Fair Oaks Dairy Farm

I stopped in last night on my way to Columbus from Chicago. I was greeted warmly and seated in the pub area. The entire restaurant had such incredible ambience. I had the privilege of speaking to the head chef, his fiancée who runs the bakery, and the general manager. The food is locally sourced, right down to the amazing pickles they grow out back of the restaurant! Everything is picked with such care. But that’s not all. Simply put, the food is delicious. The best steak I’ve ever tasted, including one I had at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in London. High quality, expertly seasoned, and cooked with passion. I live a long ways away, but I will make a point to stop here every time I’m passing through. Truly a gem.

The is some of the best cheese, ice cream, sandwiches anywhere. We travel to Chicago 6 – 7 times a year and we stop every time for a milkshake and to get some cheese to take home.
Over the years it has grown into this monster farm food family entertainment place. With a food café, tours of the farm, and other site to see.
Now we have a 2 year old and we get her ice cream too, but they don’t have a «kids» size and the small it huge for her.
If you get a sandwich I recommend asking for half the cheese!

We have been coming to Fair Oaks Farms for about 10 now. We have watched their terrific concept grow and grow…
Truly a great place for anyone to stop and relax from the rigorous commute of interstate 65… The food and ice cream is very good! The outdoor fun (for a wristband fee) is great for the kids! The Gift shop is worthy and the restrooms are clean… You won’t be disappointed.

3 times stopping here to buy cheese curds. Nothing!!! They always have an excuse why they don’t have them. If they don’t carry them any more, just tell the customers that.

This is for the whole complex, not just the restaurant, which I have reviewed separately.
Fair Oaks is a great place to stop on any drive up or down I-​65. Supposedly, they are self sufficient and produce their own power from the manure. Whether that this true or not, they have great exhibits for kids; and great sit down restaurant; really nice grocery that has excellent cuts of meat, Indiana beers, and baked goods; and of course the original cheese shop/​lunch counter.
While you can buy a $ 150 wheel of cheese that is the size of a hubcap, what you really want is a grilled cheese sandwich and a scoop of ice cream. Both are excellent – and just enough to get you the hour and a half left up to Chicago!
Worth a stop!

Shhhh! Don’t let the word get out about Fair Oaks Farms! We stopped there on the way down to Indy on a whim. Wow! I had grilled ham and cheese– ordered the whole sandwich, but I should have ordered just a half because I couldn’t finish it. We also bought a block of cheese to eat with crackers, which was delicious. In addition to the café at the north end of the farm, there is another restaurant at the south end that sounds more formal. We were dressed very casually in polo shirts and shorts and the café was a perfect stop. I’m trying to come up with another reason for a visit to Indy so I can make another stop at Fair Oaks Farms!

If you are looking for a fun place to take the kids, this is the place. They show how cheese is made a much more. They have the best grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream. It is worth the drive. It is a must see.

Place is out in middle of no where but WORTH the stop!
They have tours, a gift shop and café. I have had the grilled cheese, excellent! And I recently had the egg and cheese burrito. All I can say is bring a BIG appetite, this thing weights about 3 – 4 lbs probably, no kidding!
Apparently they are working on getting wine, why not? They do have a boat load if cheese!

I had quite the experience at Fair Oaks Dairy Farm. I came here for lunch with several work colleagues on a day long road trip. We had a blast.
I had a Caesar salad in anticipation of a heavy dinner, and it was fine. Not great. Just ok. Blah. Get the Cuban. Or the grilled cheese.
I did, however, sample about five different cheeses while my friends waited for their meals. YUMMM! Their aged gouda is excellent. Ok fine. Maybe I had 10 samples… the wait was long!
There is an adorable little shop here, a fantastic play area for children (and adults… hello wall climbing) and beautiful farm-​ish scenery all over.
They also have a «birthing room» that I came into unexpectedly. I swear I thought I as going into a gift shop when I was faced with two momma cows giving birth. It was slightly disturbing, but fascinating!
You have been warned.

This review is for the café only. I drive by this place every other weekend on my way between Lafayette and Chicago. I once stopped with my kids at the nearby gas station and ate at their subway for times sake but felt guilty I didn’t patronize the local non-​chain and always meant to go back. Yesterday my girlfriend and I stopped at the café to get a sandwich.
It was maybe the worst culinary experience of my life.
First, the ambiance was terrible. Screeching kids, a tour bus of befuddled old people, young families with SUV aisle-​blocking strollers. There was a long line for food and coffee, but the menu looked pretty good with a variety of deli sandwiches and grilled cheese. I ordered a Reuben and my girlfriend got a turkey and cheese panini. I ordered a latte, but was told that their machine was broken. So we each got a water, and they brought us dixie cup sized styrofoam cups.
The line moved incredibly slowly and I realized it was because each person placed an order for four others as their families held seats (there weren’t that many tables, maybe 20). We finally got to place our order and noticed a sign that said food took 15 – 20 minutes!!! For a sandwich? And let me tell you, they used every bit of that time.
We finally got buzzed for our food and sat down after repeatedly orbiting to find an open table in competition with everyone else. I realized that tables weren’t opening up because after eating their food, people would send someone up to the ice cream counter and then they’d sit their for another 15 minutes eating ice cream. I’m not high-​strung but the place was literally anxiety-​attack inducing.
My sandwich was not only the worst Reuben I’ve ever had, but actually the worst sandwich I’ve ever had. It’s hard to screw up a Reuben, but they managed it. It wasn’t on rye, the corned beef was cut way too thick and was gristly and the whole thing was encased in a mass of greasy melted cheese. By the third bite, I was ready to wretch. That was all I could handle and threw about 7/​8ths of it out. My girlfriend’s panini was cut from the same cloth and she picked the turkey out and pitched hers, too.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I appreciate what they are trying do and applaud their entrepreneurial efforts. But a good idea isn’t enough, you’ve got to be able to deliver and they sure didn’t.
If you get hungry around exit 220 on I-​65, go to the Subway.

