Munzert’s

10857 Business 21
Hillsboro, Mo.

The Place:

Munzert’s faces the afternoon sun. The door handle was hot to the touch, enough so that I almost let go of it rather than holding it open for my slow moving family. I suffered through it though.

The parking lot was only sparsely populated and as we entered I saw only one other couple in the dining area. To the left was the bar, a few people sitting quietly. Overhead a flat screen was showing an Olympic soccer match. I don’t know if you know about this sport, I thought it was a kids game, or rather an excuse to take your kid somewhere and let him run up and down a field until he tires out so you can then go home and take a quiet nap. Apparently though, some adults play the game as well, mostly overseas. I’m not sure why, the game is as about as interesting as watching kids run up and down a field to tire them out.

Maya

The sun would have been baking the interior of the joint had they not had dark Venetian mini-blinds closed tightly above the tables. So even though the sun was bright and hot, the interior of the place was quite dark.

We were seated at one of the windows in a booth. The hostess was sweet and polite, a waitress handed us menus.

I didn’t take long. I’d built up an appetite earlier in the day during a failed quest to find a simple, yet non-existent plumbing fixture, followed by an afternoon of defending an on-line political statement I’d made in frustration.

Angel had a full house of dogs, including three Great Danes and an adorable and lovable new client, Maya, a brindle Bull Terrier. Not a pit bull, Bull Terriers have an egg-shaped head and small triangular eyes. A Pit Bull, with its wide, square head is closer to a Staffordshire Terrier.

Overhead music played, 60’s stuff, Beatles, Motown, etc. I’m not a huge fan of 60’s music, though it is much more tolerable than country or anything contemporary currently playing on radio stations anywhere.

The selection process was quick and by the time the waitress served our drinks, tea, tea and Coke, we were ready to order. I jumped in first.

The Food:

A ten ounce New York strip and German fries for me. As for salad I picked the dinner version, with Thousand Island dressing.

Dinner salad

Angel, was hovering somewhere between a steak and the fried chicken, finally landing on the chicken. She opted for the Caesar salad, mashed potatoes and gravy. She said she’d prefer the German fries, but they didn’t come with gravy.

Adam picked the peppercorn strip steak, mashed potatoes and the Caesar salad.

As we waited for the salads we each played with our phones. Angel and Adam debated the strategies of a connect-the-dot game they’d been playing, I was just trying to get my phone to turn on.

The tea was cloudy and not exactly fresh, but it was wet and cold. The salads arrived in about the right amount of time.

Steak, German fries.

The salads looked fresh and bright, though mine was a bit skimpy on the tomato front. Two small tomato chunks, that’s all. Other than that it was quite good.

A few minutes, but only a few, passed between the salads and the main course. They did not deliver one course on top of the other as did Cracker Barrel a couple of weeks back. Bobby’s been in the restaurant business for several decades and knows better than to rush customers through.

The potatoes were served in small bowls on the larger plates. My steak, sizzling, with deep, dark grill marks was starting to let loose of it’s inner moisture, I didn’t want to waste that luscious stuff so I dumped my bowl of potatoes onto the plate.

German Fries are large chunks of skillet-fried potatoes with lots of onions. I’ve never had them anywhere else, but I absolutely love them. Even with soaking up the steak drippings they did not get mushy.

Chicken, mashed potatoes.

My knife glided trough the grilled pink meat just like a knife is supposed to. Take note Cracker Barrel, steak knives should be able to slice things, like, say for example, a steak. The first bites were heavenly, I had several before I even noticed the rolls.

Long, firm bread, still warm. The butter was in individually foil-wrapped tabs, frozen.

I don’t like frozen butter, warm rolls are never warm enough to melt an iceberg. Fix that will ya’ Bobby?

The family dived in to their meals. Angels’ first three pieces of chicken were quickly converted into a growing pile of bones, Adam’s steak disappeared rather quickly as well. Primal, grunting, animal noises and knives scrapping plates were the only sounds from our table for several minutes.

Peppercorn Steak

Angel stopped before the fourth and final piece of chicken, she surrendered. I  looked at my steak, three quarters gone and decided to stop as well. I had an idea for breakfast, thin slicing the remaining steak along with some fried chopped potatoes and scrambled eggs.

Adam all but finished his, saving the last few bites for the box.

We were stuffed, and we all laughed when the waitress offered us cheesecake or carrot cake.

Summary:

In the few times we’ve been to Munzert’s we’ve learned this much. Bobby makes an excellent steak as well as some fine fried chicken. We were not disappointed this time either. Except for the cloudy tea, and the too-few tomatoes and the frozen butter, that’s really all the criticism we could muster.

