Best Breakfast Shoe  – Lindsay’s Restaurant

Best Desert Shoe  – Amber Jack Alehouse

Crazy Horse Shoe – Lindsay’s Restaurant

Best Classic Shoe  – D’Arcy’s Pint

Best Overall Shoe  – Lindsay’s Restaurant

I made it out to the event with my family but by the time we arrived (5 pm) there were no shoes left to eat and the restaurant tents were gone or leaving so I don’t have nearly the report I was hoping to have.

http://www.springfieldpccc.com/event.php?id=194

I opted for a buffalo chicken horseshoe.  It was served with a side of bleu cheese dressing.   The fries are always good at Sammy’s and the cheese sauce was a tangy yellow sauce.  It was a good horseshoe but I was actually disappointed in the buffalo chicken.  While it had a good flavor, instead of the standard homemade breaded chicken breast, they served 2 seemingly premade frozen chicken strips. 

The horseshoe was good and I’m certainly going to try another one sometime soon but I’d call this trip a mixed bag.

I went with a classic, a ham ponyshoe.  It was thin slices of fried ham server on a piece of toast.  The fries were crinkle cut and average.  The sauce was a white cheese sauce which leaned towards a cheese gravy similar to Westwoods but actually a little better.

Two friends had ribeye pony’s which they topped with A1

and a hamburger horseshoe was devoured as well. 

All in all if you have cash and can find it Delaney’s was a good place to get a shoe.

The fried pork tenderloin shoe is really their specialty but I opted for a Buffalo chicken instead.

A funny thing about running this website is that my friends and I have eaten so many shoes since we started that we are really starting to get picky.  The cheese sauce at Sportsman’s was average.  It really tasted a lot like yellow american cheese and milk.  It was creamy and well executed but nothing special.  The portion size was very generous with the horseshoe including two breaded chicken breasts.  There were a lot of very good crisp steak fries as well.

You really just get a  good yellow american flavor from their sauce.  Ritz’s does everything right, all the parts are fresh and piping hot to your table.  I really think that the french fries at Ritz’s are extraordinarily good, perhaps the freshest in town.  You can tell your shoe hasn’t sat under a heat lamp long because they are as crispy under the cheese as the might be if they were just server on the side. 

A friend who was along ordered an egg horseshoe. 

In place of meat, his shoe had an egg over-easy.  While Ritz’s has a pretty big breakfast horseshoe menu, he had his with cheese and fries.  He said it was pretty good but I didn’t try it.

D’Arcy’s is so busy on a typical day that they regularly issue pagers to waiting patrons at lunch

Fortunately for us, a friend got there ahead of us.

Here is the horseshoe section of their menu

The Horseshoe section of the menu at D'Arcy's Pint in Springfield, Illinois.

Here is their specialty, a buffalo chicken ponyshoe.  Notice that it comes with a cup of buffalo sauce and a cup of bleu cheese dressing.

Here is a Buffalo Chicken Ponyshoe fresh from the kitchen at D'Arcy's Pint.

And for some unknown reason, a tablemate didn’t order the buffalo chicken and instead ordered a hamburger horseshoe.

A Hamburger Horseshoe with white cheese sauce from D'Arcy's Pint in Springfield, Illinois.

I always pour the buffalo sauce all over my shoe before starting.

And the finished product

Here it is

2 T butter
2 T all-purpose flour
1/4 t salt
1/8 t white pepper
1 c milk
1 C white cheddar cheese, shredded

In a medium saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux.  Stir in milk, salt, and pepper.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until sauce thickens.  Add cheese and cook just until melted, stirring occasionally.