The Schoolhouse Restaurant
Cuisine
Meal Periods
Dining Format
Phone
Cuisine
Meal Periods
Dining Format
Phone
EXPERIENCE
The old classroom at The Schoolhouse Restaurant has found a rather good second career. The blackboard now carries dinner choices, the big round tables have lazy Susans, and the lesson is how agreeable it can be to sit down together. In Camp Dennison, this former school serves a family-style supper built around individually ordered entrees and shared sides that can be replenished.
The Miller family opened the restaurant in 1962, preserving the schoolhouse’s windows, wooden floors and blackboard. Its round-table arrangement came from the family’s own dinner table, where a lazy Susan helped pass supper around. The setting has character because it had a life before becoming a restaurant, and the family has let that life show.
Everyone chooses a main course, while bowls of salad, coleslaw, potatoes and vegetables gather in the middle. The shared serving style encourages conversation without asking the table to agree on one entree. A fried-chicken devotee and a roast-beef loyalist can dine in perfect harmony, at least until the cornbread makes another turn. The unlimited part belongs to the sides; the meats are individual portions.
This is a meal to give some time to, especially with a family group. The general store and grounds add interest around the restaurant, and the dining room rewards a little looking up from the table. Old schoolhouse, chalkboard menu, passing bowls: the pleasures are wonderfully tangible. You don’t need a special occasion, though this is an easy place to make an ordinary dinner feel like a gathering.
FOOD
The Schoolhouse dinner comes with tossed salad, coleslaw, mashed potatoes and chicken gravy, country green beans, a daily vegetable and cornbread. These sides are served family style from the lazy Susan, with refills on the included sides. Everyone orders an individually portioned entree to go with the shared spread.
Tossed salad and creamy coleslaw arrive before the hot dishes. The salad comes with the family’s sweet French dressing, a recipe the restaurant attributes to their grandmother. It’s a distinctly personal introduction to supper, in a room whose round-table arrangement also grew out of the family’s own dinners together.
Mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, country green beans and a changing daily vegetable make up the hot sides. Freshly made sweet cornbread joins them on the table. The fixed potato-and-bean combination gives the dinner its familiar country character, while the daily vegetable provides a little variation.
Fried chicken is the signature main course: fresh chicken, hand breaded and fried, offered in different portion sizes with an all-white-meat option. Other individually portioned choices include roast beef with beef gravy, meatloaf, grilled pork chops and baked crumbed Icelandic cod. The meats and fish are not unlimited; the refillable part of dinner is the shared side spread.
Corn fritters and fried green tomatoes are separate appetizers, and desserts are separately ordered too. The menu lists blackberry cobbler, lemon pie and chocolate peanut butter pie. A pie decision may deserve a little advance planning once the cornbread reaches the table.
FOOD HIGHLIGHTS
♛ Family-Style Sides — shared bowls with refills, accompanying individually ordered entrees.
♛ Tossed Salad — served with the family’s sweet French dressing.
♛ Mashed Potatoes & Chicken Gravy — a central part of the included spread.
♛ Country Green Beans — paired with a changing daily vegetable.
♛ Sweet Cornbread — freshly made bread for the family-style dinner.
♛ Schoolhouse Fried Chicken — hand-breaded signature entree, individually portioned.
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