Feed Me, Seymour!

In the early sixties, the American automobile manufacturer, Studebaker was short on cash and struggling to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In a last ditch effort to attract consumer interest, they threw every available resource at designing a distinctive new car, the Avanti. With its minimalistic yet stylish fiberglass body, the Avanti looked nothing like any other car Studebaker, or anyone else had ever made and was an instant classic. Ultimately, the Avanti wasn't enough to save Studebaker from bankruptcy, but the car, designed and produced with minimal time and cash to spare by a company fighting for its life, became a symbol of going out in style. I recently encountered the Studebaker Avanti of steakhouses. 

A few months back, I spent a weekend traveling around Michigan to dine at four completely different Ponderosa Steakhouses. I found that the food, buildings, staff and overall experiences varied wildly depending on the location. I haven’t felt much desire to eat at a Ponderosa since, but I’ve remained curious about Ponderosa’s competitor turned sister brand, Bonanza.

Ponderosa and Bonanza barely survived the Great Recession. Their parent company, Metromedia, declared bankruptcy in 2008, but emerged with a new name, Homestyle Dining LLC, and a plan to modernize their aging restaurant concepts. In 2014, a year after the fiftieth anniversary of the Bonanza brand, There were plans to revitalize Ponderosa locations with badly needed building and signage upgrades as well as new menu items to attract a younger more health conscious clientele. Additionally, the Bonanza brand would be completely reimagined to differentiate it from the nearly identical Ponderosa concept. The plan was to move the Bonanza brand upmarket and rebrand it as Bonanza Steak and BBQ. Additionally Homestyle Dining introduced a fast casual steakhouse concept known as Cole’s Backyard Grill. Plans called for opening 100 franchised locations of each new concept over the next five years.

Plans changed suddenly in 2017 when Homestyle Dining LLC was purchased by FAT Brands, who owns Fatburger as well as a few other restaurant brands. Prior to the buyout, Homestyle Dining LLC hand managed to open one Cole’s which has since closed, and two Bonanza Steak and BBQ locations. The first Bonanza Steak and BBQ in Eureka, Missouri opened in 2015 and closed a year or two later. The second, the remains open in Seymour, Indiana. FAT Brands appears to have all but abandoned the new concepts as well as all North American Ponderosa-Bonanza operations in general, in favor of growing the brands internationally. Ponderosa and Bonanza seem to ultimately be doomed to the same fate as other brands like Chi Chi’s and Kenny Rogers Roasters, whose owners abandoned the American market entirely, but still exist abroad.

My initial plan was to visit the Seymour, Indiana Bonanza Steak and BBQ as well as a still-operational 1960s vintage, old concept Bonanza location in Lincoln, Illinois in order to compare and contrast the original and new Bonanza experiences. Unfortunately, multiple recent customer reviews of the old Bonanza in Lincoln stating live cockroaches were seen on the walls, tables, and salad bar deterred me from eating there. I'll therefore be forced to use my previous experiences at Ponderosa for comparison, which should be reasonably close, as old concept Bonanzas seem to function nearly identically to Ponderosas. Likewise, my local Ponderosa is housed in a former Bonanza building of the same vintage as the Lincoln, Illinois Bonanza.

The Dearborn Heights, Michigan Ponderosa, a former Bonanza with the typical barn-shaped facade. It's slightly dingy inside, but is roach-free, near as I can tell. 

(I’ll have to visit one of the old, and hopefully cleaner, Bonanzas in Pennsylvania in the name of completionism at some point, but that’s another blog post.)

I kicked off my Labor Day weekend road trip with a dinner stop at the sole surviving Bonanza Steak and BBQ. I was driving my vintage Ford Festiva, as I had plans to meet up with some of my Festiva-loving friends later on in Illinois. Though it's not without its own merits, my Festiva is no Avanti, and I was really feeling all of the 330 or so miles I had driven in my 25 year old economy car with no A/C to get there from Michigan by the time I pulled into the mostly full parking lot. I walked in the building's front door and was greeted by more branded material than I was expecting, including signs with both the original Bonanza logo and the Bonanza Steak and BBQ logo. A near life size cardboard cutout of NASCAR driver Chase Elliot was advertising a contest that was current at the time, but has since expired. It's the only official marketing material I've ever seen for the Bonanza Steak and BBQ brand.

There were plenty of nods to the past despite the overall modern atmosphere. 

The Cal Ripken cutout from Roy Rogers could totally take this poor man's Cole Trickle in a fight. 

