A Comfort-Food Lunch and Pie Stop at Mrs. Wick's

A plate of biscuits and sausage gravy can lead, quite reasonably, to a whole black raspberry pie in the car. That is the pleasant logic of a stop at Mrs. Wick's, the small-town Indiana diner and pie shop where breakfast and lunch have a way of turning into dessert shopping.

The room is compact, casual and comfortably unpretentious. Local regulars and passing travelers share the tables, greetings move around the dining room, and the mood is more communal than hurried. On a busy day, there is some diner bustle in the background, with staff keeping things moving together.

Come for a straightforward meal, but leave enough time to look over the pie selection. A slice after lunch is an easy choice; a whole pie, a frozen pie, or a pie to bake later makes the stop useful long after the meal is over.

Breakfast stays close to the classics. Sausage gravy with biscuits is one of the familiar orders, suited to anyone who thinks a morning meal ought to be warm, filling and served without ceremony.

The appeal here is not an elaborate brunch production. It is traditional diner fare in a place that understands the value of a dependable breakfast before a day on the road, a morning errand, or an unhurried visit with family.

At lunch, the hand-breaded tenderloin is one of the dependable savory standouts. It is the sort of Indiana diner order that needs little introduction, though its hand-breaded treatment gives it more character than a standard sandwich stop.

The menu also moves through the hearty middle of the comfort-food map: baker's stew, ham and beans, chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese with bacon, and daily specials. These are meals built for appetite rather than novelty.

A bowl of ham and beans can arrive with a corn muffin; handmade chicken noodles make a particularly sensible choice on a soup day. Fried potatoes, coleslaw and sidewinder potatoes served with ribs add more of the familiar, satisfying side-dish territory that a diner meal should cover.

Daily soups during the week give repeat visitors a reason to look beyond a usual order. The format also works neatly for mixed groups: someone can settle into a tenderloin while another goes for soup, a breakfast plate, or a grilled cheese with bacon.

Mrs. Wick's is especially tied to sugar cream pie, Indiana's official state pie. The filling is thick and rich without tipping too far into sugary heaviness, and the pastry crust gets its own share of attention rather than functioning as a mere container.

Sugar cream pie has a plainspoken name, but it is not a plain dessert. Its appeal is in that soft, creamy filling and a good crust, the kind of old-fashioned pie combination that needs no decorative extras to make its point.

A slice is the natural finish to a lunch, especially if the table has been working through stew, tenderloin or beans. Still, this is a place where dessert can be a separate mission altogether.

The pie display offers enough variety to slow down a decision. Alongside sugar cream, named flavors have included chocolate peanut butter, butterscotch, black raspberry, rhubarb, strawberry-rhubarb and blueberry.

Black raspberry has enough pull to inspire a dedicated trip for a whole pie. Strawberry-rhubarb brings its own sweet-tart appeal, with the crust again doing important work beneath the filling.

Summer brings particular attention to strawberry pies and cream pies. Flavors and seasonal choices change, so the case is worth browsing rather than treating as a fixed list.

For a diner with an appetite for more than one dessert, the counter makes that easy. It is common for a meal to end with a few whole pies selected for home, because one pie can seem unnecessarily restrained once the choices are in front of you.

Mrs. Wick's handles pie in several useful forms. Buy a slice for the table, take home a whole pie, or choose frozen and bake-at-home options for another day. That makes the shop especially handy on a day trip, when dessert can travel farther than lunch.

The frozen choices are a nice practical wrinkle. They let a visitor carry home a pie without having to schedule the rest of the day around serving it immediately.

The pie area remains available for purchases after the dining room closes at 2 p.m. Dining runs on a breakfast-and-lunch schedule, but the pie counter gives the visit a little more flexibility.

This is a casual place, not a formal dining room, and its friendliness is part of the appeal. Service is attentive and personable, particularly when the room gets busy, and a meal can include a little local conversation along with the food. Staff have even shared bits of local history with diners.

The setting accommodates a solo traveler just as easily as a family table. Some people build a day trip around the stop; others know it simply as their local place for breakfast, lunch and a pie for later.

There is a free lot with ample parking, another small convenience that fits the place's easygoing character. Park, have the tenderloin or a bowl of chicken noodles, and do not be surprised if the last item on the agenda is deciding how many pies are sensible to bring home.