Richville's Rockin' Horse Cafe

Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the food I see. Now, understand, I put the State Fair in an entirely different category--it only comes once a year, and all those calorie-counting naysayers will not deter me from my quota of fried foods on a stick.

But then there are the other places, the places open year-round, that have no concept of portion size.

Case in point: on a recent family getaway (to lovely, gorgeous, beautiful Otter Tail County--seriously, people, you want a scenic getaway and you've already done the North Shore? Go the other direction), the resort owner told us about a nearby cafe that served "pancakes as big as a plate." Not that we needed pancakes that big, but we did want to eat out one day, and decided to give the Rockin' Horse Cafe (in Richville) a try.

It's a cute little place.

Full of locals and regulars, people who all knew each other and friendly, fast servers. We checked out the menu and placed our orders. DH decided that while he wanted a pancake, he didn't necessarily need the plate-sized one, so he ordered the junior pancake. I went with a Western omelette, Teen 1 ordered the reuben, and Teen 2 went with a double bacon cheeseburger.

The pancake arrived.

Why, yes, that pancake is falling off the plate. The dinner-sized plate. We asked the waitress to explain, if that was the junior, just how big was the regular? "Oh," she said, gesturing to show something the size of two dinner plates, "it has its own special plate."

Oh.

My omelette wasn't any more junior in size.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say there were at least 4-5 eggs in that omelette. It was huge and densely eggy.

Teen 2 was amazed at his double bacon cheeseburger.

I was so struck by the size of the pancake that I didn't get a photo of the reuben. I'm sure you can picture it.

The food was quite good, as it often is in these small-town diners. But seriously? Did we need that much? Not really--I left behind at least half of the omelette and most of the toast; DH ate about half the junior pancake; Teen 1, who didn't like his reuben, finished the pancake (don't know why he didn't like it--it looked quite good to me), and Teen 2, he of the voracious appetite and miraculous teen metabolism, finished the burger and nibbled on the reuben. In other words, four very hearty eaters could not finish this food.

On the positive side, the food was good, as I said, and pretty cheap. Would have been cheaper still if we'd all just split things to begin with.

So--go visit this beautiful part of the state, stop at the Rockin' Horse Cafe, and choose with care, because whatever you get, you're gonna get a lot of it.

Amy Rea

Flyover Land , by Amy Rea, is about the best of Minnesota, and why you shouldn't just fly over.