Hickory Bridge Farm Restaurant, Keystone Cuisine

Hickory Bridge Farm dates back to the late 1600s when the land was granted to the Declaration of Independence signer’s father, Charles Carroll, from the King of England. In the early 1960s, new owners Mr. and Mrs. Scott repurposed the barn into the farm-style restaurant it is today. The restaurant, decorated with farm-related antiques, provides menus catered to the season with different monthly selections but always includes house salad, spiced peaches, stewed apples, corn fritters, and vegetables. Learn more about our history on the video below (Created by PCN. Originally posted at pcnselect.com)

Transcript (original recording):
Hello, this is Mary Lynn Martin at Hickory Bridge Farm. I'd like to welcome you. We feature a restaurant as well as a bed and breakfast here. My parents bought Hickory Bridge Farm in 1977, but we started out in restaurant business in 1970. My parents purchased the Fairfield Inn in Fairfield, Pennsylvania. At that time it was a pretty rough bar and my parents wanted to restore an old building. They restored the building in seven years. A wonderful, wonderful experience.
 
But when they sold it they bought Hickory Bridge. Hickory Bridge is a charm. We are outside of Gettysburg by nine miles and we feature a wonderful family-style restaurant which is housed in a barn. Our barn is about 160 years old and then we also have a nice bed and breakfast which features jacuzzis for two, cable television as well as Wi-Fi and gas fireplaces.
 
We always begin our tour here at Hickory Bridge with some appetizers. We feature local products, of course apples, here in Adams County, and so we like to promote Musselman's applesauce, apple juices. We also serve Lucky Leaf products and we have some Mott's products on the shelf.
 
So we start out by serving apple juice when you come into the farm. We serve an appetizer with that. This time of the year we do a cheese spread serving cold apple juice, but in the wintertime we serve a delicious warm apple juice and our guests love our pepper jelly and cream cheese that we feature with that.
 
When you're seated, we serve a family style dinner at your own private table. We are a tablecloth restaurant. We make everything from scratch. So when you're seated, your family will enjoy a nice family style dinner and you may have as much as you like from appetizer to dessert.
 
It's extremely important to note that our restaurant is not open every day. We specialize in serving to groups and parties during the week. We do a lot of motor coaches that go to the Totem Pole Theater. And then we have other groups that come as clubs, retirement dinners, also reunions and things like that. We do very small weddings.
 
and we also do some special events. Our most popular events happens to be our tea parties. We have those twice a year for the spring and the fall season, and then we do a fun children's tea in the middle of July, and this year it will be Cinderella. So we always showcase something like that, and we also do murder mysteries, and our murder mysteries are also featured in the spring and in the fall, and our guests love coming for our full dinner, and then we have a murder mystery right along.
 
But our regular dinner hours, so if you want to come back with your family and your friends, it's extremely important to book a reservation. And we're open every Friday evening from 4 to 8 o'clock and Saturday from 4 to 8 o'clock as well. And then on Sunday, we midday dinner, and so we serve from 12 noon to 3. But our holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Easter in those days, we also feature a little bit longer extended hours on those Sundays.
 
Speaker
Thanksgiving happens to be our most popular day of the year. We sell out extremely quickly. Reservations are only accepted beginning on the 1st of October and we're always sold out within a two-hour frame.
 
We are in the dining room here at Hickory Bridge Farm and I wanted to explain a few things. Many of our guests enjoy walking across the uneven floor. This is the original barn floor. It is made of chestnut wood. The planks are about 14 to 16 inches wide and they're about 2 inches thick. And the big barn doors to this barn happen to be back toward my back.
 
And they would have the big doors there. They kept hay on this side. The animals were only on that side in this barn. Even though it's large, like many of the Pennsylvania barns across Pennsylvania, this was called a ground barn instead of a bank barn because it was built right on the ground. They also kept hay up above the stable area on the side to my left.
 
They put a fireplace in the dining room, of course, when they restored the barn. Many of our guests enjoy a quaint little table by the window by the fireplace, and it's often requested during the wintertime. I want to note that Hickory Bridge Farm is family style, but still it has a lot of fine touches, such as being a tablecloth restaurant. We use cloth napkins, and we have very nice china on the tables as well.
 
