Local Flavor Spotlight: Harner’s Bakery & Restaurant

To say Harner’s Bakery & Restaurant is “all in the family” is quite the understatement. Daryl and Joyce Harner first bought the operation in Aurora in 1960, and of their seven children, all six of those still living work there today.

“We’re pretty close – we know what we’ve built here and the value of it,” says Jodi Binkley, one of the Harners’ daughters, who is now is a co-owner.

What they’ve built is a wonderland for anyone who loves sweet treats and down-home cooking. The basis of their bakery and restaurant is that the recipes remain as unchanged as the hospitality.

“We stick to everything made the way it was in the ’60s,” Binkley says.

Each day, the bakery churns out a massive menu featuring coffee cakes (the butter pecan variety is known for miles around), pies, raised doughnuts, sweet rolls, cake doughnuts, cookies, nut breads, muffins and more. Everything is baked the old-fashioned way, with lots of butter and sugar – just the way regular Harner’s customers like it – and irresistibly on display across six, huge glass cases to make your mouth water.

“People ask, ‘Why do you dye your pastry dough yellow?’ But we don’t – it’s just the butter,” Binkley says.

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North Aurora

All the baking now takes place at the larger operation in North Aurora, which opened about 25 years ago, but the original location on Galena Boulevard in Aurora still serves pastries and coffee each morning.

At the North Aurora location, the restaurant side of Harner’s is all about farm food. Among the crowd favorites: batter-dipped chicken, a ground round steak charbroiled over an open flame and a salad bar filled with homemade items from pickled beets to soups. There’s a special every day of the week (except Sundays) that runs all day, all year long. Think corned beef and cabbage Tuesdays and pot roast Thursdays. Everything on the menu is handmade, down to the jellies and syrups.

“We’re one of those neighborhood bakeries that does everything – there’s not too many of us [anymore], but we’re still around,” Binkley says.

Though she’s surrounded by the delicious smells wafting out of the bakery every day, she never gets tired of them.

“I still have a doughnut every day for breakfast,” she jokes. “That old saying, ‘You get sick of it?’ No, it doesn’t happen.”

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