Is that a drumroll, or is it just the glorious sound of sputtering grease I hear?
After five weeks and more than 50,000 votes, IndyStar’s Fried Chicken Challenge has come to a close. Capping off a tournament full of twists, the historic No. 6-seeded Kopper Kettle Inn of Morristown conquered No. 4 Wilson Farm Market of Arcadia, 9,815 votes to 3,839. Kopper Kettle emerged as a juggernaut down the stretch, battering its opponents in a display of deep-fried domination.
As with previous IndyStar food tournament winners, Kopper Kettle rode an extensive social media campaign to a decisive victory. Leigh Langkabel, who operates the restaurant with his wife, Kristi, credited staff, customers and friends for spreading the word and pulling in thousands of votes. Aggressive marketing is nothing new to the Kettle. Leigh said the inn’s first owner, Muriel Vredenburg, hand-wrote letters to the likes of Henry Ford and James Whitcomb Riley to attract them to her dining room.
Thank you to everyone who read along and voted in our extremely serious, societally crucial bracket and for (mostly) being very polite in your emails to me. We covered a lot of Hoosier chicken lore on the road to the champion-chick, from the dish’s arrival in Indiana to the women who largely popularized the dish and the fascinating family bond between the state’s three foremost poultry powerhouses. We even examined the question of what “Hoosier fried chicken” means.
And, wouldn’t you know, that history is at the very core of your Fried Chicken Challenge champion.
Kopper Kettle’s fried chicken fame a century in the making
Every Hoosier slinging fried chicken can trace their success back to their predecessors, some more directly than others. Kristi and Leigh, aged 59 and 64, respectively, acknowledge they inherited a dynasty when they took over the Kopper Kettle in 1997.
Living in the Detroit area at the time, the Langkabels first learned of the historic chicken eatery mere months before buying it.
Leigh, then at the tail end of a career managing chain restaurants and franchises, received an intriguing tip from an acquaintance working in real estate who overheard a conversation between two women at a restaurant in Traverse City. One was the granddaughter of Vredenburg, who ran the restaurant from its inception as a tea room in 1923 until 1972 when her daughter (this woman’s mother) Millie Taylor took over. Vredenburg’s granddaughter mentioned her mother was looking to sell the restaurant; the Langkabels decided to pay a visit to Morristown.
Although the storied restaurant was not looking its best when the Langkabels swung by — upon seeing the volume of overgrown wisteria dripping over the 150-year-old house’s back patio, Kristi implored Leigh to keep driving — both of them saw immense potential. Before long they sat down with Taylor and secured ownership of the business, with a few stipulations.
First, the Langkabels would not remove or alter the restaurant’s décor. While some tables and chairs have been replaced over time out of necessity, the Kettle’s finely aged dining rooms still drip with crystal chandeliers and assorted antiques line the walls.
Other non-negotiables became clear after the sale. Leigh sought to maximize operational efficiency by posting recipes and procedures on the kitchen walls. In turn, one employee who Leigh suspects started working at the Kettle before he was born responded: “Honey, you stay out of the kitchen and I’ll keep you in business.”
Neither Leigh nor Kristi were strangers to the fried chicken game, however. Sunday dinners at the Langkabel house during Leigh’s childhood featured chicken so fresh it usually started the day clucking and pecking in the coop out back. Earlier in his career, Leigh had run a Lee’s Original Recipe Chicken in Plymouth, Mich., for roughly 15 years.
“I’ve basically been frying chicken my whole life,” he said.
That Lee’s was also where Kristi got one of her first jobs; she and her boss promptly fell in love and have been married for nearly 40 years.
Atmosphere, nostalgia part of recipe for success
While the literal family connection between the Kopper Kettle, Hollyhock Hill and now-closed Iron Skillet had dissolved by the time the Langkabels arrived, the bond remained strong. Leigh said then-Hollyhock owners Jay and Barbara Snyder and longtime Iron Skillet owner Ronald Torr all offered themselves as advisers as he weighed buying the Kettle.
Like their peers, the Langkabels hold a deep appreciation for the archetypal Hoosier fried chicken, rolled simply in flour, salt and pepper and then fried in lard, ideally in a heavy iron skillet. When Kopper Kettle’s success demanded the kitchen pivot to using commercial Henny Penny fryers, which at the time used a proprietary oil and cost $60,000 a pop, Leigh readily voided his warranty and furnished the bubbling behemoths with lard to maintain his chicken’s signature taste.
The result is classic Indiana fried chicken, with a thin crust of breading that’s plenty peppery and sufficiently greasy. A lunch portion of a drumstick, thigh and half-breast will run you $18.95, or $21.45 if you’re among the diners who prefer all white meat. Served with green beans, mashed potatoes, concrete-thick chicken gravy and pillowy dinner rolls, Kopper Kettle’s chicken is a solid testament to the alchemy that unfolds in the depths of the fryer.
Nostalgia also plays a major role at the Kettle. Multiple diners have pulled aside the Langkabels to regale them with stories. One customer of several decades recalled visiting the restaurant in the days when Shelby was a dry county and, coincidentally, Kopper Kettle’s rear dining room was window-less, making it an ideal spot for a complete food and beverage experience. Today, the Kopper Kettle has a three-way liquor license and the back room fills with light on sunny days.
One thing that struck me while lunching in the Kopper Kettle was how much the sun room and assorted tchotchkes reminded me of my own grandmother’s house (with the notable caveat that if my ancestors could afford a sprawling Victorian estate, I might be in a very different line of work). At the Kettle, the antiques and furniture create an atmosphere that Kristi said stands still in time.
“We try to keep the charm, just so that when people come in they have the familiarity of the way it was when their grandparents brought them,” she said.
To say the Langkabels are hands-on when it comes to the restaurant’s ambience would an understatement, especially considering they’ve lived above it for the last 28 years. Kristi remembers moving into the former hotel rooms above the dining area in 1997 and Leigh assuring her, “We’ll have a house in no time at all.”
“And I told her she wouldn’t have to work,” Leigh said. “We still live above the restaurant…”
“And I still work my butt off,” Kristi laughed.
Nearly three decades after the Langkabels purchased it, the Kopper Kettle remains a large draw for chicken connoisseurs from near and far, as the esteemed IndyStar Fried Chicken Challenge showed.
Does the Kettle serve the best fried chicken in central Indiana, the region or the nation? Only you can decide that for yourself. From historic eateries to grocery store delis and roadside stands, there are a lot of beautiful battered birds worth eating in Indiana. I hope the best chicken of your life is yet to hit the deep fryer.
Thank you for following our Fried Chicken Challenge. If there’s another food bracket you’d like to see in the future, you can contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com and follow him on Instagram @BradleyHohulin. You can also stay up to date with Indy dining news by signing up for the Indylicious newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Central Indiana’s favorite fried chicken has been crowned. See who won
Reporting by Bradley Hohulin, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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