I started this review two months ago and never seemed to find the words to finish. After my latest trip to Fair Oaks, however, I realized that I talk about this place ALL THE TIME so I should really put my rave review out there for the rest of the world and not just my unfortunate immediate company.
I love Fair Oaks!!!
Adorable, homey, delicious… I make it a point to stop here every single time I drive between Indianapolis and Chicago. Yes, it’s super touristy. You can go into the Birthing Barn to see the newborn calves and their jumbo-​sized bottles. You can tour the cheese processing building. And in the summer they have climbing walls and a giant trampoline/​moon walk for all the *ahem* kids to play on. (What?!?) There’s a big cafeteria style room where you can see the milk bottling process through a window while you sip on a fresh made milkshake or munch on my personal fave — grilled cheese!
But the real reason I stop at Fair Oaks isn’t for the field trip factor, it’s for the cheese! Free sampling of all their varieties is enough for me to pull over every time. My dear lord, Butterkase is surely a gift from above! The Sweet Swiss and Gouda are other favorites. Buuuut here’s a secret: You can buy some varieties of Fair Oaks farms at Strak & Van Til in Chicago, even cheaper than they are on the farm! I don’t know how that works, but if you can’t make the trek for the full experience it’s a nice alternative. Unfortunately, the award-​winning Butterkase isn’t sold at Strak so I always add 20 minutes to my trip home and shell out the $ 9.20/lb at the farm. So worth it!

An emporium of Dairy sets alongside I-​65 and is the perfect rest stop between Chicago and Indianapolis or wherever your travels may take you. We especially love to stop here when the weather is nice. There is an extensive outdoor area for kids. A maze, a moonwalk sans top and a bovine birthing area provide the kids with fun for at least an hour. If you go on the official tour its a bit pricey. The food is a bit above average. I have had better Ice Cream in the Chicago area. The paninis are very good. The ham panini with cheddar is exceptional.

Here’s an idea: If you’re going to start a marketing campaign involving placing signs about your dairy along I-​65 in 100 miles in both directions, you might want to prepare yourself for (gasp!) people to show up. I’ve taken a few trips to Southern Indiana recently and couldn’t believe how many signs there were for a place of which I’d never heard previously. Today, curiosity got the best of me and I checked it out.
Granted, it is a Saturday on a holiday weekend, but I was still shocked by how poorly designed and staffed this place is. It touts itself as a family «adventure» dairy (I know, WTF!) and holds tours, so you’d think they’d be prepared for large groups of visitors. Not so much.
The lines at all of the counters (cheese, sandwiches, ice cream) were intensely long and each had only one cashier. And, once we got to the front of the ice cream line, they were out of all but two flavors. When we inquired which flavors were available, we were told, «The ones you didn’t already ask about.» Um, hi rude service!
As for the (extremely tiny considering it’s a dairy) cheese counter, I was very surprised to learn that one couldn’t just walk up and grab some cheese and go. This is because cheese samples are offered at the same counter, which means tons of slack-​jawed cheese freaks and their screeching kids are clawing at all the samples and blocking the aforementioned tiny cheese selection area. And, of course, even if you have the patience to wait among the free-​cheese-​starved masses, yet again you must wait in a long line while the sole cashier rings you up… VERY SLOWLY.
If all this excitement isn’t enough for you, perhaps the seeming lack of air-​conditioning will entice you. Yes? No? (Circle one.)
So, yeah. They built this giant place with a giant «adventure» area (aka a barn with cows in it), a large cafeteria and a parking lot the size of a Super Walmart, yet no one thought to put in a few more registers or hire a few more people to work on the weekends. Oh, rural Indiana! Stay the same! Best Friends 4-​Ever! KIT! LYLAS!

As the number of independent places near the Indiana interstates dwindles (RIP Blue & White Truck Stop), we have to search farther and farther off the beaten track to find something more reflective of the local culture than McDonalds or Subway. I was hoping that Fair Oaks was the middle-​of-​nowhere gem that I had been looking for. Sadly, it was not.
The dining room is set up cafeteria style. The sandwich counter offers grilled cheese sandwiches made on a panini press with various meats or no meat, as you choose. The cheese is very good, and the panini rolls are pretty good. There are also pre-​made iceberg lettuce salads, potato chips, cookies, etc., that you would expect from a regular sandwich place. There are a few cheeseless options, as well, but when the entire establishment revolves around cheesemaking (there are banners celebrating their award-​winning cheeses hung in the dining room) then what’s the point?
There is also a counter where you can buy cheese to take away, and there is an ice cream counter with a very long line of customers, so I’m guessing it’s good (I didn’t try it). There are non-​carbonated drinks available (they cater to school groups and do not serve carbonated drinks). They advertise «gourmet coffee» on their roadside billboards, but don’t be fooled: it’s just Starbucks.
My baby stole the last ¼ of my grilled cheese sandwich and gnawed on it the rest of my way home. If he could type, undoubtedly his review would be better than mine.
So to recap: Good grilled cheese, narrow selection, crappy salads, and probably good ice cream. Would I stop here again? Maybe. I’m still looking for my roadside gem, though.