A person who wrote a letter to the editor to the weekly Illinois Times newspaper, based in Springfield, came up with an intriguing idea — promoting restaurants that serve horseshoe sandwiches in the Land of Lincoln.
In case you haven’t heard of a horseshoe, it consists of thick-sliced toasted bread (often Texas toast), a hamburger patty and french fries, all coated with cheese sauce. It was created in 1928 in Springfield at the Leland Hotel. The hotel, alas, no longer exists as overnight lodging.
Smaller orders of it often are called a pony shoe. And like the green chile cheeseburger in New Mexico, the horseshoe sports all sorts of variations in central Illinois.
There are breakfast horseshoes (where the hamburger patty is replaced with bacon or sausage, the fries are swapped for hash browns, and instead of cheese, it’s gravy). Some places use tater tots instead of fries. Other places use different meat or several types of meat. You get the idea.
Anyway, Tony Leone wrote to the Illinois Times about the newspaper’s 217 Pony Shoe Week in which 14 restaurants participated. Leone not only ate at all 14 restaurants, but he showed them the “Springfield’s Celebrated Horseshoe Sandwich” book he co-wrote with Carolyn Harmon. Leone wrote:
Illinois Times’ 217 Food Week is a brilliant promotion. Frankly, I had never been to a third of the places, but I’ll be back. Some had sold out for the day when I first arrived, and I was told later they had sold hundreds of pony shoes. The chefs’ creativity was awesome.
The debate over someone’s favorite or unique pony shoe won’t end soon. I enjoyed the challenge, and being no fool, I closed the week with my annual checkup from my cardiologist. I’m going to survive.
There has been a lot of effort to promote Route 66 and tourism. I see it as an innkeeper when I provide lodging to foreign guests who stop in Springfield while adventuring west 2,448 miles from Chicago all the way to Santa Monica Pier. When Route 66 was in its prime, Americans often stayed at the Leland Hotel where the horseshoe sandwich was created. When I tell guests about the connection, travelers have to try this Springfield food sensation. Illinois tourism promoters need to work with IT to develop a plan for travelers to spend time in Springfield, the “Horseshoe Capital.”
The first thing that popped to mind was New Mexico Tourism’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail, which has been a boon to dozens of restaurants in that state. Someone needs to get the word to the Illinois Office of Tourism it needs to put together a Horseshoe Trail.
(Image of a horseshoe sandwich in Springfield, Illinois, by Ryan Harvey via Flickr)
Some of my family and I ate yesterday at a classic Route 66 restaurant which, I’m afraid, remains unknown to so many of those who travel the road: Big Chief Restaurant in Pond, MO. It’s located on old Manchester Road west of St. Louis (but still in the metro area), the route that was the original alignment of 66 going west from city. It’s a beautiful restoration of a restaurant that opened in 1929. For more information: https://www.bigchiefstl.com/ I write because of the article above about horseshoes. (The Big Chief, obviously, is not in Illinois, but we are, and I wish it were, too!) Anyone interested in a horseshoe sandwich would be in hog heaven there. My wife and daughter ordered horseshoes, and they were delicious. They were a delight to the eye and well as to the palate. (If you’re driving 66, continue west on MO 100 until you get to Gray’s Summit, where you’ll join the later alignment more often used by 66 fans.)