The Wheel Inn, Old and New, Sedalia, Missouri

UPDATE MAY 18, 2014: WE WERE IN SEDALIA YESTERDAY, WHEELED IN TO THE WHEEL INN, AND DISCOVERED THE PLACE IS FOR SALE. APPARENTLY THEY'VE CLOSED. WHAT A SAD THING! As of May 18, 2014, this post, now, amounts to a memorial page for the Wheel Inn.

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Yes, the Wheel Inn lives on, and these days it’s right across the road from the Missouri State Fair. (You are going to the fair, right? August 12–22—you can’t miss it! Seriously, it is a good time, and in addition to meeting some talkative politicians, you’ll walk away with a bag full of free stuff. You might even get a free flyswatter!)

But the Wheel Inn, ahhh, the Wheel Inn. Venerable, beloved, local landmark that was destroyed when MoDot widened the intersection of Highways 50 and 65, the major arteries that fed the Wheel Inn’s first six decades of existence. Memories.




By September 2007, when the Wheel Inn closed its doors and auctioned off bits and pieces of its original, vintage signage and architecture, it had gotten dang difficult to “wheel in” to the Wheel Inn—at that busy intersection, we usually had to pull in and out of parking lots of adjacent businesses. And the parking lot had gotten tiny; easier with my Civic, but tricky with the truck. Highway expansion; lots of traffic.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more genuinely intact vintage drive-in that was so virtually unchanged since the 1940s. But it’s gone now. (Couldn't they have moved it? Alas.)




We were among the throngs of true devotees who visited the Wheel Inn during its last few weeks in business. Below are some pictures from that time (September 2007), including our last guberburger meal. Awww, dang it. What a cool place.










. . . But change happens. It could easily have been a tornado, you know? Or a fire! (Remember the original Old Heidelberg in Columbia? They had to completely rebuild—and it’s not the same—but that’s the way it goes. We love it still.) And this way, with the Wheel Inn, we all got a chance to say goodbye, and they could sell off mementoes to their biggest fans.


~ ~ But the Wheel Inn Lives! ~ ~



I had heard that there was a “new” Wheel Inn in Sedalia, a little farther south on Highway 65, and right across from the State Fairgrounds. To be honest, I was skeptical, and that was one reason I stayed away so long: “Who are you, and what makes you think you can replicate the Wheel Inn?” It seemed almost blasphemous. Sputter, sputter, sputter!

But even though the vintage architecture was a real treat and we miss it a lot, a business is much more than its building. And yes, the Wheel Inn tradition continues.

I’m pretty sure this is only the third set of owners; the first owners, Lyman Keuper and his wife, bequeathed the Wheel Inn to their daughter and son-in-law, Ruth Ann and Jack Hawkins, who owned the Wheel Inn until the building’s demise in 2007. John Brandkamp, who owned the business, sold the Wheel Inn name, recipes, and reputation to the current owner, Judy Clark, who had worked at the Wheel Inn off and on for forty-seven years.

And so the new Wheel Inn continues with the blessing of the old owners. The rest of the pictures in this post are of the new place.




I do hope they can find a talented artist to paint a new Guber-man on their windows; their current Guber-guys look really, um, computer-generated. Oh well.




They have a lot more seating, plus plenty of parking places! I’m not sure it’s much of a “drive in” anymore, but they have a big U-shaped service counter like the old place, they’ve stuck with the red-and-white color scheme and a retro “look,” and the recipes are all the same. Hallelujah!




There are a few new items on the menu—a fried chicken salad, for instance, and a couple of “big” burgers (the “Wheel Burger” has double cheese, double meat, plus the fixin’s; the “Whimpy Burger” has triple meat and triple cheese, which I think you should avoid, unless you want a triple bypass, too).

And stuff’s gone up. Prices are higher—but then that’s the way things go. It’s still very reasonable, and you can buy food here with the change on the floor under your car seat.

No kiddin’. You can get a grilled cheese sandwich for $2.25 (two slices of cheese!) or an egg sandwich for $2.50. I bet you’ve put more than that into a big-city parking meter. The most expensive thing on the menu is “Chicken BB” for $6.10. I don’t know what that is, and anyway, you probably came here to try something else. Right?




Yes. The pièce de résistance is the famous guberburger, the steakburger with peanut butter on it. Now, this is living.

I know what you’re going to say, but before you decide I’ve lost my mind, I urge you to try one first. They use a thin patty of fresh lean chuck, top it with hot melted peanut butter, and add lettuce, tomato, and salad dressing (Miracle Whip).

The Wheel Inn is where it all began. Here’s how it happened.






Back in 1946, Lyman Keuper, the owner of the Wheel Inn, was approached by a fellow who was impressed by his curly fries (they’re called Soozie-Q Fries, by the way). They are really, really curly, and they’re thin. They’re fun to eat, and they look great.




