Author: Simon Ashworth

A restaurant with its own private beach on Lake Erie sounds like a rumor. It isn’t. The sand belongs to the diners, and the fried…

Andy Dufresne crawled to freedom in the movies, but the prison he escaped from is real. You can tour it today, cell blocks and all….

A butcher counter in Ohio that sells pig ears, garlic sausage, and school-style pizza under one roof deserves your attention. Add homemade goetta to that…

A real steam locomotive, one of only a handful of mainline steam engines still running in North America, rolls through a national park in Ohio….

A giant omelet with a side of pancakes can be so big that half of it rides home in a box. That’s the kind of…

A massive cargo ship can slide past your table here while you work through a plate of crab cakes. That is not a theme park…

A fish breading station sits behind big windows, and you can watch it work while you wait in line. That alone tells you how seriously…

One Ohio diner keeps more than 20 kinds of pie on hand, and another runs an afternoon special called Hap-Pie Hour. I love that somebody…

Homemade fudge, hand-scooped ice cream, and fried pies all share one roof at a roadside store in northeast Ohio. That alone is enough to make…

One Ohio Chinese restaurant keeps a special menu for diners with soy allergies. In a cuisine built on soy sauce, that detail stopped me cold….

A butcher shop where you can watch the meat being cut in the back, then pay for it with cash or a check. That sounds…

A summer fireworks show called Light Up The Lake turns an entire Ohio reservoir into a front-row seat. Boats drift out across the water, families…

A heavy bookcase leaves this shop already packed, protected, and tied down in the bed of a pickup truck. The staff handles the straps. You…

Wagyu outside skirt steak, sizzling on a grill built right into your own table. That’s the top-tier perk at one all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue spot in…

The only Disney retail store left in Ohio isn’t inside a fancy city mall. It sits at an open-air outlet center right off the interstate,…

Every single sub at this little deli goes into the oven before it reaches your table. Toasted, every time, on an eight-inch bun. That one…

Amish bakers turn out more than 1,000 fry pies every single week here. Each one is a hand-held pocket of fruit, deep-fried and brushed with…

One Ohio Chinese restaurant got its start inside a converted filling station back in 1956. The gas pumps are long gone. The egg rolls, somehow,…

The snow crab legs show up in metal buckets, and the buckets keep coming. Nobody counts them for you. You just keep cracking until you…

More than 240 Steinway pianos live on one small campus in Ohio. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a piano store. The school went…

One set price here covers crab legs, sushi, calamari, a hibachi grill, and even a hot pot burner built into select tables. That’s a lot…

A burger named after the morning after has turned into the star of a counter-style diner that opened its doors in 1932. The Hangover burger…

One of the best taco spots in Ohio decorates its dim dining room with Mexican wrestling gear. Masks, capes, the whole lucha libre look. I…

A donut shop south of Cleveland keeps its kitchen running through the night, five days a week. Some fans happily drive more than two hours…

The first move here is not ordering. It’s grabbing a paper ticket from an old-school number system, then waiting your turn in front of glass…

Walleye for breakfast. Not a fish sandwich at lunch, not a Friday supper special, but a walleye plate served in the morning alongside the usual…

A whole fried fish, head and tail still attached, waits on a weekend buffet line in Ohio. Next to it sit warm tortillas made by…

A breakfast buffet with eggs Benedict, biscuits and sausage gravy, crispy bacon, and a fresh fruit spread big enough to be a destination on its…

More than 20 kinds of pie sit on the menu at one small diner with yellow brick walls in northwest Ohio. That number alone is…

Warm rolls hit the table here with peanut butter and apple butter spreads waiting beside them. That alone would earn a detour. But the rolls…

A secret-recipe French onion soup and an 18-ounce bone-in prime rib topped with Cajun butter. That’s the opening pitch from one dining room in Ohio….

Free warm rolls land on the table here, and right beside them sits a jar of house peanut butter spread. That sweet, fluffy spread has…

The fries at this riverside fish house come from the same recipe used back in 1973. So does the coleslaw. So does the crab cake….

The house sauce has its own name, and people bring it up like an old friend. That’s usually a good sign for a sandwich counter….

The ground chuck at this butcher counter cooks up so lean that there’s hardly any grease left in the pan. That one detail made me…

The owner of one small Ohio salvage store says the crew puts more than 100,000 items on the floor every month. That is a staggering…

The steakhouse dining room sits inside a jail that held inmates for more than a century. Iron gates, barred windows, and old cell rooms are…

All I needed was a rug for the living room, and I figured I would be in and out in ten minutes. Instead, I found…

The gravel turnoff looked like any other farm lane in northwest Ohio, and nothing about it promised much. Then a row of weathered log cabins…

A gravel road in southeast Ohio narrowed until it felt like the trees were leaning in to see who was coming. At the end of…

We only pulled off the highway because the kids were hungry and the parking lot looked full. A full lot in rural Ohio usually means…

The smell of hickory smoke drifting out of an old house was the first clue that lunch was about to get interesting. From the sidewalk,…

We only planned to stretch our legs and grab a snack on a long Ohio drive. Instead, my kids ended up leaning over a railing,…

The first time we tried it, the kids were already in fleece pajamas and half asleep in the back seat. Ten minutes later they were…

The road dips, the trees close in, and suddenly a wooden roof appears over a quiet river in the middle of Ohio. We only meant…

A gravel shoulder, a short walk, and suddenly the ground just drops away into a green gorge you never saw coming. That was the moment…

I pulled off the highway in Ohio expecting a quick stretch of the legs and maybe a shady bench for my sandwich. Instead, I ended…

The plan was just coffee and a quick stretch of the legs on a long Ohio drive. Then a plain little donut counter handed over…

The first time I pulled into an Ohio state park cabin loop, I expected a plain room and a gravel lot. What I got was…

The first clue was a gravel lot packed with minivans on a plain weekday morning in Ohio. Inside, the air smelled like hickory and the…

The parking lot was bigger than the town seemed to need, and that was the first clue. We only pulled off the road in Ohio…

We only pulled off the road because the kids needed a stretch and a snack break. Twenty minutes later, all of us were standing inside…

We only stopped because the kids needed a bathroom and somebody mentioned pie. Hours later, we were still wandering, arms full of fresh corn, a…

The first time I pushed a cart past a pallet of dented soup cans in rural Ohio, I expected leftovers and found a full week…

The parking lot was full, and that was the first clue. We had pulled off a quiet Ohio road on a Sunday just past noon,…

My ten-year-old asked who Elvis was about halfway through our drive, and I realized a music museum might be a tough sell. I figured a…

A twenty-minute boat ride across Lake Erie does not usually promise anything more dramatic than wind in your hair and a gull or two. Then…

The plan was just to find a place for the kids to burn off energy, and a farm in northeast Ohio seemed simple enough. Nobody…

The plan was simple: find a hot afternoon escape with air conditioning and a bench. Instead, my kids ended up with their faces pressed to…

The GPS said to turn onto a narrow country road, and honestly, I almost kept driving. What waited at the end was a big barn…