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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Lonely Boy

For the second year in a row, I've devoted the entire month of November to blog posts about Big Boy, and I plan on doing so every November for as long as I see fit to keep this blog regularly updated. My reasoning for making November Big Boy Month is the result of Big Boy's expansion strategy which involved selling regional franchises to operators across the country, each of whom added their own name and their own spin to the Big Boy brand. The gradual dissolution of this chain of chains and the decline of the individual regional Big Boy sub-chains makes for a deep well of broken chain stories and experiences to which I can return for many Novembers to come. The discussion of the little differences between different Big Boy operators also serve to break up the monotony of discussing a single brand at length. Menus, logos, and even the Big Boy mascot and burger all have minor variations tied to different regional franchisees, and while most of the variations are insignificant, there are still a few oddities kicking around.

Two completely separate corporate entities use the Big Boy name today. Cincinnati-based Frisch's operates all the Big Boy restaurants in Kentucky, Indiana, and all but two in Ohio, while the Warren, Michigan-based Big Boy Restaurants International, formerly Elias Brothers Big Boy, operates primarily in Michigan, and weirdly also Japan, plus five Bob's Big Boy locations in Southern California, two Big Boys in the Cleveland Ohio area, and a single location in Bismarck, North Dakota. After learning about that single North Dakota location, operating three states away from the next closest Big Boy, I couldn't get it out of my head. Not only was it the only operating Big Boy in the vast Big Boy-less dessert between the Frisch's Big Boys in Indiana and the Bob's Big Boys in California, it was likely the most unique Big Boy in existence, maybe ever. 

Harley McDowell opened the Big Boy Drive-Inn in Bismarck in 1954, using the name without the authorization of Wian Enterprises, then parent company of Big Boy. (Harley McDowell's cousin Cleo McDowell of Queens, New York pulled a similar stunt operating a bootleg McDonald's in the late '80s, shortly before his daughter married Prince Akeem of Zamunda, but that's another story.) Harley McDowell's plagiarism resulted in a trademark infringement suit brought by Wian Enterprises, the outcome of which was, for some reason, McDowell becoming an official Big Boy franchisee, changing the name of his restaurant to McDowell's Big Boy, which against all odds, and in the face of the demise of countless other Big Boy operators, is still in business today, under control of Big Boy Restaurants International, and these days going by the name of Bismarck Big Boy. 

This Big Boy stands guard by the drive thru lane. 

Stranger still, the Bismarck Big Boy, unlike every other extant Big Boy location I know of, has no indoor seating. Service is through a drive thru pickup window only, and the menu has items that you'll find at few other operating Big Boys including fried chicken and pizza burgers. Upon learning all of this I knew it was only a matter of time until I would have no choice but to visit this isolated oddity in the middle of a mostly empty state no one ever thinks about. It was a few weeks ago, when I could no longer resist the call of the world's strangest Big Boy, and took off across the Upper Midwest, making stops at a bootleg Zantigo and a Maid Rite on the way. I found my way to Bismarck on a Saturday afternoon, and headed straight to Big Boy for an early dinner. 

The owners of the Bismarck Big Boy have invested in a trio of order speaker/monitors to keep things running smoothly 

As an early adopter of drive thru service, the entrance to the Bismarck Big Boy's drive thru lane is unconventional and clumsy. I approached the restaurant from the east and found that I had to make a U-turn across three lanes of traffic to enter the drive thru, which connected directly to the main road. It was a more aggressive maneuver than I was used to making for a burger and fries, but one I made nonetheless. It was early in the day, and the dinner rush hadn't hit yet, but I could tell the Bismarck Big Boy was set up for maximum capacity, considering the drive thru had three order speakers, presumably each of which would operate simultaneously to process an three orders at once during peak times. I studied the menu board ahead of me, which seemed impossibly tall. I wanted to sample both the strange menu items as well as the classic Big Boy, and with that in mind, I ordered up a fried chicken breast with gravy and fries, a pizza burger, and a Big Boy, and proceeded toward the triangular canopy that jutted over the drive thru window from the flat roof of the little stone building that housed the kitchen. The short line of cars ahead of me moved quickly, and the employee in the single drive-thru window handed me my order as soon as my payment was processed. I drove onward no more than 50 feet where I found a few parking spots and picnic tables set up in a small park-like area immediately adjacent to the restaurant. 

