Next leg of our trip: heading down to Key West! Course, we had to eat before we really hit the road and we traveled about an hour south of Tampa into Sarasota, FL to visit Yoder’s Amish Village.
Jake, Chris and I are all fans of Man vs. Food and during Chris’s first visit out to San Diego we took him to the places Adam visited (Lucha Libre and Phil’s – we skipped Broken Yolk) so in turn Chris took us to a place Adam visited in Florida!
Here’s the clip from that episode:
Woo, I tried something from that episode! I bet you can guess what without scrolling down.
Our table was parked right next to the pie case. Yesssssssss. Piiiiiiiiiiiie. I tried not staring into the case the whole time we sat there.
The first thing you get here at Yoder’s is a container of their homemade apple butter and a plate of their homemade bread.
The bread is like a wheat bread. It isn’t warmed or anything, but it’s freshly made and quite delicious with the homemade apple butter. The apple butter is quite thick with just enough sweetness without being a tooth killer. It’s spiced nicely as well to give it a bit of dimension and flavor.
[Quarter Fried Chicken – $9.95 (dark meat only])
The three of us shared two dishes. We ordered the Yoder’s Fried Chicken (which is pressure cooker fried) with a side of Amish Noodles. We had to ask our waitress what in the world “Amish Noodles” were and she said it was kind of like chicken noodle soup, but with very little broth and bits of chicken.
It was pretty much that – thick, homemade noodles with bits of white meat chicken – but it has like zero seasoning on it. After I after a few dashes of salt it was much more to my liking and I just ate the noodles which were firm with a slight chew. The noodles were very good, once you got past the blandness (salt, please). It reminded me of the chicken noodle soup from Souplanation – which I love getting JUST to eat the noodles – but smaller and not quite as thick as those.
The fried chicken was very tender and juicy from the frying/pressure cooker, but after the deliciously spiced chicken from Rush Hour the previous day, we felt like maybe this chicken could use a few extra spices to liven it up.
This is a side of Amish Potato Cakes (served with sour cream – which is about the only thing I’ll eat with potato cakes). I’m not sure what makes these “Amish” either or different from latkes. They’re much, much larger than any latkes I’ve ever had for one. They also look more like pancakes than potato cakes to me. They’re quite smooth – there aren’t any like, “hash brown” chunks or discernible potato chunks in this. I thought these were just okay, not terrible but not mind blowing either.
I have a soft spot for anything cornbread and these cornbread muffins turned out to be quite deliciously moist and incredibly tender. I cut these in half and pretty much I picked up a half and the thing kind of crumbled apart. This didn’t bug me though since I really enjoyed the flavor and slight sweetness of the cornbread.
[Meatloaf / $11.25]
Chris and I were both in “meatloaf moods” and figured we give the meatloaf (and macaroni) a shot. The meatloaf was very standard and quite plain. It basically just tasted like ground beef with onions with gravy on top. The meatloaf wasn’t bad per se, just a little plainer than I’m used to (I think I just like my own version of meatloaf that much better, which has fresh herbs and Parmesan cheese in the mix). The gravy was a little different than what I usually see on meatloaves – almost kind of making this like salisbury steak!
The macaroni and cheese was very creamy and packed full of cheese (I suspect just cheddar and nothing else). It’s lusciously creamy but fairly “one note” – there’s not much depth of flavor here, but it’s definitely satisfy your craving and need for some homemade mac and cheese.
[Yoder’s Key Lime Pie / $4.50]
Ahh – let’s get to my favorite part, eh? THE DESSERT.
Jake and I were on a quest to try a bunch of different Key Lime things and this was our first of the trip. At Yoder’s they have TWO kinds of Key Lime Pie – the traditional one (with key lime custard stuff on a graham cracker crust) and then their own version that’s creamy and on a pastry crust. We decided to try their version.
It’s this all-white thing that looks like it’s all meringue or something. I would never guess this was a Key Lime pie and it was kind of like “Key Lime Lite”. It tasted as if they made the key lime filling and then folded it into a bunch of whipped cream. The key lime taste is there and had a bit of that wonderful tartness, but it’s very light and very fluffy. Different!