So this fellow proposed a trade: You tell me how you make Soozie-Q fries, and I’ll give you the secret for making the best burgers ever—irresistibly delicious burgers that will make your business a sure success. . . . And the deal was made.

The guberburger became the Wheel Inn’s specialty, beloved by generations of Missourians headed to the state fair, or Kansas Citians on their way to the Lake, bikers, or any number of other folks passing through on the two highways. And they were all telling their friends, “You’ve gotta try it to believe it. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s really good!”




Now—you can get “guberburgers” elsewhere in Sedalia, like Eddie’s Drive In (which we also love), but my waiter the other day assured me that there is a secret ingredient (besides the peanut butter) used in Wheel Inn’s guberburgers that makes them unique, and extra delicious. So go there, my friends, and enjoy the Real Thing.

The moral of this story is, Change happens. But if you’re lucky, the stuff that really matters, like the Original Guberburger, continues on.

(Oh, and make sure you get the Soozie-Q fries with your guberburger!)

Gallatin, Missouri: The Corner Café

My notes about Gallatin can’t be complete without a small restaurant review. By now, I hope you know that Sue and I do appreciate high-class, artistic, and even healthy food as well as down-home food. The latter isn’t usually the most excellent food you can consume, but there are still reasons to celebrate it and enjoy it now and then. And in small towns, it’s pretty hard to escape. In France, you eat snails. In diners, you eat burgers.

With the Corner Café, there are definitely pros and cons. First, the cons. Numbers 1 through, like, 54 are: It’s smoky in there. Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes. I mean, I can handle some smoke, but my eyes started really burning. There was no designated smoking section. The ceiling fans were all spinning like crazy, too. Amazingly, there were no ashtrays on the tables. But I think anyone who wants one can have one.

We went in there about an hour after the Tour of Missouri passed through; the place wasn’t particularly crowded, but MAN did it smell of smoke.

Here is another con: The restroom had a big sign saying something like, “Don’t put toilet paper in stool.” . . . Um, say what? . . . Does that mean what I think it means? When I washed my hands and pushed the paper towel into the trash can, it looked like others had interpreted the sign the way I feared it meant. Oh my gosh, don’t they have plumbing here? (I mean: Quick! Call a plumber!)

Okay: Maybe by now, a week after we were there, that little problem has been fixed. And no, it didn’t smell like doodie in there. It didn’t smell bad in there at all. It just smelled like . . . cigarettes.

Are you completely grossed out by now? Okay, hold on. One more “con.”

It really took a while for our food to appear. I think it was a kitchen thing and not a waiter thing. I know this isn’t fast food, but then it wasn’t very busy when we were there. We had a copy of the St. Joe newspaper at our table, and we read that. But we were starting to get kind of annoyed.

Just when we were about to say “enough,” the food appeared on white oval plates. Hmmm.

Hey, it was actually pretty good! Sue got a Southwest-style chicken sandwich, and I got a burger that came with pepper jack cheese, bacon, ranch dressing (to the side, thank you), actual green leaf lettuce, actual ripe red tomato, and fries. A ripe tomato! This little café has achieved something that eludes all the corporate-ass buying power of Chili’s, Rubee Tewsdee’s, and all those types of places: Red, ripe, in-season tomatoes!




Hallelujah!

And the bacon on the burger? The real deal, thick cut, and juicy. Mmm.

Nahhh, this isn’t “art cooking,” but there is a way to make burgers be good, and this little café did the burger right.

Other stuff on the menu included various other diner foods, plus some kind of chain-brand pizza. I mean, it’s a pretty typical small-town diner, you know? Relaxed. And an excellent place to hang out if you’re a smoker.

And the place does have a reputation for its smokiness—we got that from two different sources while we were exploring the town. When we told one lady we had eaten at the Corner Café, she immediately chirped back: “Oh, I’m sorry!”

You’re probably wondering what to make of this review, and frankly, so am I. Is it thumbs up, or thumbs down?

Well, it depends. If you’re a smoker, then it’s a definite thumbs up—freedom to enjoy a cigarette before, during, and after your meal! If you can’t stand cigarette smoke, it’s a definite thumbs down; you will hate-hate-hate it. If you’re flexible when it comes to air quality, and you appreciate small-town diners, then you’ll probably enjoy the place. I was favorably impressed by the burger and by Sue’s chicken sandwich. The prices were reasonable, the people were friendly enough. And yeah, we were there in part to support a locally owned business, the backbone of America.

It is what it is.




One more comment. Next to the cash register was a basket of cookies—apparently homemade, packed in threes in plastic wrap. Chocolate chip; white chocolate and macadamia nut . . . Mmm. Okay, when I was paying the bill, I bought a three-pack of the latter to eat while we were driving home.

A few hours later, when we got back on the highway as we were leaving Adam-ondi-Ahman, we opened them. And guess what.

The cookies were delicious. But even after removing them from the plastic wrap, we could taste the cigarette smoke right in the cookies. And I think that sums it all up pretty well.