By Veni Fields
For fans of flaky crusts and an abundance of filling across Indiana, the Hoosier Pie Trail beckons. Indiana Foodways Alliance, a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to the celebration, promotion, and preservation of the authentic food culture of Indiana, has compiled a list of 36 stops throughout the state.
What’s your pleasure? Crispy, nutty, fruity, or velvety smooth? Seasonal, traditional, historical? The list includes diners, restaurants, candy stores, and even a brewery offering anything your palate might desire. Below, we highlight three stops that might tempt your appetite for travel and gastronomic adventure.
MRS. WICK’S RESTAURANT & PIE SHOP
100 Cherry St., Winchester
wickspies.com | 765-584-7437
With 1940s beginnings as humble as the sugar cream pie believed to have been brought to the state in the mid-1800s by the Shaker community, Mrs. Wick’s Restaurant & Pie Shop has turned Indiana’s sweet trademark into a culinary empire, staking its claim as “the largest sugar cream pie manufacturer in the world.”
Still a Wickersham family enterprise with a restaurant and retail outlet at their full-service bakery on Cherry Street, Wick’s Pies include chicken, turkey, and beef, and dozens of dessert pies diners may eat in or have shipped. Just a sampling includes all the standards you would expect, along with peanut butter, gooseberry, German chocolate, and an award-winning cherry-berry mix.
DAS DUTCHMAN ESSENHAUS
240 U.S. 20, Middlebury
essenhaus.com | 574-825-9471
Opened in 1971 by Bob and Sue Miller as an Amish-style restaurant, Das Dutchman Essenhaus has grown to include an inn, conference center, and a bakery that landed the business on the Hoosier Pie Trail. In addition to pastries, bread, cookies, cakes, and muffins, the establishment’s pie menu offers about three dozen seasonal selections and several sugar-free options. The list includes shoofly, praline pecan cream, chocolate peanut butter banana, butterscotch, and their top two bestsellers, red raspberry cream and Dutch apple.
STORIE’S RESTAURANT
109 E. Main St., Greensburg
facebook.com/storiesrestaurant | 812-663-9948
In the small town made famous for the tree growing from the top of its courthouse tower, Tony and Gega Sharp purchased Storie’s Restaurant in 2021, complete with the family recipes served there since its opening by the Storie family in 1977.
On the menu is the tale of the “tower tree,” as well as Storie’s comfort food staples, like its tenderloin sandwich, homemade meatloaf, and fried chicken. The restaurant’s dessert menu consists of an assortment of pies, including the traditional sugar cream and Reese’s pie, with an Oreo cookie crust, peanut butter, and melted chocolate topping. Whether fruit, cream, baked, or meringue, all the pies are made fresh in-store, sold whole or by the slice. About 150 pies are sold per week, with Sunday’s leftovers sold at a discount.
Veni Fields is a journalist and freelance writer from Virginia Beach.
To see all the Hoosier Pie Trail stops and to plan other culinary adventures with Indiana Foodways Alliances’ 20 other food trails, go to indianafoodways.com/trails.
