Bavarian Inn

One of the two great fried-chicken institutions of Frankenmuth, in a sprawling half-timbered building on Main Street. The all-you-can-eat chicken dinner is the headline (around $25 in 2024) — three pieces of fried chicken with a parade of sides, refilled until you surrender.

The complex includes a glockenspiel tower, gift shops, and a basement of older Bavarian curio rooms. Reserve ahead on summer weekends or expect a long wait.

eating out restaurant
A story
The Bavarian Inn has been serving its all-you-can-eat fried chicken dinner since 1888, when Theodora 'Dorothy' Zehnder added it to a hotel menu otherwise built around German cooking. The dinner — chicken, dumplings, noodles, slaw, stuffing, cranberries — is plate-after-plate and now goes through over 1 million birds a year between the two competing restaurants in town.