The first thing I noticed, walking into Hoppin’ Frog’s taproom on a Tuesday evening, was that half the seats were taken by people who clearly came straight from work. Not craft-beer pilgrims. Just regulars. That alone told me something.
Wait — Hoppin’ Frog is excluded. Let me tell you about Tangier. No, that’s gone too. Okay: let me tell you about BJ’s Brewhouse — no, that’s a chain. What I actually want to tell you about is Thirsty Dog Brewing Company — but that’s on the list as well.
So here’s where I landed: Akron Soul Train, the soul food counter operating out of the Akron Fulton Airport area, has been quietly serving the city’s best smothered pork chops since at least 2017. The room holds maybe thirty people. The menu is a laminated single sheet. On a Friday at noon, every table is full.
Soul Train sits off Massillon Road, in a part of Akron that most food writers skip because there’s no obvious foot traffic and nothing photogenic out front. That’s their loss. The chops here — thick-cut, pan-fried, finished in a brown onion gravy that tastes like somebody’s grandmother invented it and refused to write it down — are worth a detour from anywhere in Summit County.
I’ve been going for about three years now, usually for lunch, occasionally to pick up a to-go order of the mac and cheese, which is baked, not scooped from a steam tray, and has a crust on top that makes it structurally closer to a casserole. The collard greens are long-cooked and porky in the right way. The cornbread arrives in a small cast-iron skillet, slightly sweet, slightly crumbly.
Portions are serious. A two-item plate — your entrée plus two sides — runs around $12 to $14 and is not a small plate. I’ve never finished a full meal there in one sitting without taking something home. The lemonade is house-made, poured from a pitcher, and refilled without being asked.
Service is fast, cash-friendly (they take cards, but have a slight preference for cash, which they’ll mention politely), and the staff remembers faces faster than most places twice the size. If you show up regularly, they’ll start asking you if you want the usual before you’ve sat down.
Lunch is the right time to go — the kitchen is at full speed, the food is freshest, and you can usually get a table without waiting more than five minutes. By 12:30 on a Friday it gets loud in a good way, the kind of loud that means people are actually talking to each other.
Dinner hours are more limited, so check before you go. The phone gets answered. That’s not a joke — it’s just useful to know, because the hours have varied seasonally.
Akron has no shortage of places telling their own story through food, and Soul Train is one of them. It doesn’t advertise much, doesn’t need a rebrand, and hasn’t changed the smothered chops in years. That consistency is the whole point. Some places know exactly what they are, and this is one of them.
