Road Tips

Casagrotto - Lake Ozark, MO

A friend of mine likes to ride his motorcycle down to the Ozarks and hang out in the Lake Ozark/Osage Beach area hitting the bars and restaurants that cater to the tourists who flock to the area in the summer months.  He told me of a place in Lake Ozark that had - what he thought - was the best pizza he'd ever had.  He asked me if I'd ever tried the pizza at Casagrotto, and I told him I hadn't.  I immediately put it on my "Restaurants to Visit" list and on a recent trip between Jefferson City and Springfield, MO on evening, I stopped into Casagrotto to see if the pizza was really that good.  

Mark and Ryan Brick literally grew up on lakes.  Their father was a trial lawyer in Des Moines and the Brick family would spend a number of summers on Clear Lake in northern Iowa.  By the 1980's, the family was looking for an even larger lake to summer at and they began spending time on the Lake of the Ozarks.  Their father then made a life changing decision in his mid-50's - he ended up buying Village Marina on Lake of the Ozarks and it included 24 boat slips and a small deli.  Ryan Brick ran the marina and deli for his parents while Mark Brick had completed his degree in business and began to work for a bank.  

As Mark continued to vacation at Lake of the Ozarks, he found that he liked the lifestyle there in the summertime.  The family was looking to expand the marina and Mark decided to stay on and work in the family business.  Village Marina quickly expanded to two locations on the lake with over 250 boat slips, boat sales and service, and a restaurant - The Boathouse - a seasonal bar and grill that has become one of the more popular spots to dine and drink in the Ozarks.   

In Lake Ozark, the Casablanca - and its pizza place downstairs, Casagrotto - was a long time favorite of tourists and locals to hang out.  The building originally was the first post office for the city of Lake Ozark, then was made into a bar/restaurant in the 50's.  Eddie Jordan - who owned other restaurants around the lake - and Sharon Watson were the owners of the Casablanca, but they wanted to sell the business.  Once Ryan and Mark Brick found out the place was up for sale, they approached Jordan and Watson to make a deal to buy Casablanca/Casagrotto and the Bricks took over the bar/restaurant in 2012.  

Casablanca/Casagrotto is located on what was the former main road through Lake Ozark, Bagnell Dam Boulevard.  (see map)  Parking in the summertime - especially during the weekends - along the road can be pretty tough with all the bars and tourist shops that line the street, but I was able to find a parking spot just down the street from Casablanca.  Walking into Casablanca, I found a cozy little bar that seemed to skew a little older in clientele than what I expected.  But it was a nice place to get a drink and a sandwich.  The only problem was that they allowed people to smoke in Casablanca and the cigarette smoke was very prevalent.  

My friend had told me that Casagrotto was in the basement of Casablanca and I found a stairwell that took me downstairs to the pizza pub.  I found an even smaller space in the basement with a small number of high top tables and a nice bar, where I sat.  They had over 20 beers on tap at Casagrotto and I got a Stone Go To IPA from Misty, the bartender/server that evening.  She gave me a menu to look over, but I pretty much knew that I was going to get a small pizza that evening.  

There were two guys making pizzas off to the side of the bar area.  I got to talking to them as they were in close proximity to where I was seated.  They were both pretty funny guys.

One of the guys was telling me about the brick oven that they used to make pizzas.  He said it was four or five years old and weighed something like 6000 pounds.  "They had to bring it up through the backdoor in pieces," he told me.  "The thing is almost too big for us down here." 

Of course, I ordered my standard Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza.  The small is a 10", but it sort of looked smaller than that to me.  One of the guys shaped the dough and put the toppings on top of the pizza.  He was literally taking chunks off a big ball of sausage he had in his hand and was throwing the chunks on to the pizza.

The pizza came out of the oven in about 10 minutes.  It was a thin, crispy crust and the toppings were really loaded on.  The thick chunks of sausage had a great spicy and sage taste to them, there were plentiful discs of pepperoni, and the sliced mushrooms were fresh and earthy.   The size was perfect for one person - at least for me.  But it was so good that I was sad when I took the last bite.  

My friend was spot-on with his recommendation of Casagrotto, located in the basement of Casablanca near the dam in Lake Ozark.  The pizza was simply outstanding. The don't skimp on the toppings at Casagrotto as the pizza was weighted down from the large chunks of sausage, as well as the plentiful amounts of pepperoni and sliced mushrooms they placed on it.  The beer selection in Casagrotto was also very good with a number of good craft beers on tap.  Quite simply, Casagrotto was one of the best thin crust pizzas I've encountered in my years of travel.  

