Wyatt Beef and Brew Wyatt Indiana
Home cooking rules in a handful of dishes at Wyatt's Beef & Brew in a century-old building with a ghost story or two and a farm town of just over 100 people.
Step inside the cozy, no-smoking quarters with a 30-seat dining area on one side and a bar room for 40 on the other. The walls carry their age: A 1900 photo of downtown Wyatt with storefronts, a dirt road, horses and carriages and a bicycle. A painting of the old train depot. An old photo of the "Wyatt Band." A sign for the "Wyatt Coon Hunters and Conservation Club."
Here, owner and cook Bill Beaver hasn't handed out a printed menu for three years and instead points customers to boards with a half-dozen or more specials, mostly fixed but with a flexibility to make "whatever suits my fancy that I've got a taste for or that would sell."
The pulled pork and chicken and noodles are likely to stick around. So, too, are the wine-and-canvas paint parties that an artist recently started hosting there once each month. And karaoke at 9 p.m. Fridays. All trying to keep people coming. It's just a 10-minute drive down Indiana 331 from Mishawaka's southern edge, or 15 minutes from South Bend. Even shorter to Bremen.
Beaver closed the place for a month while the state closed the Indiana 331 bridge over the Yellow River to the south — halfway between Wyatt and Bremen — from August through October for an overhaul. Detours routed traffic around, not through, Wyatt. It caused his business to slow down so much that he laid off two of his three kitchen staff and cut out menu items that were costly in food and time: full dinners of steak, chicken, pork chops, bluegill or walleye.
To be honest, he says, he "wasn't heartbroken" over the closure, because it gave him a break. This, after all, is a "sideline" to his full-time business for 45 years as an excavator on public projects, including the bridge.
But business at Wyatt's Beef & Brew hasn't sprung back to its original numbers.
Stopping for a drink, one couple from South Bend's south side says they like to come for the fish fry. This is "off the beaten path" but not far, they add — and not a chain restaurant.
On Fridays and Saturdays only, Beaver serves a fish fry with pollock that's drenched in buttermilk and coated with his own breading, then deep-fried.
Other nights, seafood comes from frozen products, as do the fries, the jumbo breaded pork tenderloin and various appetizers.
Burgers are hand formed with a substantial 8½ to 9 ounces of ground chuck or sirloin, Beaver says, and adds: "I'm not willing to make them smaller. … You can get small at McDonald's."
The homemade chili has a tomato flavor and creamy texture. He tries to avoid making food too spicy, minding his elder customers, but even he was surprised by a slight kick after sampling last week's chili — perhaps from the diced chiles.
The pulled pork sandwich comes with tender chunks of pork in a slightly sweet sauce. Beaver says he starts with a whole pork butt that he seasons with a "hodgepodge" of peppers, garlic, onion powder, salt, sage, brown sugar and molasses. He roasts it in a low heat for 20 hours in a special roasting oven, then adds the barbecue sauce made with the pork juices, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and, well, he says, "Sometimes, it isn't always the same."
A hearty plate of chicken and noodles comes with chunks of chicken — from a whole chicken he boils in a stock with spices — plus thick noodles and sliced carrots, onion and celery.
As for a ghost, Beaver isn't advertising it, but a neighbor gave him a framed article from The Tribune, now hanging in the bar and linked to this story online. In 1999, correspondent Ann Jacobson wrote about then-owner Bruce Zitkus having heard some strange rattling noises inside, wondering if it was the spirit of Harry Love, who'd been brutally murdered outside of the Felton Saloon in 1915.
Beaver says his place was built in 1890 and started its life as a boot shop and evolved into a tavern. In the 1970s, it became Wyatt's Beef & Brew and had several owners until it closed for a year and Beaver bought it in late 2012.
When he launched into a six-month renovation, including new kitchen equipment, he recalls leaving for an hour or two, only to return and find the temperature had dropped. The furnace switch would flip off, though no one else had touched it. Also, he'd return to find the lights flicked back on.
"I don't necessarily believe in ghosts," he says, "but it's just odd."
Bartender Jerika Eskander, who started work in August, says she was in the bar one night when, through the doorway, she saw a shadowy figure pass by in the restaurant.
"Sometimes, I don't know if it's the ice machine," she says of odd noises, "or it's just in my mind."
• What: Family dining
• Where: 66714 Indiana 331, Wyatt
• Hours: 4 to 11 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 4 p.m. to close (as late as 3 a.m.) Thursdays through Saturdays
• Prices: $20-$3.25
• For more information: Call 574-633-2181 or find it on Facebook
Source: https://www.southbendtribune.com/entertainment/inthebend/food/taste-home-cooking-and-maybe-a-century-old-ghost-at-wyatt-s-beef-brew/article_5fdbf624-1d0f-11ea-95b8-4bc1c3fa41ba.html
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