Big Boy picnic

Pizza burger exterior...

...and cross section. Ignore my ugly thumb. 

It was early enough in the fall that I could comfortably enjoy an outdoor meal in the heart of the 701 area code, so I parked and selected a picnic table upon which I unloaded the plastic bag containing my order. The pizza burger captured my curiosity first. The single two ounce patty topped with american cheese and slightly spicy marinara sauce was nestled between two slices of white bread which had been grilled in a sandwich press. It was exactly as tasty in practice as those ingredients sound on paper. I would have preferred mozzarella cheese, but all in all, it wasn't bad. 

Good gravy!

I continued the parade of Big Boy oddities with the chicken. Various regional Big Boy chains have offered fried chicken off and on over the years. Some Big Boy franchisees also owed KFC franchises and sold KFC chicken in their stores in the early days of the KFC brand. The now-defunct Manners Big Boy in the Cleveland area sold Chicken in the Rough, another franchised fried chicken recipe. As an effort to stomp out the outside franchises, Big Boy offered Country Cousin's Chicken, its own brand of fried chicken to its franchisees, but to my knowledge, no Big Boy locations use the Country Cousins Chicken name today. Bismarck Big Boy seems to be the only restaurant using the Big Boy name outside of California that still serves a bone-in fried chicken product. I found the chicken itself to be nicely cooked and reasonably fresh if a little under-seasoned, but a quick dip in the gravy really brought each bite to life. The thick chicken gravy was nicely seasoned to compensate for the lack of seasoning on the chicken, and its peppery flavor served to enhance the flavor of the chicken. After the chicken was gone, I found myself using the gravy on my fries, which were thinner and much crisper, which is to say, objectively better than Michigan Big Boy fries.

Big Boy, Dakota style. 

The sauce had a paler color and milder flavor than on its Michigan counterparts. That thumb isn't getting any better looking.   

The Big Boy itself bore a strong resemblance to its Michigan counterpart with its three piece sesame seed bun, shredded lettuce, single slice of American cheese, and Thousand Island style sauce. The flavor of that sauce was a bit milder, pickley, and dare I say, Big Mac-like than the Thousand Island used at Michigan Big Boy, almost as if their sauce comes from a different supplier, which when you think about it, it's likely to. I also imagine very few people notice given the restaurant's remote location within the Big Boy chain. Regardless, I found it to be a perfectly acceptable burger. After all, Big Boy sauce varies much more wildly than this. Frisch's uses tartar sauce, while Bob's uses a blend of ketchup and relish. Another curiosity on the menu in Bismarck that I didn't get to try is a junior Big Boy with a single patty, which like the chicken and pizza burger, I've never encountered at any other Big Boy. 

The view from the drive thru. I had my butt with me, but no one seemed to mind. 

The Bismarck Big Boy was the turnaround point of my four day 2500 mile roadtrip, and despite its grueling pace, it was a trip I'm glad I made. I had initially planned a trip to California to eat at one or a few of Bob's Big Boy locations for Big Boy month this year, but for a variety of reasons that trip didn't happen. I thought this trip to North Dakota would be the next best thing to a visit to Bob's, the original Big Boy chain, but in retrospect, I'm glad I visited Bismarck instead of Burbank. With its indoor dining, and multiple locations with consistent menus, Bob's Big Boy is sure to lack the charming weirdness of the Bismarck Big Boy born out of plagiarism and litigation. Everything about its existence feels like a fluke, from the lawsuit that inexplicably turned into a franchise agreement to its 65 years of continuous existence serving the literal dozens of residents of The Flickertail State, despite the Big Boy brand having no presence anywhere remotely nearby and the restaurant itself having no indoor seating in a state known for its harsh winters. Weirder still, according to their Facebook page, the Bismarck Big Boy is now offering a mushroom Swiss burger on a Big Boy bun. If they still have it next fall, I may be crazy enough to come back and try it, and you should too. 

Raxgiving is so close I can taste it. If you'll be anywhere near Harlan, Kentucky on November 29th, consider joining me at Rax for a meal and informal broken chain conversation. 

