Soon after Ray D. King and his wife, Bertha, moved from the Philadelphia area to Lima, Pennsylvania, in 1939, they began scouting for just the right spot there to open a roadside restaurant. In relatively short order they found such a place along U.S. Route 1, about two miles west of the nearby community of Media, and in 1942 they opened Lima Farms Restaurant at 1151 West Baltimore Pike, just east of Oriole Avenue. “GOOD FOOD,” the big oval sign they put out front said, and by all accounts that’s exactly what patrons of the restaurant got.
Lima Farms Restaurant was nothing fancy, but it was an inviting and comfortable place with homestyle food, an attractive dining room, a lower section with a lunch counter and stools, and some cabins out back for tourists and other travelers who might want to spend the night. (The Kings also maintained a farm next to the restaurant and operated a trailer court behind it.) Lots of people stopped by just to get some Ice cream, which was one of the restaurant’s specialties.
In 1953 Bertha King became seriously ill, to the point where she could no longer help out in the restaurant. She died in 1956. Ray soldiered on, both at the farm and at the restaurant, but as he hit his mid-70s he apparently decided that he’d packed enough hard work into his life.
In 1963 King sold off a big chunk of his farm, and the following year he sold the restaurant and the trailer park behind it to Walter Carvin, Jr. One of Carvin’s first moves for Lima Farms was to hire Melvin Lebo, who’d been the executive chef at the Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pennsylvania, some 80 miles to the west. He then launched a quirky advertising campaign that billed Lima Farms as “an out of this world restaurant for out of this world people,” among other such taglines, and highlighted its new “International & Continental Menus.” (Down-to-earth folks, though, could still get a breakfast of two eggs, home fries, toast, and coffee for just 49 cents.) Meanwhile, Carvin was forced to battle county tax assessments on the property—consisting of the restaurant, a garage, a second-floor apartment, and a small cottage–that had zoomed from $5,500 in 1963 to $25,000 in 1966. He managed to obtain a $3,000 reduction in the assessment, and in January 1966 he went to court to challenge the assessment that remained in place as “unjust.” Calvin’s efforts to rebrand the restaurant evidently didn’t work, either, and Lima Farms quietly closed its doors before the year was out.
In 1967 Carvin began trying to lease Lima Farms to someone else, variously advertising it as a “gold mine” or the “chance of a lifetime” at $350 a month. By the end of the year, he had dropped the asking price to $200 a month, but there still were no takers.
In 1969 Carvin sold the property for $200,000 to Walsh Ford Company, a local automobile dealership. It occupied the suite until 1980, when it went out of business.
Ray D. King died in 1974 at age 86 in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Pumpkin Pie
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Loading...In 1948 Ray D. King and his wife, Bertha, opened the Lima Farms Restaurant 1151 West Baltimore Pike in Media, Pennsylvania. Pumpkin Pie was a popular item on the Lima Farms menu—so popular, in fact, that the restaurant typically made five of them at a time. The restaurant's original five-pie recipe has been adapted here to make a single pie.
Ingredients
- 2 eggs, slightly beaten
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- Scant 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Scant 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Pinch ground ginger
- Salt, to taste
- 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons pumpkin purée (canned or fresh)
- 5 tablespoons molasses
- 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons scalded milk
- 1 9-inch unbaked pie shell
Instructions
Heat the oven to 550 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt until they are well-blended. Stir in the pumpkin.
Stirring constantly, add the molasses, then the milk, to the pumpkin mixture.
Place the pie pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips. Pour the filling into the unbaked pie shell.
Place in the 550-degree oven for 5 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake until firm, about 35 to 40 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.
Remove the pie from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before serving.
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