“Yum, good as always!” Angel noted

“Good, I knew it would be, I’ve had it before.” Adam added.
And there you have it, about as good a review as it gets. No surprises, no mysteries, just a fine, well-prepared and satisfying meal.

At just over fifty dollars, this is certainly not the cheapest meal in Hillsboro, but it may be the best.

Bobby Munzert’s II

Hillsboro, Mo.

This is a follow-up. We first visited Munzert’s back in September shortly after it opened. At the time we found the service rather loose and shoddy, but expected as much on the second or third night of being open. This trip was deliberate and fine-tuned to seek out and voice the improvements, or lack thereof.

The Place:

Located at the junction of Highway B and Highway 21, just a few minutes from our humble abode. The inside was still dark, the color scheme was black/rust and the lights were very dim. To the left was the bar and tables designated as the smoking area, to the right the tables and booths that, despite being called non-smoking, smelled otherwise. There was no wall or industrial air purifier to stop the stale stench from the left from intruding on the right.

We were early, about five P.M., and there were no other non-smoking diners. A few uninteresting people hung around the bar. The hostess showed us to a booth, I didn’t mind, and seated us telling us that wait-help would be on its way shortly. She no more than said that when a tall, young gentleman was at the table. We ordered our drinks, tea, tea and Coke.

The music in the background was once again pleasant. Big band hits covered by contemporary artists. The main wall was decorated with large black and white photos of Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood and a WWII sailor dipping and kissing a young lady In Times Square, you know the one.

The table setting was still elegant, White linen cloth, Black, stylishly folded linen napkins, a small candle in a frosted votive holder. Once again, this seemed a little uptown for the small (1600 residents) village of Hillsboro*, a town whose largest chain department store is the Dollar General, and has not had a hotel since the 1930’s.

The Food:

The tea, though served in nice, heavy stemmed glasses, was cloudy and bland.

We perused the minimalist menu, though I’d pretty much decided ahead of time. I had steak last time, I wanted to try the burgers.

I ordered the Munzert Burger with a side of German Fries.

Angel asked for the New York Strip, baked potato and a salad. Adam struggled and opted for the Chicken Piccata with mashed potatoes and a salad. Both chose French dressing.

The ‘Munzert Burger’ was defined as a fine grade of steak, ground, grilled and doused with ‘Munzert Sauce’ on a bun, with a choice of cheese, I naturally asked for Cheddar.

Piccata indicates thin, flattened (hammered) meat topped with a sauce of wine/lemon, butter and spices, most often parsley.

I did not order a salad so I got to watch as Angel and Adam ate theirs. I stole a crouton and enjoyed the lightly toasted bread cube with a hint of some pretty nice French dressing. Adam plucked the onions out of his and laid them out on his mother’s plate. I stole one of those as well.

Adam’s Coke was refilled, they chowed down, and I waited patiently. No water or bread was offered. Just as Adam and Angel were finishing up, the meals arrived. Adam’s chicken was buried under a thin, opaque sauce, the potatoes served in a separate bowl. Angel’s steak still sizzled. My burger smelled like fresh grilled steak. The German fries looked appealing. I’d taken a chance on the fries, but the only other option was steak fries, which I occasionally order, but don’t care for as much as other styles. The waiter had described the German version as sliced, spiced fried potatoes on a bed of fried onions. That was good enough for me. They steamed at the side of the plate, the round slices about a quarter inch thick, the onions had fried to a point of nearly being caramelized. My first bite was satisfying. I cut the burger in two, I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it. It was served simply, just the burger, the cheese and the bun. If there was any Munzert sauce on it, it was invisible. The thick, hand-flattened patty was still pink in the middle, which was perfectly fine by me. No lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, mustard or ketchup was even offered. I did take some of the German onions and stick them inside the bun. The subsequent fries seemed a bit greasy as though the cooking oil temperature might have been a skosh under 350 degrees.

Adam picked at his chicken, scooting the sauce away. He wrinkled his nose at it. His mother tested the sauce and declared that indeed, it was too lemony. He picked at one of the fillets for a while but was obviously not enjoying it. His mashed potatoes were just as disappointing, they were ‘dirty’, peels and all had been mashed, and even the weak brown gravy did not impress or console him. I offered him a half-burger, he declined.

Angel was doing just fine, between burps, grunts and gnashing of flesh she declared: “They do know how to make a steak”

Then the babies showed up. We’d had the place pretty much to ourselves till about halfway through. A family, mom, dad and somewhere between two and seven toddlers popped in and were seated about two tables behind us. The kids were unrelenting screamers. Random, unannounced, unprovoked raspy siren-like squeals chiseled away at the darker places of my soul every few minutes. The parents did not take them outside, shush them or offer them up to passing gypsies as a decent parent would have done. My mood grew darker and darker as the evening progressed. Why a family would want to take a squirming herd of slimy, noisy, uncouth toddlers to a fancy, uptown steakhouse is beyond me. That’s what we have McDonalds for, and also part of the reason you’ll never find me at a McDonalds.

