Breadbasket Restaurant

How about a visit to the Breadbasket Restaurant and Bakery at 219 N. Main in Newton?

OK, you know how I am about food. When I got to Newton on Saturday, it was lunchtime and I was starving. Dave and I had been to the Breadbasket Restaurant and Bakery once before, so I knew it was good, and I drove right to it.

This is why the Breadbasket Restaurant is so great – their food is made from scratch.

Since I seldom have bierocks, I ordered one. Because who doesn’t love a good bierock? And, although I’ve always stuck with the non-cheesy bierock version in the past, this one had cheese and, my, let me tell you, it was good.

And those cucumbers on my salad plate were in a nice dill-flavored sauce and that’s a slice of banana nut bread.

One of the options for lunch was a combo – two out of three things – you could choose from soup bar, the salad bar, or a sandwich. I selected the salad and sandwich (bierock.)

Here’s George Eason, one of the owners of The Breadbasket. Eason and Barry Lehman have owned the business since April 2005. George told me a little about the business and mentioned he has a daughter who loves going to school at Emporia State University.

As I drooled over the pie case, George told me they have three bakers. One bakes the pies, another the breads and cookies, and the third does the cinnamon rolls and danish – the breakfast items.

I didn’t ask how many varieties of pies they have, but there were quite a few – including sour cream and raisin, pecan, jackpot, chocolate peanut butter, apple, and others.

They have many items packaged to go, including stacks of rolls.

Many varieties of breads: pumpkin, cinnamon, black Russian, white, cracked wheat, natural grain, vegetable.

But, it’s more than just a bakery, here’s the soup bar.

On Friday and Saturday evenings, they serve a German buffet – which is what Dave and I had when we stopped here two years ago. Verenika and ham gravy – yum.

Those German buffets bring in the crowds and they can seat 149 people in their two dining rooms.

For dessert, I selected the coconut cream pie with the three-inch meringue. I think it would be hard to go wrong with any of the pie flavors here.

If you’re ever in Newton, I’d recommend stopping by. They also have a breakfast buffet which sounds delicious. Check out their website (including a video).

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Here’s a column I wrote two years ago for the April 24, 2007 edition of The Emporia Gazette:

AT THE BREADBASKET

The wait in the German buffet line was about 15 minutes.

But, I didn’t mind leaning on one leg then the other for a short while – because freshly-cooked verenike was up for grabs.

Returning home from the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson earlier this month, Dave and I stopped at The Breadbasket in Newton. This restaurant serves German food on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Oh, the choices: zwieback or whole wheat bread, butter or apple butter, fried potatoes or hot German potato salad?

Except for the sauerkraut, which I could live all of my days without, the entire buffet looked delicious. I can personally vouch for the goodness of the sausage, chicken borscht, and verenike with ham gravy. For dessert, I chose bohne beroggi over the cherry moos.

OK, now I was raised in a German Mennonite community and to my recollection, in my 18 years of living there, only once was I fed borscht and moos. And I had never even heard of verenike or bohne beroggi.

How could this be? Other Kansas Mennonite communities consider these dishes to be traditional food.

The German/Russian delicacies are a hit to thousands of folks at the Mennonite Central Committee Relief Sale held each April in Hutchinson.

And on certain days of the week, these German dishes can also be found at restaurants in Hillsboro and Inman, Moundridge and Buhler.

The church I attended near Pawnee Rock was something of a Mennonite outpost. In Barton County, we were far flung from the McPherson, Marion and Harvey County communities where a majority of the Mennonite/Russian immigrants settled in the 1870s.

So anyway, I’m wondering, did the group of Pawnee Rock Mennonites leave Russia in such a hurry that they forgot to grab the family recipes?

Maybe as my ancestors moved around on the open prairie near Pawnee Rock and Dundee, their cookbooks bounced off the wagons and the pages blew away with the Kansas wind.

Or perhaps my kinfolk merely assimilated too well, chucking the verenike and the borscht in favor of pan-fried chicken.

I can’t complain; I ate satisfying meals at church and in the farmhouses of the elders – those second-generation Americans, the bilingual ones who often spoke Low German to each other.

Like many Americans, my tribe tends to be a meat-and-potatoes people. As a youngster, I saw bread at every meal. If there were no rolls, I’d find white bread stacked on a plate.

And at gatherings, we’d often have orange Jello topped with shredded carrots. (Jello, as you know, is the first sign of assimilation.)

No, I don’t know why I was never exposed to verenike. But I have grown to really like this doughy food which is categorized as a dumpling. It’s filled with dry cottage cheese, boiled, then sometimes fried in a skillet to add crispy texture. They are served with ham gravy.

For dessert at The Breadbasket, I passed by the German chocolate cake, the cherry moos, the cookies and selected the bohne beroggi, which is a food that confounds me, actually.
The first time I tried this dessert, it just seemed bizarre to me that anyone would think put refried beans into a sweet bread dough, bake it, then drench it in a sweet sauce.

I found a recipe for bohne beroggi on the Internet. There’s cream in the dough, cream in with the sweetened, mashed pinto beans and the sauce includes half-and-half. No wonder they’re yummy.

My own kin failed to feed me bohne beroggi and verenike, but when I eat this food I feel like a sturdy German. Sauerkraut aside, it’s all good stuff.

The Breadbasket, 219 N. Main in Newton, serves their German buffet Friday and Saturday evenings, 4:30 to 8 p.m.  316-283-3811.