Wobbly Boots Roadhouse - Osage Beach, MO

A friend of mine had taken a motorcycle vacation down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri last year and he sent some pictures via Facebook from a place he was at in Osage Beach - Wobbly Boots Roadhouse.  I'd seen the signs for Wobbly Boots going through Osage Beach on my trips between Jefferson City and Springfield, MO a few times over the past couple of years and often wondered how the food was there.  When I saw my friend after he got back from his motorcycle road trip, I asked him out Wobbly Boots was.  "You haven't been there," he asked incredulously.  "I figured that as many times that you go down that way that you'd been there a couple times before."  Nope, I'd never been but on a subsequent trip between Jeff City and Springfield late this past year, I stopped into Wobbly Boots for lunch. 

The brother duo of Mark and Brian Barrett are the owners of Wobbly Boots.  They've been in the restaurant business in the Osage Beach area for over 20 years running popular restaurant/bars such as Dog Days on the Lake and Shorty Pants Lounge.  In 2002, the brothers bought out J-J Barbecue and the recipes of John Hangley who also owns the Dickie Doo Barbecue in Sedalia, MO.  Using J-J Barbecue as the basis of Wobbly Boots, they eventually closed that restaurant and opened Wobbly Boots in the summer of 2012.  Tom Livingston is the pit master for Wobbly Boots, which opened an Iowa location in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, in late 2014. 

The Wobbly Boots in Osage Beach opened after the new Highway 54 Bypass opened in 2012.  Before the bypass, travelers had to lurch through Osage Beach passing shops, hotels and restaurants.  Now with the bypass, it shaves as much as 20 minutes of the travel time it took to get through Osage Beach to Camdenton - sometimes longer during the height of the vacation season in the Lake of the Ozarks.  In order to let travelers know that Wobbly Boots existed, the Barrett brothers had a plan - they put up Wobbly Boots billboards in both directions coming into Osage Beach on the new bypass.  It's those billboards that piqued my interest over the past couple of of years of traveling through the area. 

Getting off the bypass onto the Osage Beach Parkway just before the bridge, I had to double back to get to Wobbly Boots.  (see map)  It was around noon during the week when I stopped and the large parking lot was half full of cars.  Entering Wobbly Boots, I was greeted by a hostess and I asked if I could just sit at the bar which was part of the main dining area.  She gave me a menu and I took a seat at the bar.  Amy was the bartender that day and I saw that they had Schlafly beers on tap.  I got a Schlafly Pale Ale while I looked through the menu. 

In addition to barbecue at Wobbly Boots, they also feature a number of appetizers - award winning chicken wings, brisket quesadillas, and bacon-wrapped shrimp stood out on the menu.  They also have a number of burgers, wraps and sandwiches, as well as rib-eye steaks, a brown sugar teriyaki salmon dinner, and prime rib that is sold on Friday and Saturday nights. 

But barbecue is their big draw and they feature baby back and spare ribs, barbecued chicken, brisket, pulled pork, turkey, ham and smoked sausage.  I ended up getting the two meat combo plate - pulled pork and brisket.  I had a choice of one side to go along with the meat and I got the baked beans.  Had I gotten two choices I also would have the Texas fries along with the beans. 

The pulled pork - in my estimation - was great.  It was moist, tender and had a slightly-smoked pork flavor.  The brisket - though not as good as the pulled pork - was also very good.  It, too, had a subtle smoky taste to the beef.  The barbecue sauce that was given to me was robust with a bit of a spicy bite on the back end.  It went well with the pulled pork and brisket, which, quite actually, were very good on their own without the sauce.

Usually, I feel a need to zip up baked beans at most barbecue places with some of the sauce.  But the baked beans at Wobbly Boots were very good on their own.  They were thick and sweet with chunks of pork mixed in.  This was some pretty darned good barbecue in my book. 

I really didn't know what to expect with the barbecue from Wobbly Boots, but I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised with both the brisket and especially the pulled pork that I had.  The baked beans were good, as well, and the sauce was adequate.  It was a lot of food for the combo plate and I was definitely full when I finished.  The Osage Beach location of Wobbly Boots more than acquitted themselves admirably in the world and ways of barbecue.  With a number of barbecue places to choose from in the Lake of the Ozarks area, I don't think you can go wrong with Wobbly Boots. 

