Fa-Ray's
 Barberton, Ohio        Date of Visit: 06/13/15        http://www.farays.com

There are fewer and fewer local places we’ve yet to try and we’re crossing off another. No one has ever recommended Fa-Rays, at least not with any gusto. On our trip it turned out to be somewhere below perfectly average, I guess that explains the lack of suggestions.

Picture Kinda Sums Up All You Might Need To Know About Fa-Rays
 

The building has definitely been around for a while and either their lunch crowd was particularly messy or it’s been a bit since the bucket or vacuum have made the rounds.

The service has a very Mel’s diner kinda feel.

The place is killing it serving a variety of banana splits which seem to be on most of the other occupied tables. We did see a bowl of fruit which looked pretty tasty but we were in it for breakfast/lunch. Breakfast – French toast with hash browns. Lunch – A Barberton chicken panini topped with homemade hotsauce, French fries and coleslaw on grilled Italian bread with a side of mac and cheese.

This won’t take long. Breakfast could easily be replicated at home with kids cooking.
 

The Barberton chicken sandwich was better and worse than I had expected. Having had a great deal of dry chicken named after the city, the cutlet actually had a bit of life left inside. The hot sauce (a requirement of the local yardbird which has never done anything for me, certainly adds nothing resembling hot) actually added a little tomatoey summer. The slaw was alright. The bread was wrong. Never had a chance to maintain structural integrity. From the looks of it, the slices were ruing their fate even before leaving the bag. The mac and cheese was quite an upsell fraught with promise, how do you pass that up. It is a classic béchamel based cheese sauce version served in a crock. There is a fair amount of cheese involved but the mother sauce needed some more time on low heat to cook out the grainy flouriness texture and taste before the cheese entered. I’d give it an ehh.

If you’re hungry, Fa-Ray’s has food. That about sums it up, except for the banana splits.