[Peanut Butter Cream Pie / $4.50]
Chris insisted we HAD to have the Peanut Butter Cream Pie. Geez, twist my arm, eh? Like I could say no to something full of peanut butter…
I decided to taste this one second after the Key Lime and I was glad I did since of the two I liked this one the best! This has a pastry crust, plus vanilla pudding, plus this sort of “peanut butter dust” sprinkled all throughout the pie. It’s a mixture of peanut butter and powdered sugar which is blended together to form this kind of dusty, crumbly-like mixture. The peanut butter “dust” (as I called it) was sprinkled all over the place and gave this a really nice punch of peanut butter flavor. I’m used to making peanut butter pie where the peanut butter is mixed into the custard/pudding part so this was a really lovely twist – definitely going to have to try and remake this version at home!
Here’s Jake and I all smiles before our LONG car ride down to Key West! Key West posts coming up next!
Yoder’s Amish Village Restaurant
3434 Bahia Vista Street
Sarasota, FL 34239
(941) 955-7771
Those pies look SO GOOD!! That’s a crazy amount of whipped cream on the first one you can’t even see the lime part. And I love the Souplantation chicken noodle soup but just for the broth and the chicken I don’t like the noodles at all haha. I am that asshole that takes forever to serve myself the soup because I’m trying to fish out all the little bits of chicken…..haha
Um, yeah, I’d be the ahole behind JS trying to make sure she doesn’t jack all the chicken from the dang soup. Because, um, *I* want that chicken from the soup.
Phht…
Hi J.S. – On the key lime, that whole whipped cream looking thing IS the whole pie part. It’s like the key lime is mixed in with all of that fluffiness, if that makes any sense! There wasn’t a separate key lime layer. We should just share soup duties at Souplanation, I’ll eat all of the noodles and you can have all of the rest! 🙂
Wow that is quite the take on the key lime pie then haha. And done deal 😉
Wow that peanut butter pie looks like it’d totally hit the spot on a sweet tooth day. I love peanut buttery stuff too! I feel like I am gaining ten pounds just looking at those pics. That meatloaf does look meh. I love meatloaf I like to add a bunch of stuff too, plus some sriracha sometimes since I like to put it in almost everything lol.
Did you eat out for every meal during your trip? I love food exploring during trips, but I also crave homecooked meals. So when I can, I prefer to get a room with a kitchen. Sometimes I think about bringing burners, but I haven’t yet, mostly because people talk me out of it or it’s not allowed.
Hi Miss Kim – I love homemade meatloaf, I put milk soaked bread and lots of fresh herbs in my mine and lots of Parmesan cheese. So good!
Yeah, we ate out for every meal. We were trying to do so much stuff that we weren’t ever really at our friend’s house and the room in Key West didn’t have a kitchen (all of the hotels there were so pricey). My friend didn’t look like he uh, had a lot of kitchen ware and he mostly eats out so I don’t think we could have really done something homecooked there anyway.
We did one trip to Julian last summer where we had a little cabin with a kitchen and I made our meals for that trip – it was really fun and homey!
Man, those pies look pretty awesome!!!! Very light and fluffy!
The chicken and the noodles (without soup) look good too!
The cool thing about traveling is that you get to try “new” places all the time!
Hi CC – Haha yes that’s true! We only did one “repeat” – La Teresita – because I loved their croquettes so much. And I wanted more Cuban coffee before I left 🙂
I try not to do repeats when we travel, but in Portland, we liked this one Vietnamese/French bakery so much, we went twice (An Xuyen) as well as a Vietnamese noodle shop (Ha & VL) because their soups were different each day of the week. Gotta love that element of surprise.
Yeah, I really try not to do repeats, too but if it’s something really good and you can’t get it at home then a repeat is okay 🙂 Portland – man, another place I really want to go! I’ve seen so many great posts about spots there.
I would have SO loved to sit next to the spinning dessert showcase thingy!
The Amish pancakes look like my Bisquick pancakes I make for family when they stay over. I’m not sure about the Amish Noodles. It looks like it would require a lot of liquid/soda/glass of milk to wash it down.
I’m not a big pie person but have always been fascinated by the meringue pies. Do the meringue type pies taste like sweetened egg whites? I am not clear on that as I don’t eat pies all that often so the thought of eating egg whites has always been off putting to me. But I so adore the pies that have the meringue topping that reaches the ceiling 🙂
Hi Faye – meringue has a different taste/consistency it doesn’t really just taste like sweetened egg whites. They are light and fluffy and airy. This pie looked like meringue but didn’t taste like it, more like whipped cream! I liked it, it was a different way to have key lime pie.