As you drive on Interstate 5 from Southern California to Northern California, you start to see strange billboards. Beginning over 200 miles from the place they’re advertising, they feature two jaunty characters hitting each other with mallets.
As you drive North, the frequency of the billboards increases. First, you saw them every 50 miles or so. Now it’s every 20.
And then all of a sudden, like a mirage, you see it–a bizarre Dutch windmill rising incongruously out of the other featureless expanse of The 5.
As you pull over, you find a strange place.
It’s a restaurant. It’s a truck stop. Perhaps inappropriately–given that all of its clientele are about to drive–it’s a bar. It’s a Danish gift shop selling fine China. It’s Pea Soup Andersens!
This strange roadside attraction in Santa Nella, California–just outside the San Francisco Bay Area–has entertained and bewildered travelers for nearly a century.
Founded in 1924, Pea Soup Andersen’s was started by Danish immigrants as a roadside restaurant. At the time, they were enamored with electricity (this was the 20s, and it was fairly new), and advertised the fact that the restaurant had electric ovens!
But what really drew in visitors was the restaurant’s pea soup. Made using soaked split peas, with a creamy texture despite being dairy-free, the Andersen family’s pea soup became so famous that people would drive hundreds of miles to try it.
The Andersens changed their restaurant’s name to Pea Soup Andersens and started buying split peas in 10,000-pound lots. They filled the windows of their restaurant with peas, mainly because they had nowhere else to put them.
Fast forward a century to 2024, and Pea Soup Andersen’s is still going strong. Although its original Southern California location is temporarily closed, its Northern California stop is still going strong.
It’s a massive restaurant that looks like it hasn’t changed since 1964. That’s because, fundamentally, it hasn’t.
You can stop and get massive portions of Danish or American food, and then browse in the attached Danish gift shop. Need some bone china while on the road? Andersen’s has you covered.
There’s even a massive, Medival-looking dining room with hanging banners where you can enjoy insane portions of food.
The real draw, though, is the pea soup. It’s the same recipe that made the restaurant famous back in 1924. And today, Andersens reportedly sells over 1 million bowls per year. Line them up, and they would stretch all the way from Northern California to Southern California, spanning the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
You can also get wings, chicken, and many other American dishes. The service is friendly and everything is cheap.
So the next time you’re driving up the 5, keep an eye out for Andersen’s iconic windmill. You’ll find a classic spot that transports you back to an earlier time in California, a delicious meal, some of the region’s strangest shopping, and of course, plenty of peas.
