Finding Justus

by Expat Chef

I can’t go home again, or at least not without a million memories good and bad flooding my mind and heart. After high school, I spent quite a bit of time seeking to be anywhere else but there. Even 22 years later, it still takes a lot for me to return to that small town community less than an hour away. Usually it’s a call from one of my best friends. Last trip, however, it was a call to the dinner table at Justus Drugstore.

When you are lucky enough to live in a small city with more than a couple James Beard award-winning chefs in it, it seems pretty odd that you’d go 40 miles north to a former drugstore in the main square of a small town to dine. Frankly, small town fare up there is usually a diner or two, or fast food on the fringes near the highway. Not exactly cutting edge cuisine territory even if it is the perfect terrior to source the food from.

And Justus does just that. No other chef in our area sources more food from local farmers than Jonathan Justus. Twenty-seven farms are listed on the back of the menu. Often, what doesn’t come from local farms, the chef forages himself. He has a handheld GPS with his go-to morel mushroom spots and paw-paw sources, all of which he hikes to from his home near the lake.

As he crouched near our table and talked about his foraging trips, I was taken back to the hours I spent as a child hiking in the woods of our farm. I felt the place that was connected to the food. And, as much eating local as I have done, at that moment, I really got it. And I got the value of that place and my own history there.

I also got the best meal I have ever had. I tried really hard to remember anything better from any corner of the world I have visited. But when it comes to food, there’s no place like home. Or Justus.

Our meal included Pork Two Ways, a plate holding two different cuts of local pork brined two different ways, one grilled, one braised. Served with blueberry ginger gastrique, soft polenta and lemon shallot green beans.

A terrine served with vanilla maple pecan, fig, ginger pear port syrup, fresh pear and cinnamon brioche French toast, and micro greens with an apple sorbet to complete the crisp, soft, warm, cold, crunchy, smooth, delicate dish.

I also ate the Bleu Cheese Salad with foraged paw-paw. We finished the meal with six desserts among four people. We couldn’t decide. My choice was a cheesecake made from local goat cheese and served with a basil sauce.

With each course, the chef himself would visit, or even serve, and explain all the components of the dish and often where they were sourced. To my delight, he was wearing a ball cap with the local of my favorite grass-fed dairy farm.

Despite the complex and intricate food, Jonathan Justus is anything but pretentious. As he describes a dish, his eyes light up like an excited kid who has just found the coolest thing and wants to share it. It’s easy to get pulled into the excitement, as if he is bringing you into his adventure, not speaking down to you. I am predicting great things for Justus. I just hope he doesn’t move onto those greater things anywhere else.

It struck me that Jonathan and I are the same age. That we went to the same high school conference at the same time. That he shared the same kind of thoughts and surprise at finding himself right back where he grew up.

Justus reminded me a bit of one of my best friends from the same area who looks every bit rural, bakes his own bread, makes fantastic calamari, hunts and forages, and grows herbs for a living. He’s traveled the world, but would never leave home for good. The place is that much a part of him.

I was home. And I realized what it is about local food that goes beyond all the politics, the green ideals, the nutrition, even the flavor. It’s something inside the person, in myself as the eater, the farmers, and the passionate chef who sourced and created the meal with such care. I realized why it is only local that can bring such amazing complexity and layers to the table. Nothing is finer than that which is brought forth from the fertile ground of our own roots.

Justus Drugstore
106 W Main Street
Smithville, MO
816-532-2300

Comments

[Wicked Good Dinner]

What a wonderful post! It makes me want to jump in the car and drive to MO for a bite to eat and some memories :-)

[expatchef]

Thanks, I've eaten some great meals in Chicago and NY, but this was by far the best meal I've ever had.