The Cozy Dog in Springfield, Illinois, is one of the iconic locations on Route 66, and is the first restaurant owned by the inventor of the Corn Dog.

As this place closes fairly late (by rural America standards), when I arrived in town first I went to the hotel and checked in, and then I came by here to check it out

From the sign its clear that this place USED to be a Drive-in, it’s not any more. At best, it has a small drive through window along the side but I didn’t see many people using it.

Since all the reviews I had read where going on and on about how this was the best corn dog they’d ever had, I had to try it. Based on the sheer speed it was handed to me, it was NOT made to order, although it was still warm and very crispy on the outside

Was it a good corn dog, sure… was it so much better than any other corn dog that I’ve ever had that I absolutely had to try it … no, not really.

The next day, since I was going to be staying in Springfield for a few nights, I went back to get daytime shots.  There must have been some sort of antique car club meeting there because the cars were so pretty

The Cozy dog was the first place I’ve seen so far to have TWO of these Illinois route 66 maps, The tall one, which is two sided — back is the bottom right image, was adjacent to the road, while the small one (upper right) was standing just by restaurant’s front door

The weather had gone from overcast and rainy the night before to clear blue skies and a windstorm… 20 mile per hour winds with 40 mile per hour gusts… and those gusts of were making it very difficult for me to set up my iPhone, walk away, and then use my apple watch’s camera app to trigger the shots before a gust blew the camera over.

 

The Maid Rite Sandwich Shop in Springfield, Illinois is located on one of the multiple  Route 66 that pass through this town…. There’s more than one, because of changes to the route over time. This restaurant is on the National Register of Historic Places and claims to have invented the concept of the drive-through-window, although that doesn’t quite jive with the corporate history of the chain as written up by wikipedia.

According to the guy who owns and runs this place, who I got to talk to, this is the restaurant that invented the idea of the drive-through window. It is in what was originally the caboose of a train where they took the wheels off.

The caboose was built in 1881, The building has been here since 1919 and it had a gas station in the front originally. It was registered as a business in 1924 which is when the tax system came into tax businesses. They’ve been selling loose meat sandwiches since 1919, and from the beginning the layout was as it is now, with sandwiches either being sold direct from the kitchen through the side window, or to customers at the bar. (Later, they expanded sideways and added more indoor seating.) Remember how on the Rosanne TV show, how her shop sold a loose meat sandwich… the Conners live in the mythical town of Lanford IL, which is supposed to be somewhere around here. This is the first place I have ever been to that had it. So of course I had to try it, it is not a sloppy Joe it’s different, they call it a sloppy Joe with no sauce. It was homemade pie, their maid-rite sandwich (loose meat), and homemade root beer which they still make.

Now that I’m not in the building anymore it was not very tasty. The root beer was VERY good, but the loose meat…. the primary flavor was salt with a second flavor underneath it that I could not quite identify… it was some sort of spice. The guy as a hint said the woman who invented it was originally from Hungary, and that no it was not paprika, but the taste was really familiar I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I timed it right because they were closing up just as I was getting ready to leave