Peter K.

Wanda's Grill: Master of Mush We needed a late breakfast while driving east on US 50 from Cincinnati to Parkersburg, WV. Entering Hillsboro, Ohio (population 6,600), we pulled into the town square. Right there on High Street, we came upon Wanda's Grill. In front a hand-written message on a white sandwich board proposed the day's special. "Two eggs," it read. "Mush & Toast. $4.50." Mush? Mush is an indigenous inspiration of rural Ohio. It is a cake-like confection made of corn meal. You pour some meal into a pot and boil it in milk or water until it reaches the consistency of pudding. You spread it out in a cake or meat-loaf pan, usually overnight, to harden enough more so it can be sliced into squares about as half an inch thick. Then you fry it in whatever grease you've got until it's toast-like brown. Serve it with maple syrup, or better, Mrs. Butterworth's syrup. Wanda--owner-chef Wanda Brown--is a master musher. There's no MacDonald's or Wendy's or KFC in Hillsboro, Ohio. They wouldn't stand a chance. For the novelty of her menu and its flavors, too, Wanda has put a fist in the dike against that tide. She opened the restaurant ten years ago with the same server, a woman who still works there. She has a counter for five or six diners and booths and tables that seat 30 or 40. Serving breakfast and lunch, Wanda opens at 6 a.m. every day except 7 a.m. Sundays and closes at 2 p.m. Lunch is mostly burgers and hoagies. She cooks to order. My Favorite American and I spent half an hour there on a busy Sunday, but our breakfast was worth the wait. Wanda alone works the grill. She prepares the usual eggs-bacon-toast dishes. M.F.A. had a scrambled egg, one slice of toast, one cup of tea and four strips of bacon. She pronounced them just right. Like mush, other dishes aren't so common. Potato crisps, for example. Served with eggs, these are sleeves of fried string potatoes with cores of sour cream and a creamy yellow cheese. Crisps come in three sizes. The biggest for $5.50 covers a dinner plate. Mine, the smallest, took up nearly half of one. Wanda also serves fried patties of goetta, a distant cousin of scrapple. Goetta is an herb-packed sausage of ground pork and oats that is produced and served mostly in southwestern Ohio, around Cincinnati. . Ranking Wanda's isn't easy. Wanda doesn't do filet mignon and white tablecloths. While some Ohioans do, in fact, call goetta Cincinnati caviar, Wanda's fare should be judged differently. Whatever any excesses in calories and cholesterol, Wanda's excels in serving authentic American cuisine, an endangered species in a nation of fast food. That's worth five stars.