Road Tips

Smokehouse BBQ - Columbia, MO

I was in the mood for barbecue when I was in Columbia, MO on a recent visit.  I knew there were a couple of good ones in the city, but one I hadn't been to was the Smokehouse BBQ on the west side of Columbia.  I ended up going there one evening to try their barbecue. 

It turns out that I had been to a Smokehouse BBQ a couple three times before.  One of my dealers in Kansas City was telling me of his love for Smokehouse a number of years ago and I ended up going to their location in the Zona Rosa shopping and entertainment district on the city's far north side.  (Click here to read about that visit to Smokehouse BBQ.)   Since then, I've been back there twice to have some barbecue and I've always found the place to be good and reliable. 

Smokehouse Bar-B-Que has been in business since 1986.  Owner Darioush Ghasemi knew that in order to stand out in one of the barbecue havens of the U.S. he was going to have to do something a little different.  He went upscale with his first restaurant offering steaks, seafood and pork chops along with brisket, pulled pork and baby back ribs.  Ghasemi once had five Smokehouse BBQ locations with four in the Kansas City area and a foray into Tulsa, OK in 2012.  However, he closed the Tulsa location about a year after it was in business and closed the Overland Park, KS location in September of 2014.  About a week after closing the Overland Park location, Ghasemi opened the new Columbia, MO spot.   

The Columbia Smokehouse BBQ is located in a strip mall at the corner of N. Stadium Blvd. and W. Worley, just south of the Columbia Mall.  (see map)  It was just after 8 p.m. when I walked in.  It was a sparse crowd in there that evening.  A couple three tables in the dining area were filled, but that was about it.

I ended up sitting at the bar.  There were four other people at the bar when I got there and they were all gone by the time I finished up that evening.  Five flat screen television were hung over the back wall of the bar, each of them had a basketball game on.  The bartender that evening, Brannon, came over to drop off a menu and to take my beer order.  They had Schlafly beer on tap and I got a pale ale. 

The menu at the Columbia Smokehouse BBQ seemed to be similar to the one in Zona Rosa that I've been to before.  They had spare ribs and baby back ribs, barbecued meat sandwiches, as well as pulled pork, brisket, chicken, turkey and smoked sausage platters.  It was more than just your basic barbecue fare on the menu.  

I ended up getting the two meat combo platter - brisket and burnt ends.  I've not been a big fan of burnt ends over the years, but the ones that I've had at Smokehouse BBQ in Kansas City have been pretty good.  I got a side of fries with some baked beans, as well.   And like good barbecue places, Smokehouse BBQ provides half slices of white bread to help sop up the sauce, and dill pickle slices to have a vinegar taste to counter-balance the barbecue sauces.   

The brisket was tender and flavorful, but was served with Smokehouse BBQ's house sauce mixed in.  I would have liked it to be plain and then I could add my own sauce.  The brisket, I felt, was very good.  

The burnt ends, however, were another story.  I've smoked enough meats and judged enough barbecue contests to detect a petroleum taste to the meat if it's been over-smoked.  That was clearly the case with the burnt ends.  They were meaty and moist, but that faint taste of petroleum turned me off to them.  I know it's not petroleum, but a by-product of the smoking process.  Too much smoke on the meat and it develops this sort of taste.  That was the burnt ends at Smokehouse BBQ that evening.  

The fries were very good - crisp on the outside and moist on the inside.  And the baked beans were also very good.  I like to doctor up my baked beans at most barbecue places by adding some barbecue sauces - usually a spicy one and a sweet one.  But the baked beans at Smokehouse BBQ didn't need much help.

Brannon came over to check on me and see how everything was.  He asked if I had ever had the barbecue at the Smokehouse before.  I told him that I'd been to the one in Zona Rosa a couple three times, but this was a my first trip to the one in Columbia.  He said, "I used to work at the one over in Gladstone (MO).  I had a chance to transfer over here and I really like the area."  (It's tough not to like Columbia.)   He admitted that business has been a challenge, but that things seemed to be picking up over the past few months. 

So, other than the faint petroleum taste on the burnt ends, the brisket at Smokehouse BBQ was pretty good - moist and flavorful.  The baked beans and the fries I had for sides were also good.  The place was clean, comfortable and a little nicer than most barbecue joints.  It wasn't great, but it was far from bad.  And that's what I've come to expect from my visits to Smokehouse BBQ in the Kansas City area and now in Columbia.  It's consistently good, not great, but good.   

Buckingham Smokehouse Bar-b-que - Columbia, MO

While I was on the road earlier this year, I got into a streak were I just seemed to crave barbecue all the time.  I was in Columbia, MO for an appointment one day and I cranked up the GPS to see if there were any barbecue joints in the area.  One that came up wasn't far from where I was at the time - Buckingham Smokehouse Bar-b-que.  I thought I'd go find the place and see what it was all about.  

