Worm's Hilltop Inn - Home of the Lazy Susans A restaurant, you would think, would always have a name that made people want to eat there. "Worms" was not one of those places.
I was filled with dread and suffering from a queasy stomach, as we were loaded into the old Buick station wagon, to go out to eat at a place that was called "Worms". Daddy assured me that my worst possible fears were to be realized... we were going to eat worms! "Don't worry, you'll like them!" he encouraged me with a smile. I was either 3 or 4 years old at the time.
I tried to hide from the inevitable slimy, disgusting meal by scrunching down onto the floor of the car. I knew I would have to eat it- it was the 60s and your parents were supposed to make you eat everything on your plate, something Daddy adhered to, religiously.
Would they be cooked? or crawling all over the plate?
It was an all too short drive down South Lakeshore to Worm's Hilltop Inn. I reluctantly disembarked from the car and trudged, like the condemned, to my awaited fate.
I don't know at what point I began to see that I had, thankfully, been deceived and that we were, in fact NOT eating worms, but fried chicken and fish and all the fixin's. We were led to sit at a large round table with, oddly enough, another round surface in the middle of it.
When our food was brought to the table, it was served "family style"- which was pretty much the only way we knew how to eat. The mashed potatoes, coleslaw, rolls, chicken and a large pitcher of milk were put on the inner surface of the table. We were delighted to find that the inner circle - called a lazy susan- spun around so that each item eventually made its way to you - much more entertaining than our usual "take some and pass it to the left" method.
The food was good and the lazy susan was so much fun that I almost could have forgotten the trauma of thinking we were going to be eating actual worms - almost...
3 comments:
There were spiced peaches for dessert with heavy syrup and cloves. Did they have green tomato pickles and coleslaw? I think so. But the building itself was high up in the air. Some of the parking spaces were under the wooden building, and once up in the dining room, there were windows all around, so you could look into the treetops or out over the lake on the other side.
Oh, and the place was named for the family that owned it. One of my Girl Scout leaders, Mrs Van Winkle was born a Worm; her parents ran it.
Mmm, I remember those spiced peaches, they were so good!
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