Frank's Diner in Kenosha: A road trip and a meal to remember
I’ve been writing this column, blog and now newsletter for close to ten years. In that decade I’ve written about a restaurant exactly one time.! Really, it wasn’t so much about the food as it was about the road trip to get there.
A couple of years ago, I read a column in the travel section of the Chicago Tribune about a Wisconsin town known for its cheese festival. It featured a restaurant that supposedly made the greatest grilled cheese sandwich known to mankind. It’s a vast understatement to say that I love cheese. When it’s perfectly grilled, even better. This place seemed right in my wheelhouse. So, even though we were in the midst of the pandemic, off to Wisconsin we went.
Three hours later we arrived. The restaurant turned out to be a tavern. The sandwich was highly overrated. The combination of three melted kinds of cheese that supposedly led to bliss didn’t exist. You chose between American, cheddar or swiss and they toasted it on plain white bread. I could have made the same thing at home. I could have saved six hours of driving.
Let’s flashback even further. One night I’m watching Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on Food Network. Guy Fieri has come to Kenosha, Wisconsin to eat at Frank’s Diner. It’s an eighty-plus-year-old restaurant that looks like a railroad car. It serves your typical breakfast and lunch items. As usual on Triple D, everything looks delish.
The woman I’m seeing at the time thought it was a good idea to check it out, plus we can do some shopping at the local outlet mall. It sounds like a plan. Off to Wisconsin, we go. After an hour's drive, we get to Frank’s…CLOSED! SIGH!
We eat elsewhere, do some shopping, and head back to Illinois. We never tried to go to Frank’s again.
It’s more than a decade later. I haven’t thought of Frank’s Diner in all that time. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed on Facebook that a few people were showing photos of their meal at Frank’s. It looked pretty good. Breakfast in Kenosha was a possibility again.
I did some Googling. I noticed that Frank’s Diner was now in year ninety-seven of serving food. I showed this to the current sig other. She was intrigued. And, on last Friday, that road trip to Kenosha of breakfast and shopping was repeated.
We live in the far north suburbs of Chicago. The ride to Kenosha is fairly easy. At least it is until Waze tells you to get off at an exit nowhere near what you know is the correct one, but I did it anyway. Then it takes you to a couple of roundabouts, which are circles in the road with multiple choices of connecting streets. You just try to make an educated guess on which one to take…and then you hear the sound of Waze resetting itself because you’ve chosen the wrong one. No matter, we made it to Frank’s Diner in about an hour. YEAH!!.
The place is jammed packed. We’re not the only ones waiting. The hostess not only takes my name, but she also takes my phone number so she can call me when our table is waiting. We decide to wait in the car. A half-hour later we decide to check out where we are on the waiting list. Great timing because she’s about to call me. Our table is ready. It’s food time!!
Get this, on the wall beside our table, is an autographed picture of Guy eating there. I take this as a good sign.
I know…I know…you’ve spent all this time hoping to hear about the food…well, here we go!
It starts with the coffee. Forget at Starbucks, Peet’s, Panera, or your favorite coffee house. This was the smoothest cup of coffee I’ve ever had. The cost: $2.15!! I would go there every day just for the coffee if it didn’t take an hour to get there.
Next comes the homemade cinnamon roll. Neither of us are big cinnamon roll people, but on the menu, it’s highlighted in a big red rectangle. It’s also only four bucks! Sounds like a good appetizer, right? It comes out and is huge. The roll is soft and hot with frosting all over, including the plate on which it’s presented. I told our waitress the roll would be worth it if it costs ten dollars.
If you go to Frank’s and only get the coffee with the cinnamon roll, it would be worth it and enough.
But, of course, we didn’t stop there. She had scrambled eggs. I had a ham and cheese omelet. Both were excellent. Each came with delicious hash brown and the best toast I’ve ever had to eat. I know, you’re asking how can this toast be so good. It’s huge pieces of bread that have the taste of honey. It’s slathered with so much butter, you have to scrape most of it off. It’s amazing.
We rolled out there raving about our meal. That doesn’t happen too often, especially with me. Next time, and there will definitely be a next time, I want to go back for lunch. There are a variety of milkshakes that I want to try. I have a feeling they’ll be spectacular, too.
That’s the long-winded story of our trip to Kenosha to eat at Frank’s Diner. Although the first two road trips in this tale were a disaster, you know what they say about the third time. Going to Frank’s Diner was definitely a charm.