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Me and the Boys

I've spent the past 12 months feeling more than a little bit guilty about my blog post about the meal I had at the Port Clinton, Ohio Frisch's Big Boy last November. While everything I wrote about my experience was true, I should have made efforts to document an endangered brand rather than to criticize it, but the allure of being an amateur restaurant critic rather than an amateur historian captured my attention as it does all too often. I have a lot of affection for the Big Boy brand in general, and Frisch's in particular, and the more I thought about it, the more unfair it seemed that I visited only one Frisch's during Big Boy Month last year. Even worse, it was a franchised Frisch's in Northern Ohio, the edge of the chain's operating territory, hardly the best representative of the chain's 118 mostly company-owned locations. I picked this far-flung, oddball franchisee based solely on it's proximity to my Metro Detroit home, and the fact that its next door neighbor was Lake Erie. Needless to say, I could have made greater efforts to curate my Frisch's Big Boy experience, and ensure it was a more positive one.

1990s Frisch's print ad (courtesy of The Poncherello Collection)

This year, I intend to right that wrong, and in observance of the second annual Broken Chains Big Boy Month, I spent my entire weekend road tripping to four (arguably five) carefully selected Frisch's Big Boy locations in an effort to both experience and show a more complete view of the current state of the Frisch's brand, while taking in occasional glimpses of its history.

The approximate route of my Frisch's Big Boy trip (Courtesy of The Poncherello Collection)

Pre-Big Boy Frisch's matchbook showing the original two locations, (courtesy of The Poncherello Collection)

Cincinnati restaurateur David Frisch became the first franchisee of Bob Wian's Big Boy system in 1946, after Wian offered him a franchise for a fee of one dollar per year for a territory including Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida. The low cost of the franchise was part of Wian's strategy to grow his brand rapidly and obtain a national trademark. Frisch's family would remain in control of the chain within a chain until 2015. After weathering storms that all but destroyed the Big Boy brand outside of Frisch's territory, becoming a separate corporate entity from the company that controlled the Michigan Big Boys and California Bob's Big Boys, and losing the Florida territory entirely, David Frisch's grandchildren sold the company to NRD Capital, an Atlanta-based private equity firm.

I grew up eating at Frisch's in Kentucky fairly regularly, and was more than a little bit cranky about the ownership change, and took out those frustrations, perhaps unfairly, on the Port Clinton Frisch's last year. Since then, the chain has made some encouraging moves, including rolling out a line of new, Big Boy-inspired burgers that offer new interpretations of Frisch's original interpretation of the Big Boy, which itself differed in several ways from Bob Wian's original Big Boy burger. Don't worry, purists, the original tartar sauce topped Frisch's Big Boy is still on the menu, but it gained some new siblings this year. I set out to try them all on my multi stop journey.

Meal #1
Location: Frisch's Big Boy 16 Weller Drive, Tipp City, Ohio.
Order: Farmhouse Boy platter with onion rings and coleslaw, Diet Coke

Typical '80s-'90s built Frisch's

Admittedly, I chose this location because it was near I-75 and on the way to Cincinnati. I did however choose the Tipp City Frisch's over its counterpart up the road in Troy because I'd had one poor experience too many at the Troy Frisch's. I was seated right away on a Friday evening, and half the salad bar was running in hot food mode, keeping a modest buffet of seafood and sides warm. Servers could be heard explaining to anyone ordering the salad bar that they could only eat from the cold side. A surprising number of people needed this explained to them repeatedly. If I'm being completely honest, the buffet looked questionable at best. It made me feel thankful that I had planned on ordering a burger.

Farmhouse Boy platter 

The Farmhouse Boy is what I ordered. It's an original Frisch's Big Boy to which a fried egg and a few strips of bacon has been added. A frequent criticism of the original sized Big Boy is that its two eighth pound patties are insufficient to fill its three-piece bun and make for a flavor profile that lacks sufficient beefiness to please the modern burger connoisseur, and reminds the eater of the Big Boy's depression-era origins. The Super Big Boy, essentially the same burger with quarter pound patties has been a menu for decades serving as the sole response to the criticism, until recently when Frisch's corporate overlords sought to address the original Big Boy's protein deficiency with a wider array of proteins. I was a fan from the first bite. The bacon and egg play well with the pickle-heavy flavor of tartar sauce, and indeed sliced pickles that top the burger. It's a great balance of flavors that tastes more complex and substantial without losing the classic signature Frisch's flavor. The onion rings were crispy, hot and sweet, and the coleslaw had the same pleasant tang it always has. Aside from the odor of sketchy buffet shrimp permeating the dining room, my in-depth exploration of Frisch's was off to a decent start.