It was around 7:30 PM on a Friday evening, and the place seemed relatively busy. The dining room was full, and there were a few people waiting for a table, seated on padded benches just past the entryway. Since I was by myself, the host sat me at the bar right away. A couple of things struck me as unusual right away. No one took my order before seating me, as is the case with most Pon-Bon locations, and this location has a bar. I've only encountered a single Ponderosa that offered beer and wine served to you at your table. Most don't seem to have liquor licenses at all, but this one had a full bar, with a bartender to hand me a nicely printed hardcover menu and take my order. I assume there would be regular servers in the main dining area. 

Nicely displayed Bourbon bottles. Other liquors were displayed similarly at the other end of the bar. 

I think this rug really ties the steakhouse together, man. 

The hot food buffet and dessert bar, longtime staples of the Pon-Bon chain, and monuments to quantity over quality, were also noticeably absent, however, there was still a salad bar, which was massive, close in size to the entire salad bar and buffet combined at my local Ponderosa. The salad bar felt new and modern, with its refrigerated slab holding salad ingredients in large porcelain serving trays. An employee was nearby to ensure that the entire operation remained clean and well stocked. It appeared to be her sole job duty. While a salad bar would be considered a mark of a low end restaurant by some, this one thanks to its appearance and quality actually managed to feel upscale, while providing a nice nod to the Bonanza brand's heritage. I was also able to make myself a really great salad. I wish I had a salad bar this good near my office. I'd have a salad for lunch every day, and in turn, be able to consume more empty calories at oddball fast food joints and then write about them on my silly blog. 

A bonanza of salad fixins

I'm going to spend the rest of my life remembering, and futilely trying to recreate, this salad.

My steak arrived in a reasonable amount of time, and was nicely prepared and topped with a tasty herbed butter. It tasted like a better quality of meat than I would normally get at my local Ponderosa, but it was the same cut I always order. It also came with four hot yeast rolls, not unlike those found on Pon-Bon buffets, as well as a large cup full of cinnamon butter. I also got a baked potato, which was nicely prepared, but it's tough to screw up a baked potato. 

Behold, the best steak I've ever had at a Ponderosa or Bonanza!

There's a live musician here, playing guitar and singing mostly southern rock tunes from the '70s. As I'm eating, he starts into CCR's "Midnight Special," singing, "Ain't no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan." and pauses for a minute to interject, "They ain't at Bonanza!" He's only part right, though, there's plenty food upon the table, but surprisingly little pork up in the pan for a place with BBQ in its name. The only barbecue inspired items on the menu seem to be ribs, pulled pork, and a smoked prime rib, which I should really try on my next visit.

Despite the limited selection of smoked meats on the menu, just about every aspect of Bonanza Steak and BBQ feels modern, and compared to the dingy, dated, and overpriced Ponderosas I've experienced, I can safely say that this concept is a definite improvement over the antiquated Pon-Bon model. Nearly all aspects seem more upscale and modern without seeming overly generic. It's everything I prefer this location to three of the four Ponderosas I visited previously. (The Ponderosa in Bay City, Michigan retains it's #1 spot thanks to better than average quality buffet fare and unintentionally entertaining patrons.) It's not really any more expensive to eat here than it is at any of the Ponderosas I've experienced. Having ordered a ten ounce sirloin, salad bar, a potato and a soft drink, I was out the door for under 25 bucks, including a tip for the bartender and another for the musician. I've had much worse meals for more money at Ponderosa.

The exterior building design feels thoroughly modern and vastly more upscale than the average Pon-Bon. The architecture is tasteful and restrained, if a bit generic. Old Google Street View images show the building was previously a Max and Erma's, but even the striking Studebaker Avanti rode on the same chassis as its predecessor, the humble Studebaker Lark. I imagine a stronger corporate image plan might have come later had the concept had the opportunity to grow. It would be great to see FAT brands attempting to open more US locations, but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon, as they have their sights set elsewhere in the world.



As solid a concept as Bonanza Steak and BBQ seems to be, it seems to have been too little too late to keep Pon-Bon relevant. Though both the Pon-Bon and Bonanza Steak and BBQ websites state that franchises are available, I don't think they're getting many bites, due to better franchise arrangements being available from other brands and/or the diminished state of the Ponderosa and Bonanza names in the US. FAT Brands has owned Ponderosa-Bonanza for nearly a year at this point, and from the perspective of the customer, they seem to be doing little to revitalize existing locations and re establish a dying chain that was once 1,200 locations strong. I suspect things will get worse for the 100 or so remaining US locations before they get better, but I'm happy to have experienced Bonanza Steak and BBQ, as the final push of a corporate parent to revive an ultimately doomed brand that resulted in a stylish and memorable product.