It turns out the owner of Buckingham Smokehouse - Mark Brown - has a pretty interesting back story as to how he ended up doing barbecue.  In the early 70's, a band out of Springfield, MO - the Ozark Mountain Daredevils - became a popular band in Southwest Missouri.  In 1974, their first hit "If You Wanna Get to Heaven" became somewhat of a hit song hitting number 25 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.  The next year, "Jackie Blue" made it all the way to number 3 on the charts.  The Ozark Mountain Daredevils were suddenly rock stars touring the nation.  

Mark Brown was a buddy of the guys in the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and was working for the City of Springfield at the time.  In 1976, the OMD's road manager called him one evening and basically told him, "We need you to come on the road with us.  We just had a roadie who broke his leg.  There's a prepaid ticket to L.A. for you at the airport."  He flew to Los Angeles in the morning and became an equipment guy for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

When the Ozark Mountain Daredevil tour ended later that year, Brown found himself building stages for the Eagles on their Hotel California tour.  And when that ended a year later and the OMD's going nowhere but down after their earlier successes, Brown ended up back home in Springfield wondering what he was going to do next.  

He knew a guy in Nashville who leased tour buses to rock and country stars.  Giving him a call, Brown was asked by the owner if he would like to drive a band around on a bus.  Brown needed a job and he readily agreed to go to work driving tour buses for the company.

His first job was to drive from Nashville to Hollywood, FL in May of 1979 to ferry around the Moody Blues on the second part of their "Octave" tour.  The band played 17 shows in 22 days.  After three years of riding around on tour buses, Brown found out that he really liked driving the bus.  

Over the next 20 years, Brown drove tour buses for the likes of Kiss (he's still friends with Gene Simmons), Bon Jovi, Phil Collins, Elton John, Prince, Stevie Nicks, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead.  Brown met his soon-to-be wife while on tour - she worked rock tours, as well.  They married and while she worked nine months out of the year, Brown continued to work around the calendar going wherever he needed to drive a band or performer.  

Brown and his wife had a couple kids and, quite tragically, she was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1996.  Knowing that he had to raise his children who now had no mother, Brown got off the road and wondered what he was going to do with his life.  He didn't want a job where he had to punch a clock, considering he was pretty much living a high lifestyle for so long.  He could always cook, so he decided to open a barbecue place in Springfield.  

The name "Buckingham" and the logo with the cowboy riding the pig came from rock guitarist Lindsay Buckingham, a personal friend of Brown's.  Buckingham's grandfather once had a produce farm and he showed Brown the logo of the "bucking ham" (or pig) that his grandfather used.  Brown was trying to come up with ideas of names for his place in Springfield and he asked Buckingham if it was OK to use his grandfather's logo for his new restaurant.  Buckingham thought it was a great idea and that's how Buckingham Smokehouse Bar-b-que came to be.  

In 1998, Brown opened up his first Columbia, MO location in a leased space on the north side of town.  With most of the growth in Columbia - business and residential - going to the south of the main part of the city, Brown eventually bought a building on Buttonwood Drive in 2006.  (see map)  Today, in addition to two locations in Columbia, MO, there are five locations in and around the greater Springfield, MO area.  

With a back story like that, one has to figure that the barbecue is pretty good at Buckingham Smokehouse.  I was certainly going to find out.  It was around 1 p.m. when I got into Buckingham. I was seated by a hostess at a booth near the front door and given a menu.  Not long after, my server Taylor came over to greet me.  

The menu at Buckingham is your typical barbecue fare - smoked meats such as brisket, pulled pork, ham, turkey and sausage links.  Interestingly, they didn't do chicken at Buckingham Smokehouse.  They had baby back pork ribs, but nothing along the lines of beef ribs.  Sandwiches featuring brisket, pulled pork, turkey and ham were available.  The sides were somewhat interesting, however.  They included the staple pit beans and fries, but they also had horseradish cole slaw and deep fried corn-on-the-cob.  

They smoke their meat on-site at Buckingham.  They have a large walk-in smokehouse in the back of the restaurant with a large pile of wood just outside the doors.  I couldn't tell what kind of wood they had, but I'm guessing it was oak that they were using at Buckingham Smokehouse.  Oak is becoming a very popular choice for barbecue places in the Midwest mainly because it's cheaper than hickory and mesquite, and it lasts longer in the smoking process than most other smoking woods.  

The good thing is that they had combination meat platters at Buckingham allowing someone to try up to four different types of meat, or a half-rack of baby back ribs with one smoked meat selection.  Whenever I see that on the menu I always opt for the brisket and pulled pork.  Two sides came with the combo plate.  I knew that I was going to get the baked beans, but I deferred to Taylor as to what I should get for the second side.  "A lot of people like our cole slaw," she said.  I was leaning that way, anyway.  They also had a great selection of beer at Buckingham Smokehouse.  There's nothing better than a cold beer with good barbecue.  

