A Cartwright Family Tradition: Maple Syrup and Buckwheat Pancakes

Ronald and Virginia Cartwright were dairy farmers, but they also became wildly successful owners of The Maple Tree Inn in rural Angelica, Allegany County

By John Addyman

 

Ronald Cartwright walked into the Saturday dance at Dunda High School on a cold January night. A young lad from a dairy farm family, he had an air of promise about him.

“When I first saw him walking in the gym door, I said to my girlfriend, That’s the man I’m going to marry,’” the now-Virginia Cartwright said.

“My friend asked, ‘How the hell do you do that?’”

It didn’t take long for Ronald to notice Virginia.

“He asked me to dance,” she said, her heart taking her back to the minute. “I couldn’t even answer him. I just got up and we danced. Then he took me home. Then he came to see me after that and that’s the way it went.”

They were engaged in March.

Married in May.

“He was a hard-working man,” she said. “He worked all the time. He made this farm possible at that time. I worked out in the field with him and in the barn, haying, cleaning stables. We also hired help and I had to feed them as well.

“I only had him for 55 years. He was a very gentle man, very giving. He had an eighth-grade education, but he’d read everything he could get his hands on. He was the justice of the peace in the town of Allen for 19 years and never took a cent. He married people right here in the house. He remarried my parents for their 60th anniversary.”

Virginia, 95, lost Ronald 21 years ago. She gave him six children, born in eight years.

“He wanted more children,” Virginia said, tilting her head disapprovingly. “I said, ‘No.’ I was very blessed with him. I miss him every day.”

Ronald and Virginia Cartwright were dairy farmers, but they also became incredibly successful restauranteurs in rural Angelica, Allegany County.

They built the Maple Tree Inn where, nine weeks a year, you can enjoy handmade buckwheat pancakes with fresh locally tapped and processed maple syrup.

If you’ve ever driven to Angelica, you’re struck with how empty the Empire State is.

And if you stopped and asked anyone you encounter, they know the Maple Tree Inn, they know how good the fare is and they know the Cartwright family. Virginia has 19 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.

From Feb. 3 to April 4 this winter, nine weeks, the Maple Tree Inn will serve about 500 people a day during the week and 1,000 to 1,500 pancake-and-syrup lovers on the weekend. The whole family gets involved in the operation. People have brought their kids and grandkids to the inn, starting relationships with the Cartwrights that are more than a generation old.

Stand in line to get in and you’ll meet people from all over New York along with visitors from Germany, Ohio, Japan, Connecticut, Georgia, North and South Carolina. “We had two stewardesses hop a plane in Los Angeles, come here, eat and fly back to California,” Virginia remembered.

Yes, the food, the atmosphere and the experience are a significant draw.

 

Long Journey

It took a catastrophe and Ronald’s genius to make it all happen.

Back in the 1960s, the Cartwrights were working hard to make their dairy and maple syrup businesses successful.

Then the bottom dropped out.

“Our sugar house burned in 1962,” Virginia explained. “So, my husband decided if we built a place where people could buy syrup in smaller containers, we’d do more business. We had been selling it in barrels and weren’t getting very much money for it. He thought if we put syrup in smaller containers, people could come in and taste the syrup, then they would buy it and we would make more money than selling it in bulk. That’s how the Maple Tree Inn was formed.”

Ronald and his brother, Clarence, built the inn in 1963.

“We thought if people would taste it on pancakes, they’d buy the syrup,” she said.

Just before opening day, Ronald had a surprise for his beloved.

“He informed me that he was going to put the grill right in front of the counter so people could watch me make all the pancakes,” Virginia said. “I about died. I had never cooked for the public before.”

The inn’s first dining room consisted of 15 seats at the counter, two booths and a small table, room for 27 people.

“I wasn’t happy,” she grumbled. But she went along with it. When they opened, “on the first day, the first customer who came in was a neighbor. He looks around at everything that Clarence and Ronald had done and said, ‘I can’t believe this. I thought I was going to come in and sit on a stump and you’d hand me a paper plate.’ He couldn’t believe I was cooking and that everybody was watching me. I had a lot of conversations with people who were watching me and those people came back and told other people.

Soon the Maple Tree Inn was established.”

Well not that soon.

“Those first few days, you could have gone out and stopped cars to get someone to talk to,” she said. But by the third year the place was getting packed by pancake-and-syrup lovers.

Ronald went into action again, doubled the building footprint to increase the original seating. A couple of years went by and he did it again. In 1980 he added a room that could accommodate 60 people. In 1993, another room was added that sat 69. The Maple Tree Inn can now handle 200 guests.

Virginia stopped cooking in 1985, handing the job to daughter, Amanda Amidon. Son LaVergne took over making the maple candies and spreads. Grandson Will is the syrup-maker. Virginia became the hostess and Maple Tree Inn ambassador.

“I went around to all the tables and made sure everything was all right,” she said.

Diners who visit the inn are treated to buckwheat pancakes made from a recipe developed by great-grandmother Cartwright, who fed those pancakes to Ronald as he grew up.

Given her age, Virginia gets to the inn less and less, but the lure is there.

“I have so many friends,” she said, smiling. “Most of them I can’t put a name to but I recognize them. We have customers who grew up with me, who came here as little kids, they’re bringing their grandchildren now.”

She believes what the Cartwright family has worked so hard to create is what built and maintains the popularity.

“I think it’s the atmosphere. We try to have a family atmosphere,” she said. “The pancakes and syrup, first and foremost, are our success, you can’t get those anywhere else.”

“People come just to stand in that line and visit with other people, no matter how cold it is. We have no cell phone service in there, so people have to talk to one another. We see the Amish come in and eat, a person in a business suit or a dress and heels. And kids. We love them all, we don’t care where they come from. We have lifelong friends and employees whom we’ve met here. It’s an opportunity we never would have had if Dad didn’t hadn’t come up with this plan,” said Rhonda Amidon, Virginia’s Cartright’s youngest daughter.

Virginia is firm about something else: “We totally tear the place apart and clean it end to end before we open up. We’re fanatic about it. Trust me, this place is clean. Customers can see everything. Most of these restaurants, the kitchen is clear in the back so you don’t know what’s going on. I’m bound and determined that my bathrooms are clean. I don’t want them to look like some of these other places.”

This is a place to be enjoyed.

If you sit next to a window in the Maple Tree Inn and look outside, you’ll see the forest and the fields where your breakfast came from, handed to you by people who care very much that you’re fulfilled.

 

When to Go

The Maple Tree Inn is located at 4321 County Road 15A, Angelica, New York.

Phone: 585-567-8181

Open from Feb. 3 to April 4, Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

An order of all-you-can eat pancakes plus ham is $12.10; same price with eggs or sausage.

The Maple Tree Inn accepts cash and checks — no credit cards. There is an ATM on site. The pancakes are not gluten-free. The inn does have gluten-free rolls for burgers.

 

National Exposure

The Maple Tree Inn in rural Angelica, New York, got national attention about a year ago when it was featured on the segment “The Dish” on CBS Mornings, hosted by Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson.

“The ‘Dish’ takes a journey to a cherished destination that’s much more than a pancake house — it’s a legacy,” read the show’s promo. “Nestled in the remote reaches of Western New York, more than an hour from Rochester, Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn has been delighting palates and hearts for four generations, despite being open for only nine weeks each year.”

The CBS segment can be viewed online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNR1VL3TWZg.