8 Ohio Restaurant Chains the Rest of the Country Has Never Tasted

Drive across the Ohio state line in almost any direction, and a whole category of restaurant signs disappears from the road.

The chili spot vanishes.

So does the burger drive-in with the double-decker sandwich, and the regional pizza chain down the street from it.

These are Ohio restaurants many parts of the country have never had the chance to order from.

1. Skyline Chili

Skyline Chili ladles its chili over a bed of spaghetti and buries it under a mound of shredded cheddar, a combination many parts of the country have never seen served that way.

The chain started as a single restaurant on a hilltop above Cincinnati in 1949, and it’s barely left the hill since.

Founder Nicholas Lambrinides grew up in a small village in Greece, where he learned to cook by watching his mother and grandmother.

He named the restaurant for the skyline it looked out over.

Cincinnati families have spooned Skyline’s chili over spaghetti for three generations.

The chain now runs about 136 locations, every one of them in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana or Florida.

2. Frisch’s Big Boy

Frisch’s Big Boy traces back to a Cincinnati drive-in called the Mainliner, which restaurant owner Dave Frisch opened in 1939.

In 1946, Frisch met another restaurant owner at an industry convention who’d invented a double-decker burger called the Big Boy.

Frisch brought the recipe home, and by 1947, it was the star of his menu.

The chain built its own regional identity around that sandwich.

In 2001, Frisch’s locked in permanent rights to the Big Boy name across most of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and most of Tennessee.

Today the chain operates 31 locations, and every one sits inside Ohio, Indiana or Kentucky.

Frisch’s holds the Big Boy naming rights across four states; it simply hasn’t opened a restaurant in Tennessee.

Step outside that trademark territory, and any Big Boy you’d find belongs to a completely different company.

3. Gold Star Chili

Gold Star Chili didn’t start out as a chili restaurant at all.

Four brothers named Daoud, who’d immigrated from Jordan in 1957, opened a hamburger stand in Cincinnati’s Mount Washington neighborhood in 1965 and called it Hamburger Heaven.

Customers kept ordering the chili on the side menu more than anything else.

The brothers took the hint.

Gold Star Chili built its 13-spice recipe into the main event and let it take over the menu.

The chain still serves only Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, competing directly with Skyline in the same three states without ever chasing a customer beyond them.

4. LaRosa’s Pizzeria

LaRosa’s Pizzeria opened as a single shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1954, back when many people in the city had never heard of pizza.

Founder Buddy LaRosa had seen pizzerias thrive in Philadelphia’s Italian neighborhoods while serving in the Navy, and he brought the idea home to Westwood.

He baked his aunt’s recipe into every pie.

LaRosa’s still uses that same recipe today.

The chain grew slowly through family franchising, and it now runs 64 pizzerias across Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

It’s never opened a location past that tri-state line.

Not once.

5. Cassano’s Pizza King

Cassano’s Pizza King, one of Ohio’s oldest pizza chains, started in the back of a Kettering grocery store in 1953, in a room barely bigger than a one-car garage.

Vic Cassano Sr. and his mother-in-law, Caroline “Mom” Dinisi, sold 400 pizzas on their very first day.

The chain grew into a regional franchise business, and it once ran 125 stores at its peak.

Not nationwide.

Nearly all of those stores have stayed within a short drive of Dayton.

6. Marion's Piazza

Marion's Piazza opened in Dayton, Ohio, in 1965, built by a former peanut-and-soda vendor named Marion Glass who'd spent years running Cassano's franchises for someone else.

Glass wanted his own dining room, not just delivery and carryout.

He liked the idea of an outdoor Italian plaza, but Ohio winters ruled that out, so he built the plaza indoors instead.

The thin-crust pizza he served became known locally as Dayton-style.

It still is.

Marion's Piazza has grown to nine restaurants, and all nine sit inside the Dayton metro area.

7. Fricker's

Fricker's, an Ohio sports-bar chain, built its reputation on wings, not football on the big screen.

The chain calls them its "World Famous" wings.

World famous is a stretch.

Fricker's got its start in Dayton, Ohio, in 1985, when two brothers began sketching what a hometown sports bar could look like.

Their Woodman Drive location opened in 1988 and still operates today as the chain's original restaurant.

Fricker's runs 24 locations today, and every single one sits in Ohio, Indiana or Michigan.

8. Der Dutchman

Der Dutchman opened its first dining room in Walnut Creek, Ohio, in 1969, seating just 75 people in the heart of the state's Amish country.

The restaurant is part of the Dutchman Hospitality Group, a family business rooted in Ohio's Amish and Mennonite communities.

Its menu leans on scratch-made comfort food. Broasted chicken, fresh-baked bread, and pies are made the same way they were decades ago.

Der Dutchman expanded slowly, adding dining rooms in a handful of other Ohio towns, including Sugarcreek, Berlin, Bellville and Plain City.

In 1985, it added exactly one location outside Ohio, buying a Sarasota, Florida restaurant that had served that area's own Amish and Mennonite community for years.

That's still the only Der Dutchman outside Ohio.

Everywhere else, it's never opened.

Max & Erma's Tried Going National, Too

Max & Erma's opened in 1972 inside a Columbus, Ohio, tavern that a couple named Max and Erma Visocnik had run since 1958.

New owners Todd Barnum and Barry Zacks kept the original names and built a theme restaurant around them, complete with a converted bathtub serving as the sundae bar.

The concept caught on fast.

At its peak in the early 2000s, Max & Erma's operated 110 restaurants across more than a dozen states.

Then came a 2009 bankruptcy filing, and the chain never recovered its footing.

Just seven locations remain today, in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Then Tom & Chee Tried the Same Thing

Tom & Chee, an Ohio chain, tried the same national push that didn't stick for Max & Erma's either.

The grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup shop started as a holiday pop-up tent near Cincinnati's ice rink in 2009.

It worked.

Within six years, Tom & Chee had opened 32 locations spread across eight states, from Tennessee to New York.

That's national reach for a shop that started in a holiday tent.

It didn't last.