Another Visit To Jerry's Cafe

Following my last meal at Jerry's Cafe in Orville, Ohio, I managed to get a little more of the backstory from one of the other member's of my mother's handbell choir. It seems that when Jerry initially bought the bar, it had a rather typical rough and tumble crowd. Over time, Jerry worked long and hard to turn the place into a more family friendly place that serves really great food. When I told this member what I had tried for dinner, the burger and onion rings, he told me that the next time I return, I definitely needed to try the sausage vegetable chowder and the fried fish. Oddly enough, I do remember seeing the sausage vegetable chowder on the specials board the last time I ate at Jerry's and thinking that it sounded like an odd candidate for a chowder. I was informed that not only was it delicious and a signature item on Jerry's menu, it was also an award winning soup.

Finding myself in Orrville for another choir rehearsal, I decided to return to Jerry's Cafe and try out some of the suggestions I had received after my first visit. Once again, I was warmly greeted and told I could sit wherever I liked. I choose the Ohio State room once again since it was sequestered off the main area and had decent lighting (which usually translates into better photographs). As soon as I sat down, I was greeted by a nice basket of freshly popped popcorn:


As I remarked in my last entry on Jerry's, this was a nice way to greet customers and for those of adult-beverage ordering age, a good way to push drinks from the bar. While I did enjoy a couple of handfuls of popcorn before I ordered my food, I decided to limit my intake so that I didn't get too full before receiving my dinner. I decided to start with a cup of the sausage vegetable chowder:


This was an excellent soup, creamy and well balanced. The large chunks of sausage added a lot of textural and flavor elements to the soup. There was a mild pepperiness to the soup, the kind that tickles the back of the throat. What I really found interesting, though, was the mild hint of anise flavor that seemed only barely discernible in the aroma. Knowing that most Italian sausage had fennel seed in them, I asked my server what kind of sausage the cook used. She wasn't entirely sure, but thought that Italian sausage in one form or another might be an ingredient. The soup, while it may have contained cream, was primarily thickened with potato.

After finishing up my soup, I decided to take a small detour and try some of the chicken wings:


While there were several flavors available, I decided to see what Jerry's take on standard Buffalo-style wings would be. Truth be told, I'm a sucker for wings, even bad wings. Most of the time, the chicken skin is flabby and is normally discarded. I've only ever been to a handful of places that cooked the chicken wings correctly; Jerry's is now on that list. The wings were hot, juicy, and the skin was nice and crispy. Better yet, the sauce was an impressively tasty version of what I consider to an authentic Buffalo sauce. The cayenne spice and vinegar combined with butter nicely coated the wings and my tongue when I ate them.

For my final course, I went with a fried fish sandwich:


The fish, Alaskan pollack, was dipped in their beer batter before being fried to perfection. Served on a nicely buttered and grilled bun with lettuce and tomato, the only way this sandwich could've been improved was with the additional of a little homemade tartar sauce ... OH, WAIT!


May I introduce some of Jerry's homemade tartar sauce? I tried some of the sauce by itself and picked up a hint of the Dijon mustard that I was so excited to receive with my burger the last time I visited. I liberally applied the sauce to my sandwich and took a bite. I was rewarded with a flavorful stack of ingredients. The bun did an excellent job holding the entire sandwich together. The fish was hot and moist and the crispness from the lettuce offset the creaminess from the fish and the tartar sauce. Everything worked very well together and quite honestly, I think this was the best fried fish sandwich I've had in a very, very long time. It was at the same time a leap into a sense memory from my youth when I used to take fish stick sandwiches to my confirmation classes every week as well as a modernized and much more sophisticated version that I could enjoy as an adult.

Having eaten here at Jerry's Cafe twice now, I remain incredibly impressed with the level of food being served here. It takes real commitment and skill to bring out the best flavors of the food you serve and even when a fried-from-frozen product is served, such as the onion rings, they are done with great skill. I'm unfamiliar with what the post dinner bar crowd is like, but I can assure that during dinner hours, the place is entirely family friendly and accommodating to both children and adults without being noisy or congested. I have visited a number of rural places that served something unique or interesting, but until I ate at Jerry's, I don't know that I've ever come across a place that serves something that I can see myself craving enough to drive that far to get.

Jerry's Cafe may very well be one of those hidden gems in Orrville about which only the locals know. Hopefully with the encouragement of my last review and this one, you will take the time to seek them out. The food is simple, unpretentious, quite a bit is homemade, and best of all, delicious.

Jerry's Cafe and the Nearly Perfect Onion Rings

Over the course of the past year, I have been asked on a fairly regular basis to fill in for several of the handbell choirs that my mother directs. It seemed as though almost every week someone would be unavailable for rehearsal. Seeing as the only other hobby I have outside of work is writing about food, more often than not I was available to help her out. While it had been nineteen years (ugh) since I had played a handbell, it didn't take me long to get back into the swing of things.

The church at which my mother is currently the director of music is located in Orrville, Ohio. Known primarily for the Smuckers company, sadly there are very few choices for eateries that aren't of the national fast food variety. There are a few bars here and there, but those weren't the kind of places I was looking for to get a decent meal. For this past rehearsal, I decided to arrive at the church a little early and see if I might be able to scrounge up something that didn't require the order taker to ask me if I wanted to "super-size" anything.

