Ohiopyle Bakery

We're coming up on the fourth anniversary of our road trip through Pennsylvania, so our travels are on my mind a lot. When we last left off, we had just visited Fallingwater and had lunch at their cafe. Fallingwater is still one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen, and we're so glad we made the trip out to Western PA. Back to the recaps!

After lunch at Fallingwater, we lingered around the property some more, trying to take in as much as we could before hitting the road. Our plan was to drive over to nearby Ohiopyle State Park and go for a walk. When we had initially researched Ohiopyle, we wanted to go bike riding, but we just didn't have enough time for that on this visit, considering we still had one more stop to make that afternoon before heading up to Pittsburgh.

I had made a full list of activities we could do that afternoon, trying to take advantage of our brief time in the southwestern corner of the state, but since we didn't end up leaving Fallingwater until after 2, most of those plans ended up going out the window. It also meant we only had a very short window of time at Ohiopyle, just enough for some strolling, seeing one of the waterfalls, and grabbing a snack.

We had heard good things about the Ohiopyle Bakery, so we stopped in there for some sweet baked goods to tide us over until dinner. It was mostly cookies and some doughnuts from what we remember, and we went with both of those. The doughnut was your regular yeast doughnut with some chocolate glaze and sprinkles (of course in Steelers colors). We also got a couple of sugar cookies, because it's hard to go wrong with sugar cookies. While they didn't have any unique variations or flavors at the bakery that we could see, what they did have was done well.

After our snack and a little more time at Ohiopyle, it was back on the road for a short drive over to Laurel Caverns. I had never been to a cavern before, and A's only visit had been when he was really young. We didn't know when our next opportunity would be, so we definitely wanted to check that out. After our tour, we began our trip up to Pittsburgh (of course, in rush hour), where we would spend a couple of days before beginning our drive home.

Fallingwater Cafe

One of the places in western Pennsylvania that was a must for our road trip was Frank Lloyd Wright's amazing Fallingwater. Designed in the 1930s as a residence, it's an amazing architectural masterpiece built over a waterfall. We really enjoyed the tour, and after spending time taking in Fallingwater from every angle, we headed over to their cafe for some lunch.

The Fallingwater Cafe was focused on seasonal and local fare, and served soups, sandwiches, and salads. This seemed to fall right in line with the Fallingwater aesthetic and philosophy of fitting in with the land and the environment.

We got 2 different items for lunch. One was Liliane Kaufmann's chicken salad from the Fallingwater cookbook. The Kaufmanns were the clients Frank Lloyd Wright designed the house for, and I guess this salad was a specialty there. The salad was described as having chicken, grapes, celery, and water chestnuts with a homemade dressing. It was served with a corn stick, which was like an elongated corn muffin. The salad itself we thought was good, clean tasting, but nothing extraordinary.

The other thing we got was the mixed mushroom melt (garlic and thyme sauteed portabello, shiitake, oyster and cremini mushrooms with lettuce, tomato, and mozzarella on Cuban roll) with a side of a cool English pea and couscous salad. From what we remember, the sandwich was pretty good. Again, very clean flavors, good quality ingredients, and well-executed. The part I remember a bit more is the pea and couscous salad, which I remember tasted very fresh and bright, but I also probably remember this more because of my love for Israeli couscous.

Overall, we had a nice light lunch at Fallingwater Cafe. We were still in a really great mood after spending the morning around such architectural beauty, and it was great to be able to extend that a little longer with some lunch there. Was it the most amazing, extraordinary food we had on our trip? Probably not, but it was a good, solid meal and we were glad we went.

Eat'n Park

We were completely exhausted when we finally arrived at our hotel in Uniontown, and our first task was to figure out what to do for dinner. There weren't a ton of options near our hotel, so when I did all the research before the trip, I had bookmarked places as far away as Ohiopyle (about a 30 minute drive) and Morgantown, West Virginia (about a 40 minute drive). We were pretty tempted by a Kenyan restaurant in Morgantown (since there were no Kenyan restaurants that we knew of in NYC), but in the end, we were just too tired and sick of being in the car (and we had an early morning scheduled). There was an Eat'n Park down the street, so we decided to just go there. While A had been to other outlets of theirs before, I had only ever seen them from the interstate. Since they're a small chain only in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, it seemed appropriate that we would visit them during our Pennsylvania road trip.

Eat'n Park turned out to be the perfect place to grab dinner after a long day on the road, mostly because of their salad bar. Each of our orders that night came with one side, and instead of a side, we could substitute the (unlimited) salad bar for a few extra dollars. Unlimited soup and salads, tons of fresh vegetables after an exhausting travel day? Perfect. Of course we were going to do that.

There were a bunch of soups at the buffet bar, and I went straight for the wedding soup. Chicken broth, pasta, meatballs, vegetables, just a really soothing choice. It was getting really cool out when we arrived in Western PA (just a couple of days after near 100 degree temperatures in the middle of the state) and this soup was so incredibly comforting and warming.

In addition to make your own salad stuff which was all really fresh, there were also a lot of prepared salads at the salad bar, like cole slaw and beet salad and corn salad and many more. This was exactly what we wanted after a not so healthy (but tasty) lunch and all that time in the car.

After some soup and salad, our entrees turned up. A got the mushroom and onion burger, which they proclaimed had taken first place at some national hamburger festival. It came with grilled onions and mushrooms, as well as a choice of cheese (A got pepper jack). While the burger itself tasted fine, A wondered what other burgers it might have been pitted against to win that festival. It was good but nothing special.

I got the habanero chicken sandwich, which was described as "spicy cajun seasoned grilled chicken with our own jalapeno sauce, crisp lettuce, and topped with grilled bell peppers, habanero jack cheese, and thinly sliced red onions." The sandwich was pretty good - very basic but a good combination of fresh ingredients. It was a nice healthy choice, and I was all about trying to eat healthy that night.

Our sandwich and burger didn't come with any sides since we did the salad bar option, so we continued going up to the salad bar even after our entrees arrived. There was more soup to be had, like this chicken noodle soup, also perfect for a cold night.

We just couldn't get enough of all the fresh vegetables at the salad bar. It's not always easy to find affordable salad or fresh vegetable options when traveling (or even at home, really), as so many restaurants are so starch and meat based, that we loved having this as an option on the trip.

When we were leaving, we passed by a Smiley cookies display. I didn't know much about these at the time, but Smiley is apparently like a mascot for the restaurant, or as their website puts it, "a life-sized representation of Eat'n Park's commitment to making people smile." That's a philosophy I can get behind. The world needs more smiles.

We got a cookie on the way out to eat back at the room. It got a little cracked on the way back to the hotel. It was raining really hard when we were running from the car to the hotel's door, and I clenched hard on the cookie instead of just putting it in my pocket. From what I remember, this was like a frosted sugar cookie. It was a little bit harder than a standard sugar cookie, but it was obviously not so hard that it didn't crack.

We were pretty happy that we decided to stop at Eat'n Park that night instead of traveling further away. The food was good, and it gave us a chance to relax in a casual, comfortable spot close to our hotel. It was just what we needed before heading to Fallingwater early the next morning, and we were glad we went.