Our decor here at the restaurant involves my dad's lantern collection. He collected many, many lanterns, railroad lanterns, lanterns that were on trucks, all different types of lanterns are decored throughout the restaurant. The large lanterns that are here in this part of the restaurant happens to be from the streets of Biglerville. We also have a little train that runs throughout the one dining area here. It sits up high, and my dad painted the train car with Hickory Bridge Farm on it.
 
Right now we are in the lower dining room here at Hickory Bridge and it happens to be my favorite room. The lower dining room is the only area that kept the livestock.
 
But it is decorated beautifully with many, many kitchen-related antiques. We have numerous cherry cedars, apple peelers. We have a beautiful collection of blue agate and also some nice green enamelware. This old cook stove here happens to be a local piece. It belongs actually to the family up the road. Many guests like to reminisce about how their great-grandparents had one of these stoves in their farmhouse kitchen.
 
Something rather new at Hickory Bridge happens to be the offering of spirits and beverages from the bar. We keep it kind of low key. We feature local wines from Adams County and we also make a wonderful sangria depending on the season and we also make a nice rum punch. Many of our guests like to have this included especially when they have a banquet or a special party coming to the farm.
 
I would like to welcome you to the bed and breakfast at Hickory Bridge Farm. When our guests arrive, they normally come into the old kitchen. The old kitchen is the first room that they built in 1750. The house was built of mud bricks. They made them by hand, often in forms, and they laid the mud into the forms and dried them until they were ready to put into the home. The old part of the house here is all made of mud bricks. When my husband redid the bathroom, they were still in the walls right up to the attic.
 
This is called the farmhouse suite, the oldest part of the house, which is three bedrooms and two baths used as one unit, so your family could come and stay with us. We serve full breakfast here in the old farmhouse every day, but on Sunday morning, we spoil our guests. Breakfast is delivered to you, to your cottage or to your room in a nice basket featuring homemade sticky buns, muffins, fresh fruit and juice.
 
When our guests come to Hickory Bridge and they're here in the old kitchen, they always like to see the old fireplace. The fireplace is a walk-in fireplace where they often did a lot of their cooking, of course, and they also did some of their laundry. This particular fireplace does have a crane in it where many pots and things hung. But in the olden times, the families often did not have a beautiful collection as I have today. They were happy if they had one pot.
 
They also had a bake oven here which is out at the exterior part of the kitchen. The original bake oven was replaced by a new one and from time to time we do cook in the bake oven. We are now in the newer part of the old farmhouse. It was built in 1977 when my parents bought Hickory Bridge Farm. They lived in this part of the house for 25 years and then after they moved to Fairfield we went ahead and made the whole house into bed and breakfast.
 
Since the house is a newer construction, we were able to put in nice jacuzzis for two. All the rooms have king-sized beds and they have Wi-Fi and cable television here in the house. The house is decorated with antiques from our family as well as photographs that many of our guests enjoy seeing.
 
Right now we're on the back porch of the farmhouse. This is where we serve breakfast from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Many guests enjoy the peacefulness of hearing the creek, which is right here at the back of the house. And they also can see our covered bridge, which Hickory Bridge is actually named for. We have many hummingbirds that like to follow our feeder, and that's a lot of fun to see those in the morning as well.
 
Welcome to my garden. I'm very proud of my garden. We have a variety of vegetables here that we like to use on the table at the restaurant. I'd love to be a farm-to-table restaurant, but we serve too many guests. So our anniversary dinner is the first Sunday in August. We have live bluegrass music that we play while you have dinner. And then I'll be featuring cucumbers and onions from the garden, fresh zucchini, sliced tomatoes,
 
And of course we're going to have local peach desserts, which features our ice cream pie with a wonderful blueberry raspberry melba sauce.
 
This is another favorite spot of mine at Hickory Bridge Farm is our country store. We are very fortunate to own this collection that was owned by very good friends of mine who are kind of like second parents, Bill and Grace Newman. They had their display here at Hickory Bridge for about 20, 22 years and because of time they needed to give it up and we were very fortunate to be able to purchase it. Everyone loves to see the things of the past.
 
