Hinkle's Sandwich Shop

Hinkle's opened in the 1930s, in the years when small griddle counters serving cheap, hot, quick food anchored the main streets of towns across the country. Most of those places are long gone. Hinkle's held on, passed along and kept running, its signature the little onion-fried slider, a thin patty griddled with onions pressed into it and tucked into a small bun.

Regulars order them several at a time, in a paper sack, the way people always have. The appeal is not novelty but continuity, the sense that you are eating the same simple sandwich, made the same way, that Madison folks have eaten for the better part of a hundred years. That kind of steadiness is exactly what makes a place a landmark.

Madison grew rich early, when the Ohio River was the main highway of the frontier and this was a major shipping and pork-packing port. When the river trade shifted and the railroads passed it by, the town stopped growing, and that very stagnation preserved it. Block after block of Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate buildings survived, so that today Madison holds one of the largest and most complete historic districts in the country, recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

Walking Main Street, a visitor passes storefronts and homes that look much as they did in the 1800s, and Hinkle's sits right in the middle of it all, a working piece of that living history rather than a museum piece. The Ohio River country here is old homeland of the Miami, Shawnee, and Lenape (Delaware) peoples, who lived along these bluffs long before the town was laid out.

Hinkle's is a counter, not a sit-down restaurant, so the experience is quick and unfussy. You step in, order a handful of sliders, and either perch at the counter or take your sack out along Main Street. It rewards the traveler who wants the real thing over the polished thing.

Because it is small and beloved, busy stretches can mean a short wait, especially on weekends when downtown Madison fills with visitors. That is part of belonging to a place like this. Pair it with a walk through the historic district and a look down at the river, and you have the essence of a Madison afternoon.

Madison sits in a bend of the Ohio, hemmed by wooded hills, with Kentucky rising across the water. The surrounding country is full of quiet drives, river overlooks, and small historic towns, and the state park just west of town adds waterfalls and hiking to the mix.

The setting shifts beautifully with the seasons, from spring dogwoods to the deep greens of summer along the river to a blaze of fall color in the hills. In any season, a stop at Hinkle's is the kind of small, honest pleasure that anchors a trip through this stretch of southern Indiana.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.