Crites
 Wadsworth, Ohio        Date of Visit: 05/08/13        No Known Website

There have been a couple of times I have been a little worried going into a restaurant. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Crites is such a place. I didn’t have specific concerns about food-borne illness or physical danger but I have been in Wadsworth for a long, long time and I have never been to Crites. No one has ever said I should go to Crites. I only know one other person who has eaten there, he went every morning but he is the only one I knew. Well, the Donald thinks we should try it so we’re going to risk it. It’s hard to find a parking space on the street outside. There is really no other reason for people to be parked there at this time of the morning…except for Crites. Interesting.
 

These Are The Real Prices
 

Walking up to the front, it is easy to figure why there is trepidation. The place looks like a tiny concrete bunker, not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of tasty vittles. Plus you can’t see inside through the windows, what I’m assuming is a thick coating of grease from decades of cooking has clouded the glass enough to make them useless. There is a for sale by owner sign in the window that has been there for a long time. After you’ve been looking to get out for years and years, how interested are you in keeping moving? We’re going in regardless…how long we might be staying or if we’ll eat is up for grabs.

It seems much cleaner inside and in some violation of the laws of physics the windows not only allow light inside, you can see the outside world somewhat clearly. It’s cleaner but everything has the worn look of perhaps never really having been new. That includes the furniture, the serving wear and the patrons. Speaking of patrons, there are quite a few of them and the door keeps exchanging fed for looking-to-be fed in a continuous flow.
 

We took a gander at the menu and its shocking. It’s what you would expect. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, nothing strange. But the prices are remarkable. It seems as though the owners met just after World War Two and decided it would be too expensive to reprint the menus and that was their last meeting. I took pictures in case you didn’t believe me…some of the prices follow:

·         Cup of Coffee………………………………..…………..….35¢

·         Eggs, Sausage or Bacon, Hash browns & Toast.....……$2.50

·         Three Hotcakes……………………………….…...……$1.50

·         Shrimp Dinner (21)…………….……………….……….$4.50

We weren’t on the bikes this morning but we ordered what we typically would on a breakfast bike run, the eggs dish for $2.50 and coffee. Our coffee arrived in random mugs with an old school stainless steel cream dispenser and the big ribbed glass sugar jar. While we were waiting to breakfast we took a look around. The patrons all seem like regulars and most of them stop in the kitchen to chat before sitting down. There is a large table of men which rotate one or two in and out during our stay. It’s sort of a backwater meeting of muckity mucks holding court about everything under the sun. Our server was friendly and relatively efficient. She didn’t get back around with the coffee until we were about to go but at 35 cents who’s going to complain?
 

The Breakfast...Eggs Were Perfectly Done
 

Breakfast arrived sort of a mixed bag. The eggs were done perfectly. The toast was fine. The hash browns were…well, weird. A flat little rectangle of lightly browned potato…from the texture a lot of mashed potato. It didn’t taste bad, it was just odd.

The bacon suffered. It had been cooked off some time ago and had dehydrated into a sort of pig leather. I saw a sausage patty on another table, we went the wrong way, at least it looked better.

It wasn’t a great breakfast but we certainly weren’t cheated out of anything. It’s probably cheaper to eat there every morning than it would be to have a bowl of cereal at home. Don’t expect much and you might find a deal and a half.