Okay, I'm going to veer off the reservation a bit, but will bring it back on home pretty quickly. I shortened my work hours somewhat this week to accommodate some of the dining and reporting...so it may help you to imagine me relaxed in an old leather chair, with the intensity of Marco Pierre White, minus the accent and huge index finger, focused like someone under hypnosis telling a story as a montage of days gone by plays on the screen...you know, the camera pans upwards from where Forrest Gump sits as he remembers his dear Jenny...
Independence, Missouri - departure point for the California, Oregon and Santa Fe Trails, home of Harry Truman, and depending upon your religious upbringing it may also be the actual location of the Garden of Eden. The juicier, more recent history and infamy of Independence is way too non-food related to get into, but I’ll just say that Hollywood could parlay “Winter’s Bone” into a Harry Potter level franchise if they wanted to. But for ME, in the PRESENT, that part of the city is all about Independence Avenue- the stretch of 24 Hwy that takes you from downtown Kansas City aallll the way out west of town where migrant farm workers pack the weekly-rate motels. I literally debated whether or not to make this week’s blog specific to food along the avenue. Most of it isn’t that pretty, sections of it can be very unpredictable and randomly violent. If you visit, bring a reformed thug like me along so you don’t exit the vehicle to take your blog photos in the wrong place. I didn’t grow up there. I discovered it in the early 90’s when a friend first took me to eat, and in the years that followed another buddy and I would seek out the scariest possible bars to enter on a dare and have adventures. But I love this part of Kansas City. I genuinely do. And not in that “NPR junkies Biff and Bunny go slumming” kind of way...it’s in my guts. If you know anything about this town and that avenue, it can be very beautiful to drive through and discern all of the stories the architecture can tell you and how much of it has stayed the same as generations have passed through. Old drugstores that are now cell phone shops, banks into taquerias, hardware stores morphed into Asian markets...imagining the crowds strolling down the avenue back when that ancient McDonald’s arch was new or Mayfair Cleaners had just opened.
That ghost town of a steel plant.
It’s hard to describe. The place just has character. I feel like the pot dealer in American Beauty trying to express his feelings about the empty trashbag swirling in the wind. The space in my heart that I reserve for Independence Avenue is huge.
And one of the greatest things about Independence Avenue is that it takes you to Jim’s. It used to be located a little farther east, by the Truman library, and it was called “Jim and Sue’s” for a long time. But from what I was told they got divorced. So now it’s just “Jim’s Family Restaurant”, and it has since moved to an old Captain D’s building in Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek is a wee little place that borders Independence...it began as a Slavic community and if you stay on the avenue you just kind of blow through without knowing you’re in a different town. Its significance in the folklore of Jim’s is the rumor that he moved his restaurant because Sugar Creek was soon to be one of the last places in the area with no smoking ordinance (the other rumor I know of involves gambling debt). Love it or hate it, I guarantee one of the last places you’ll be able to smoke in a restaurant in the United States will be in some pocket of Missouri. Prohibition never happened in these parts, btw. That’s how we roll. When it comes to the stubborn Missouri spirit I am totally convinced that it would have been an abolitionist state, but at some point some Kansan...probably from Johnson County...pointed a finger at someone and said “you HAVE to do this”...and that kicked off what SHOULD be the Missouri motto instead of the Show-Me State: “We WILL cut off our nose to spite our face!”...or “Eventually we’ll do the right thing if you just leave us the hell alone about it”. Both too big for a license plate I guess...