Taylor brought out my two meat platter with side bowls of the pit beans and horseradish cole slaw. They had two different types of barbecue sauce - a thick sweet mild barbecue sauce and a hotter barbecue sauce that had a nice little spicy kick on the backside.  As I'm usually prone to do, I mixed both sauces together to get that spicy sweet flavor.

The brisket was thinly sliced and I didn't get much of a smoked taste with it.  Actually, it reminded me more of deli-sliced roast beef than a good smoked brisket.  It was all right, but it was certainly lacking that true brisket type taste and texture.  

The pulled pork, however, was excellent.  The pork had a good moist consistency with a hint of a smoky flavor.  Along with the mixture of the sweet and spicy sauces, the pulled pork was just outstanding.  

Normally, I like to add barbecue sauce to the baked beans at most barbecue joints.  I really didn't need to with the pit beans at Buckingham Smokehouse.  They were good on their own.  But even after adding the mixture of sweet and spicy sauces and mixing it all together, I thought the beans were outstanding. 

However, the highlight of the meal - to me - was the horseradish cole slaw.  It had a hint of spicy fresh ground horseradish mixed in with the sweet taste of the slaw.  The combination of tastes with each fork full of the cole slaw sent me over the top.  I wished after the meal was over that I had gotten a double order of cole slaw even though the pit beans were excellent in their own right.   

I came away pretty darn impressed with the overall meal at Buckingham Smokehouse.  The brisket was somewhat disappointing, but the pulled pork, the pit beans, the beer menu, the barbecue sauces and - most importantly - the horseradish cole slaw more than made up for it. Even with the sub-par brisket, I can't complain much about anything else regarding Buckingham Smokehouse.  I may have to try one of their locations when I get back down to Springfield at some point.  

Broadway Brewery - Columbia, MO

In Columbia, MO recently, I had a chance to try a place that has been open for about five years, but it was new to me.  Broadway Brewery features a number of in-house beers and a menu that highlights farm-to-fork foods that are grown locally around the greater Columbia area.  It was actually two small farmers/shopkeepers along with a brother who was retired and a homebrewer who started Broadway Brewery about five years ago.

Walker Claridge got his start in sustainable farming while working for an Oregon bed and breakfast that specialized in growing their own food.  Moving to rural Central Missouri to work as an organic farm inspector, he decided that the traveling around to farms didn't suit his bones.  He started his own little seven acre sustainable farm outside of Columbia.  He began to sell some of his produce at local farmers markets, but he found that he wasn't making enough money to sustain a living.  Other sustainable farmers in the area were having the same problem.  Working with another part-time sustainable farmer Kenny Duzon, the two opened The Root Cellar, a produce store committed to the local farming base.  At the height of The Root Cellar's popularity, they were selling produce, eggs, dairy and meat products from over 140 Missouri farmers.  

Kenny Duzon worked full-time as a biologist for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in addition to being a part-time sustainable farmer and a partner in The Root Cellar.  At the Department of Natural Resources, he worked with a guy by the name of Paul Dickerson who was a home-brewer of beer and who also knew Walker Claridge.  Dickerson had caught the home-brewing bug when he was going to Quincy University in the mid-90's.  Dickerson had been harboring thoughts of opening a brew pub at some point, even talking to Claridge about his dreams.  Meanwhile, Duzon and Claridge had been throwing around the idea of opening a restaurant that featured Missouri-grown produce and meats.  The ball started to roll in 2007 when Dickerson, Claridge and Duzon - along with Duzon's brother Jim, a retired school teacher - began to make plans for a small brew pub that sold locally grown foods in downtown Columbia.

They found a spot on Broadway - basically the Main Street through downtown Columbia - a the subterranean-level of a building which housed a bakery that had moved to a new location. (see map)  The group opened Broadway Brewery in the Spring of 2009.  Soon after, Claridge and Kenny Duzon moved The Root Cellar next door.  In 2011, they sold The Root Cellar and Broadway Brewery expanded into that space.  Broadway Brewery serves dinner seven days a week, with lunch Tuesday thru Saturday and a Sunday brunch.  

I got into Broadway Brewery around 8 p.m.  The main dining part of the restaurant is to the left.  A three-sided bar was toward the back of the dining area.  To the right as you come in is the newer space that Broadway Brewery took over after Claridge and Kenny Duzon sold The Root Cellar.  A small stage is off to the side, a shuffleboard court was in the middle of the room with tables off to each side.  Small groups of people were interspersed throughout the brewpub.  

 
The brewing tanks are in the back of the space behind the bar area.  The large glass-encased room features about a half dozen brewing vessel.  It was a pretty clean operation.  

