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FRANKENMUTH, Mich. — Whatever the season, every all-you-can-eat dinner here is taken from the Thanksgiving palette: creamy mashed potatoes, golden swirls of buttered egg noodles, army-green woods cranberry sauce puddles of thoroughly cooked broccoli and garnet.
For more than a century, this city in Central Michigan has gained a reputation for family-style chicken meals, serving the same as when this newspaper advertised Frankenmuth in 1937.a Mecca for gourmets”
The chickens are boiled whole, allowed to cool, cut into 10 pieces, breaded and lightly fried until the meat is hot and juicy. But the holidays include roast turkey with chicken dinner, and this Thursday is expected to be the busiest day of the year for two “Frankenmuth dinner” restaurants facing each other across South Main Street: Bavarian Inn and Frankenmuth’s Zehnder. About 30,000 diners are expected over the four-day holiday weekend.
“This is food,” said Dorothy Zehnder, founder of the Bavarian Inn, who will turn 100 on December 1. “They know they eat well, and Thanksgiving and Christmas are really family matters, family days.”
They also experience an acre of nostalgia served with the delight of Lawrence Welk at the time of the champagne foam. Like those traveling to Solvang, California, or Leavenworth, Wash., those who visit Frankenmuth are sung by polka music from another place—or in this case, from old Bavaria to colonial America to the North Pole. they are experiencing a full-blown simulacrum. wine tastings, water slides, and rock band reminders Greta Van Fleet it started here.
Frankenmuth’s German heritage is woven throughout the city in the Bavarian Inn’s 50-metre Glockenspiel tower, hotel rooms named after the founding families, and Fraktur writings everywhere. The front of the post office contains larger-than-life cutouts. Hummel figurines mailing porcelain letters directly to a visitor’s heart.
Hopes are high this year. Michigan restaurants reopened at full capacity this summer, and this month the border reopened to Canadian visitors, who before the pandemic made up a significant portion of out-of-town guests. Spacious dining rooms that can seat 1,200 or more people were dark last Thanksgiving. Takeout was the only option with only a small portion of the staff running the show; While headcount at the Bavarian Inn was still below pre-pandemic levels, Zehnder’s is almost back to normal.
“For us, takeaway is like telling a car dealer, ‘You can’t sell a car, but you can have an oil change,'” said Al Zehnder, CEO of Zehnder’s Frankenmuth.
Tell a Michiganian about Frankenmuth and he’ll know right away whether he comes from a family of Zehnder loyalists or Bavarian Inn fans. The two restaurants have distinct stylistic differences, starting with the facades. If George Washington advertised it with neon, Zehnder looks like Mount Vernon. The Bavarian Inn has a “the hills are alive” feel.
Servers at the Bavarian Inn wear dirndl or lederhosen. Zehnder’s dress in the restaurant’s colonial theme, the women in mobcaps and white aprons, and the men in a striped collared shirt and pants.
The meal at Zehnder’s starts with garlic toast and spheres of spreadable cheese and pate, while at the Bavarian Inn the opening attraction may be an accordion serenade. Linda Lee, an honor Polka Hall of Fame. “They have more American food and we have more German food,” said Ms. Zehnder of the Bavarian Inn.
But the all you can eat menus are largely the same. Both restaurants offer chicken noodle soup and sandwich bread-sized slices of stollen, conservatively garnished with candied fruit. And they both finish off their bottomless meals with soft serve ice cream. At Zehnder’s, there’s a translucent plastic animal on top of the dessert, as the restaurant says. Zoo Selection. At the Bavarian Inn, a boy or girl is chosen dressed in Alpine clothes.
Mr. Zehnder once considered saving a few dollars by getting rid of Zoo Picks. Customers howled. “We needed to get them back,” he said, adding, “The guests’ expectation is really singular.”
And there is more. Beneath each restaurant is an underground warren of shops selling Frankenmuth favorites like toys, collectibles, cookware and fresh. butters, sweet rolls that will survive the long drive home. The idea is to entertain guests while they wait for a table.
“We live in the ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ kind of town,” said Wayne Bronner, CEO of Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. “I explain this to people, and younger people are like, ‘Who? Ozzie and Harriet?’”
How the predominantly German-American city in the Saginaw Valley, near the base of the Michigan “thumb”, becomes a target for satiety, complete with religious fervor, tinsel, beer, and a family dynasty is an epic worthy of a James Michener novel. synonymous with chicken dinner.
But with the city’s focus on its German heritage, it’s easy to overlook the other group at the beginning of the story.
This farmland was once the oak, walnut, and pine forest that was Chippewa’s hunting ground. NS Treaty of SaginawAn 1819 agreement with the United States government took the Saginaw, Swan Creek, and Black River Bands of Michigan from six million acres of land, but subsequent agreements placed a trust land whose sale was meant to benefit Native Americans.