ANYWAY, if you go to Jim’s with ME...I must not only love you, but I also trust you to be someone who can appreciate exactly why it is so great and show the proper respect. Is it the best version of home cooking you will find anywhere? Absolutely not...but any fool can go to The Corner or Stroud’s. Is it too far gone to be a contender for “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”? Why yes it is. In fact, Guy Fieri’s haste to get the hell away from there would be so fast that he’d total his Freudian jalopy while exiting the parking lot. Could it benefit from a good “Kitchen Nightmares” treatment? My suspicion is that if Jim and Gordon walk into the back together, only Jim returns, and you may not want to order the chili for a while. Could the décor use a little updating? No...duct tape for repair AND upholstery in the booths is timeless, as are Sugar Creek themed hand painted murals. It’s a little rough around the edges, but good manners are important. If someone tried something heinously rude or was going to attempt a dine and dash...I am not joking when I say I do NOT know how that would end. If any of y'all are familiar with old school country types, small town law enforcement or good ol’ hills justice (not unlike the Swayze classic ‘Next of Kin’)...you understand that simple politeness and basic respect are all you need to make loyal friends for life.
This is a place that will never be “popular”, but the parking lot is always full, if that makes any sense. If I lived to be a hundred and went there twice a week until I died I’d still probably never be considered a “regular”, but the service is always friendly and efficient. Very sweet people, a true family-run place. The non-smoking section is three booths by the front door, and the dessert case is...kind of like peeking in the window of the local haunted house when you were a kid.
There are at least a dozen “home cooking” places in the area I could have chose to represent my town. And though I joke around, my love for Jim’s has no smartass irony. I adore it- the food is good and it is just a little untouched snapshot in time where you can relax and take it all in. My WIFE loves it, so I know I’m not alone. I painted an even longer, more detailed picture for her before I ever took her, and in the end she had to admit “Nothing you said to me was in any way exaggerated. It was completely as-described”. Even the caricature of Jim on the building and menu is a testimony to my truth. We pulled up, I pointed at the sign and said “Jim looks EXACTLY like that”. And sure enough, shortly after we were seated, my wife’s eyes got big and she said “Oh wow, THERE’S Jim!” before I even had a chance to spot him. This afternoon we were actually greeted and seated by the man himself...
Sorry to have only two photos of actual food after so much yammering, but there were only two of us and the portions are HEARTY. The menu is huge, from biscuits and gravy to fried chicken, omelettes, tenderloins, BLT’s, monster sized burgers, you’d have to have a roving gang to make a dent in that thing.
We have dubbed the smallest burger at Jim's "The Ron Swanson". For any fans of the tv show Parks and Recreation, you may remember the episode where Ron Swanson and (enter Rob Lowe's character's name here) had a contest to see if Ron's plain Jane, cheapest possible hamburger held a candle against a very high-end turkey burger. Everyone loved the saffron-laden mega-fancy turkey patty until ripping into the "Ron Swanson"...proving the point that no matter how cheap and how plain a beef patty may be, it is still light years beyond any other meat. The burger at Jim's is exactly like the burger any one of the millions of midwestern moms on a budget serve their families....except bigger. And if you order The Big Jim triple patty version and Jim is around, you can COUNT ON him coming over to bring you an extra bun.
I usually stick with another trusted classic- the open faced sandwich. Specifically, the open faced chicken fried steak sandwich. It. Is. Awesome. Not the cheapo crumbly or gristly cube steak you get a lot of places, but definitely tenderized. And perfectly breaded. The key to the whole thing is the combination of the cream gravy and the cheap white bread. They meld into a totally different substance when combined and have that stick to the roof of your mouth effect.
And of course you can get a side of gravy with anything, a side of mayo is a literal bowl of mayo, and you know if you ever DO become a regular because your waitress will stand right at your table and smoke while she chats with you. It's kind of funny to see how differently you are treated than a "regular". It's kind of cute, they joke around completely differently and Jim is all anxious to make sure you like your food.
Inside the wonderful time capsule. It is probably painfully obvious that this place is a non-guilty pleasure of mine and that you can decide pretty quickly whether you'd love it or hate it. I don't think a lot of locals even know about this place, much less eat there. I don't take many people there either. I'd hate to smack someone if they complained about the bus tub full of dirty dishes two feet from their head. Making a scene because one of my favorite chefs refuses to make you a meat-free beef tartare is one thing, but you can't go messing with Jim's. My endless rambling about this wallflower surely communicates my sincerity.
Edited by Zeemanb, 20 July 2011 - 07:31 PM.
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