Eating with the Amish

When my wife first told me that she wanted to drive an hour south to Sarasota, FL to visit "the Amish country" I thought she had lost her mind.

"What do Amish people have to offer that's worth an hour drive?" I asked out of curiosity

She answered: "Cheese"

Well, cheese isn't the only thing. They also serve up pies, homemade mashed potatoes, and fried chicken.

At the word "cheese" she had me sold. We needed to go to Sarasota, now.

Believe it or not, there are actually a variety of Amish owned restaurants throughout Sarasota. However, after some deep research we settled on Yoder's Amish Home Cooking

From what we could gather, Yoder's seemed to be the most authentic and had the most history. Not to mention they were also recently featured on Travel Channel's Man vs. Food.

Yoder's is a quaint restaurant with a market to the right that sells fruit, vegetables, cheese, jams and bread. To the left of the restaurant is a store where you can purchase stuff for your house that you don't really need.

It became clear upon our arrival that Yoder's was a very popular place. The line to get in was out the front door and the parking lot was jammed packed.

We finally ended up getting seated at a table and we were greeted by our server. I talked to her quite a bit because while I had already studied the menu in detail and I really didn't know what to order. Sometimes when you visit restaurants you don't know what to order because nothing looks good, other times (and this rarely happens) you don't know what to order because you want to try everything.

This was one of those special situations where I wanted to eat everything on the menu. The decision was very tough, however with our server's counseling I decided on the 2 Piece Fried Chicken dinner with a side of mashed potatoes and homemade sweet potato fries.

My wife ordered the far less exciting "Vegetable Plate" which consisted of a salad, side of mashed potatoes and two corn muffins.

Finally the glorious moment arrived and our food was delivered to our table. The fried chicken was amazing, it's pressure cooked, crispy and extremely juicy. Every bite of the chicken was absolutely succulent.

The sweet potato fries were equally unbelievable....a full plate of homemade fries with a side of cinnamon sugar to sprinkle onto the fries. (Let's just say I sprinkled plenty on).

Knowing how famous Yoder's was for their homemade pies I didn't have any hesitation in placing my dessert order while I was still eating my entree.

We ordered one slice of peanut butter pie (see above) and a piece of cheesecake. The peanut butter pie is simply to die for. I'm going to make a bold statement and say it's some of the best pie I ever tasted.

After we ate ourselves into an oblivion, we went next store to the market and picked up some homemade strawberry jam, and baby swiss and muenster cheese.

The Amish know how to eat, how to cook and how to provide amazing service. The entire experience can be summed up by me simply saying: I wish I was Amish.