Frankenmuth was founded by 15 Lutherans, led by August Craemer, who emigrated with the stated purpose of converting Native Americans to Christianity. In 1845, the group purchased 680 acres of ancient Native American land from the government for $1,700, or about $62,000 today.
The first Zehnders, including Johann Stephan Zehnder, arrived in Frankenmuth the following year with a second group of German Lutherans. For the first few years, Craemer ran a missionary school in Frankenmuth and taught German religious doctrine to several dozen Chippewa children.
Today, less than 20 of Frankenmuth’s approximately 5,000 residents identify as Native American. 2020 census. A sign in the city’s Memorial Park draws attention to Frankenmuth’s connection to Chippewa; NS Michigan Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe He’s got a reservation 70 miles west at Mount Pleasant.
“The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe celebrates all others who take the time to remember where they came from and maintain those connections with ancient traditions and celebrations,” Frank Cloutier, the tribe’s director of public relations, said in an email. “As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, we recall the autumn harvest celebration of the late 1600s, when pilgrims from Europe were invited to break bread with the native locals. Since they shared their culture then, we still share it today.”
The hospitality culture of Frankenmuth, or Gemütlichkeit, dates back to the late 19th century, when a brewery and hotels fed travelers traveling between Saginaw and Flint. In 1928, Johann’s grandson, William Zehnder Sr., bought a hotel on Main Street across from the Fischer’s Hotel, and it’s where most travelers stopped for a chicken dinner at the time.
William Zehnder, a fan of George Washington, remodeled his hotel to resemble Mount Vernon and opened as the family’s first restaurant on Mother’s Day in 1929. Al Zehnder, “On the verge of Prohibition and Depression.”
But visitors kept stopping at Frankenmuth as the beer kept flowing. “‘A pot of tea’ was the code word,” said Heidi Chapman, the company’s director. Frankenmuth Historical Society. The government fined Zehnders and Fischers hefty fines, and federal agents destroyed both bars.
II. After World War II, Wally Bronner, a sign painter who became famous for his work for Christmas splendor for the decoration businesses in the area, added tinsel to Frankenmuth’s tourism industry by opening his first Christmas store.
“Red glitter ornaments are our #1 seller,” said his son, Wayne Bronner. In Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, 75 people, a tenth of his usual staff, work just to paint customers’ names on ornaments. With nearly 100,000 square feet of shopping space, the 320,000-square-foot store is the size of five football fields and sells everything from velvet Santa suits to work-specific ornaments (“Lawyers never lose their appeal!” “Plumbers go with the flow”).
The Zehnder family bought the Fischer’s Hotel restaurant in 1950. Ms. Zehnder and her husband, William Zehnder Jr. (aka Tiny – she was a little baby) In 1959 she built an annex designed by an architect who agreed to work on it. only if he can do it in German style he can project it.
“Business boomed the day we opened,” said Ms. Zehnder. “It really evolved and then of course we became German. we had to.”
Little Zehnder convinced the city’s dignitaries to weave the Old World motif all over the city. Along Main Street is the fachwerk (half-timbered) and Octoberfest’s blue-and-white diamond pattern.
The Zehnder family operated both restaurants until the 1980s, when the second generation split the business into two entities to pursue different business interests. Dorothy Zehnder’s family runs the Bavarian Inn and a shopping mall; Al Zehnder, his sisters Martha and Susan, and their families run Zehnder’s restaurant and a golf course. Each has a hotel with a bakery and a water park.
James Beard Foundation in 2020 Honorable Zehnder Favorite regional restaurants, often family-run, as one of America’s classics.
“Our whole focus was on creating a truly four-season family vacation destination,” said Mr. Zehnder. “The focus on family hasn’t really changed since its inception.”
A family, the Murines of Irwin, Pa., has been planning a Thanksgiving trip to Frankenmuth since the summer. Emily Murin and her husband, Jonathan, love the Christmas season (“It’s the only thing that connects us,” she said) and wanted to take their daughters, 5-year-old Gianna and 4-year-old Gabriella, on a holiday trip to their home. new camper trailer.
They preferred Frankenmuth of hollywood, in Tennessee, because the road to Michigan would be on flatter terrain. They plan to arrive on Wednesday, have Thanksgiving dinner Thursday, shop at Bronner’s on Friday, and maybe take a trip to Splash Village on Saturday before heading home where four decorated Christmas trees await their return.
Ms. Murin polled Facebook groups run by Frankenmuth fans before deciding where to eat.
“I asked local groups, ‘Okay, well, which one: Zehnder’s or Bavarian Inn? Who is the winner?’ And it was actually very, very dead heat,” he said. “So it’s time to book.”
When Murines sit down to Thanksgiving dinner at the Bavarian Inn, they’ll find a style of food that hasn’t changed much since Mrs. Zehnder began her waitress career in 1937.
Even so, not all dinners adhere to tradition. “You’d be surprised how many steaks we serve at Thanksgiving,” said Ms. Zehnder.
Recipe: butterhorns
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