After driving around the small downtown area, I decided on something that looked like a bar, but had a name that was decidedly incongruous with the exterior, Jerry's Cafe:


Located at 226 West Market Street, Orrville, Ohio 44667, they can be reached at 330-683-8696. Google identified a website associated with this business at http://jerrysinorrville.com; however, pointing my browser to that address left me with the message "Server not found", so I'm not sure exactly what is happening. No other websites came up that seemed directly tied to Jerry's Cafe. Well, hopefully this one will after it posts.

When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was the dichotomy of the patrons and the surroundings. It did indeed seem to be a bar, but it was well lit and there were several families with young children seated at various tables around the outer walls. One of the servers walked up to me and showed me to a table in a room behind the bar known as the Ohio State room. It was pretty obvious that this homage to the Columbus-based football team was aptly named. As I surveyed the room, I noticed a dry erase board with the daily specials:


My server left me with a menu to peruse while she went to fetch some of the complimentary popcorn that is served to all of the guests. Here were a couple of shots of the menu:






While the interior of the restaurant certainly had the feeling of a bar, the menu was ambitious enough to leave me with the impression that the owner was just as dedicated to the restaurant business as he was to the bar business. My server quickly returned with my popcorn:


I asked her about the burger that was the special for the day at only $2.25 versus the one in the menu. She let me know that the daily special was roughly 1/3 pound rather than the 1/2 pound Angus burger that is on the menu. There was some confusing language on the menu about extra toppings on the burgers (such as bacon). Apparently, all of the burgers off the menu come with either onion rings or french fries and were $8. If you decided that you wanted something extra that the burger didn't normally come with, THEN you paid the extra fee. It seemed a little silly to me since one of the burgers listed was a bacon cheeseburger. Had I gotten just a plain cheeseburger and added bacon to it, would it have cost me an extra $0.75? I didn't really bother to ask.

When I inquired about the freshness of the french fries versus the onion rings, she sadly hung her head and said that while at one point they were made from fresh, both were now fried from frozen. She did add that both were very good. Having heard this numerous times from other servers who insisted that their restaurant's fried items were terrific only to be served a limp greasy mess, I opted to go with the onion rings.

I should also mention that the popcorn was actually quite good. I was pretty darn hungry and had to make a point of only eating a couple of handfuls of the freshly-popped buttery, salty kernels as I had a 1/2 pound burger coming out of the kitchen fairly soon. I know the point of the free popcorn is just as much about making guests thirsty as it is about giving them something to nosh on, but I did enjoy having a bit of an appetizer before my platter came out.

After about fifteen minutes or so, my dinner arrived:


Here is a close-up of my burger:


The bun was very nicely buttered and grilled. I had ordered my burger medium, but unfortunately, it came out somewhere between medium well and well done. There wasn't even the tiniest bit of pink on the inside of the patty. I'm not sure if my burger was just a fluke and the cook accidentally overcooked it or maybe we have reached a point in modern society where anything less than medium well just won't be served to customers for fear of lawsuits. That being said, I was equally as pleased at how incredibly juicy it was. Had it been totally dessicated, I probably would've sent it back to have them re-fire the burger; the juiciness saved the burger. While the melted cheese was simply American cheese, the bacon was quite nice. I could tell that it had been prepared at the same time as the burger as it was crispy, but not overcooked and hard.

I next turned my attention to the side item, the onion rings:


While they did suffer the fate of most frozen onion rings (the onion inside tends to detach itself from the breading), Jerry's version was fried expertly and left no oily residue on the paper lined basket at all. The coating was crispy and the perfect thickness to provide a nice resistance, but not so much breading that the onion got lost. I have to say that hands down, this was probably the best fried-from-frozen onion ring that I've had in a long time. The fact that you can get this side instead of french fries at no additional cost was also a big bonus.

The last thing I wanted to mention were the condiments. I know that might seem silly, but I was very surprised with what I received. I had asked my server to bring me mustard and ketchup with my burger platter and while she brought regular commercial ketchup, this is what arrived on the platter itself:


To the right is actually Dijon mustard. I actually love Dijon mustard on my burgers, but so few places actually have it that I have just gotten used to eating regular yellow mustard instead. The fact that it was provided by default really said a lot about the commitment to food that Jerry's Cafe had. The other surprise was the sauce on the left. What I originally thought was simply mayonnaise for my burger turned out to be a dipping sauce for the onion rings. On first taste, I got creamy, tangy, and a slight burning at the back of my throat. The mayonnaise and cayenne pepper I immediately identified. The "tang" I had originally thought was a bit of lemon juice mixed in with the mayonnaise turned out to be sour cream. The interesting thing was that while it was fairly easy to pick up the spice from the dip when simply eating it by itself, when I paired it with an onion ring, the spice faded into the background and was very subtle, but still effective.

I finished all of my onion rings and most of my burger before crying, "Uncle!" and asking my server for the check. While my burger wasn't exactly cooked the way I asked for it, $8 for such an incredibly juicy burger with some of the best fried-from-frozen onion rings I've had in quite a while made this an excellent dinner, and more importantly, a spot I will definitely return to in the future. Add in the homemade dipping sauce for the onion rings and the Dijon mustard as standard condiments and this cafe really does have something special to offer.

After talking with a local about Jerry's before the handbell choir rehearsal, I learned that the homemade sausage vegetable chowder (which was actually listed on the dry erase board in the photo above) is not only outstanding, but has also won a local tasting competition. I think a nice bowl of that may just be on the my radar the next time I decide to visit.