The hostess who greeted me wanted to take me to a table along the east wall where there were banquette seats.  I thoroughly detest banquette seating and I asked if I could get a small table just around the corner from the front door.  She obliged me and dropped off a menu for me to look through.    

The menu isn't all that extensive at Broadway Brewery, but they did have appetizers, salads, sandwiches, pizza and main entrees that included pork, beef, chicken and farm-raised shrimp that were featured in the Creole dish that included andouille sausage.  That evening they had a morel mushroom appetizer on the menu.  I love morels and there seemed to be a lot of them out this year due to the cool and wet Spring weather.  They were also featuring a 6 ounce Wagyu beef filet with morel mushrooms.  I was getting closer to figuring out what I was going to get.  

The beer selection at Broadway Brewery is wide and varied.  They had five different India Pale Ale's on the menu that included a single hop IPA, a double rye IPA, and a Black IPA that was heavy in malt with a hint of chocolate and coffee in the taste.  They also featured a porter, a brown and an organic honey-wheat beer.  I wasn't certain what kind of beer to get. 

And I certainly had a long time to make up my mind for both what I was going to have for dinner and the type of beer that I was going to drink.  No one even came close to approaching me as I sat at my table.  I don't want to say this always happens to me when I eat alone because it doesn't.  But when it does, I just have an uncomfortable feeling about how the rest of the meal is going to go.  

I was seriously thinking of just getting up and walking out when a young guy by the name of Marc saw me sitting there, patiently (well, not too patiently by that time) waiting.  He came back and greeted me and asked me if I wanted anything to drink.  I told him that I wanted the kolsch beer that they had and that I was ready to order some food.  He sort of snapped to attention and said, "Oh!  OK!"  

As I said, I was thinking of getting the 6 ounce Wagyu filet with the morel mushrooms.  But I decided that I was going to do the morel mushroom appetizer instead.  And that was mainly because I saw something on the menu that really jumped out at me - a bison Salisbury steak topped with porter-glazed morels, arugula salad and onion straws.  That's what I ended up getting.  

The morel appetizer featured pea pods, sliced cherry tomatoes and fresh basil all on a bed of housemade white bread and topped with a creamy biere blanc (white wine and butter) sauce.  The morels were chopped and lightly breaded and they were just out of this world, tastewise.  With the fresh basil, pea pods, cherry tomatoes and the rich biere blanc sauce it was an amazing appetizer.  I sopped much of the sauce up with some of the bread that I had.  

 
Not long after I finished what I could of the appetizer, Marc brought out the bison Salisbury steak.  It was in a small serving dish and was piled high with onion straws and a smattering of the green arugula.  The bison Salisbury steak was swimming in the a brown porter sauce with bits of mushrooms mixed in.

The ground bison steak was very good.  The sauce helped with the moisture, but the porter-glazed morels were just outstanding in taste.  Sometimes bison meat can be a little bland because of how lean it is.  But the sauce and mushrooms helped liven up the overall taste.  The onion straws were also very good - lightly breaded and crispy to the taste.  To me, this was an excellent meal.

Marc's service was a little less than desirable.  He was a talker and I noticed that he was chatting up people - including me - when he should have been taking care of tables.  After he brought out the bison Salisbury steak, I asked him if I could get another kolsch to go along with the dinner.  The kolsch turned out to be pretty good and I like the lighter taste of it, especially in warmer weather.  He said he'd be right on it, but then I noticed that he stopped off at a table to pick up a check and credit card and proceeded to chat up the people at the table for about three or four minutes.  I didn't want to be eating and not having anything to drink along with it, so I waited.  He finally went to the bar, I'm guessing he put my beer order in while he was processing the credit card.  But he walked out from the bar with the people's credit card and receipt, chatted them up for a few more moments, then went over to check on another table, chatting THOSE people up for a moment.  Then he disappeared.  I finally had to get the attention of the hostess to ask if she could go find him to get my beer.  Moments later, he brought out the beer with nary a word of apology, only asking how my dinner was.  

Actually, other than that, my dinner at Broadway Brewery was very good.  The food was excellent, the beer was fine, the service, well...  Having to sit there for a long time before anyone came over was bad enough, but forgetting to bring back my beer is another.  I mean, Marc was a nice guy when we were talking after the meal was finished, but his service was a little lax.  But it didn't fully tarnish my experience at Broadway Brewery.  The food was just too good to do that.   (Photo courtesy Sweet Leisure.com)

Glenn's Cafe - Columbia, MO

I was in Columbia, MO recently and invited a dealer and his wife out to dinner.  My ulterior motive was to try the reincarnation of the famed Glenn's Cafe in Columbia, a long time culinary destination that had closed, then reopened in a small near Columbia a few years ago, then reopened in downtown Columbia as part of the renovated Tiger Hotel in 2013.  Glenn's had been one of my all-time favorite restaurants, one that a good friend of mine who lived in Columbia turned me on to years ago.  It was a special place for him, as well - his first date with his wife was at the second Glenn's on the corner of 9th and Cherry.

