Go West Old Man – Headed Home Across Missouri & Lambert's Cafe– 2012

On Thursday we crossed southern Missouri taking US-53, MO-13, and US-60 and all were very good roads with hardly any traffic.  Much of the terrain reminded us of home and it was mostly rolling pasture land as we drove thru the Ozarks.

That is until we passed Poplar Bluff and it got dead flat – similar to approaching the southeastern seacoast.  It was covered with soybeans, rice (which I’d never seen growing), and a little cotton - I wondered what the yellow rolls were until I could see they were picked cotton.

We stayed at a very nice campground called Hinton RV Park and it’s at the intersection of I-55 and I-57/US-60 along with a lot of motels.

I can’t believe we keep stumbling into pretty neat places to eat and I can’t say we saved the best for last, but this was a good one.  As we drove across Missouri, I suggested Bev use her IPad to do a search on Sikeston, Mo and the first thing to pop up was Lambert’s Café and it got good ratings on Yelp.

We’d skipped lunch and when we checked into the campground mid afternoon, the lady at the desk advised that Lambert's good and only about a mile down the road, so off we went to find the little café.

Talk about a shock, their waiting areas are bigger than most cafes and the parking lot is huge.

As it turns out this place is famous and the Home of Throwed Rolls – just search on nothing but Lambert’s Café and see what you get – my first three pages were this place or one of the other two offshoots (Ozark, MO & Foley, AL).  I thought throwed rolls referred to some part of the baking process (like hand-tossed pizza), but it’s not.  A young man walked around the large room calling out “hot rolls” and when you raised your hand, he throwed one to you. 

Other servers went around the room with various pass-outs that go with all of the meals – fried okra, black-eyed peas, and fried potatoes and onions, plus the roll thower had apple butter and sorghum molasses - this is the black eyed pea girl.

This is about half of the seating for over 300 people and they show up here by the tour bus full or semi as seen above.

I had the fried chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and turnip greens.

Bev had the round steak which is really chicken fried steak, topped with mashed potatoes, topped with cream gravy and her sides were cucumber salad and white beans.

Here was the real surprise – we thought it was all very good, not Bobby Flay good, but home cooking good and I considered staying another night just so we could go back – I would have had catfish.  My chicken was crispy, moist, and flavorful and both side dishes were very good and cooked with southern flavors - like bacon.  Bev’s was also very good plus she had about four servings of the fried okra pass-out.

They have a menu slate of southern comfort food as seen on their menu and I can easily see why it's a tour bus stop.  If you have the opportunity, you should give it a try, but take cash and even if you think the food is just so-so, the experience is worth the price.  Per Wikipedia – “The Travel Channel named Lambert's Cafe as the "World's Best Place to Pig Out", edging out Beth's Cafe, The Big Texan Steak Ranch, Primanti Brothers, Cluck-U Chicken, and other notable restaurants.”

I'm now responding to your comments and hoping you will stop back by - photos best if enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/27/12 event date