A cornucopia of meat dishes will be on full display at Mrs. Yoder’s Fair Night Buffet
While usually filled with breakfast food or a mix of fine dining, the buffet at Mrs. Yoder’s Restaurant in Mt. Hope will feature a variety of dishes created from the restaurant’s Holmes County Junior Fair purchases. The buffet will feature beef, pork, goat, lamb, turkey, rabbit and more.
Gloria Yoder is a very familiar face at the annual Holmes County Fair. Yoder can be found perched on one of the benches in the main arena bidding furiously as a way for Mrs. Yoder’s Restaurant to support the area youth who participate in the Junior Fair livestock auction.
From the smaller animals like chickens and rabbits to turkey, goats, lambs, hogs and steer, Yoder runs the gamut as she purchases fair animals.
Those purchases are going to be part of a dinner smorgasbord on Wednesday, Sept. 19 when Mrs. Yoder’s offers its annual Fair Night Buffet, an evening in which the buffet in the Mt. Hope restaurant will feature a meat selection from the variety of animals purchased at the fair.
“Our buffet will basically feature all of the types of meats available from the fair, and people can take as much or as little as they want,” Yoder said. “The buffet is nice because for people who have never tried rabbit or goat meat, they can get a little taste and try it out.”
Yoder said the restaurant staff continually tries to come up with some unique and tasty ways to showcase the different meats. One year they did pickled beef hearts, which turned out to be a huge hit.
They have pan-fried rabbit and barbecued rabbit, barbecued sausage, ham loaf bites, and many other interesting ways to create meat dishes for the event.
“We try to mix it up and create a lot of different dishes for people to try,” Yoder said. “One of the dishes will be chicken enchilada for something outside of the basic fried or broasted chicken people are used to around here.”
Over the years Mrs. Yoder’s has been doing this event, they have seen hundreds of people come in to try it out. Many of them have become regulars. The kitchen cooks have been doing this long enough that they are used to creating unique dishes, and they have extra help come in to do the barbecuing.
“Our staff has really gotten good at understanding how to prepare each meat, and most of them have been doing this for quite some time, so they do create some really interesting and tasty dishes for people to try,” Yoder said.
While it is a meat lover’s paradise, Yoder said it is more than just an all-meat buffet. “We do throw some vegetables and desserts in there too, although there is even some meat in those dishes,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll have green beans with ham, twice-mashed potatoes with bacon and other vegetable dishes.”
Mrs. Yoder’s has made this a two-night event, the first night having taken place Sept. 12. It is a highly anticipated event for many meat lovers, but the end result comes from the Yoders’ desire to play a role in supporting the Holmes County youth who invest their time and effort into raising their fair animals.
“We have always felt that it was extremely important to show our support to the many young people who invest a lot of time and energy into doing such a great job in raising their animals,” Yoder said.