Following the end of Avanti production, a pair of Studebaker dealers purchased the rights to the Avanti name as well as the manufacturing equipment and space, and survived as a boutique manufacturer, building Avantis in small numbers. Avanti cars would be built in some form or another for the next 40 years following Studebaker's demise. I sincerely hope that Bonanza Steak and BBQ can continue on for at least that long after the last of the US Ponderosas and Bonanzas close for good. It's every bit as deserving of a long life on the market as the Avanti was. 

El Perro, el Perro, es Mi Corazón

I spend a lot of time on I-75 in Ohio. It’s the quickest route between my home in Metro Detroit and my immediate family in Lexington, Kentucky. Over the past ten years, I’ve driven the 211.6 mile stretch of highway along the western edge of Ohio more times than I can remember. I can recite every exit with an amusing name, like Needmore Road, Botkins, and Luckey-Haskins, which when I drive by, always makes me think of actor Dennis Haskins who was indeed very lucky to land the role of Mr. Belding on Saved By the Bell. I-75 is a route I that until recently, I tried to complete as quickly and with as few stops as possible, never venturing more than a mile or so off the highway when I did stop. It’s only in the past few months that I realized how much Broken Chains fodder there was between Toledo and Cincinnati, often just another mile or two off the highway. I’ve previously visited the last operating Clancy’s, spitting distance from Exit 94 in Sidney, plus the three Kewpee locations in Lima, each of which are within five miles of Exit 125. On my most recent Kentucky run, I found that three of the 15 or so remaining B-K Root Beer drive-ins were all situated along I-75 in Ohio.

The first B-K Root Beer location opened in Michigan City, Indiana shortly after World War II. The initials B and K stood for the surnames of the founders, Melvin and Mary Bergerson and their partner, someone surnamed Kenefick, whose first name does not seem to appear anywhere on the internet, and may be lost to history. (Somewhere Keneflick is hanging out in a forgotten business partners' support group with Roebuck, and the McDonald brothers.) The two-initials-plus-root-beer nomenclature, was perhaps inspired by A&W which was founded nearly 25 years earlier, and the format of serving a proprietary recipe root beer in a drive in setting is also close to A&W’s early business model. I’m not sure that A&W pioneered this concept, or if someone came before them, but drive-in chains like Dog ‘n Suds and Frostop, as well as countless surviving independent drive ins across the Midwest all seem to function on the root beer-driven drive in model, each with their own distinctive root beer recipe.

At their peak, there were 238 B-K locations across the Midwest, but the increasing dominance of the national fast food chains in the 1970s brought about the decline of many drive-ins and regional chains, including B-K, who ended up under ownership of the Michigan-based DeNovo corporation in the ‘80s along with Dog ‘n Suds and Tastee Freez. DeNovo’s sale of the B-K trademark to Burger King for their then-new BK Broiler sandwich in the late 1980s was the final nail in the coffin for any corporate support for the final B-K franchisees. Wikipedia claims there are around 35 B-K locations left in operation, but my research only shows 15, all of which are in Ohio and Indiana. I suspect the Wikipedia estimate also includes locations that no longer use the B-K name, as I’ve run across a few of those. Given that the remaining B-K locations have been operating independently for 30 years, I was curious about what a still-operating B-K looked like and how consistent the locations were to each other. My most recent jaunt down I-75 afforded me the opportunity to visit three different B-K Root Beer drive-ins.

Meal #1
Location: B-K Root Beer 1407 South Sreet, Piqua, Ohio
Order: Spanish hot dog, onion rings, root beer float

The Piqua B-K Root Beer location is made up of two buildings, the main building with a kitchen, small seating area, and a vintage canopy supported by bright orange V-shaped pillars and the "Patio" an open-sided pole barn next door which is used for additional seating. I opt to eat in my car. None of the B-K locations I visited had intercom systems. Instead, the carhop walked out to my car as soon as she saw me pull up. Slightly unprepared for the transaction, I ordered, and she returned a few minutes later with an antique metal tray that she attached to the partially lowered drivers' window of my car. I was under the impression that this style of tray was incompatible with the curved glass of most modern cars, but that didn't seem to be the case here.

Metal tray attached to my window

Free root beer for toddlers!

