDonald's, you were probably getting a product very similar to what was offered at Big Boy for less money with less hassle.

Rather than forcing Big Boy into the already crowded fast food segment where it already had a brand, Roy Rogers, Marriott opted to increase emphasis on things like salad bars, breakfast buffets, and outstanding service at Big Boy. It worked for a while, sustaining both Frisch's, Bob's and the Big Boy chain formerly known as Elias Brothers into the current century, but as I discussed at length on the occasion of my visit to the final Embers, restaurant chains that offer table service but don't sere alcohol are rapidly dying. The previous owners of the Michigan Big Boy chain knew this and launched a fast casual Big Boy Burgers and Shakes location as a prototype for a modernized Big Boy location. That restaurant is still open east of Cleveland, Ohio, and I have yet to visit it. (I've got to save something for Big Boy Month 2020.) Instead, the Big Boy prototype location that caught my interest is the one that opened this year.

Big Boy Restaurants, LLC has expressed a goal of growing their 75 unit chain to 200 locations in the next seven years, and it would seem that a tool they intend to use to accomplish that goal is to open low-overhead, fast casual Big Boys with limited menus and no waitstaff in strip mall slots. The first location of this type opened in a newly constructed Big Boy Restaurants, LLC-owned strip mall in Southfield, Michigan this summer, and I naturally went to check it out.

What kind of business would do well between a Starbucks and a Big Boy? A mobile phone store? A vape shop? 

From the outside, it looks nothing like any other Big Boy location I've experienced. There's no Big Boy statue out front. The building is a nondescript strip mall, of which Big Boy occupies roughly a third. The two other slots are a Starbucks and a vacant storefront. The sign on Big Boy's portion of the building has a unique lowercase font and a monochromatic Big Boy graphic. The place looks as if Chipotle's marketing team had been tasked with designing a Big Boy location. I visited early on a weekday afternoon between the lunch and dinner rush, and found a few customers scattered about the dining room.

Order line and register, note the menu on the wall to the left of the window. 

The entrance leads straight to an approach to a single register with ample room to accommodate a line of customers, and a printed menu is mounted on the wall to the right of the line. I was pleased to find that in addition to the Michigan style thousand island topped Big Boys, that a California style Bob's Big Boy was offered. I ordered one along with a side of fries and a hot fudge cake. I paid the cashier, was given a numbered card on a tall metal stand and was instructed to sit anywhere I liked. This was nothing like any other Big Boy I had ever visited, but was a welcome change. I procured my customary Diet Dew at the self serve drink fountain and took a seat where I could admire the decor which included a Big Boy word cloud style graphic, and an indoor Big Boy statue that I was pleased to learn is a giant bobble head. An employee delivered my order a few minutes later. I inspected the top bun and found it was indeed topped with the red relish associated with Bob's Big Boy locations on the west coast, which seems to be little more than a mixture of pickle relish and ketchup.

"THINK CHECKERED PANTS"

Big Boy founder Bob Wian created this original iteration of the Big Boy to wow his depression-era customers with an comically tall and decadent hamburger, but in this age of ever-increasingly ridiculous fast food sandwiches it feels a little small, even skimpy. After my first bite, I found myself thankful I didn't travel to California to try a Bob's Big Boy this year, because without the tangy Michigan thousand island, or Frisch's signature tartar sauce, Bob's version of the Big Boy tasted like a burger with relish and ketchup, not terribly special and in need of more than a little mustard. The fries were not the worst Michigan Big Boy fries I've encountered.

"Bob's Big Boy"

I hear that in Californy, the relish is red and fire hydrants are green. The streets are paved in avocados, and people wear flip flops to job interviews.   

The employee who served me my burger and fries, noticing I was finishing up, asked if I was ready for my hot fudge cake. I responded in the affirmative, and watched as he struggled with the hot fudge warming and pumping apparatus. He seemed to be having trouble pushing the machine's plunger down to extract the fudge, and when he brought the dessert to my table, I realized why. The hot fudge sauce was not hot, and because of its low temperature, its higher viscosity made it difficult to pump onto the cake, and it was holding its extruded shape, and not melting over the sides like the menu shows. To say the brown logs of not-hot fudge did not appear appetizing was an understatement, but even a bad hot fudge cake is still pretty tasty.

Room temperature fudge cake. The fudge reminds me of a certain Emoji.