The first Glenn's was opened in the early 40's by Glenn Purdy and his wife, Tilley.  It was located along side U.S. Highway 40 on the north side of Columbia.  Basically a combination gas station and diner, the Purdy's ran Glenn's for over 40 years, staying open when Interstate 70 was built parallel to the highway.  The Purdy's changed the name from Glenn's Drive In to Glenn's Cafe to reflect the more upscale food the small restaurant was serving.

(Pictured left - The original Glenn's Cafe on what is now Business Loop 70 on the north side of Columbia.)   

The Purdy's sold their business and it went through a couple of owners before a young restaurateur by the name of Steve Cupp bought the place in 1985.  Cupp immediately put his stamp on the place by offering Cajun-stamped entrees featuring steaks, seafood, chicken and pork.  (This was the first time I was introduced to Glenn's Cafe.)  Looking to heighten Glenn's profile, Cupp moved the restaurant to downtown Columbia in 1988, just north of the University of Missouri campus.  

Citing a lack of profits, Cupp closed the downtown Columbia location for Glenn's in 2002.  I was told that he hung out in the Caribbean for awhile before moving back to Central Missouri in 2006 to open the 3rd incarnation of Glenn's Cafe in the newly renovated Hotel Frederick in Boonville, MO, about 25 miles west of Columbia.  

(Pictured left - Steve Cupp.  Photo courtesy L.G. Patterson from Inside Columbia Magazine) 

Cupp was approached to become the food and beverage director for the Tiger Hotel, an upscale boutique hotel in downtown Columbia that had undergone an extensive renovation in 2013.  He jumped at the chance to bring Glenn's back to Columbia as it turned out that 50% of his clientele would drive the 25 from the city out to Boonville to eat at his restaurant.

It was a young lady who greeted me at the 4th edition of Glenn's Cafe now in the Tiger Hotel at the corner of 8th and Cherry.  (see map)  The venerable and iconic Glenn's Cafe sign hung from the side of the building - the original Glenn's Cafe sign that was on the original building on the north side of town.  When Cupp wanted to hang the sign on the side of the Tiger Hotel, local leaders cited a city ordinance that restricted signs in the downtown business district.  A civic uproar ensued with locals - including the Columbia Historic Preservation Committee - calling on City Hall to allow the sign to be hung.  I heard that Cupp and the owners of the Tiger Hotel threatened to stop the development, but city leaders gave them an exemption earlier this year and the well-known sign was hung from the side of the building.

My dealer and his wife were already seated in the ornate and posh dining room at Glenn's Cafe.  The second Glenn's Cafe - a block to the east - had more of an art deco theme to it.  This was definitely more upscale than the old downtown Columbia location.  

 
Our waitress - Crystal - came over to greet us as we took a look through the menu.  She took our drink orders - I got a Dixie beer, my dealer got a Coors Light, and his wife got a cosmopolitan.  She brought my Dixie beer to me, but didn't have the Coors Light or the cosmo.  After about another 5 minutes, she brought out the cosmopolitan, but said that they were out of Coors Light.  My dealer said, "Well, OK.  How about a Busch Light?"  She said she'd get that right away.  Right away was another 5 plus minutes.  When she brought his beer, she apologized and said, "The bar (which is pretty small and in the connecting passage way between the hotel lobby and the restaurant - pictured above right) is slammed."  I immediately ordered a second Dixie figuring that it would be sometime before I'd get it.  

Many of the items on the menu were the same as when I was last in Glenn's with my wife, my friend and his wife sometime about 15 years ago.  The shrimp creole was always delicious, as was the spicy bronzed pork chops.  Their roasted prime rib comes with Yorkshire pudding, and the Cajun-Italian infused Pastalaya featured penne pasta mixed with shrimp, a house-made tasso ham, smoked duck and andouille sausage in a seafood reduction sauce.  Glenn's also had their famous gumbo on the menu.  I couldn't pass up getting a cup of the gumbo.  

My dealer and his wife talked about the cornbread at Glenn's, calling it the best they've ever had.  This, too, was their first visit to Glenn's since it reopened in Columbia and they were giddy to get some of the cornbread with their meal. This was probably the most important point they made to Crystal when they ordered their food. My dealer's wife ordered the Pastalaya and my dealer ordered the jumbo deep fried shrimp.  He asked if I wanted to get some oysters on the half shell as an appetizer and I couldn't say no.  He ordered a half dozen for he and I to split (his wife didn't care for oysters).  

I ordered the blackened redfish, not knowing if I would actually getting redfish anymore than some sort of seafish with Cajun seasonings.  And I got a cup of their wonderful gumbo.  

