I have long seen signs dotting the I-95 corridor for Duchess, a Connecticut chain of fast food restaurants. There are currently 11 locations, down from 14 just a few years ago, and it should not be confused with the midwestern chain of gas stations by the same name.

Brothers Jack and Harld Berkowitz founded the restaurant chain in 1956. Both have since passed away. Before opening their restaurant, the brothers had previously worked at Maraczi’s Snack Shop, in Bridgeport where they learned plenty of industry secrets. They went on to found founding their first restaurant in Fairfield, according to Robert Brum at Connecticut Insider. A few years later, Sidney Fialk, a long-time friend, opened a branch of Duchess in Norwalk in 1964.

The restaurants remain a family business. Three families operate the chain’s restaurants, and unlike other fast food competitors, food is cooked to order. There’s also a larger number of menu items than are typical in other chains too, and regional items like whoopie pies were being advertised the day we stopped in.

The signs for the chain are visible from the highway from southern Connecticut to New Haven. This section of highway tends to be the most congested, so there’s plenty of opportunity to look around at all the sights. The regional chain had good reviews, and I had long wanted to see what they had to offer.

I had my chance last weekend. We had stopped off at the PEZ museum in Orange, Connecticut. Our five-year-old has recently discovered the dispensers, and the factory visitor center seemed like a good stopping point as we drove north to Cape Cod.

After touring the museum and identifying all the PEZ-idents, we had worked up an appetite. Luckily for us, there was a Duchess location just around the corner, and it was even in same direction as the northbound on ramp.

I didn’t know what to expect having done literally zero pre-visit research. I had to hope they had French fries (they do) after promising them to our five-year-old. Luck was on my side.

The fascinating thing about this chain is the amount of Italian American influenced dishes on the menu. The menu included a Big D Chicken Parmigiana sandwich (I passed) and pepperoni crunch bites (I couldn’t resist).

What is a crunch bite? The pepperoni and cheese version was basically a pizza egg roll with an extra crispy batter on the outside. I did not indulge in the cheesesteak variety, but I suspect they were similarly good / bad, depending on your point of view.

The deep-fried crunch bites arrived with a side of marinara sauce, which like most chain tomato sauces was nearly inedible. Otherwise I enjoyed these monstrosities, though my wife took just one bite before turning them down.

We arrived between meal times, but when we first placed our order, we were the only family in the entire restaurant. The booths were large and spacious, and the whole place felt like a throwback to the 1990s. This is the nostalgic fast food restaurant everyone has been pining for with their posts about desaturated McDonald’s facades painted Millennial Gray.

The bacon cheddar barbecue burger had a surprisingly good roll, a variation of the bulkie roll. Bulkie rolls are New England’s answer to the Kaiser roll, but softer rather than crusty. It was a good burger, although if I had one criticism, it was that the barbecue sauce was too sweet.

The French fries were totally fine, but nothing like more addictive varieties from other restaurants. I’d be happy skipping them for some other heart clogging side dish.

The onion rings were actually made of onion rather than little bits squeezed together with a binder. These were a pretty good example, especially for a fast food joint. I had plenty of tiny rings, which are always the best. The batter mostly stayed on the rings.

Our five-year-old had French fries and chicken nuggets, though he wasn’t thrilled by the nuggets. I thought they weren’t bad. Whether this is intentional or not, they had a corkscrew shape to them.

We all agreed though that this was a perfectly good fast food restaurant. I even dared suggest we eat more fast food (we should not).

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The actual Duchess website was hard to find. The oil company in the midwest has done a much better job of with SEO.

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