Big portions for hearty eaters at the Turn-er Inn

Edwardsville — There’s a little restaurant and bar on the road between Morristown and Edwardsville just around the corner from Black Lake, a popular fishing and camping spot in the summertime.

It’s called the Turn-er Inn, and it’s been owned and operated by the Turner family for nearly 38 years. It’s a plain brown concrete block building that sits in the middle of a field at the side of the road. According to the menu, it’s known for “sturdy drinks, good food, big portions and good times.”

The slogan is “Big is Better.”

We arrived around 7 o’clock on a Monday evening. Remnants of a happy-hour crowd were still having a good time at the bar, a little loud, in part due to the concrete floor, paneled walls and knotty pine ceiling.

We seated ourselves at a booth and began looking over the menu, one of those glossy-paper folded jobs stuck between the salt and pepper shakers. You know — the ones with all the advertising in them — ads for the local marina, the local insurance guy and the local grocery store that sells worms and lures.

It must have gotten a lot of use over the wintertime, because it had come apart at one of the folds. Not a problem. We just pieced it back together on the table, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.

If you like deep-fried food, you hit the jackpot. There are deep-fried mozzarella sticks, deep-fried cauliflower, deep-fried clam strips, deep-fried mushrooms, deep-fried chicken fingers, deep-fried chicken wings and deep-fried onion rings.

Looking for something more substantial? There’s deep-fried shrimp, deep-fried haddock, deep-fried chicken patties and deep-fried Southern fried-chicken dinners.

You can get chicken fingers three different ways: deep-fried with one of their savory sauces, deep-fried and dipped in chicken wing sauce, or deep-fried and dipped in chicken wing sauce, then smothered with cheese, chopped onion and tomato.

Care for fries with your fried food? There are small fries, steak fries, shoestring fries or sweet potato fries, all deep-fried.

We got started with some sturdy drinks. For beer, there’s no bottled Heineken or Sam Adams, but there is Bud, Coors or Genny, some on tap. Oh, and Miller in a can.

And a good selection of liquor, including my favorite and the favorite of NASCAR fans everywhere, Crown Royal.

Time to order some good food.

There’s one deep-fried appetizer on the menu that seems to be available only at special places. It’s called chicken cordon blue balls ($5.95).

I didn’t make that up.

Five little chicken balls are breaded and deep-fried with ham and Swiss cheese inside.

The breading was good, but the inside tasted like watery ham with tasteless cheese and chicken.

It was served with habanero berry zing sauce that was neither zingy nor habanero-y and didn’t seem to pair at all with the balls. Might taste good on toast, though.

To show off the skills of the kitchen, we ordered the loaded nachos ($9.95). There’s a reason it costs 10 bucks: “It’s enough to share or a meal in itself.” So says the menu.

A huge plateful of tri-colored slightly stale chips arrived, intermingled with cheddar and Jack cheeses, sliced black olives and heatless jalapeños, blobs of real sour cream and salsa from a jar.

The menu touted one of the ingredients to be their “award winning homemade chili.”

I hope that wasn’t what we got. It tasted more like seasoned Taco Bell boil-a-bag ground beef, but without the seasoning.

Wings are wings, but here’s a new twist: Dinosaur wings ($9.75), a dozen wings deep-fried and dipped in “sensuous slathering sauce” from the famous barbecue joint in Syracuse, giving great flavor to the wings.

We considered ordering a pizza until we realized that our bartender, who was also our waitress, was also doing the cooking. And several tables had filled up after we arrived, people with thirsty looks in their eyes.

So we opted for something easier — a pulled-pork sandwich ($8.25), also served with Dinosaur sauce. The pork was nothing special, a little bland, no doubt something from one of their food suppliers. The sauce did help to kick it up a bit.

The coleslaw and baked beans were supposed to come with it. The beans made it; the coleslaw showed up as cottage cheese.

A non-deep-fried option was a burger.

Their standard burger weighs three-quarters of a pound. If you’re looking for something a little bigger, there’s the “Paul burger.” It weighs in at 2 pounds, it’s covered with American cheese and takes 45 minutes to cook.

I wonder if Paul is still with us?

We decided something a little different — a bison burger. “Our locals’ favorite,” according to the menu.

Unfortunately, the acting cook couldn’t find it anywhere in the freezer, so we got the “black and blue burger” ($7), “grilled and smothered with melted blue cheese crumbles and topped with sautéed onions.”

In relation to the good-sized burger, the blue cheese on top seemed a little skimpy.

And the sautéed onions never appeared.

They say they slow-cook their burgers in cast-iron pans. I really don’t understand the advantage. The purpose of a cast-iron pan is to cook at a high temperature to sear the meat, isn’t it?

Whatever; the gray-looking meat came out medium-well, although still juicy (probably fatty ground beef to begin with) and sorely needed salt and pepper.

It was served on a standard soft hamburger bun like you’d get in a 69-cent bag of buns at the P&C, pretty soggy if you wanted to pick it up in your hands, so we ended up eating it with a fork.

One of the only homemade items on the menu appeared to be a tempting meatball sub, “Our family’s homemade meatballs with our house marinara covered with mozzarella cheese on a roll.”

Unfortunately, they’re taking it off the menu. Our waitress friend told us it just wasn’t that popular. Surprise, surprise.

Instead, we ordered the equally tantalizing chicken pesto sandwich ($7.29).

We’re pretty sure she made a chicken Parmesan sandwich by mistake, but we weren’t about to complain at that point. The poor gal was working her tail off, the only employee in the place.

It was quite good — a deep-fried chicken patty with good marinara sauce and melted mozzarella on a hoagie roll.

Dessert wasn’t offered, and we didn’t ask.

Cost for the food was $52. A round of drinks added $13 to the tab. They do not accept credit cards.

Our server, Nancy, deserves extra credit for working the place by herself without complaining or making excuses or getting frazzled. Maybe her boss will give her a raise. Or get her some help.

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Turn-er Inn
Route 58
Edwardsville
375-4020
www.turnerinn.com

A pub-grub menu, primarily deep-fried food along with pizzas and burgers.

HOURS: Menu available from 11 a.m. to midnight seven days a week.

Orders after midnight are at the discretion of the bartender

RATING: 2/5 FORKS