This is where things got a little discombobulated.  Service had been choppy up to that point - Crystal was taking care of a number of tables in our immediate area and we were doing a lot of talking up to the point of ordering our food.  We weren't in a large hurry, but we noticed that she would leave us alone for long periods of time.  After she took our food orders, we were sitting talking, waiting for the oysters and the gumbo to come out.  About 15 minutes after we ordered, our main entrees came out.  I said to Crystal, "Uh, hey.  We didn't get the oysters and the gumbo." 

She said, "Oh, they're right behind me."  A young man was carrying the oysters and the gumbo on another tray.  When I said that I had hoped we'd get the gumbo and oysters before the meal and not after the entrees had shown up, she apologized.  Suddenly, we had a table full of plates with not a lot of room to maneuver through our dishes.  

Well, at least the gumbo was there.  It was that same dark brown gumbo I remembered from Glenn's Cafe years and years ago.  It had a wonderful smoky flavor to it and was even better when zipped up with some Tabasco sauce. The oysters were meaty and plump with little grit.  They actually gave us seven oysters on the half shell and I let the dealer have the last one after I had already eaten three.  

 
Through all this, I was trying my blackened redfish while taking bites of gumbo and raw oysters.  It was a large filet with copious amounts of Glenn's Cajun seasonings.  The taste was very good and the fish was flaky and fresh tasting.  The zipped up taste of the seasonings was exactly what I remembered from the past.  

The redfish also came with some whipped garlic potatoes that were pretty good, and some sweet-glazed carrots that were also good.  I do like my carrots to be somewhat sweet if they're cooked.  

The Pastalaya was a large bowl of penne pasta, tasso ham, andouille sausage and shrimp mixed in with the reduction sauce.  My dealer's wife said that it was somewhat spicy, but not too bad.  She said, "You know, I can't remember if this was on the menu before, but it's very good."  

 

My dealer had the large battered shrimp that came with a side of creamy cole slaw and a berried rice.  It came with a small ceramic container filled with Glenn's sweet and sour sauce for dipping.  My dealer said that he normally doesn't care for battered shrimp, but "the batter here is pretty good."  He wasn't unhappy in the least with his choice.

However, my dealer and his wife were unhappy with the cornbread.  Their anticipation on the cornbread exceeded either of their entrees, but after the first bite into the cornbread they both looked at one another and agreed, "It's not the same.  They've changed it."  

A manager came over to our table during our meal.  "I understand there was a timing problem with getting your food," he said.  "What can we do to make it up to you?"  I suggested taking the oysters off the bill.  "Done," he said with authority.  But when my dealer and his wife commented that the cornbread wasn't the same, he said, "It should be the same as it's always been.  He hasn't changed the recipe of many of the items he originally had."  

My dealer said, "Maybe it's because we haven't eaten at Glenn's since it was first out in Boonville, but I remember the taste of that cornbread from 25 years ago.  To us (pointing to his wife), it doesn't taste the same."  The manager said he'd check with Steve Cupp to see if there was a change.  When he came back to let them know that it was the same recipe, my dealer said, "Maybe my tastebuds have changed as I've gotten older."

The one thing I remember from earlier visits to Glenn's Cafe was their great bread pudding.  It's served warm in a bourbon sauce and it's just to die for.  I hemmed and hawed about getting one, but I finally couldn't say no.  I asked Crystal to bring three spoons, but my dealer and his wife declined the offer.  Fine!  More for me!

And the bread pudding was everything I remembered it to be.  It was sinfully rich and flavorful.  The creamy bourbon sauce is a great complement to the sweet taste of their bread pudding.  My dealer's wife couldn't resist, especially after the look of bliss on my face after each bite.  She had a bite and said, "Oh, my gosh, that's rich."  

When Crystal brought out my bread pudding, she also brought out a small container that held extra pieces of the cornbread.  She said, "This is a little thank you and an apology for the service."  

My dealer's wife said, "I didn't have the heart to tell her we were disappointed that it wasn't the same."  My dealer said the cornbread wouldn't go to waste.

It always bums me out when favorite restaurants go out of business, but then come back - and it's never the same as it was.  To me, Glenn's Cafe was just as I remembered 20 plus years ago, only in a different spot a block away.  Yeah, the service was choppy, but they realized it and did their best to make up for it.  (I later found out that they had only been open for less than 90 days at this new location and were still working the kinks out.)   It won't deter me from going back at some point - always hoping that the blackened swordfish will be available on that visit. 

Flat Branch Pub and Brewing Company - Columbia, MO

I'm in the process of putting on a new dealer in Columbia, MO, a great Midwestern college towns.  In fact, Columbia has been one of my favorite destinations since I began to travel in the mid-80's.  I had a meeting with my new dealer recently and I thought we were going out to dinner.  But his partner was out on an install and he had a meeting with a doctor later in the evening, so he begged off until next time.  That afforded me the chance to go back to one of the better brew pubs in the Midwest, Flat Branch Pub and Brewing Company. 

