Shipshewana, Ind.- The other day I found a place with food like Grandma made. Not my grandma. Her grandma. Whatever she cooked up in the covered wagon, I’m pretty sure I sampled the day before the recent Southern California-Notre Dame football game.
I also got a glimpse of how Grandma lived. No, not my grandma or her grandma but her grandma’s grandma. I’m pretty sure she rode around in a horse-drawn buggy, but I doubt she had to worry about a visiting sportswriter running over her – and the horse she rode in on – in his rented Impala.
Believe it or not, only 45 miles from Notre Dame’s Golden Dome live people who don’t know Knute Rockne from Newt Gingrich. On tiny Indiana State Road 5, about 5 miles from the Michigan line, is this tiny Amish community of Shipshewana.
I saw no “Welcome to Shipshewana (pop. 560)” sign. I didn’t need one. I knew when I arrived. As I approached town I passed various black wooden carriages with bearded and bonneted occupants inside being pulled by trotting horses. After spending an afternoon strolling the main drag here, I think what it really needs is a sign reading, “Welcome to Shipshewana – Watch where you walk.”
But the Amish don’t really care what I, or anyone else, thinks. They’re shy with outsiders, particularly reporters, and I learned they much prefer community to the outside world. I was absolutely shocked when a young, bespectacled woman in a long blue smock and a white bonnet had a blank expression when I asked her about Notre Dame’s cornerback problems.
They’ve lived their lives about the same since the 16th century. They eschew all things modern: engines, zippers, computers. I was told they consider modern society evil. After my laptop failed to send last summer, forcing me to dictate two Tour de France stories at 4 a.m., I could see their point.
They also do not serve in wars because they deplore violence. The Amish ice hockey team is terrible.
But while the Amish are viewed by outsiders as an American novelty act, a cultural sideshow falling victim to bad one-liners (see above) and worse fashion sense (see Shipshewana), modern man can appreciate one aspect of Amish life. The Amish food is terrific.
Think about it. In an era when most American food has more preservatives than a Goodyear tire, the basis of Amish life – gardening, farming, family, – is a solid basis for great cuisine.
“To say it in a nutshell, it’s home cooking,” Shipshewana resident Mike Palmer said. “It’s like Grandma and Grandpa used to make. It’s from scratch. It’s slow-cooked with lots of flavor. It’s not instant.”
Palmer is executive vice president of Riegsecker Marketplace, the umbrella company that runs numerous Shipshewana businesses, including Blue Gate Restaurant, the town’s flagship Amish eatery. It’s a sprawling two-story restaurant with a family-style, all-you-can eat buffet room on one side and a sit-down menu room on the other.
Waitresses in the Amish’s figure-diffusing long blue smock, only the Amish staff in white bonnets, scurry around carrying plates to customers, few being Amish. The menu could pass as a conglomeration of all the country diners in the Midwest: fried chicken, grilled beef sandwich, smoked ham.
After visiting Yoder’s Meat Shoppe, where I gorged on luscious samples ranging from horseradish cheese to garlic bologna, I sat down at Blue Gate and ordered what was listed as the Amish Country Sampler. The massive food list read like Thanksgiving with the Broncos: chicken, ham, roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, homemade bread, garden salad, and choice of corn, carrots or green beans, all for $11.99.
The non-Amish waitress (the Shipshewana area is about 65 percent Amish) brought out my plate, and it was enough food to feed Cleveland – or an average Amish family. It was all very good and appeared terribly ordinary until I delved further. The roast beef was so tender I didn’t need a knife. (“They slow-cook roast beef,” Palmer said. “It cooks 4-6 hours. It’s very, very tender.”)
The dressing is chicken stuffing with tangy bits of potatoes and eggs. The chicken is pressure-fried so it’s doesn’t drip with grease like you get in American chains. But the highlight was a condiment used for the warm homemade bread. It’s an Amish creation of peanut butter mixed with marshmallow, a tantalizing combo that sweetens the peanut butter and makes it easier to spread, giving me an idea of how I could enhance my long-time diet staple.
I made a mental note to write authorities and suggest an Amish PowerBar.
But just because Blue Gate uses pressure fryers and puts ice in the Pepsis doesn’t mean it isn’t authentically Amish. Palmer said Amish use natural gas and even gas refrigerators. And if you look close inside the carriages, you might catch an Amish man talking on his cellphone.
“They’re people like everybody else,” said Palmer, a non-Amish Pittsburgh native recruited for the job. “Sometimes there’s this mystique about them. They’re way far out and really unusual. They have unusual customs compared to what English people (the Amish term for non-Amish) have. But they’re people all the same. They laugh and cry. They get uptight. They get frustrated.”
I didn’t. I ate. And, grasping my teriyaki jerky I bought at Yoder’s, I waddled – very carefully – back to my Impala.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at jhenderson@denverpost.com or 303-820-1299.
