Visiting The Cherry Hut in Beulah, Michigan, always makes me feel like I've entered some sort of time warp, dropping into a tasty 1950s kitsch fest where affordable family fun and fare was the order of the day.
The cherry-red-and-white color scheme, the vintage-style server uniforms, and the huge Cherry Jerry logo adorning the menu and grinning atop the restaurant's sign while overseeing a stretch of U.S. Highway 31 out front hasn't changed much in my memories of the place over the past 25 years or so.
The restaurant has its origins as a roadside pie stand opened in 1922 by James and Dorothy Kraker on Crystal Lake to distribute homemade pies made with cherries from their orchards.
The Krakers had several small Cherry Huts around the region during the 1920s and 1930s before consolidating them and opening the Cherry Hut's present-day Beulah location in 1937.
In 1946, a local high school sophomore named Leonard Case Jr. began working at the Cherry Hut in the jam kitchen. Case started working full-time at the restaurant in 1948, and with the exception of two years he spent in military service, remained on the job all these years. Case became a Cherry Hut manager by 1957, purchased the business in 1959, and the Case family still owns the Cherry Hut.
The Cherry Hut keeps traditional summer season hours, opening early in May and closing for the winter in mid-October, and much of their work force consists of high school and college students on summer break. The back of the menu proudly lists the staff by name and school affiliation, with the "girls" tending to be college students working as servers, while the "boys" tend to be high school kids working in the back of the house operation.
Cherry Hut fare tends to be the type of food you remember from childhood meals-chicken pot pie, turkey and dressing, Swiss steak, or chopped steak. Plenty of menu items like burgers, chicken salad, drinks, and desserts incorporate cherries, with the Cherry Hut using as many as 4,000 pounds of tart cherries in their food and products during a busy week.
The Cherry Hut particularly prides itself for its cherry pies. Leonard Case's wife Brenda told a National Public Radio interviewer the Cherry Hut uses the same recipe, and makes pies the same way with hand-crimped crusts, that the Krakers began using in 1922. The Cherry Hut sells as many as 500 cherry pies during the height of the busy summer season in July and August.
I especially enjoy going to the Cherry Hut for dessert and ordering a cherry sundae, vanilla ice cream with tart cherry sundae sauce. And I never seem to visit there without purchasing a couple of jars of the cherry sundae sauce from the restaurant's gift store to take home.
Prices at the Cherry Hut are affordable, and they seem to easily accommodate larger groups, making it a good choice for families or stopping off for a quick meal while you're traveling.
The Cherry Hut expanded over the years, but it seems to retain much of its vintage vibe and essential look. Check out the Cherry Hut Facebook page for great vintage photos of the business.
The Cherry Hut ships many of its jams, jellies and sauces, but repeated trials show that the pies don't seem to withstand the rigors of shipping, so you do have to visit in person to check out the cherry pie.
But those who love all things cherry will tell you that it's worth the trip!© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
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