Funky canopy supports

The entire menu for the Piqua B-K

Main building and canopy

Patio

B-K's food menu seems to revolve around hot dogs. Several hot dog toppings are offered at this B-K, but chili is not among them. The B-K stand-in for a chili dog seems to be the Spanish hot dog. It's the menu item I'm most excited to try, and I'm not disappointed. It's basically sloppy joe meat on top of a hot dog, but it's really good sloppy joe meat. The smoky, sweet, and tangy flavors are well balanced, and the pieces of meat in the sauce are quite small, making for a consistent texture that compliments the gentle snap of the steamed skinless hot dog below it. Copycat recipes I've found call for thoroughly stirring the sauce and raw ground beef to ensure the correct texture, similar to the Taco Tico meat recipe I attempted a few months back.

I was halfway through the root beer float when I thought to take a picture. You'd think I'd know better by now.  

My new favorite hot dog and my new favorite sloppy joe, all in one bun

The onion rings are nothing special, pre-breaded, frozen rings from a bag deep fried, but the root beer float is baffling. It's a paper cup with root beer and a scoop of French vanilla ice cream. (I ordered a large, which comes in a paper cup, a medium comes in a mug. Your experience may vary depending on which B-K you visit.) The majority of the flavor in the float seems to come from the slowly melting ice cream. The whole mixture tastes of vanilla with a slight sassafras/wintergreen undertone. I made a mental note to try the root beer without ice cream before my journey was over.

As I'm leaving, I'm unsure of how to get the carhop's attention so she can remove my tray. I try turning on my car's headlights, and it worked perfectly. She came right out of the building, took my tray, and wished me well. After snapping a few pictures of the buildings as the staff and local patrons eyed me and my Michigan license plate with suspicion, I was on my way to my next destination. 

Meal #2
Location: 2780 Stone Circle Drive, Troy, Ohio
Order: Spanish hot dog, fries, peanut butter shake

I miss the orange pillars.

The Troy B-K Root Beer is housed in a newer building, I'd guess a late '70s to early '80s build with a nondescript canopy and a larger dining area. This was my return trip, and I'd been sitting in the car for a lengthy amount of time thanks to heavy traffic around Florence, (Y'all) Kentucky. Because of this, I opted to eat inside. The very instant I picked a seat at the counter and sat down, another eager carhop/waitress, asked me for my order. I hastily order, noticing too late that this location had hamburgers. Unsurprisingly, my food arrived quickly. The fries were cut thick and well-cooked. I suspected they may have cut from potatoes on site, but further examination revealed their shapes and sizes were a bit too consistent for them to have been made from scratch. The peanut butter shake was blended in a vintage mixer right in front of me, and reminded me of the shakes I'd get at the vintage soda fountain of the old drugstore in the town were I grew up. The Spanish dog tasted exactly like the one I had a couple days earlier in Piqua, which was a pleasant surprise considering how little resemblance my surroundings bore to my previous B-K stop.

Yep. I could really get into Spanish hot dogs. 

The Troy B-K has a more extensive menu.

Come to our restaurant! We're closed every major holiday!

The Troy B-K had my favorite sign. 

The dining area is decorated with various 1950s clichés including a vintage jukebox in one corner of the dining room that doesn't seem to be functional, at least not until Arthur Fonzarelli hits it. Antique branded root beer mugs line the shelves along the perimeter of the room, mostly from B-K, but I saw a couple A&W mugs in the mix as well. This restaurant seems to be the largest piece in someone's antique collection. This B-K serves regular beer as well as root beer, but not on the day I was there, as it was Sunday. Behind me, another employee was repeatedly trying to explain to an elderly and possibly already inebriated customer that local laws prevented them from selling alcohol on Sunday. Their point seems to be lost on him. This is more small town charm than I can handle, so I hop in my car and head for the next (and final) B-K.

Meal #3
Location: 301 Riverside Drive Sidney, Ohio
Order: Two Spanish hot dogs, large root beer

The bare bones B-K of Sidney

Komedy K for the win!

The Sidney B-K is just a mile or so down the road from Clancy's. This location is less of a drive-in and more of a stand. There's no indoor seating, just a few picnic tables around the perimeter of the small building. It's located near some batting cages, and the sign by the road slyly advertises both businesses, using an alternate spelling. This feels the least like the remnant of a chain. The menu boards look to have been hand painted by an amateur, and the branding is minimal.