Meal #2
Location: Frisch's Big Boy "Mainliner" 5760 Wooster Pike, Cincinnati, Ohio
Order: Bad Boy, Soup and salad bar, Diet Coke

The Mainliner Drive-In was one of two restaurants owned by David Frisch that began selling Big Boys immediately after he became the first Big Boy franchisee. The original restaurant is long-gone, and a modern Frisch's Big Boy Building now occupies the site, but the original Mainliner signs remain on the property as nods to the brand's heritage. Locals still call it the Mainliner. My Cincinnati-area friends Carl and Lorelai Poncherello brought me here after our trip to Roney's this past spring, and I knew I'd have to come back for Big Boy Month. In fact, Carl and Lorelai were with me on this visit to the Mainliner as well, and were nice enough to take me on a tour of a few interesting historical sites between the Mainliner and their home, including Frisch's longtime headquarters, and a previously undiscovered former Minnie Pearl's Fried Chicken building serving as a veterinarian's office.

Frisch's HQ; this is where the magic happens. 

Maybe don't bring your pet chicken here for a checkup. Cousin Minnie Pearl may be hiding in the shadows with a meat cleaver. 

The dining room at the Mainliner is home to a small museum of Frisch's artifacts that was added during a 2018 renovation. On my previous visit there, Carl, an avid collector of restaurant memorabilia had donated a pair of 1960s vintage Frisch's paper cups to be added to the display cases, and I was curious to see where the restaurant's management had placed them. On my way to the salad bar, I took a detour to the museum area to find Carl's cups, and was surprised and dismayed to see that they were indeed in the display case, but still stacked, one inside the other, and barely visible behind some Big Boy dolls. I had hoped that such rare artifacts, generously donated by my friend would have been displayed more prominently.

Carl's cups are hidden behind the dolls on the top left. Go figure. 

Too much spicy tartar sauce is my new favorite condiment.

Bad Boy and the bounty of the Mainliner's salad bar

I was, however encouraged by the salad bar that was impeccably clean and stocked with fresh fixins. I loaded up a plate with salad and a bowl with cream of potato soup to return to my table, where our respective orders, including my Bad Boy, had already arrived. The Bad Boy is a classic Big Boy with a slice of pepper jack cheese in place of the slice of American cheese that's normally on the lower patty, and topped with a spicy tartar sauce, which I suspect is Frisch's original tartar sauce mixed with Sriracha. I found it to have the perfect level of heat for my tastes, but no so much heat that the signature Frisch's flavors were drowned out, another outstanding variation on the classic Frisch's Big Boy.

Meal #3
Location: Frisch's Big Boy, 840 Lila Avenue Milford, Ohio
Order: Pumpkin Cheesecake, water

How could anyone not stop to take a picture of this sign?

Carl, Lorelai, and I stopped here for dessert immediately after eating at the Mainliner, mainly so we could admire the 1950s vintage neon sign out front. The building was identical to the modern Frisch's on the site of the Mainliner, but with additional seating in place of the museum. The pumpkin cheesecake tasted just as good as it did in Port Clinton last year, but someone in the kitchen had neglected to add the whipped cream and little candy pumpkin to the top.

Meal #4 Frisch's Big Boy
Location: 500 Broadway Street, Anderson, Indiana
Order: Breakfast Buffet, orange juice, water

I've never seen this style of Big Boy statue in the wild before. 

I parted ways with Carl and Lorelai not long after our stop at the Frisch's in Milford, and spent the night in the suburbs north of Cincinnati. I got an early start the next day and headed for Anderson, Indiana, home of a Frisch's Big Boy operating out of a building that appeared to be largely untouched since the 1950s. Most operating Frisch's I encounter are in structures built in the 1980s or later, and I strongly suspect that the Anderson Frisch's is the last of its kind still in operation. I had worked up a powerful hunger on the two hour drive there, and all I could think about the whole drive was trying a Breakfast Boy, a Big Boy with sausage patties instead of beef patties, with bacon and egg thrown on for good measure. Upon arrival, I took no more than a minute to admire the building and grounds, headed inside where I was seated and handed a menu that made no mention of the new Big Boys. Only the original Big Boy and Super Big Boy were on the menu. I wouldn't be having a Breakfast Boy here. Defeated, I resigned myself to eat from the Sunday morning breakfast buffet, which was mostly fine as breakfast buffets go. While the buffet food was acceptable, the beverages were severely lacking in quality. All I had to chase slightly too salty biscuits and gravy was orange juice that had an unpleasant brown color and tasted half fermented and a glass of local tap water that had an unpleasant rotten egg flavor. The lack of an up to date menu and potable water led me to conclude that the Anderson Frisch's is best appreciated from the outside.

