Red's: A Best-Kept Secret for Nearly 50 Years
Drive along County Route 15 south of Sherman, NY, on a weekend during maple season and you will pass farmland and cows, along with some Amish farmhouses and maybe a few horse-drawn buggies, especially on Sunday. About three miles down the road you will come across a nondescript log cabin set near the road, recognizable by the number of cars parked beside the building and along both sides of the road. Smoke will be pouring from the chimney stack …
This is Red’s. Or, more formally, Red’s Best Pancake House. A local staple for 49 years, Red’s is known primarily by word-of-mouth. In fact, until an employee launched a Facebook page in 2014, you probably wouldn’t have found it online. Originally called Barney’s, the pancake house has been serving neighbors and friends since 1971 when Bill Barney built the cabin. He had been allowing customers who stopped to purchase maple syrup the use of a grill to make pancakes while they were visiting. The grill had been set up for workers in the sugar house located on the spot where the cabin now stands. Soon Bill’s daughter, and eventually his granddaughters, became involved in the operation. In 1999, Darl and Cathy Redlecki took over the operation.
On weekends from mid-February to mid-April (excluding Easter Sunday) and again in October, Red’s serves the same menu as Barney’s did at the start: all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes with butter and pure maple syrup (Red’s Best, of course), homemade pork sausage using an original blend of secret seasonings, applesauce, orange juice and coffee, tea or hot cocoa. That’s it.
“In the beginning,” says Darl, “there were about 50 to 75 customers on Sunday only.” Since then, other than updating some equipment and adding bathrooms, the only real change in the operation has been to add Saturday hours. Today, Red’s serves an average of 300 meals each weekend from 7:30am to 2pm (12:30pm in October). The maximum capacity is 85 at any one time. If you are in any kind of hurry, Darl’s advice is to arrive early.
“Our customers are like family,” says Cathy. “They come with hugs, excited for a new sugar season.” Diners come from all over the region from Fredonia, NY, to Edinboro, PA. Cathy explains that one regular customer drives 1½ hours from Titusville, PA, every Saturday morning during the season.
Darl spends the day between flipping pancakes, a finely tuned process he sometimes relinquishes to son Jeremy, and demonstrating the sugaring process to kids and adults in the entry room adjacent to the kitchen and dining area. It’s something he is passionate about. “My job is to educate children on how syrup is made,” he says. “Many kids think the syrup comes right from the tree.” It’s important to Darl to teach people how much work is involved. “It takes 40–60 gallons of sap to evaporate down to one gallon of syrup.”
Red’s pure maple syrup is made by boiling sap drawn from 10,000 taps on trees rented from nearby farms, annually producing between 2,000 and 3,500 gallons of syrup, depending on weather conditions and how many runs per tap happen each year. Darl collects the sap using the modern method of tubing. “Overall, it’s more ecofriendly,” says Darl. “It keeps the sap cleaner than traditional bucket taps and keeps a tractor and horses out of the woods so the soil is undisturbed.” According to Darl, the quality of the soil and its nutrients are important factors in the percentage of sugar in the sap and ultimately the taste and quality of the final product. Darl keeps the sap from the best runs, a little more than 50 percent of an annual yield, to make syrup sold under the Red’s Best label and served at the pancake house. The rest he sells to bulk packers.
A logger and a sawmill operator, Darl uses wood scraps from his logging operations to heat the evaporator and boil the sap. “We don’t use diesel fuel.” In addition to being an efficient part of the overall operation, Darl believes the variant heat from burning wood adds complexity to the taste of the syrup.
This season, Red’s will be open through April 19th and reopen for a month in October. You can find Red’s Best pure maple syrup at local, independent grocers like Necker’s Company in Clymer and Lighthouse Point Grocery in Mayville, as well as at a few area farm and produce stands, plus Wegmans stores in Jamestown, Blasdell and Erie. Along with pure maple syrup, Red’s sells maple sugar, maple candy and maple spread.
Red’s Best Pancake House: 2749 Clymer-Sherman Rd, Sherman, NY; 716-761-6020
