Just A Little Cruise Through The Clouds

Hop a freight, grab a star, swim or fly to get to this restaurant!

Or, there are other modes:






Not all as classy as this, I'm sure.

And if parking is tight, there's always that sweet spot by the back door!

Once, a little family climbed down out of a plane, the little kids still in their jammies, and they filed into the restaurant for breakfast.

However it is you get to the Auger Inn at Ogden Hinckley Airport,


it will not disappoint.


Nothing especially unusual about the fare, except it that tastes so dad-gum good, you can't get it out of your head for more than 30 years. My sister used to waitress here in the 70s and we went back the other day hoping that the hamburgers were as good as memory promised. You know, sometimes Memory lies and you have to watch out and her sister, Hope, can mess with your head, too, but this time they were right on.

How could that be, though? Most restaurant burgers look good, right? Even as good as this one looked. I wondered what specifically made my hamburger taste so good, but I didn't want to stop eating it long enough to ask my sister what she thought makes these things taste so good. I even had to comment on the crispy, sweet onions that seemed bigger than the beef patty without overpowering it.

Well, I don't know. It's a puzzle but somehow this food tastes like the past. Oh wait. I know what it is. NO KETCHUP. Who puts ketchup on their hamburgers, anyway?! (I think that was one of the biggest culture shocks my family went through when we moved into this state many long years ago. Forget about religious differences, these people couldn't keep from messing up a perfectly good hunk of meat by putting ketchup on it! I had a friend in high school who would take the Heinz jug out of her mother's refrigerator and haul it with us when we went to Hardee's for lunch. She didn't like their ketchup and ask for her burger plain so she could "fix" it when she got it.)

However, I must say, I had to try Auger Inn's ketchup on those fries, just for authenticity's sake, don't you know. Not bad, and I'm not a fan of ketchup--oh, you knew that did you? It was in a Chef Dave's from Texas bottle and the label was washed out and worn down, some. You can do what you will with that information.

And as we are at the fries, now, yeah, yum. Hot and crunchy on the outside, hotter and soft on the inside.




I asked owner Paul Cromwell, "Remember when Robert Redford came through here?"

He laughed and said he remembered it well. SLC was fogged in and Redford had to hole up in Ogden for a while. He asked Paul if he could hide out in his kitchen, because the runway out back was littered with all these commercial and news planes.

"That was a big mistake. All my girls just went crazy in that kitchen!"




My sister was one of his "girls." He changed her name. "That table's waiting for service over there, Suzy."

"My name's not Suzy."

"It is now."

Suzy

(Well, this was maybe a couple of years before Suzy worked with Paul.)

The restrooms haven't changed that much, either.

A Farr Better Beacon in the Cold Cold Night

Well. What do you think? Think it bears repeating?

OK, how's this?

And this?

Right. You get the picture.

But do you get the aroma?

They should call it Vanilla Waffle Warm. It has steamy little tendril-like fingers that waft up to your nose and pull you through the door.

Oh. Mmmmm...

I counted, oh I don't know--a gazillion deep? There are little heads in that crowd that you can't even see when you're in the store. And this was on a cold Utah winter's eve.

They're waiting for cherry chocolate chip, or moose tracks (with miniature peanut butter cups,) or some outlandishly chunky strawberry ice cream--if they can make up their minds, that is.

But what am I telling you for? If you live anywhere in the vicinity, you already know about Farr's--it's about like 80 years old or something.

You can buy allkynna sherbet, ice cream that looks like playdough, old fashioned Iron Port or retro Root Beer, creamy scoops dotted with little surprises and real teddy bears, too.

This place is mere steps from my front door, but that's all right because they have the best "no sugar added" vanilla ice cream and they pack it tough down into the little pint carton that I schlep home with, vowing to make it last longer than five minutes.

And I do. Because you know--a vow is a vow, after all.