Ace of Cakes star poses with rooster

Randy Rundle was on his way to get lunch with his wife and two of his three children when his oldest son, Matt, looked out the window and saw quite a surprise.

The surprise was not the 15-foot rooster that stands guard outside Carl’s Bakery in East Peoria — he had seen that before. The surprise was the man standing by the rooster.

“We were just driving by when my son looked out the window and said, ‘Hey, there’s the cake dude,’” Rundle, of East Peoria, said. “It was the most random thing.”

The “cake dude,” also known as Duff Goldman of the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes, was in the midst of a two-week-long road trip with a group of about 10 cast and crew members from the show. They made a quick stop in East Peoria June 15, especially to see the rooster. 

“Nobody knows Carl’s, but everybody knows that chicken,” said Carla Armstrong, who runs Carl’s with help from her husband, Dave Armstrong, and mother, Edna Weber. Armstrong added that although the statue is actually a rooster, many, herself included, refer to it as a chicken. 

Ace of Cakes is a reality show that takes place in Goldman’s Baltimore-based bakery, Charm City Cakes. A blog, which can be found at charmcitycakes.com/blog, kept by Charm City Cake’s general manager, Mary Alice Yeskey, details the road trip.

“They will be stopping in many places all over the country,” Yeskey writes. “It’s all open road as they venture to Texas, Illinois, Charlotte and back.” 

Armstrong said she received a call at about 11:30 June 15 from a representative from Ace of Cakes asking if a crew could come to the bakery and film.

“I really thought it was a joke,” Armstrong said. “He said, ‘We just want to see your pastries and get a look at your chicken.’”

And so they did.

Armstrong said the crew spent about 45 minutes at Carl’s. During that time, they took pictures of the chicken, bought rolls and ate them. They also spoke with customers and filmed for an episode of Ace of Cakes that is scheduled to air in about three months. Armstrong said they ate lunch, which included tenderloins, a sandwich that is not commonly served outside of the Midwest.

“One guy said he’d never had a sandwich so big and so good,” Armstrong said.

They asked about the rooster, which Armstrong said her father purchased at a restaurant show in Chicago about 40 years ago. Armstrong refused to sell the landmark to a crew member who asked if he could purchase it.

“My dad would roll over in his grave if I sold it,” she said. “Everybody wants to buy that chicken.”

Armstrong said she was told the crew was passing through East Peoria on their way to Frankfort, where they planned to make a cake for the village’s 107th anniversary. She said she had no idea how they heard of Carl’s.

Jared Sanford, a spokesman for Charm City Cakes, said the production crew researched the road trip and planned the visit to Carl’s.

“Carl’s was a point of interest for both the baked goods as well as the cult status,” he said.

Sanford said he believed the crew found Carl’s on roadsideamerica.com, a website that lists quirky landmarks across the U.S. Other attractions on the site include Babyland General Hospital, a 70,000-square-foot Cleveland, Ga.-based “hospital” that caters to Cabbage Patch Kids; the world’s largest pecan in Brunswick, Mo.; and Peoria’s own Vanna Whitewall at Plaza Tire.

Goldman — born Jeffrey Adam Goldman — started Charm City Cakes in March 2000. The out-of-the-ordinary cakes at the now-famed Baltimore bakery start at $1,000 and have included a Viking ship wedding cake, a dry ice-filled Hawaiian volcano and a replica of Wrigley Field.
Rundle said he had a chance to speak with Goldman during the visit.  

“He was a cool guy,” Rundle said. “He was exactly like he is on the show.”
It was such a random experience,” Rundle added. “The whole ‘right place, right time’ aspect of it all blew me away.”