It's fascinating. Our boxes are filled with clothing. The medical items that we have are filled with products. Certainly wouldn't want to try it, but at least the shelves are filled with beautiful things. One of my favorite things happens to be the clothings. This is a lambkin baby hose that is featured here. It has, of course, the original box and a beautiful little inlay, and then the baby hose just can't be more adorable.
 
I would like to add that some of the products in this country's store are also given to us. We're very tickled to have a charge account from a local gas station. It goes back to 1924. It actually still has some of the original receipts in it. I don't even know if they've ever been paid. But whenever someone gives us something here at Hickory Bridge, I always take their name and address, just in case their family wants that piece to be back. I'm more than willing to give it back at no cost.
 
In addition to the antique collection here at the Country Store, we also have a very nice retail shop. Our guests can buy candles, some jewelry, and they actually can buy old-fashioned things such as penny candy. All the children and some of the adults certainly appreciate getting some old-fashioned candy.
 
I'm here with Mary Lynn Martin, owner of the Hickory Bridge Farm, Restaurant, and Bed and Breakfast in Ortana, Pennsylvania. How long has the restaurant and the business been in operation? Well, it's been a restaurant since the early 1960s. My parents bought it when it was almost completely out of business in 1977. So I am the second generation and my son Bert will be the third generation. And when did you guys start the farm and bed and breakfast part?
 
The farm, we always served at the restaurant. We actually served Wednesday through Sunday at that time. My mom had carried over from a restaurant called the Fairfield Inn in Fairfield, Pennsylvania. So her reputation came over.
 
And so we served Wednesday through Sunday, as I said, but the price of gas went over a dollar and that really hurt our business tremendously back in the early 80s. So we decided to close and just do banquets and parties. So that's how we got established, doing so many banquets and special events, which we do during the week. And then we are open every Friday night, Saturday night, and then we're also open Sunday midday, serving family style dinners.
 
So when did the farm start? The farm originally started in 1750. The room that we're seated in was the first room that they built, and they only lived in this room and the room above us. And the house is made of mud bricks, and they built the rest of the house shortly thereafter because the whole house is made of mud bricks, except for the portion that my parents built on in 1977.
 
So it goes back. It has a lot of good history to it. And when did you decide to open the bed and breakfast? The bed and breakfast, they had cabins here. People would bring their sleeping bags and they had restroom facilities in them and they were really, really rough. So the cottages are in the woods. We call them cottages, not cabins. They've been upgraded beautifully with double jacuzzis for two. And we also have gas fireplaces as well as
 
king-size beds in all the cottages now and so then the rest of the bed and breakfast was here in the old portion of the house and my parents lived in the newer part of the house
 
So they always had bed and breakfast here. My mom was probably the very first person to have bed and breakfast in Adams County when they owned the Fairfield Inn because she used the rooms at the Inn for bed and breakfast at that time, which would have been in the early 70s. We're very fortunate to be part of an association called the Select Registry, which is a fine organization of B&Bs and Inns that you need to be selected in. And I think that keeps our quality up to snuff.
 
And it's important to make sure that our rooms and everything is very clean, up to date, and offer the best hospitality as we can. So what is your favorite part of operating the restaurant and the bed and breakfast? It has a lot of self-satisfaction. We have guests that really appreciate us making traditions here. They bring their families here. They say it's always been part of their special occasions.
 
And I think that it's very gratifying to see people very happy with what we do and to have those traditions. And I think that that's my best part is the people that we have come here.
 
And another part is that I got a great staff. I mean, when you have staff that, you know, I've been their only employer after 32 years, as our head cook has been, or his sister who runs the front that has been here for over 30 years, and multiple people have been here for over 15 and 20 years, it makes it very satisfying that I have a great team, that we can offer good hospitality and a great product to our guests.
 
Can you talk about some of the traditions that you do here at the Hickory Bridge Farm? Some of our traditional things will be open on Thanksgiving. It's a day that our guests thoroughly love coming to the farm. It's our most popular holiday out of the year. We start taking those reservations for Thanksgiving on the first of October at nine o'clock and we're always sold out by 10:30.
 