The most spartan menu yet

The final Spanish dog of my trip

With each Spanish dog I consumed, I became more obsessed with them. It had been over an hour since I had eaten my last one in Troy, so I pretty much had to order two more in Sidney. The carhop, thankfully, seemed to be a little less intense than her counterparts at my last two B-K stops. The Spanish dogs were as tasty as ever. I also took advantage of my final opportunity of the trip to try their root beer. Sadly, I was not overly impressed with it. I generally enjoy trying different root beers and noting how the sassafras, butterscotch, vanilla, licorice, mint, and wintergreen flavors harmonize with one another. The proprietary root beer at Mike's Drive-In in West Frankfort, Illinois is a personal favorite, but Culver's root beer will suffice for me in a pinch. B-K's root beer didn't come close to either. It had little carbonation, no foamy head, and a one-note flavor that reminded me of chugging chilled mouthwash. It strikes me as root beer designed to be the base for a float. It needs the extra flavor from the ice cream to be palatable. Perhaps this was a built-in upsell strategy that had been there since the beginning, though that seems like a risky strategy for a place with root beer in their name.

Testing the strength of my car's window glass

It takes a little more gesticulating to get my carhop's attention here, but she eventually finds her way over to me and takes my tray. I can't say I'm a fan of the old fashioned drive-in trays. They lose their novelty quickly when you're worried about the weight of 22 ounces of mediocre root beer in a heavy glass mug supported only by the glass of your car's window, and you can't drive away until the carhop takes the tray. I'll stick to asking for my food to go on my next B-K run. I was glad when my car was again trayless so I could hop on I-75 at Exit 94 and head back home.

The B-K locations, that I visited seemed to be consistent to the brand where it counts, the food. While there were wild variations in the overall menus, signage, and architecture, the core items I sampled at multiple locations were consistent to one another. While the root beer was a bit of a let down, the Spanish dogs are my new favorite hot dog configuration. I'll be back to B-K for a Spanish dog or two the next time I'm travelling down I-75. I'll probably stop at the one in Troy. It's less than a mile off the interstate.

Ruins of Jerrico

I went to Kentucky this past weekend, which means it's time for me to share with you more vague memories of my Kentucky childhood. One such memory is of a white plastic container with a blue lid, full of my coloring supplies including a mishmash of crayons from various Crayola boxes and restaurant activity place mat coloring kits. A few of those crayons had a distinctive scalloped pattern on the wrapper, and for some reason, I knew those crayons came from Jerry’s.

I have zero memories of eating at a Jerry’s restaurant as a kid, but I’m sure I did at some point. How else would I have had the crayons? I have more vague memories of travelling past their restaurants with gently sloping roofs and maroon signs with distinctive white lettering. I remember their pudgy chef character that bears more than a passing resemblance to Bob Wian’s Big Boy mascot. I would eventually learn that Jerry’s was the original brand of Jerome Lederer’s Jerrico Inc. that launched several restaurant concepts around Lexington, Kentucky, from the 1940s through the 1980s, the most successful of which were Long John Silver’s and Fazolis.

This hair salon was once the first ever Long John Silver's...

...and this recently-closed wing joint was once the first ever Fazoli's (originally called Gratzi's)

It was the early ‘90s when the Jerry’s around Lexington, and indeed the Jerry’s across the southern US, stretching from Florida to Arizona began to close up. Jerrico had divested itself of the Jerry’s and Fazolis brands to focus on Long John Silver’s, and all 46 of the surviving corporate-owned Jerry’s locations were bought up by Denny’s and converted to Denny’s locations. On trips around the Bluegrass State in the ensuing years, I’d occasionally see a franchised Jerry’s still open for business, often rebranded as Jerry’s J-Boy, but over the years, the J-Boys began to disappear. Near as I can tell, Jerrico ceased to exist as a corporate entity around the time of their sale of the Long John Silver's brand in 1999. Long John Silver's and Fazoli's are their legacy, but if you look hard, you'll find a handful of franchised Jerry's locations soldiering on independently, the last remnants of the early days of the Jerrico empire.

I found a surviving J-Boy by accident in Louisville on my trip to Ollie’s Trolley earlier this year and planned to have dinner there, but one thing led to another, and I ended up making a three hour round trip to Evansville, Indiana for a G.D Ritzy’s dinner instead. Later I discovered another Jerry’s in operation in Paris, Kentucky, and finding myself with a few spare hours on a weekend run to Lexington, I made plans to dine at both.