Located on the west end of the downtown area and near the University of Missouri campus (see map), Flat Branch Pub and Brewing Company opened in 1994 and is housed in a building that was built in the late 1920's.  It was the first brewery in Columbia since 1841.  The business is named after Flat Branch creek that flows not far from the building.  Years ago, the building was the home to the local Hudson automobile dealership.  The building features a unique curved barrel roof and they've kept the original brick walls and hardwood floors intact.  The brewery is on the premises and it's headed by Larry Goodwin, who has been at Flat Branch for about 10 years.  Plus, there's a great outdoor beer garden on the south side of the restaurant.  It's a very popular place for people in and around the Columbia.

I got into Flat Branch Pub and Brewing Company around 7 p.m. and was met with a large crowd milling about in the lobby area.  The hostess told me that it would be approximately 30 to 45 minutes to get a table.  I noticed there were a couple places to sit at the bar and I asked if I could eat at the bar.  She said, "We have full menu service at the bar, yes."  The bar, itself, is sort of unique in that it has a couple of short 90 degree angles and I sat in a spot where I could easily lean up on the bar to my right.  It was sort of cumbersome for the bartenders to work around, but they managed.  

My bartender gave me a menu and I ordered up one of their pale ales - the Katy Trail Pale Ale.  It's an American-style pale ale made with Cascade hops.  It's not as forward of a pale ale like I normally like, but it was OK for that evening.  Flat Branch may have the largest beer list of any brew pub I've ever encountered.  They have a minimum of 10 different types of beer to choose from at any point in time.  However, Goodwin and his brewery crew have an arsenal of over 90 different types of beers they can brew.  They use hops and grain from all over the world including Germany, Belgium and New Zealand to make their special beers.   

In addition to their beers, Flat Branch Pub features one of the largest and most impressive Scotch selections in the Midwest.  And not only do they have a ton of great Scotches to choose from, they also have a fine selection of Bourbons, as well.   My colleagues Todd and Chris are big Scotch and Bourbon aficionados, respectively, and I thought about them as I looked over the whiskey menu.  I could see spending an afternoon in Flat Branch just trying the different Scotches they have to offer.

The food at Flat Branch Pub is a nice mix of appetizers, salads, sandwiches, burgers and what I would characterize as upscale bar food.  They feature a rib eye steak, a pasta dish (Bayou chicken and sausage pasta - I've had it and it's great), ribs, chicken dishes and even brick oven pizza.  One thing that caught my eye was the Buffalo Stout meatloaf - they mix ground beef and lean buffalo meat and mix in some of their stout beer.  They top a couple slices with a barbecue bourbon glaze and you get your choice of one side.  I signed up for that and I got their dirty rice for my side. 

I had finished my Katy Trail Pale Ale and I was looking to try something else.   Most of the beers Flat Branch serves are unfiltered beers.  One that caught my eye was their Green Chili beer - a mild beer that is hopped up with Serrano and Anaheim peppers.  I asked my bartender for a sample of that.  She brought me a small 6 oz glass that was about half full.  It has a peppery smell to the beer and mildly spicy aftertaste.  But I decided to try their American Pale Ale - an American style pale ale that was actually a little more forward in the taste of the hops and bitters.  I liked it better than the Katy Trail Pale Ale. 

A waitress brought out my dinner and sat it in front of me at the bar.  The slabs of buffalo/beef meatloaf were about 3/4 inch thick and very lean.  They were sort of dry - I think they may have thrown them on the grill for a bit before they were served to me.  But the meatloaf was still good and I did like the sweet Bourbon barbecue sauce they had with the meatloaf.  The dirty rice was also very good with a nice spicy aftertaste to it.  Overall, the meal wasn't overwhelming, but it was good. 

The Flat Branch Pub and Brewing Company is one of the finest brew pubs I've encountered in my travels.  It has a great atmosphere, a number of above average beers, and the food isn't bad.  The beer garden is a great place to have a cool beer on a warm Missouri Summer afternoon.  While it may not be quite the place to go to impress a client, the food is still serviceable for a brew pub.  It's a great place to go for a quick bite with friends or by yourself. 

Booches - Columbia, MO

I've been to Booches in Columbia, MO, geez, I don't know, maybe three dozen times since I first found the place back in the 80's.  Since then, I haven't found many other places in my travels that makes a cheese burger as good as the one at Booches.  I had a meeting in Columbia recently and purposely came to town early to get a couple of their small cheeseburgers one afternoon.

Booches was established in 1884 - yep, that's right, 1884 - by Paul "Booch" Venable.   For over 90 years Booches was a male-only establishment.  That was pretty hard to believe when I first heard that, considering the Columbia area is one of the more progressive and liberal areas in the Midwest.

