Duncan Hines (17 page)

One question that Hines consistently found himself answering concerned the location of America's best restaurant. He responded that there was no such place. It all depended on what one wanted to sink his teeth into. The Middle West was the best place to find a pie. “The best dog-gone lemon pie in the world,” Hines declared, was made at Stone's Restaurant in Marshalltown, Iowa, a dining
facility that had been in operation since around 1905.
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Hines wrote of this “quaint little dining room,” which made its first appearance in his guidebook's 1937 edition. “Don't be dismayed by the obscure location—almost under a viaduct ‘down by the winegar woiks.' One bite of Queenie's angel food pie—and you won't care where you're eating. The restaurant is unpretentious but for fifty years Stone's has been searched out by transients.”
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Mrs. Anna Stone, the proprietor and widow of the founder's son, made valiant efforts to keep the restaurant as clean as her own kitchen. A few years later, when America's entry into the Second World War commenced and wartime rationing, food shortages, and the lack of manpower ensued, Mrs. Stone, like all Americans, tried to cope as best as she could. But in early 1945 she temporarily closed her doors rather than compromise her ideals and the restaurant's integrity. When most of the wartime domestic problems created by the war subsided, she reopened in April 1946, much to Duncan Hines's delight. Stone and Hines remained close friends for many years, and Hines did all he could to let others know about her operation. Stone's Restaurant was just one of many roadside dining facilities Hines could recommend to his critics; travelers could purchase a meal there for under seventy-five cents. But that is not why he dined there. For him the attraction was still that mile high lemon pie in the middle of Iowa, and it brought him back to the Midwest repeatedly.
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The slow disappearance of the tea room in the 1930s saddened Hines. Milton MacKaye, in his
Post
article, described his own irrational knee-jerk tendency when he saw one: “Many men—and I number myself among them—have what may be described as spinning-wheel trouble—that is, when they approach an inn with a spinning wheel or a couple of green glass bottles in the front yard, they step on the throttle. Hines says that this phobia against tea rooms, as such, makes many men miss a lot of good eating. Some of the best inns are cluttered up with antiques and collections of Aunt Sarah's quilt designs, and if one will brave the whimsy, he may find the finest type of home cooking.” One of the most famous tea rooms of this character, still in existence, was the McDonald
Tea Room in Gallatin, Missouri, a town about 60 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, and about 80 from Kansas City.

Its proprietor was a woman Hines admired greatly. In about 1920, Virginia Rowell McDonald became very ill and stayed in bed for nearly eight years. In 1928 she became well enough to lift herself from her sickbed, and from that moment forward she made the most of the remainder of her life. In the years that encompassed her illness, she had consumed her husband's collected savings. She felt obliged to somehow repay him for his sacrifice, but she was stuck for an idea as to how to do it. She recalled that her mother was deemed by many as a great cook; Virginia, however, believed her own cooking skills surpassed that of her mother. One day in the summer of 1928, Virginia announced she was going to open her own restaurant. Her husband, a realist, pointed out that no one in Gallatin patronized restaurants, that they were several miles off a main highway, that they had no place for a restaurant, and that they had no silver or dishes. But Mrs. McDonald had answers. Tourists would drive off the highway for good food, she could borrow dishes from friends, and there was an old blacksmith shop that would serve nicely, if he would put a floor in it and build the tables and chairs. On a Monday they were ready to open. Mrs. McDonald suggested that her husband shave and put on a clean pair of overalls and go downtown and ask every traveling salesperson he saw to come to the tea room and eat free. It was a shrewd move. Dyspeptic salesmen [were] always hunting for a good place to eat, and they spread the good news among their fraternity.