I returned to give the new format Big Boy another shot a few weeks later, and found more customers and a more attentive staff along with a busier dining room. This time I ordered my customary Super Big Boy, and found it to be up to the same high standards as other Big Boys I've experienced in the Wolverine state. The location seemed to have worked out the bugs, but I'm still a little hesitant to order another hot fudge cake. Overall, I think I prefer the style of service to the traditional Big Boys. Having a server take your order for a simple burger and fries seems more than a little excessive, and the fast casual format fits a burger-driven menu better. But while I don't miss the overly formal seating and serving protocols of the older Big Boy locations, I can't help but feel like the omission of the salad bar is a glaring error.

I almost always get the salad bar at Big Boy, even when I'm just ordering a burger, and you can make a healthy meal out of just Big Boy's hearty soups and salads. Salad bars are strongly associated with virtually every Big Boy and Big Boy-descended chain. To throw them out along with servers taking orders feels like an over-correction. No one in the quick serve or fast casual segments offers a salad bar, so a salad bar at a fast casual Big Boy feels like a perfect way for them to maintain a cohesive brand identity while setting themselves apart from competitors. Salad bars were a part of Wendy's identity during what I think most would agree was their best era, and the two best surviving Rax locations are the ones that still offer the chain's signature salad bar.

Speaking of, Raxgiving went great. Thanks to Ryan, Mapcat, and my long-suffering mother for making the trek to a remote corner of Kentucky to share an experience with me at the best Rax left. If you didn't make it to Raxgiving this year, don't worry I've already got a similar event, in the works in a less remote location. Raxgiving also marks the end of Big Boy Month, as does November 30th. Normal Broken Chains posts will resume next week.

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Every Good Boy Does Fine

Welcome to Big Boy, home of the Big Boy. Can I take your order? 

With its unique status as a chain of chains, the Big Boy brand is full of stories of regional chains that came and went, rebranded, or have been slowly fading away for decades. The Big Boy Wikipedia page has a long list of Big Boy regional franchisees whose Big Boy sub-chains have long ago gone extinct. Others like Shoney's, Eat 'n Park, and JB's would secede from the Big Boy empire and continue to do business without the Big Boy name attached to their own, though similarities to the Big Boy brand would often persist. Today, two completely separate chains are left using the Big Boy name, the Cincinatti-based Frisch's, and the Warren, Michigan based Big Boy Restaurants, LLC, formerly Elias Brothers, that once controlled the entirety of the Big Boy brand.

With the exception of five Southern California Bob's Big Boys, three Cleveland-area Big Boys, and the one oddball Big Boy in North Dakota, all of the Big Boy Restaurants, LLC locations are in my home state of Michigan. Most of those are former Elias Brothers Big Boy locations. Brothers Fred, John, and Louis Elias were the second Big Boy franchisees after David Frisch. In 1987, Elias Brothers would acquire the Big Boy brand from Marriott, who had bought the chain from Bob Wian, its founder, in 1967. The already fractured Big Boy empire would crumble under Elias Brothers' ownership, which culminated in the 2000 bankruptcy that led to Frisch's becoming totally separate chain, and the purchase of the remainder of the Big Boy brand by Robert Ligget Jr. who phased out the Elias Brothers name, making all Elias Brothers Big Boy locations simply Big Boys. Last year, Ligget sold Big Boy to a consortium of Michigan investors after 18 years of neglect, mismanagement, and restaurant closures. The new owners have expressed a goal of expanding from 75 present locations to 100 within two years and 200 within seven years.

Last year's Big Boy month post that focused on the Michigan-based Big Boy chain contained accounts of poor experiences with Big Boy locations I'd had in the past, plus one so-so experience at the Warren, Michigan Big Boy, a stone's throw from their corporate headquarters. My implicit goal this Big Boy month is to experience the best and most unique locations in the remnants of the Big Boy empire. My trip to five different Frisch's locations a couple weeks back yielded mixed results, so when it came to planning a trip covering the Michigan Big Boy chain, I needed a new game plan. I found a list of all operating Big Boy Restaurants, LLC locations on their website, and one by one, Googled each location and looked at their customer reviews, until I had found five Big Boy locations that had more than four stars. I then visited all five of them.

Meal #1
Location: 2701 East Monroe Road, Tecumseh, Michigan
Google Rating: 4.3 stars, 646 reviews
Order: Super Big Boy, mandatory fries, soup and salad bar, hot fudge ice cream cake, Diet Pepsi

A couple weekends ago, Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I drove out of the sprawling Detroit suburbs and into Tecumseh, a little town southwest of Ann Arbor that is home to both a Wendy's with a deeply troubling sign and the last ShopKo Store I visited before that chain's near complete liquidation over the summer. Right across the street from the carcass of that ShopKo (which was originally a Pamida), is what 646 Google users say is the best Big Boy in Michigan.