Country Jerry’s

Location: Jerry’s, 4129 Lexington Road, Paris, Kentucky
Order: J-Boy platter with fries and coleslaw, hot fudge cake, sweet tea

Vintage neon

Time capsule exterior (if you ignore the modern cars)

The Jerry’s in Paris, Kentucky is among the first buildings you’ll see after arriving in Paris via Lexington on US 68. The twelve mile drive from Lexington’s north side takes you through the green rolling hills and wooden fences of the horse farms that seemingly occupy every rural road in central Kentucky. The original neon Jerry’s sign beckons you in off the road to a purpose-build 1961 vintage building. It’s a well preserved example of Jerry’s corporate architecture. With its gently sloping roof and windowed facade, it resembles a slightly larger Burger Chef of the same era. Next door is an independent pizza place that’s housed in a former Long John Silver’s, which makes me wonder if the owners of the Jerry’s also owned the franchise for the LJS as well since both were Jerrico brands. The inside of the building is a bit bland compared to the outside. It looks to have been renovated in the past 10 years or so, but the outside of the building is so nicely preserved that I don’t mind. 

I walk in and a disembodied voice of some unseen employee tells me I can sit anywhere. It’s late on a Saturday morning and the place is busy. I’m by myself, so I take a seat at the counter. I had perused their website a few days before so I didn’t have to look at the menu for long. I ask my waitress for a J-Boy burger and fries. She asks if I’d like to add coleslaw to make it a platter, and I agree. I like coleslaw. She returns a minute later with a bowl of slaw and a soup cup containing wrapped crackers. 

11/10 Would slaw again. 

One of my favorite oddball Facebook pages is Coleslaw Review which rates restaurant coleslaw on a number of criteria including but not limited to, taste, texture, presentation, vegetable size, and liquid content. I think they’d like Jerry’s coleslaw. It’s a nice balance of sweet and sour with vegetables sliced just irregularly enough that you can tell it’s made from scratch. 

The famous J-Boy, like a Big Boy, but better. 

The burger  arrived and confirmed my suspicions that were aroused by Jerry’s portly tray-carrying mascot. The J-Boy is a double decker burger with lettuce, pickles, a single slice of cheese and a mayonnaise based special sauce. It looks and tastes like a better quality version of a burger from Big Boy, specifically Frisch’s Big Boy.

(Bob Wian franchised his Big Boy burger to various regional master franchisees who would occasionally alter recipes to suit local tastes. Frisch’s Big Boy whose territory included the entire state of Kentucky used a mayonnaise based tartar sauce as the special sauce on their signature burger rather than Bob Wian’s signature red relish. Other regional master franchisees used a thousand island based sauce.) 

The Big Boy burger, of course, has spawned countless imitators, including the Big Mac. Ram’s Horn, a local Detroit chain unpretentiously calls their double decker, special sauce burger The Famous Imitator. (Unlike in the Bible, Ram's Horn had nothing to do with the demise of Jerrico.) The Jerry’s J-Boy is one of the better double decker burgers I’ve had. It has all the flavors that a burger from Frisch’s has, but tastes fresher, meatier, and more balanced. Detroit-based Big Boy and Cincinnati-based Frisch’s Big Boy are run by completely separate corporate entities these days, and neither seem to be thriving. (The Detroit-based concern also owns the few remaining west coast Bob's Big Boy locations.) Both chains seem to be shrinking and have declined in quality in the past few years. I still visit locations of both chains regularly, and reserve the right to do a full Broken Chains post on them in the future. I don’t think I’ve had a burger at any Big Boy as good as the one I had at Jerry’s in at least a decade. 

There's ice cream in there somewhere. I promise. 

Jerry’s similarities to Frisch’s continued with the dessert course, which was a layer of vanilla ice cream encased between two layers of chocolate cake drenched in hot fudge and topped with whipped cream and a cherry. It looked and tasted just like Frisch’s fudge cake. Likewise, just behind where I was sitting, other patrons were enjoying a breakfast buffet, which is another fixture of most Big Boy locations on weekends. A news article I tracked down talked about a recently closed Jerry’s serving pie containing whole glazed strawberries, which is also a seasonal favorite at many Big Boy locations. Both Big Boy and Frisch’s predate Jerry’s, which makes me suspect Jerry’s was more influenced than Big Boy than the other way around. This isn’t exactly uncommon.

In addition to the Big Boy burger being widely imitated, and entire restaurant chains like Shoney’s and Eat ‘n Park are former Big Boy regional franchisees still operating very similarly to Big Boy in all but name. The difference with Jerry’s is that their parent company continued to innovate and went on to create original seafood and Italian fast food concepts in a time when both were uncommon.

