WORDS & PHOTOS BY CHRIS TIESSEN
There’s something to be said for a late-summer Friday escape – windows down, wheels rolling, fields unspooling in neat green and golden cords as the city – and its worries – slips behind. On a Friday morning in mid-August my TOQUE partner Cai and I find ourselves steering northwest from Guelph through farm country toward Millbank, a village with a legendary canteen – Anna Mae’s Bakery & Restaurant. Our mission: to enjoy lunch at this Perth County destination before finding our way back home with a few spontaneous stops along the way.
When we arrive at Anna Mae’s just past noon, the parking lot is pretty much bursting at the seams with pick-ups and the queue inside the place is at least fifty souls deep: local families in ball caps and button-ups, cyclists dusted with trail grit from the G2G Trailway (which runs directly behind the establishment), out-of-towners lured by word of mouth. All waiting for the same thing – good ol’ down home country cooking.
Anna Mae’s has been feeding the region since 1978, when Anna Mae Wagler began selling homemade pies at the end of her laneway. Over the past four decades this small enterprise has grown into today’s barn-beamed dining hall, bustling bakery, and gift shop stacked with everything from summer sausage and cheese curds to metal toy tractors and wooden rubber-band guns. Cai and I decide to skip the long restaurant wait in favour of the take-out line – situated on the far side of the gift shop. When our turn comes, we go classic: crisp, pressure-fried broasted chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy (for Cai) and potato salad (for me), yellow beans (for me) and coleslaw (for Cai). And for dessert hefty slices of peach pie: flaky, fragrant, and made with farm fresh Ontario peaches. (On any given day you’ll find a large variety of pies on offer, plus butter tarts and seasonal bakes.) We ferry our feast to a shaded picnic table outside where the meal – honest, generous, comforting – does what all good country dishes do: silences the table.
A quick note on that chicken: ‘broasted’ isn’t a rustic flourish but a mid-century American invention: marinated, seasoned, and cooked in a sealed pressure fryer that locks in juices and leaves the crust light and crisp and the chicken tender and juicy. Fried chicken’s country cousin – slightly neater, no less addictive.
Sated (and loaded up with a couple peach pies for home), we drift back towards Guelph along grid-patterned concession roads. On the way we stop for wayside sunflowers (presented in simple white buckets in roadside stands at the ends of long farm driveways). At a bare-bones Amish farm stall we find a small trove of preserves. As Cai chooses the perfect jar of zucchini pickles, I note a handful of Amish children in various states of work and play: a young boy dashing back and forth from the farmhouse to the stalls; another scootering up and down the dusty farm driveway on what looks to be a century-old contraption; and a third peering sheepishly at us from behind his older sister’s plain dress. Cai pays three dollars cash for the pickles, and we keep moving.
Fifteen minutes further south, in Elmira, we trade starch for hops at Rural Roots Brewing Company. The taproom is small and cheerful – part community hall, part living room – while the back patio sprawls wide with a stage for live music and plenty of chatter. The beers lean classic and clean, and before long we’re folded into pints (a ‘Kommunity Kolsch’ for me and ‘Plotting and Planning’ IPA for Cai) and leaning into conversation with regulars drifting in for what promises to be a fine Friday evening. As tempting as it is to linger, it’s time to move on. After all, this is the definition of an afternoon away: two unpretentious stops stitched together by pretty roads and enticing farm stands.
We head home with sunflowers for the table, pie for breakfast, pickles for noshing, and the pleasant feeling that we have eaten – and drunk – just right. Sometimes the best adventures require little more than a tank of gas and an appetite: broasted chicken, peach pie, jars of pickles, and a cheerful pint of ale – a moveable feast, Ontario country style.