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I noticed a few things walking through the parking lot. For one thing, it was the fullest I'd ever seen any Big Boy parking lot outside of breakfast hours. Additionally, an oddly-placed fire hydrant was situated immediately adjacent to the classic fiberglass Big Boy statue out front, and signs on the windows of the entryway proclaimed the name of the place was "Tuckey's Big Boy." As we proceeded inside, it became clear that we were in for a unique Big Boy experience. Though the outside looked like every other Big Boy built in Michigan in the '70s and '80s, the interior had undergone a unique remodel, and for some reason, was firefighter themed. Photos of firefighters and firefighting equipment lined the walls, and a good many tables had lamps made from fire helmets above them. Unlike Frisch's, the majority of Michigan Big Boys are franchisee-owned, and it's clear this particular franchisee wanted to make their restaurant unique.

This is also the first Big Boy I recall encountering that serves beer and wine. 

Is this firehouse motif doing anything for you? 

That helmet is a lamp, hanging from a firehose. 

Great Super Big Boy, disappointing fries

My hot fudge cake and Esmeralda's cookie sundae

The name, "Tuckey's Big Boy" seemed the most unusual. Since 2000, the only Big Boy Restaurants, LLC locations to have a name before Big Boy were the California Bob's Big Boys, or so I thought. The owner of Tuckey's Big Boy, presumably someone named Tuckey, seems to be adhering to the historic franchisee name+Big Boy nomenclature, and corporate seems to be allowing it. I'd like to see more of this style of branding making a comeback as a nod to Big Boy's heritage.

Bountiful salad bar

Toy firetruck parked atop the salad bar

Esmeralda and I were seated immediately at one of the few open tables in the restaurant packed with a small town Saturday night crowd. The salad bar was nicely stocked, and well maintained, my Big Boy and fries showed up quickly despite the packed dining room. The Big Boy was fresh off the grill and dressed with the lettuce and proprietary Thousand Island sauce that Michigan Big Boys use, but my fries were cold and limp, just as they were at the Warren Big Boy last year. Any sandwich you order at a Michigan Big Boy automatically comes with fries whether you want them or not. Given the poor quality of the fries that were foisted on me in Tecumseh, I doubt they'd sell many fries if they were optional when ordering a burger. Fries aside, Esmeralda, who grew up in Michigan with Elias Brothers Big Boy summed this place up on the drive home when she said, "That felt like what Big Boy used to be." With its impeccable service, mostly above average food, and unique name and decor, the Tecumseh Big Boy has the not quite standardized, but high quality feel that a franchised Big Boy in the heyday of the brand.

Meal #2
Location: Big Boy 28340 Ford Road, Garden City, Michigan
Google Rating: 4.2 stars, 396 reviews
Order: Super Big Boy, mandatory fries, salad bar, Diet Pepsi

The Garden City Big Boy has been a Big Boy twice. 

The Garden City Big Boy has an interesting history. It originally opened in the 1960s as an Elias Brothers Big Boy, but sometime between then and 2009, (Likely around the time of the 2000 bankruptcy and ownership change) it lost its Big Boy flag and began operating under the name, Toast. I ate there once ten years ago, when it was Toast, and remember it being a lot like Big Boy. I vaguely remember seeing double deck burgers on the menu while I was there for a weekend breakfast buffet. Toast closed in 2016, and this spring, it became a Big Boy once more, the first to open following the 2018 ownership change that came on the heels of the closure of many Detroit area Big Boys.

Another great salad bar. 

Here's what I foraged from the salad bar. 

I came in for lunch on a weekday, and felt mild concern when I saw plastic sheeting draped over the bay windows on one side of the building, presumably an attempt to prevent water leaks cheaply, and hopefully temporarily. My concerns melted away once I was inside and found the interior had been completely remodeled since I was last there in the the Toast days. Photos of old Elias Brothers Big Boy locations hung on every wall. Booths had been replaced or reupholstered, and funky Sputnik-shaped space age chandeliers lit the room. It felt modern, but with appropriate nods to the past, yet standardized in a way that Tuckey's Big Boy was not.

Modern interior, retro lighting. 

