Peg's Countryside Cafe, Medina

Ask Peggy Rasmussen how many meals she's served from her kitchen at Peg’s Countryside Cafe, and she'll wager around three million. That's roughly one million meals for every decade the cozy, 55-seat café has been in business. Try breaking that figure down into orders of buttermilk pancakes, corned-beef eggs benedict, and cinnamon-roll french toast, and you'll likely work up an appetite. Which is great, since you can simply eat your way into the lunch rush, when Peg's cooks get busy making hand-breaded tilapia sandwiches, grilled reubens, tuna melts, and a rotating selection of from-scratch soups and pies.

If you happen to meet Peg between bites of pork schnitzel sandwich, don't be surprised if her face triggers a flash of recognition or a hankering for brownie batter. In 1996, she was one of 75 women chosen by General Mills to form a composite image of the new Betty Crocker. Look around the dining room, and you might find the finished image hanging on the wall alongside photos of thousands of Peg's Countryside Cafe's regulars taken throughout the years.