After a few weeks “a sizable number were finding their way to Gallatin and to” Virginia McDonald's Tea Room. By 1938, her tea room was a tremendous success, serving more than 250 customers at a time. Particularly famous were her relishes and corn muffins. It was through his friends in Chicago that Hines first learned of her legendary kitchen skills. Always ready to check out a good tip, Hines “drove four hundred miles over to Gallatin one day just to see if the food was really as good as everyone said it was.”
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Many years later, Hines said he never regretted the trip. In time, her tea
room expanded into “a fine, modern restaurant.” Hines liked her corn muffins so much he printed the recipe for them in his autobiography.
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Another of Duncan Hines's favorite restaurants was “in the hill country of central Florida,” four miles north of Lake Wales off U. S. 27 in a beautiful triple-leveled hotel and restaurant “ten minutes away from the famous Bok Singing Tower.”
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This was the Chalet Suzanne, “a rambling structure set in the midst of 230 rolling acres of orange trees and lily pools near the shore of little Lake Suzanne.”
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Its architecture was not Swiss but, rather, featured “a potpourri of architecture and decorations from all over the world. The tables in the dining room [were] of tile from Mexico, Spain, Egypt [and] Italy. The patios, hung with Spanish moss and bright with bougainvillaea,” suggested “Spain or the tropic isles of the Caribbean. The furniture [was] English, the crystal Egyptian.”
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Hines marveled at the human spirit behind this unusual place and championed it as frequently as possible. The Chalet Suzanne was a one-woman enterprise run by Mrs. Bertha Hinshaw. She began her business from the rubble of a series of personal misfortunes. She and her husband “lost almost everything they had in the market crash of 1929 and spent their few remaining dollars trying vainly to raise rabbits for a living. Then Mr. Hinshaw died suddenly of pneumonia, and [Bertha] was left to face the depression and the raising of two children with no assets but her resourcefulness and a background of gracious living. She thought she might put the latter to work for her, since in her travels with her husband she had collected a number of unusual and outstanding recipes and some lovely furnishings. She thought she might combine these in an unusual guest house and restaurant.” Since there was no money for an architect, she became her own.
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On the day she was ready for business in 1931, “she trudged” four-hundred yards “from her home to the main road and posted a small, hand-painted sign that read: MEALS SERVED. The cars, however, whizzed on by. Then one day a man and his wife ventured up the driveway. Mrs. Hinshaw served them. A week later the wife returned with four companions. At the same time two of
Mrs. Hinshaw's friends telephoned and asked for dinner. “But I can't cook properly for more than five people,” she said, “agonizing over this sudden rush of business.”
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Through sheer determination, however, she survived the next few months. As word of her marvelous cooking skills spread among the transient public, her qualms about feeding large numbers of peoples dissolved. When she realized the public would gladly travel long distances just to eat her meals and sometimes sleep in her guest house, Bertha Hinshaw hauled her two children into her car “and headed north on the existing roads, tacking up Chalet Suzanne signs along the main highways.”
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Before long those who had tasted her cooking told others of her culinary abilities, and word of this remarkable woman spread rapidly, first throughout the state, then beyond its borders. Afterward, her home grew into the Chalet Suzanne which—even today—is by far Florida's most eclectic and enchanting restaurant-inn. Bertha Hinshaw literally built it herself, adding “room after room” in her spare time. She personally laid the tiles which paved her restaurant's lovely patio. By 1938 her guest house had blossomed into a 25-room affair which featured boating and bathing for patrons who took advantage of the nearby white sandy beach.
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It was the food, though, that made Bertha Hinshaw's restaurant famous, and its popularity eventually brought Duncan Hines to her doorstep. So charmed was he by the fairy-tale exteriors which surrounded him as he enjoyed his wonderful meal he kept returning over the next two decades to relish the experience. His favorite dishes included baked grapefruit and steaks with mint ice; and he always swooned when he devoured their orange souffle.
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Guests seldom saw Mrs. Hinshaw because, despite her enormous success, she insisted—even decades later—on personally preparing the meals.
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Hines had many other favorite restaurants, ones which he treasured for good eating experiences above the rest. One of these was Crane's Canary Cottage at Chagrin Falls, Ohio, which was located in a residential home twenty miles south of Cleveland. “I doubt you will find more delicious food in the country,” he
wrote.
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Expounding on this culinary find nearly ten years after its discovery, Hines told Phyllis Larsh of
Life
magazine why he was so enthusiastic about it: “First,” he said:

they bring in these crisp, hot little finger rolls and you think you are just going to eat a dozen of them, they're so good. But before you get started, they've brought in the watermelon pickle—the best in America—and three kinds of soup. You have to keep moving back from the table to disguise the loosening of your belt. They serve a salad—it's so doggone beautiful you hate to destroy it. The dressing has lumps of Roquefort cheese the size of the end of your little finger. Oh, honey, that's the one place where you absolutely bust.
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Another of his enthusiasms, one that remained dear to his heart was Mrs. K.'s Toll House Tavern at Silver Spring, Maryland, just north of Washington, D. C. He wrote:

Here's an outstanding place in a two-acre garden that possesses unusual charm. You dine in the past here—so far as surroundings are concerned. Nothing is changed apparently from the Revolutionary days when it was built. Even the pretty girls who wait on you in Colonial dress seem to have been miraculously preserved from a more leisurely age when dining was a rite not to be passed over casually. It may be crass to speak of food in this genteel atmosphere but their Virginia ham and fried chicken are the best there are. Mrs. K. superintends the cooking herself, particularly the hot breads and the pies and cakes that have made the place famous. The kitchen is one of the most immaculate I ever inspected. Try a Planked Steak dinner.
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Finally, although New York City boasted many fine restaurants, few could compare, in Hines's estimation, with the Krebs at Skaneateles, New York. The Krebs was operated by Fred Krebs until his death in the late 1930s. Its ownership was taken over by
Frederick W. Perkins, a twenty-four-year Krebs employee and his wife, who for many years afterward gave hungry travelers some of the best food in New York State. Located in a town of less than 2000 population in the region's Finger Lakes section, in its day the restaurant often served more than 1000 people daily. People would “drive up from New York for one meal”; reservations had to be made months in advance. Milton MacKaye, describing its riches, wrote: “Here, from April to December, food is presented in prodigious quantities; coffee in half-gallon pots. The lobster Newburg is famous, and may be served along with a choice of soups and desserts, a half chicken, a slice of roast beef three eighths of an inch thick, five vegetables, and a sherbet. It's marvelous, but it's brutal.”
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Hines swooned over this culinary institution, never making up his mind which of their many dishes he liked best. “Perhaps it is the lobster, perfectly marvelous,” he opined, which was served “along with a superlative cut of roast beef and fried chicken, or perhaps it is the amazing popovers that greet you for breakfast.”
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Whichever it was, he always tried to show up when he was in the neighborhood.

However, as Christmas 1938 rolled around, not quite a whole month after the publication of the
Post
article, Hines was not necessarily thinking about his next roadside meal. Now that he was alone with no one to care for him, he was increasingly thinking about returning to his boyhood home. But it was not an easy decision. He had been away for forty years.

In early December 1938, Duncan Hines sent a note to his secretary, counseling her not to become too depressed over the tremendous amount of work she was suddenly facing. He wrote:

It is possible that we may have the new
Lodging
[guidebooks] ready by February 15, but I am not yet certain about doing it so quickly. I like the way you have handled things during my absence. I never worry about business. All any of us can do is to be loyal & do the best we can. Then if things do not turn out right, worry won't help a bit. You go ahead & have the girl assist you whenever she is needed. Perhaps one of the most important things to remember about the conduct of any small business [is that] to make a profit you must keep expenses down. That is why this business has been conducted from my home. By May 1st we will move out of the apt. & have an office somewhere…. You should handle [office business] any way you desire so long as you have a record of invoices & labels to send to Donnelley for shipment from their plant in Crawfordsville. All the accumulated orders should be shipped by Donnelley &
perhaps books can reach customers by Xmas…. I leave here tomorrow night 12/12—8
P.M.
Arrive in El Paso 12/14—10
A.M.
will go to Hilton Hotel for laundry & mail. Then start for gulf coast.
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