Great burger, terrible fries 

I ordered my usual Super Big Boy and salad bar, and found the latter freshly stocked for the day, which allowed me to make a nice salad for myself. The same broccoli cheese soup with chunks of ham that I'd had at Tuckey's found its way to my table here as well. The soup was made from scratch and had big chunks of broccoli, and all the salad ingredients were fresh and perfectly chilled. As before the Big Boy arrived at my table quickly fresh off the grill, and the fries were colder and limper than the ones in Tecumseh had been. I only bothered eating a couple of them before giving up entirely. Again putting the fries aside however, it was an above average experience. I'm glad to have a well-run Big Boy so close to where I live and work. I might even come back to this one when it's not November simply because a good salad bar is tough to come by, and the salad bar at this Big Boy was great.

Meal #3
Location: Big Boy 6301 Dixie Highway, Bridgeport, MI
Google Rating: 4.1 stars 548 reviews
Order: Big Boy, mandatory fries, pumpkin pie, Diet Pepsi

The firehouse-themed Tecumseh Big Boy was likely decorated with the intent of being unique, and the Garden City Big Boy was remodeled with an eye toward the future of the Big Boy brand in Michigan. Their counterpart in Bridgeport is no less unique in that it's firmly rooted in the past. While perfectly clean and nicely maintained, its clear the interior and exterior of the building have not seen a significant update in the past 20 years or so. In fact, the dining room feels nearly identical to that of the long ago closed and demolished Dearborn Big Boy, which had the very same decor package when I was a regular there a decade ago.

The checkered indoor awning really takes me back. 

It was late on a Saturday morning, peak breakfast buffet hours, likely peak hours in general for most Big Boys. After fawning over the gaggle of young children in the group in front of me, the hostess returned to indifferently seat me, a lone adult man. As I passed the glass case of pies by the register, I noticed a whole strawberry pie on display.

The fries are better in Bridgeport. 

Consolation pies. 

My one regret in arbitrarily designating November Big Boy month is that it's difficult to impossible to find a Big Boy serving its signature, seasonal strawberry pie in late autumn. When my waitress appeared, I asked if they were serving the dessert after ordering my Big Boy and fries. She told me that the strawberry pie wasn't available as it was seasonal, and informed me I'd be eating pumpkin pie instead. I didn't argue with this assertion in the interest of not being difficult, plus who can complain about pumpkin pie? I assume the strawberry pie in the case up front is inedible and used only for display. Perhaps it's months-old, and/or preserved with a thin coat of clear resin.

Strawberry pie, taunting me. 

My Big Boy, tasted as a Big Boy should, though less meaty since the last two since I ordered a quarter pound standard Big Boy this time as opposed to the half pound Super Big Boys before, but to my surprise and delight the mandatory fries that came with it were actually hot and crispy, as if they had been prepared to order. Likewise the near-mandatory pumpkin pie, while in no way unique among pumpkin pies was a perfectly acceptable autumnal consolation prize in the absence of its elusive vernal counterpart.

Meal #4
Location: 400 South Ripley Boulevard, Alpena, Michigan
Google Rating: 4.1 Stars, 519 reviews
Order: Slim Jim, mandatory fries, salad bar, banana split, Diet Pepsi

I had several different 4.1 star Michigan Big Boys to pick from when planning my trip, but I chose to visit the relatively remote Alpena Big Boy for two reasons, the first being that I had never before visited this part of the state and this felt like as good an excuse as any, but the reason more relevant to Broken Chains is that the Alpena Big Boy began life in the late '70s as a Sambo's restaurant, and became a Big Boy in the early '80s following Sambo's closure. Most Sambo's locations had closed by the mid 1980s following a bankruptcy brought on by mismanagement and several hasty attempts to modernize the chain's racially insensitive name and marketing. Incidentally, there's still a single Sambo's open in Santa Barbara, California, owned by the grandson of one of the chain's co-founders, but that's another blog post.

Slim Jim and the best fries of the trip

Upon arrival at the Alpena Big Boy, it was clear its exterior looked nothing like the corporate architecture from any era of Big Boy, and aside from the red and white Big Boy checkerboard pattern along the roofline, it likely looked much as it did as a Sambo's. The interior was no more conventional, as it still retained what I assumed to be the Sambo's floorplan, L-shaped with a long serving counter at the front of the building and an area with tables and booths at one side. A tiny salad bar sat at the convergence of the L, less than half the size of any other Big Boy salad bar I've ever encountered. I doubt it was there in the Sambo's days, and was likely added during the Big Boy conversion. My surroundings while perfectly clean, were even more dated than the Bridgeport Big Boy. The seats of the boot I was seated in reminded me of the Golden Girls' couch.

Thank you for being a booth. 