HalfSauced Barbeque - Osage Beach, MO

Driving between Jefferson City and Springfield, MO on a recent trip through the Ozarks, I had a hankering for some barbecue.  I knew there were a couple places in Osage Beach and I found one on my GPS by the name of HalfSauced Barbeque.  I pulled into the restaurant nestled in between Osage Beach Parkway North and Osage Beach Parkway South.  (see map)

Tell me if you've heard this story before - a couple friends go on the barbecue competition circuit and win a few contests.  They then decide to open their own barbecue place.  That's the story of the vast majority of barbecue places I've come across in the Midwest and HalfSauced Barbeque is no exception.  Kirk Streed and Randy Heimgartner were doing barbecue competitions before they decided to open their own place about 10 years ago in Osage Beach.  They cut down on their time on the competition circuit to get their business up and going, but within the past four or five years they've returned to their roots, so to speak, and have won numerous awards again.  Three years ago, they moved into what the former Captain D's seafood restaurant in Osage Beach, their current location.  Kirk Streed's wife, Cindy, and their daughter, Haley, help out around HalfSauced Barbeque, as does Randy Heimgartner's wife, Andrea, and their son Andrew. 

There were only a couple three people in the place when I walked into HalfSauced Barbeque as it was well past the lunch rush.  The restaurant is divided into two sides and a nice young lady led me to a table in the dining room to the right as you come in.  She dropped off a menu and soon thereafter my server Elizabeth came over to greet me.  I got a beer while I poured through the menu.

The barbecue offerings are typical as to what you'll find at most other joints - brisket, ribs, pulled pork, pulled chicken, double-smoked ham, turkey and burnt ends, many meats available as a sandwich.  I always like to get a combo plate when I try a new barbecue place and they had the HalfSauced Sampler Platter that consisted of three baby back ribs, brisket, burnt ends and pulled pork with a couple sides.  That was a lot of food for lunch, but I ended up finding a two meat combo platter consisting of 10 ounces of your choice of meat and two sides.  

When Elizabeth came back to take my order, I told her that I wanted the two meat combo - pulled pork and brisket.  I got the pit baked beans for one side, but hemmed and hawed over what to get for the other side.  They had potato salad, a dinner salad, onion rings, French fries, green beans, and two different types of cole slaw - a creamy style with a little bite to the taste, and an oil and vinegar based cole slaw with sliced toasted almonds and sesame seed.  The creamy cole slaw with the bite sounded good to me and I ordered it up.  "I'm sorry," Elizabeth said to me.  "But we're out of cole slaw today. Both kinds."  I sort of groaned - more so for the creamy cole slaw than the oil and vinegar slaw with the almonds.  I'm not big on almonds.  I ended up getting fries with the baked beans.  

Elizabeth brought the barbecue out to me not long after I ordered it.  I'm glad I didn't get the bigger combo platter because there was enough food on the plate for me and possibly one other person.  I got three large slabs of brisket, a good sized portion of the pulled pork, fries that probably came from TWO potatoes and a small bowl of the pit baked beans.  

The brisket had a nice smoke ring and a nice seasoned bark on the outer shell.  It pulled apart very easily and had a nice smoky taste to it.  It was very, very good.  

The pulled pork didn't seem to have much of a smoky flavor to it, but it was moist and had a good pork flavor on its own.  I added some of the medium sauce they had on the table to the pulled pork.  It had sort of an essence of Worcestershire Sauce and soy sauce to it along with a sweet flavor.  They also had a spicy sauce that sort of reminded me of salsa.  It wasn't the best spicy barbecue sauce I've ever had and I found that I sort of liked the medium sauce a little better.

The pit baked beans were fine - nothing special on their own.  I added some of the medium barbecue sauce to them to give them a little more of a zippy taste and it helped.  The fries - to me - were basically a throwaway.  After the anguish of not having the creamy cole slaw, the fries were sort of an afterthought.  But they were crisp on the outside and had that moist potato taste on the inside.  I dipped some in the medium barbecue sauce and it turned out that I liked them very much.  

Overall, the barbecue I had a HalfSauced Barbeque was well above average.  I liked the brisket a little better than the pulled pork.  The beans were all right and even though I was disappointed they didn't have the creamy cole slaw, the fries filled in admirably.  The sauces - to me - were pretty average.  The spicy sauce had a little zing, but - once again - it tasted sort of like salsa.  The medium sauce was fine, but not a big winner to me.  Elizabeth's service was fine and she was on top of things for me.  It was a nice experience at HalfSauced Barbeque.  Not the best BBQ I've had, but certainly far from the worst.  It was worth it to stop and try the place.