Nostalgic neighborhood diner lives on
TAYLORVILLE, Ill. — Look back in hunger.
Bill’s Toasty Shop lives while so many other neighborhood diners have died, their plates cleaned long ago by corporate chain rivals where bland predictability replaces individual quirkiness. But this little diner that could remains persistently in place, still sizzling just off the square in Taylorville at 111 N. Main St.
Driving past other modern stores to get to it feels kind of like flicking TV channels and suddenly finding an episode of “Happy Days” or “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” airing right next to “America’s Got Talent.”
Who would expect that?
The place itself is tiny, holding maybe 20 diners if you used some sort of violent compression to get them in there. The restaurant’s eating area is 21 feet long and 12 feet wide. Owner Candy Scallions and the 10-strong shift team who work for her think their Taylorville food icon dates to 1937. A check of the Herald & Review’s extensive library suggests it actually started frying in 1932, when America was depressed and awaited the newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to serve them a New Deal.
Scallions said Bill’s Toasty Shop has kept on serving because it offers people great fried and grilled food, unwaveringly. No concession to health worries, fad diets or the latest depressing nutrition recommendations from the American Medical Association. You name it, they can deep-fry it, from pickles to zucchini and even cauliflower.
“It’s cauliflower with cheese and it’s breaded,” explains Michelle Sprinkle, a former truck driver who cooks on the night shift. “Our broccoli cheese bites are really good, too.”
They all make for good sides, along with fries, for one of the house special triple cheeseburgers that you can have loaded with onions, tomato, pickle, lettuce and a rather potent mayonnaise spiked with jalapeno.
“The secret to a good burger? Slap it on the grill and smash it,” says Sprinkle. Patrons can watch from just across the counter as she does the honors in front of them in a swirl of smoke and steam. Some amply lubricated diners, however, have issues with concentration.
The reason is that Bill’s Toasty Shop is open 24/7 (it’s closed Christmas and Thanksgiving during the day and evening but is back frying by 10 p.m.) and the clientele also includes those who weave in from local watering holes at midnight or 3 a.m.
The cooks occasionally find the odd drunk asleep on the freezer after a failed attempt to navigate to the restroom, but generally customers behave themselves. Generally. “Weekends and midnight, you never know what is going to happen,” says Sheena Donoho, another Toasty’s worker. “But it’s a blast; you’ve really go to experience it yourself.”
Her boss, Scallions, picked up a lot of experience watching her late mother, Patty, and her now 86-year-old father, Calvin, deftly handle the reins for some 30 years. She says her dad, who ate in there when he was a boy, always loved the place and had set his heart on owning it when he got ready to buy in 1980.
“There had been something going on between him and the owner at that time, and he wouldn’t sell it to him,” she recalls. “So my dad went to the owner of the building the business is in and he just bought the whole building, all the way down to the corner. It wasn’t long after that my dad took this place over and ran it with my mom. You mustn’t forget her; she was the backbone, too.”
Their daughter is fully aware of the historic legacy now in her trust and says the fame of the place continues to spread faster than a grease stain. “Charley Pride and Boxcar Willie have all been in here,” she says. “People come from all over because they love the food, and they know it’s just the same kind of food you got back in the day.”
First-time diners, locally known as “Toasty’s virgins,” can commemorate their visit with coveted souvenir T-shirts, which are now washing up as far away as the wilds of the Alaskan crab fishing grounds. “I was just sitting there a few months ago watching that `Deadliest Catch’ TV show,” recalls Charlie Butler, another member of the diner’s crew. “And one of the cameramen had on a Bill’s Toasty T-shirt.”