Most Big Boy and Big Boy-descended chains offer a weekend breakfast buffet where you can get food that looks like... this. 

While the exterior of the building was a 1950s time capsule, complete with a vintage sign similar to the one in Milford and a rare early style Big Boy statue with striped overalls, fair hair, and saddle shoes, the interior looked and felt tired. The walls were rough and uneven like they had been hastily repaired and painted one time too many. The carpet around the buffet and leading into the kitchen was threadbare, and aside from a dusty display case full of more Frisch's artifacts, there was no evidence of the Frisch's brand reflected in the decor. Instead the walls were lined with Indianapolis Colts merchandise.

Mini-museum in an otherwise unremarkable dining room 

As I dry-swallowed my breakfast, I concluded that this franchised Frisch's location's anachronistic appearance is the result of an owner's resistance to change rather than a conscious historical preservation effort. They were even still serving Pepsi products. The majority of the chain converted to Coke last year, not that either would be palatable if the carbonated water in the fountain drinks comes from local sources. Though the poor water quality was concerning, the lack of the exciting new Breakfast Boy I had been craving all morning was the biggest disappointment. Frisch's corporate overlords would do well to acquire this place from its owner, give the interior the restoration it deserves, and operate it to the standards I witnessed at the Cincinnati stores.

I returned to my car dejected, but I had an idea. I was only 90 minutes away from one of my favorite Big Boys. Surely I could have a Breakfast Boy and a positive experience to conclude my trip there.

Meal #5
Location: Azar's Big Boy 6800 Bluffton Road, Fort Wayne, Indiana
Order: Breakfast Boy, chocolate shake, water

Azar's Big Boy once had 26 locations in Northern Indiana and Colorado, and operated not as a direct franchisee of Bob Wian's Big Boy, but as a subfranchisee, one of two Big Boy chains to acquire their franchise rights from Frisch's. As such, Azar's more or less has always functioned as Frisch's does in all but name. The Fort Wayne restaurant is the last operating Azar's Big Boy location. I ate there during Big Boy Month last year, and had a great experience. I had high hopes of an Azar's stop cheering me up after a disappointing breakfast, but I fear that I visited Azar's, ostensibly a very good Big Boy, while they were having a very bad day.

My milkshake...

By the time I was in Fort Wayne, it was late in the morning, and the Sunday brunch crowd was swarming the place. I parked in the crowded lot, and found my way inside, noting a handwritten sign on the door informing me that their credit card machine was down and they could only accept cash. I was seated immediately at one of the few remaining open tables, and a visibly frazzled server took my order. She returned a few minutes later with my freshly mixed chocolate shake. I hadn't had a Frisch's shake in years, but this one made me wonder why. It was the perfect thickness, pleasantly creamy, and with a richer chocolate flavor than could have been provided by Hershey's syrup alone. I sipped it, surprisingly indifferent to the throngs of diners around me as I awaited the much anticipated arrival of my Breakfast Boy.

...brings all the boys...

...to the table.

My server returned after I'd finished the first quarter of my milkshake carrying my long-anticipated matutinal burger. I thanked her as she set it before me and disappeared to tend to a large group seated nearby. I took a bite, and swallowed it, dejected. She had mistakenly brought me a Farmhouse Boy with beef patties. I debated just eating it and not complaining, I really did, but at that point I felt that eating a Breakfast Boy was essential to my happiness, so I informed my server of the error when she had finished with the nearby group. She apologized, and returned, half a chocolate shake later, with my Breakfast Boy. I'm happy to report that the Breakfast Boy lived up to the image I had built up for it in my head. It looked and tasted like something a stoned line cook working the graveyard shift would prepare while on a lunch break, and I mean that in the best possible sense. The breakfast sausage patties paired surprisingly well with the pickles and tartar sauce, and the quarter of a chocolate shake I had left was just enough to wash it down. My Breakfast Boy-induced euphoria was cut short, however, when I witnessed a line growing to a concerning length as I was finishing my meal.

