Comestiblog

Dutch Haven Shoofly Pies

It was not a lawless giant who meant to do battle with me.  Rather, it was an old-fashioned roadside attraction with gesticulatory arms that beckoned me to stop.  For more than half a century, the iconic Dutch Haven windmill has waved at cars and horse-drawn buggies traveling along the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania's Dutch Country.

This Lancaster County landmark began as a gas station with an adjoining ice cream stand in the '20s.  When Roy and Alice Weaver bought the business in 1946, they opened a restaurant that featured Pennsylvania Dutch fare, and added a gift shop.  After Dutch Haven's fortunes had declined, however, Paul Stahl purchased the property in 1991 and began selling Amish furniture, crafts, and kitschy souvenirs.  Though he closed the restaurant, he reinstated its most famous item: shoofly pie.

Lois Schrock hands me a slice of shoofly pie

Using Alice Weaver's original recipe of white flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and refiners' syrup, Stahl purports to produce "America's best shoofly pie."  Never having tried the molasses-based confection, I was eager for my first taste.  As I made my way to the counter, Lois Schrock, a Dutch Haven fixture, handed me a sample of the gooey goody.

Served slightly warm with a dollop of whipped cream, the pie delivered surprisingly complex flavors that stimulated my tongue.  Instead of being cloying, it was agreeably sweet, with a richness that even afforded slight hints of umami.  Its viscid filling, offset by a thick crust and a crumb topping, yielded a palate-pleasing plate of textural contrasts.  While I normally eschew sugary desserts, I'm happy to have not es-shooed this one.

Pies are available whole or by the slice

It's hard to determine whether Dutch Haven's shoofly pies are truly America's best.  Suffice it to say, however, that all others I've tasted thereafter have left me tilting toward the ones beneath the windmill.

Dutch Haven

2857A Lincoln Highway East (U.S. 30)
Ronks, PA   17572-9607   (map)

(717) 687-0111

https://www.dutchhaven.com/

Dinah Shore sings "Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy" (1946)

Comestiblab: There are a couple of explanations regarding the origin of the pie's name.  One theory maintains that shoofly (also shoo-fly) pie originated in France, where its crumb topping was said to resemble a cauliflower, or chou-fleur (pronounced shoo·FLUR) in French.  Supposedly, the word eventually morphed into "shoofly."  A more plausible explanation, however, is that the sweet ingredients attracted flies that had to be shooed away.

Comestiblab:  Pennsylvania Dutch isn't Dutch at all—it's an alteration of Deutsch, the German word for German.  The term refers to descendants of the people who emigrated from southwestern Germany to Pennsylvania during the seventeenth and and eighteenth centuries.  It also refers to a German dialect spoken in Amish communities.  Thus, it would seem a Dutch windmill is somehow out of place in Pennsylvania Deutsch country.

The Gardens at The Penn Stater Hotel

Though we dined there relatively recently, during the course of an otherwise memorable trip that took us through State College, Pennsylvania, it is with the greatest difficulty that I dredge up any inkling of the Friday evening America's Bounty Buffet at The Gardens Restaurant in The Penn Stater Hotel.  Despite the aid of my photographs and a comprehensive list of buffet items (see below), the dinner we shared remains a virtual blank.  The reason, perhaps, is that this was one of the most banal meals either of us had consumed in recent memory (or lack thereof).  Given the wide variety of offerings—far greater than that of the average buffet—such banality is a remarkable achievement.  My conundrum: how to tell you about something I scarcely remember?  I'll just have to give it the old [state] college try.

Let's start with what is easy to remember.  The setting is lovely: a tastefully decorated dining room divided into intimate spaces with panels of cascading greenery, and full-length windows with views to a well-landscaped courtyard.  Gardens, indeed!  The seating is comfortable, and the service very competent.  Appearances can be deceiving, however.  Our first indication thereof arose from the wine card:  white zinfandel was listed as a rosé.

The buffet ($22.95 per person) consisted of a long table of hot dishes near the kitchen.  Additionally, market carts, scattered in the dining room across from the hot table, overflowed with breads, pâtés, cheeses, fruit, salmon, caviar (and its traditional accompaniments), as well as countless veggie, rice, pasta, and tofu salads.

It all looked quite appealing—if only the food had been as sumptuous as its presentation.  This is where memory becomes sketchy.  As with all the items on the market carts, the breads came in several varieties.  Moist and crusty, none of them disappointed.  Although the cheese selections were rather ordinary, they were reasonably flavorful.  The pâté and salmon selections were presented either whole, or fresh from the mold, but were curiously dry and gamy (we wondered how long they had been prepared beforehand).  Alas, the salmon offerings—usually my favorites—were bland and disappointing.  Things devolved from there.  I tried small samples of several salads, and recall that I enjoyed a couple in particular, but their identity has been lost to me.  The same holds true for the dessert table.  While most of the offerings were too sweet, one item had my Comestaccomplice returning for seconds.

Can banality be disastrous?  Or is that a contradiction of terms?  In any case, between my companion and me, we tasted all but one of the hot dishes and were underwhelmed by nearly every one.

In the case of the steak, we had not only seconds but thirds.  This item was indeed memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.  For one, it was incredibly tough.  Though I abhor wasting food, three failed attempts to find a piece of sirloin I could chew was more than I could swallow.  We did, reluctantly, ingest parts of each serving, if only to avoid the embarrassment of leaving everything over.

The rest of the buffet items don't merit much additional comment.  Two observations we made at the time are salient, however.  First, despite our arrival at the start of dinner service, many of the hot items already looked tired.  The Tuna Brochette, for instance, appeared particularly questionable.  Second, our overall opinion, as we left, was that the food was completely industrial.  Except for the bread, and perhaps one or two other items, everything revealed the bland and tired characteristics of having been overly processed.  It's doubtful much of what we ate was local.  It was, more probably, trucked in from a bulk processing plant that emphasizes uniformity.  How else to explain such ubiquitous banality, given the enormous variety of foods on hand?

The Gardens Restaurant
The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel

215 Innovation Boulevard
(on the campus of Penn State University)
State College, PA   16803-6603  (map)

(814) 863-5090

http://www.pshs.psu.edu/

Please click above for a larger view of the buffet menu

Smoked Salmon

Peel & Eat Shrimp

Whole Poached Salmon

Caviar with Traditional Accompaniments

Homemade Pâté

Crudités, Dinner Salad, and International Cheese Board

Tuna Brochette and Wasabi Yuzu Dipping Sauce

Roasted Loin of Pork au Poivre with Gorgonzola Grits

Poached Fillet of Salmon, Julienne of Vegetables, and Oyster Sauce

Dessert Buffet