The Cherry Hut

I recently picked up Jane and Michael Stern's new book Two for the Road, which chronicles the Sterns' rise to fame as roadfood connoisseurs. As I was reading it last night I laughed out loud several times (often laughing so hard I started snorting, as my companion pointed out from across the living room). Anyway, I was delighted to see the Sterns give some props to one of my favorite northern Michigan haunts (Up North, to those in the know). Yes, they wrote about The Cherry Hut!

Here's what they had to say about the Cherry Hut in their chapter on reading menus:

Every menu, even the most intrinsically boring one, is valuable, at least as cultural anthropology. But some are sheer joy. What foodie can resist a smile at the menu of the Cherry Hut in Beulah, Michigan? It is perfectly round and red, to evoke the signature creation of the 1920's-era roadside snack shack, cherry pie. The broad Happy Face on its cover is the face of Cheery Jerry, the Cherry-Pie-Faced Boy.

(When the Cherry Hut opened, the pies were made with the boy's face etched into the top crust, the eyes and mouth serving as vents. But at some point early on it was decided that the runny pie filling made the pies look too much like the boy's orifices were hemorrhaging blood, so the face was abandoned in favor of normal slits.)