So we are open for other holiday banquets and traditions as people come with their company parties and things like that. So the restaurant is very well known for people coming year after year. We have an insurance company in Gettysburg called CRS and they have come for the last 40 years at Hickory Bridge every Christmas.
 
So it's nice to see that people want to continue those traditions year after year by coming to Hickory Bridge. And where did the name come from? It was named Hickory Bridge Farm when we bought the place.
 
They had a little hickory bridge down behind the house. I don't know if that's what it was that the farm sits on the creek So there's a bridge just beyond the restaurant and it used to make a terrible amount of noise So I don't know if it had something to do with the noise or or what but it's always been hickory bridge farm the original owners actually owned a restaurant in Gettysburg called the Dutch cupboard and
 
and it's Martha Scott and she wanted to have a place that she could do hay rides and pony rides so she fixed up Hickory Bridge in that respect so she named it and I have no idea why but I would think that it was probably because of the Hickory the bridge up above us that was so noisy
 
How would you describe the food that you serve in your restaurant? Our food is just very down to home type food. We feature local products. I'd love to be farm to table, but that's not able to do that with the number of guests we have. So we like to promote local products. So we promote the fact that we serve a lot of apple products.
 
When our guests come in, we serve apple juice. In the summertime, of course, it's cold, but in the wintertime, our holiday parties love it because it's always served warm. And then we serve an appetizer with that. We serve apple butter on the table always. And then we serve stewed apples with the dinner. And guess what? Apple desserts. Our apple crisp is very well known at Hickory Bridge, served warm with vanilla ice cream.
 
So we like to promote a lot of the local products on the dinner table as well as family recipes. We're very well known for our crab imperial, which my mother featured years and years ago at the Fairfield Inn when we owned that. And people love having it. It complements two other entrees that we serve family style.
 
So when you're seated as a family, we would serve you three entrees. There's no selection. Everybody gets the same thing. And our house special happens to be our oven fried chicken, roast beef with dressing. It changes every week. So those menus are posted online or also in our newsletter. And we also have...
 
Special dietary need entrees that we feature for those who may be gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, all those things. We like to have a little notice so we have your dinner kind of thought about before you arrive.
 
What are the most popular items on your menu? Oh, our corn fritters are always popular and our oven fried chicken and our crab and pierro are our three entrees as well as our roast beef with dressing. People love our dressing. It's so simple. Our dressing is made just with real butter, of course, with celery and parsley and salt and pepper.
 
and no spices but people really enjoy that dressing as well. And what is your personal favorite dish? Oven fried chicken. Oven fried chicken right across the board. Doesn't matter we always have it. I always have to have a leg or a thigh before I leave and I tell you it's been 42 years and I still enjoy our chicken.
 
And now you also have a cookbook with recipes from your restaurant. What recipes are in there? All the recipes that we serve are in the cookbook but not our fried chicken and we don't let our guests, we call it in-house recipe of our crab imperial. That one's not also in there.
 
But I would say majority of all the recipes are in the cookbook and many of them were my mother's. We've gotten a good many from Southern Living. There's Cook's Country. That's another of my favorite cookbooks. So I read cookbooks all the time. So looking for new ideas continuously. But our small cookbook features all of our signature desserts such as our apple crisp, our dressing and things like that and the corn fritters, of course.
 
Now you mentioned that the menu changes every week. Why did you decide to do that? It's easy to plan the weekend menu. So it's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the same menu. So we can prep for the same menu for one weekend. So one weekend we might have...
 
Baked ham with a pineapple dressing in the oven, fried chicken in the crab imperial. Another weekend, it might be a boneless breast of chicken. It might be, you know, so it changes and that is online or our guests can receive a newsletter that has our special events in it, which are really nice because we do some special events here that people like to know about.
 
Talk a little bit about those special events and what you guys do throughout the year. Our special events, we do teas. We do a tea party in the spring and in the fall, and then we do a children's tea. We're going to do our July children's tea, but it is sold out. This year, it's going to be based around Cinderella, where in the past it's always been a butterfly theme, but we decided to change it a little bit. We also do murder mysteries in the spring and in the fall. They're very popular.
 