In 1976, three friends - Mick Jabbour, Jerry Dethrow, and Bob Rappold - who all shared a love for creative writing and poetry, bought Booches and transformed it into what is the present day incarnation of the place.  They quickly became known as having a killer cheeseburger and became a favorite lunch-time hangout for University of Missouri students and professors.  Over the years, I've had a number of people from the St. Louis area tell me about how they used to get Booches burgers when they were going to school in Columbia.

Running Booches gave the three friends time to dabble in their love of poetry and they ended up publishing five poetry reviews called "Review La Booche" that featured work from local writers.  Rappold eventually left the trio in the mid-80's and opened a small cafe with his wife near Booches.  Dethrow eventually bought out Jabbour's share of Booches in 1993 and he ran the place until 2004.  He then sold Booches to longtime managers Charlie Kurre and Rick Robertson who continue to run the place today.

For years, Booches was primarily a pool hall featuring a number of full-sized pool, snooker and no-pockets billiard tables.  Jabbour, Dethrow and Rabbold moved two or three tables out of the building to make room for a dining area up front near the bar.  First and foremost, Booches is still a pool hall that hosts a number of specialty tournaments.  But the massive draw continues to be their cheeseburgers.  In 2000, USA Today called Booches one of the Top 10 burgers in the nation.  The little secret that a lot of area residents knew about for 24 years suddenly became a national phenomenon.  But notoriety hasn't changed Booches one bit and the burgers are still consistently great.

Booches is located in downtown Columbia, not far from the University of Missouri campus (see map).  It was about 1:30 when I got into Booches on a cold day recently.  There was still a pretty good sized lunch crowd in the place at that time.  And it was very diverse in ages.  There was a large group of college-aged students seated at a big table up front, an elderly couple was seated near the bar, and a number of middle-aged men and women were having Booches burgers for lunch.  Now that Columbia bars and restaurants are smoke free, there's no longer any of that gray haze that lingers over the place from the number of pool players who smoked while they played.  I've been told the smoking ban has hurt Booches' billiard business, but they've more than made it up with the amount of people coming in for their burgers.

Booches menu is located on the wall opposite the old ornate bar.  In addition to burgers, Booches also has grilled chicken sandwiches, pork loin sandwiches, hot dogs and chili dogs, and breakfast sandwiches.  It had been a couple years since I was last in Booches and I noticed they'd raised their prices a bit.  Their cheeseburgers are now $3 bucks apiece.

In addition to the menu on the wall, there's a number of vintage pictures and a lot of St. Louis Cardinals memorabilia.  Actually, the amount of St. Louis Cardinals pictures and memorabilia on the wall is pretty impressive.  A Cardinals fan could easily spend a half-hour just looking at all the stuff they have on display.

I took a small table near the front door.  Each time the door opened, a blast of cold air came up my back.  It was sort of uncomfortable, but I didn't mind it all that much knowing that a couple Booches cheeseburgers would be worth waiting for in the occasional cold.

Booches cheeseburgers are not all that big.  Two can easily be eaten in one sitting.  I did see one of the college-aged girls seated near me order three.  And she wasn't that big of a girl.  I'm sure I could have had three, myself, but I was going out for dinner with a prospective dealer later in the day and I didn't want to spoil my meal.

I ordered up a couple cheeseburgers and a beer.  And don't think just because the burgers are small they're gonna be out quickly.  The grill Booches uses isn't all that big and it's located next to the bar.  It took nearly 20 minutes (and a second beer) for my two cheeseburgers to show up.

Booches cheeseburgers are served on wax paper, just as they have been for years.   Everything on a Booches burger is ketchup, mustard, raw onion slices and pickles.  The cheese is on the bottom of the burger as it's served.

The bun helps Booches cheeseburgers.  It's light and fluffy and stays together as you eat the highly juicy Booches burger.  As small as they are, it doesn't take long to devour one of the burgers.  From the first taste to the last, a Booches burger is still one of my all-time favorite burgers.

As soon as I finished the second burger, I damn near came close to ordering a third one.  I had the time, but I reminded myself that I didn't want to overeat - still trying to watch the waistline and keep the weight off.  So two Booches burgers were enough for me that day.

 

 I'm in the midst of "fine tuning" my Top Ten burgers list.  But, Booches remains firmly ensconced on that list.  Their burgers are consistently very, very good to great.  I view it as a treat each time I have the opportunity to go to Booches.  Now, if I can land this new dealer in Columbia I'll have more chances to visit Booches in the future.  If you make the trip to Columbia over a weekend for a Booches burger at some point, be sure to take note that Booches is not open on Sundays, or as the sign says, "Closed on Sunday - See you in Church."  I'm guessing that's a tradition Booches has had from the days of being a men only establishment.  And Booches is one of those places where you don't have to worry about traditions being changed.