Once again our search for food on the road has landed a keeper. Credit for this one goes to Joe, who was navigating en route home from a run to Texas and commanded, "Pull in here". And there we were at Exit 33 of I-44 near Sarcoxie, Mo., doing a quick right-left-right to get to the outer road and an immense parking lot of Hungry House, truckers welcome. Sarcoxie is between Springfield and Joplin, close to the mid-point between St. Louis and Dallas.
This is old-fashioned, real home-town food, even though the building is fairly new. On the walls of the entrance, flyers advertise auctions of farm equipment and the joys of country music shows coming to nearby venues. Part of a wall in the large dining room is filled with brochures for Branson attractions. Branson is not our style, but that didn’t dampen our appetites.
You know you’re eating country style when options for side dishes with your sandwich are include cottage cheese, applesauce and canned peaches. A pulled pork sandwich was generously filled with moist, flavorful pig, smoky enough to eat without the little cup of sweet tomato-based, nicely sharp barbecue sauce served on the side. Potato salad was a mayo-mustard version, a little sweet, a little sharp.
Country-fried steak came on a huge bun, but was large enough to spill over the sides. And this was not the extruded stuff that carries the name in some parts, but real meat, hammered into tenderness, then breaded and seasoned and served up hot and crisp. The coating was nicely peppery, the meat at the ideal point between tender and chewy. Onion rings are made in-house, and absolutely thrill with a beer batter that isn’t too thick, and a nice mixture of sizes of rings. Very well-drained, too, thanks. Even the standard hamburger was large, a third of a pound, on another of those jumbo buns, and carefully cooked to be moist. The fries were standard-issue crinkle-cuts, but you can’t win them all.
At dessert, we need to remember that the correct answer to the question of "Do you want that warm?"
when it applies to pies and cobblers is "Not if it’s been refrigerated." A cold, soggy crust, the inevitable result of refrigerating pastry, is okay, but reheated, it loses its charm without regaining crispness. Cobblers here are real cobblers, not cake dough poured over fruit, but complete with a top and bottom crust, the way Ann’s mother’s family always made them. The peach won over the blackberry, being better seasoned, but both were a little too heavy on the cornstarch. That said, the coconut cream pie was superb, even to the non-coconut aficionado. The custard filling tasted like coconut even when an individual bite didn’t carry actual coconut meat. (We also inadvertently discovered how well coconut and blackberry go together; who’d-a thunk that?) And the pastry was still fairly crisp and tender, despite its refrigeration.
Sweet tea is among the beverage options. (The sweet tea dividing line, unlike the Mason-Dixon, seems to be moving, and 2007 appears to be the year for a big northward surge; it seems to have captured space on many McDonald’s signs and billboards.) The dinner section of the menu offers steaks, but we think it would be pretty stupid to pass up something like ham and beans for a steak that you could get lots of other places. Breakfast is served at all hours—at 1:45 p.m., a plate of pancakes floated by us. And it’s open 24/7. What else could you want?
Hungry House
1391 Lawrence
(South Outer Road)
Sarcoxie, MO
417-548-2604
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and everything else daily and nightly
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Poor
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $4-$15