PART 3
Mother Road meals, in Missouri and beyond
QUEEN’S GATE in Springfield, the newly dedicated monument to the Birthplace of Route 66, provides a new photo op in the “Queen City of the Ozarks,” third-largest city in Missouri and home to a wide array of dining experiences.
ROUTE SUPERMAN Gordon Elliott, 90, proprietor of the famous Rail Haven Motor Court in Springfield, Missouri, is a fan of the Steakburger and fries from the nearby Steak ’n Shake.
HOME STYLE At the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma, the comfort food is served up as fast as Sally the Porsche. In addition to standards like buffalo burgers and chicken fried steak, the diner serves German dishes like Jagerschnitzel and spaetzle—but the oatmeal pie alone is worth the trip.
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME KUKU FRIES with that? Gene Waylan, above right, has owned and operated the last remaining restaurant in the former Ku-Ku chain for more than half a century.
The Route 66 experience is as much about the meals as it is the miles, we’d learned decades ago, when an impromptu jaunt to the Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo wound up with a birthday dinner at The Big Texan on the city’s eastern fringes.So today, rested up after the early-morning Route 66 Centennial Kickoff in a city where we knew little about the foodscape, we con...