Very un-Big Boy serving counter, likely a Sambo's artifact

Impressive banana split. 

It was around this time that I remembered Big Boy sold more than just burgers, so I ordered up a Slim Jim, a ham and cheese sandwich on a hoagie roll, flattened on the grill and cut diagonally, essentially a simplified Cuban sandwich, minus the roast pork and with tartar sauce instead of mustard. I don't recall ever having one before, but I found it to be a unique and pleasant sandwich esperience, if slightly messy. The fries at the Alpena Big Boy were the hottest and crispiest of my trip. It seems the Big Boy fries get better the further north you travel. Michigan Big Boys focus heavily on their proprietary ice creams, and I don't recall ever having anything other than a scoop of vanilla in the middle of a hot fudge cake at a Michigan Big Boy. As long as I was sampling the non-burger offerings of the Big Boy menu, I took this opportunity to order a banana split, which allowed me to sample the Big Boy chocolate and strawberry ice cream in addition to the stalwart vanilla. The chocolate was perfectly fine, but the strawberry stood out as unique. It had unabashedly artificial salmon color with few, if any strawberry pieces. Still, it had a real strawberry flavor, with what I thought might be a slightly malty undertone, though I couldn't be sure with all the other flavors of the sundae's toppings fighting to drown out the strawberry.

Meal #5
Location: Big Boy 200 West Maple Road, Troy, Michigan
Google Rating: 4.2 stars, 521 reviews
Order: Beef stew, coleslaw two scoops strawberry ice cream, Diet Pepsi

Big Boy, after dark. 

For my final Michigan Big Boy stop, I elected to dine at the Troy, Michigan Big Boy. It felt the least unique of the trip, thanks in part to my meal there following my stop at the former Sambo's packed with '80s decor in Alpena. Like the Garden City Big Boy, its counterpart in Troy had been renovated recently and was decorated with the same aesthetic, right down to the Sputnik chandeliers. Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I stopped in for a weeknight dinner, and found the dining room was around half full.

This location had a lot of Big Boy merch for sale. I may need to go back and buy some or all of it. 

We were seated immediately and greeted by a pleasant if forgetful server who brought us water instead of the Diet Pepsi we had ordered and who I had to remind to bring the coleslaw that came with my beef stew, which is one of several new additions to the Michigan Big Boy menu. I found it to be the perfect meal for an unseasonably cold Michigan November evening, and was pleased to find it served over real mashed potatoes, though they could have let it stew a little longer, as the baby carrots and mushrooms floating in the stew were almost completely raw, though the beefy chunks were cooked through. I still ate everything, because despite the unsettling squish of a raw mushroom and snap of a raw carrot in my mouth, it still tasted great. Likewise Big Boy seems to have switched coleslaw recipes since last year. The new slaw is markedly more flavorful and more fresh than the tasteless mush I had during Big Boy Month last year. As I suspected, the strawberry ice cream does have a slight malted flavor, and the more of it I eat, the more I enjoy it. It may become my new go-to Michigan Big Boy dessert order regardless, though weirdly, this time I had a whole frozen strawberry embedded in one of the scoops, but no evidence of strawberry pieces elsewhere. Just as strangely, the fries that came with Esmeralda's Big Boy while reasonably fresh, were a completely different type than I had encountered in my travels to other Michigan Big Boys. While other locations were serving medium sized, skin-on fries, these were skinless and lightly battered. The couple that I sampled were above average, but the inconsistency stood out and showed that the brand's new owners are perhaps trying new things and attempting to improve their inherited shortcomings.

Tasty, if undercooked stew, unique fries. 

Well, if you insist, placemat.

Unconventional but delicious strawberry ice cream, and Esmeralda's second cookie sundae. 

A year ago, Big Boy Restaurants, LLC found themselves with a shrinking chain of dated and deteriorating restaurant properties operating in the dying full service family restaurant segment. It's clear they're making efforts to improve existing properties, modernize menus and streamline service at their legacy locations. Though decor, branding, and architecture were anything but consistent at the five well-rated locations I visited, the quality of food and service were uniformly above average. If these locations are representative of the whole chain, it's clear that Big Boy Restaurants, LLC is committed to their goal of more than doubling their existing footprint to 200 locations in the next seven years. This exploration has left me with a vastly improved opinion of the Big Boy brand in Michgan and will likely see me visiting Michigan Big Boy locations not in search of blog fodder, but out of a desire for the food and experience, though I'll probably beg and plead to get a burger without fries on my next Big Boy trip.

Raxgiving is less than a week away. I hope to see several of you there.

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