City Jerry’s 

Location: Jerry’s J-Boy, 4832 Dixie Highway, Louisville Kentucky
Order: Champ sandwich, Diet Pepsi



The Louisville Jerry’s building is situated on the busy Dixie Highway in a slightly rough feeling neighborhood on the city’s southwest side. It simultaneously feels newer and older than its relative in Paris. I’d guess the building is a 1970s construction that was last updated in the early ‘90s. Holdout franchisees seem to have adopted the J-Boy signage around this time. Elaborate awnings and brick walkways have been added to the otherwise nondescript building. Signage shows the later Jerry’s J-Boy name rather than simply Jerry’s. Signs are backlit plastic. If there was ever an outdoor neon sign here, it’s long gone. 

Custom concrete signage set into the brick walkway.

Gulf war-era faux retro neon, has gone full circle to being legitimately retro.

Perhaps in order to compensate for the lack of neon outside, the interior of the Louisville Jerry’s has neon everywhere, with “Jerry’s, still the champ” spelled out on the wall behind the counter. I suspect the building was last updated around the time of the Denny’s buyout, at a time when places with a nostalgic theme were popular. Walls are adorned with images of Elvis Presley. There’s a life size Elvis statue by the door. I'm greeted with a "Can I help you?" from a surly hostess as I walk in. I inform her that I'm there to purchase and consume prepared food, and she begrudgingly shows me to a booth in the mostly empty dining area.  

I examine the menu, and find it to be completely different than the Jerry’s menu I’d seen earlier that day in Paris. While the Paris location has separate double-sided single-page lunch and dinner menus, The Louisville location has a single multi-page menu, and serves all menu items 24 hours per day. The wall immediately across from my booth is adorned with several pictures of heavyweight champion and Louisville native Muhammad Ali in his prime. I’m not terribly hungry, having driven straight here from Paris. Perhaps inspired by Ali, or because it’s an item that I recognized from the menu at the Paris Jerry’s I order a sandwich known as a Champ. 

The Champ, a better Buddy Boy

Ironically, it’s a ham sandwich, which Muhammad Ali never would have eaten. It's served hot on a toasted sesame seed hoagie roll dressed with Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, and tartar sauce. It's pretty close in appearance and flavor to the sandwich that Frisch's calls a Buddy Boy. The other Big Boy chain has a similar sandwich called the Slim Jim. Like the J-Boy I had in Paris, it's better than any sandwich I've had at a Big Boy in recent memory. This location, while a little rough around the edges in terms of facility and staff, is still able to serve Big Boy inspired food better than any modern Big Boy is capable of. I think it's the consistently good food quality that keeps the holdout Jerry's franchisees in business nearly three decades after the end of support from Jerrico.

As is so often the case, the last Jerry's franchisees are also the best ones. The holdouts in Louisville and Paris, plus a handful of others, outlasted Jerrico, and may very well outlast the Big Boy brand that they began imitating in 1946. These days they're better at being Big Boy than either of the Big Boy chains are, and serve as monuments to Kentucky's lesser known fast food empire. 

Rubber Biscuit

Loyal readers of Broken Chains may have, by now, deduced that I spend a lot of time on the road. Years ago, I had a job that required me to drive 1000-1500 miles per week. All that windshield time caused something to permanently shift in my brain, and now I start to feel antsy if I don’t take at least a short road trip once every few weeks. My time in the car gives me a chance to remove myself from the stresses of everyday life and just be alone with my favorite podcasts on the way to a historically interesting meal or two. While on the road, my preferred pit stops are at the large travel plazas open to both professional truckers and amateur road warriors like myself. More often than not, places like Flying J, Love’s, and TA have an abundance of gas pumps, reasonably clean restrooms, and a place to grab a snack or a full fast food meal. The idea of one stop to take care of all the typical travel needs appeals to anyone who’s trying to travel efficiently. The modern travel center fills a niche today that 50 years ago was filled by places like Stuckey’s, Nickerson Farms, and Horne’s.

In a time before strict zoning restrictions, outrageously styled buildings with brightly colored roofs stood by highways beckoning travelers, and their children, to stop and spend money. Whether it was an orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s, a red-roofed Nickerson Farms, or a yellow-roofed Horne’s, the architecture of the building served as an advertisement as much as the billboards that counted down the miles to their next location.