And one of our most popular events happens to be this August where we have our summer dinner in our open house where we have live bluegrass playing during your dinner hour. And then we feature things from the garden as much as I can. Or I'll go to friends' gardens and pick up more stuff. And then we have a wonderful ice cream pie we feature. And it's going to be, of course, our peach ice cream pie with a blueberry raspberry sauce and fresh peaches will be on it. And it's a highlight of the month.
 
How would you describe the atmosphere of the restaurant? Well, it's of course a big barn. Our atmosphere features tablecloths that are cloth and also cloth napkins. I try to do some fresh flowers within the dining room if I can.
 
But then it's because the antiques are just gorgeous. So we have a lot of antiques I'm real picky about cleanliness. Our restaurant is probably one of the cleanest ones you'll go to So we have a very very very comfortable feeling where people are going to want to come back Where is your favorite spot to sit and eat? Oh our favorite spot to eat and especially in the wintertime is right beside our fireplace it's called the fireplace in the corner by the window and
 
And we have guests that definitely request that. It's a two table, but people love that little table, especially when the fire is going. We do have a wood-burning fireplace in the restaurant, so a lot of people do enjoy that. But when it's windy, we can't light it because it will smoke like a chimney. So it makes it a little tough sometimes when the weather's not cooperating.
 
What impression do you want your guests to leave with when they leave the Hickory Bridge Farm? I want them to feel like they visited home, that they visited our family, that they're not just a customer, they are a guest. And I want them to feel that it is going to be a place that we hope to see that they're going to come back to or refer their friends to.
 
And what do you hope for the future for the restaurant, for the bed and breakfast, for the farm? I think I'm hoping that it's going to continue. My son does have a definite interest in what we're doing. I think that it's going to become a historic meal because people don't cook like this anymore, or few do, where they, you know, fix a complete meal that's homemade.
 
So I'm hoping that the future of the business will definitely keep the old flair to what we're doing and keep the importance of family togetherness and friends, whether family is friends or whatnot. I think it's important that we continue to get together and share our love and concern for each other and that this is going to be a special place to be able to do that. Mary Lynn Martin, thank you so much for talking with us. No problem. Thank you for having us. We are privileged.
 
Speaker
Okay, we're here in the kitchen at Hickory Bridge Farm, and I'd like to introduce Kelly Schaer. She's worked for us for eight years as one of our cooks. We feature a lot of local recipes as well as many, many family recipes. One of our signature recipes happens to be corn fritters.
 
Speaker
Above the Mason-Dixon, we make corn fritters. Below the Mason-Dixon line, they're known as hush puppies. Hush puppies are made with cornmeal, but here at Hickory Bridge, they're not made with cornmeal because they're called corn fritters. The first thing we do is we beat the egg, the milk, and the sugar, and the corn together, all the liquid ingredients as well as the salt. And after these are well blended, she will add the flour.
 
and she'll fold in the baking powder into the mixture. Baking powder happens to be known as one of the leavening agents that happens to go flat if you beat it too much. So you want to be careful that you don't beat the baking powder too much. Sometimes during the course of the year we also make apple fritters, but our corn fritters seem to be a bigger hit than the apple fritters are.
 
We feature a cookbook at Hickory Bridge and our cookbook also features our corn fritters as well as many of the recipes that we have here at Hickory Bridge. Though we do keep some in house, our oven fried chicken and our crab imperial recipes don't go in the cookbooks.
 
But we do have a pineapple dressing that we serve with our baked ham that is very, very popular. And our apple crisp is also super popular. It has a little coconut in it. But we do feature local apples with our apple crisp. And also we serve it warm, of course, with vanilla ice cream. After these are blended, then we go ahead and put them in the deep fryer for a little bit. It takes about five minutes to cook them in the deep fryer. And then, of course, you can't forget to put the garnish of powdered sugar on top.

You want to put some in the fryer there? Show you how they look. When we serve the apple fritters, we often put a little cinnamon in the sugar as well. Makes a really nice taste to the apple fritters. Many people want to buy our corn fritters, but it's one of those things like donuts. You've got to eat them after they're cooked or they don't last.
 
and here's a beautiful corn fritters that everybody enjoys with their dinner so it is served as a side with the main course of the dinner not a dessert