I sat, watching the line of patrons waiting to pay their bills extend halfway across the dining room, wondering if I had any hope of settling my tab and completing the 180 mile drive home in anything resembling a timely manner. After ten minutes of this, I noticed that I hadn't seen my waitress for a while. Ten more minutes passed, as the children of the large party seated near my grew restless and unruly. I was feeling increasingly on edge, as if I had not just eaten a magical sausage burger when my waitress finally appeared with my bill and an apology, indicating that the restaurant's computer system had gone down, making it momentarily impossible to print bills or accept even cash payments. Thankfully, the staff had managed to get the system to function somehow, and by the time I had my bill, the line had diminished. I quickly paid and left, as the manager was locking the entry door mentioning something about closing early.

Like a lot of broken chains that still have some semblance of corporate oversight, a trip to Frisch's Big Boy is a mixed bag. From the impeccably run Mainliner that, cup display aside, exemplifies the best of the Frisch's brand on the site of where the Frisch's Big Boy brand began, to the indifferently run location in Anderson that tempted me to rehash the Grey Gardens pastiche I used to describe Pappy's Family Pub, even a collection of carefully-planned Big Boy stops can have unpredictable results, even when visiting a known good location like Azar's. Thanks to these little surprises, I didn't even get a chance to try the last of the new Big Boys, the Big Boy Deluxe, which is topped with tomatoes, red onion, and leaf lettuce. Regardless, I came away from my my weekend immersed in Frisch's with more positive experiences than negative ones, and I'm glad to have experienced the new menu items that look to the future while holding onto an appreciation for the brand's heritage. It's great to see Frisch's corporate overlords making efforts to maintain relevance in an increasingly competitive marketplace. I may even come back to Frisch's well before next year's Big Boy Month. I still have to try that Deluxe Big Boy.

The other Broken Chains November observance, Raxgiving is drawing near. If you're able, consider joining me and other broken chain enthusiasts to celebrate the season at the Harlan Kentucky Rax in a few weeks.

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Use the code OLIVE15 at checkout to get 15% off your order through the end of the year!

Let’s Hear it for the Boy!

It’s been November for nearly a week now, and I can feel the pudgy, pompadoured, fiberglass countenance of the Big Boy beaming down at me from on high. Big Boy month is upon us. It’s a time for celebration of the once national network of loosely affiliated regional restaurant chains that soldiers on as a few unaffiliated regional chains today.

If you’re unfamiliar with Big Boy’s history, check out the introduction post to last year’s Big Boy Month, or the immensely informative Big Boy Wikipedia page.

Big Boy is perhaps the most imitated American restaurant chain of all time. The empire Bob Wian built on the back of a double deck hamburger and an adorable cartoon mascot has been widely plagiarized. The McDonald’s Big Mac, for instance, was inspired by the Big Boy Hamburgers sold at an Eat ‘n Park Big Boy in Pittsburgh. Frisch’s Big Boy in the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state area inspired the Burger Chef Big Shef that predated the Big Mac. For that matter, Frisch’s is arguably the inspiration for the postwar iteration of the entire restaurant chain, Jerry’s, whose parent company would go on to establish both Long John Silver’s and Fazoli’s.

Big Boy’s wide imitation by other chains is because of its early success and sudden ubiquity in postwar America. Rapid growth in the early years came from its growth strategy of selling Big Boy franchises to existing regional restaurant chains, effectively uniting them as one big chain with a bit of regional variation. This strategy would eventually become Big Boy’s undoing as many of those same chains would leave the system as their initial franchise agreements expired or cease operations when their fortunes changed.

Today, the Big Boy name is still used by two completely separate chains. At least three other chains formerly affiliated with Big Boy are still in operation as well. Last year’s Big Boy Month posts focused on four of those five chains. This year will be a bit different. I’ll be doing a deep dive into the two chains that still use the Big Boy name, visiting multiple locations of each in search of the best possible Big Boy experience from two chains that have undergone myriad ownership changes and endured steady declines in quality and territory.

My motivation for this plan is based on a fear that I did not take sufficient care when selecting Big Boys to visit last year. As a result, I wound up with a too-small sample size reflecting an overall negative experience. This year’s Big Boy visits are an effort to rectify that and document the best and most interesting locations still using the Big Boy name in the Midwest. So settle in for a month of Big Boy posts as I experience the brand, two patties and three bun pieces at a time.