Bob Horne opened his first roadside candy and souvenir shop a short distance from his family’s motel outside Jacksonville, Florida in 1948. Like Nickerson Farms, Horne’s also has a Stuckey’s connection, as Bob Horne worked at the original Stuckey’s in Eastman, Georgia before striking out on his own. Horne and his father took their enterprise public to raise money for expansion and succeeded in expanding quickly thanks to the rise of leisure travel and a booming postwar economy. The concept eventually evolved to include a sit down circus themed restaurant, dubbed Horne’s Circus Grill. Some locations had on site motels as well. By the time Horne sold his enterprise to Greyhound in 1964, the chain boasted 55 locations and would eventually peak around 60. The brand’s decline began in the 1970s as so many businesses set up to cater to traveling motorists did. Thanks to a combination of a decrease in leisure travel due to various oil crises and economic recession and increased competition from the growing network of fast food chains, Horne’s had all but disappeared by the mid 1980s. The 60 unit chain eventually shrank to just one location in Port Royal, Virginia.

Modern gas pumps still sport the old Horne's logo.

Modern gas prices to match the pumps

Between stops at Roy Rogers in Maryland and Darryl’s in North Carolina, Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I were able to stop by the last operating Horne’s for breakfast. The building, a tall A-frame with a brilliant yellow roof adorned with its original neon sign seems to look much like it did in when it opened in 1961. Aside from modern products on the convenience store shelves, modern gas pumps, and updated restrooms, the place felt untouched, and generally well maintained. 

Thankfully, the circus theme stopped at the striped awning. No clowns joined us for breakfast. 

It was mid morning on a weekday when we sat down in what looked to be an original booth opposite the counter, still adorned with a striped awning meant to evoke a circus tent. Our waitress took our drink orders and handed us some nicely printed menus. 

Sadly www.hornes.com leads only to a blank page. 

Before discussing the food at Horne’s I should probably digress a bit to provide you, the reader, with some background information. Living in Metro Detroit, Esmeralda and I have a high standard for breakfast food. Seemingly every corner of our fair city has a “coney island,” an establishment traditionally run by Greek immigrants and their families, specializing in Detroit style chili dogs, diner food, and all day breakfast. Coney islands have little to do with the eponymous Brooklyn amusement park beyond a loose connection to hot dogs. Many area independent restaurants as well as a handful of unrelated local chains refer to themselves as coney islands, but you can expect them to have largely the same menu, including a large selection of delicious breakfast offerings for a decent price. In my six nonconsecutive years living in Metro Detroit, I’ve eaten hundreds of breakfasts at coney islands from Ypsilanti to Mt. Clemens, and I can’t remember ever having a bad one. If there’s one area where the Detroit coney islands excel, it’s breakfast even more so in my opinion than their namesake coney dogs.

It is with this relationship to breakfast food informing my perspective that I ordered a western omelette, hash browns, and a biscuit that morning at Horne’s. I found the omelette and hash browns to be generally acceptable, if a bit small in the case of the omelette and mushy in the case of the hash browns. I was really looking forward to the biscuit. As you might imagine, good southern style biscuits are tough to come by in Michigan, and I erroneously assumed that since I was in an ostensibly southern state, that the biscuit would be made from scratch in an antique cast iron oven by a tough old southern grandmother tucked in some back corner of the Circus Grill’s kitchen. I was wrong.



It was made from canned dough.



And it tasted like it had been reheated in a microwave. 

A decent omelette on the right, and the offending biscuit on the left.

I was suspicious when the top and bottom halves of the biscuit split cleanly and easily and the dry, bland flavor cemented my certainty that the Pillsbury Doughboy had more to do with the construction of this biscuit than anyone’s meemaw did.

Still, I like to assume the best about the places I visit. A little research reveals canned refrigerated biscuit dough was invented in 1931, and processed foods were new and even fashionable in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It’s therefore entirely possible that Horne’s has always slung prefabricated biscuits. On the other hand if I were to assume the worst, it could be that the offending dough puck is a recently-implemented cost cutting measure. A little more research revealed that in 2016, Horne’s changed ownership for the first time in 25 years. Could the new owners be cutting corners? Either explanation seems possible.

Regardless of the reason for the disappointing biscuit, it wasn’t enough to prevent me from buying a couple of Horne’s T-shirts and some Virginia toffee coated peanuts in the gift shop/convenience store area and taking a few minutes to appreciate the unspoiled vintage roadside architecture the building offered. It’s every bit and more the time capsule of a highway-adjacent eat-here-get-gas establishment as the former Nickerson Farms I visited in Ohio a few months back. Experiencing the building was more than worth the stop, and while decidedly mediocre, the food didn’t kill me. I might come back for lunch the next time I’m in the area, but I’ll stick to one of the Tudor’s Biscuit World locations West Virginia for my next biscuit craving, or maybe Suzi’s where I can get a Big Shef with my biscuit.