Angel finished most of her steak, I finished off one and a half, half-burgers, Adam’s meal was pretty much as it had started. Our drinks were refreshed once near the end of the meal. The waiter stopped by a couple of times to check on us.

Summary:

We came to judge the service, but were not properly able to do so. We were the only customers for most of the time we were there, so had they been able to screw that up it would have been an epic abomination. The service we got was in fact efficient, polite, professional and without noticeable error. Had it been crowded we might have been able to better judge.

Adam’s meal was not a problem of the restaurant as much as the outcome of a meal that wasn’t prepared to his tastes. He ordered mashed potatoes without knowing (the menu was not very descriptive of any item) that they would be dirty, and the sauce on the chicken was just not to his liking. My burger was fine, the minimalist wording on the menu was dead on, meat + bun + cheese, not a morsel of conventional toppings or condiments. The cheese was cheddary and plentiful, the meat itself flavorful, like a well-grilled steak.

The entire meal came in at forty six dollars and change before the tip, expensive for Hillsboro, on par with most of the big-name franchises.

Between the franchises and Munzert’s, except for location, I’d say the trophy goes reluctantly toward the chains. Those places often have too many things on the menu, Munzert’s, not enough. I don’t recall a single vegetable being offered aside from the salad. The heavy odor of stale cigarettes knocked the ambiance score down considerably. I suppose I’ve just gotten accustomed to those places that reside in smoking-ban towns.

All in all I’d say it was ‘pretty good’. They can do a steak.

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*Hillsboro:

Hillsboro is notable for pretty much only one thing. It was designed to be the county seat and nothing else. In 1839 the county elders decided they needed a more centralized seat, as all the other towns were huddled along the far edges of the county on the Mississippi and Meramec rivers. So they found a plot of land on a hill above a creek in the middle of the county and declared it to be the designated seat. They wanted to name the town Monticello, after all this was Jefferson County, but some other little pissant crossroad had already filed for that name, so they settled for the English translation of 'Monticello', which is 'Hill-town', 'Hill-ville', or the more regal sounding, Hillsboro. Courthouses and other related buildings and supporting shops followed shortly, soon followed by the historically obligatory courthouse fires. The population has never grown much, the town was and still is almost devoid of industry other than light retail and legal/bail bond/title offices. It's kind of interesting that this dumpy, unattractive and virtually unheard-of, little one-horse town of less than two thousand people is the county seat for the fifth most populous county in Missouri. JeffCo is home to nearly a quarter of a million fine, upstanding folks.

In "Goodspeed’s History of Jefferson County" (1888) can be found the following commentary: “Hillsboro has always remained and seems destined to remain, a small village.”

More than a hundred years later, he has proved correct.

Bobby Munzert’s

Highway B and Highway 21

Hillsboro, MO.

The Munzert family has been in the restaurant business in Jefferson County for nearly a thousand years. For many of those years Bobby had a steakhouse at the corner of BB* and 21, right next to the courthouse. This new place just opened the day before we went, we’d found out about it from the local weekly paper.

Regardless of how many eons your family has run restaurants, the first few days of any new one are going to be rough. This is exactly why I wanted to go as soon after opening as possible. The plan was to go, then go again in a couple of months to see if the place improves on its certain discrepancies.

Keep that in mind as you read this, that we fully expected service issues and understand and forgave them completely. I will point them out, but only as a record for later comparison.

The Place:

Not a new construction, there has been something, a bar maybe, at this location up until recently. It’s at the last traffic light heading south out of Hillsboro. We were a bit surprised when we first saw it, we’d never seen that parking lot so full. The place looked crowded, so much so that we decided to consider plan B. So we drove past, discussed plan B and soon realized we didn’t actually have a plan B. So we turned around and went in. Though the lot was crowded there was no one waiting outside. We ducked in and realized that this place was much larger on the inside than on the outside. There were two large, distinct sections, the bar side and the dining side. The bar side had TV’s people laughing, drinking, smoking, the dining side had a couple of middle aged families sitting, waiting and staring at the bar side.

We were seated immediately by the hostess, a young lady that seemed to know where she wanted us, at a table, not a booth.

She handed us menus then disappeared.

The motif was black on rust. Not the bad kind of rust, corrosion, but the color, a dark orange-ish color that actually looked classy trimmed with black tables, chairs, booths and carefully folded black linen napkins at each place setting. The floors were wood laminate, pale oak or pine. The walls above the chair rail were cream colored, hard to tell exactly in the dim light. Several pictures of various sizes, mostly black and white set a theme. Mae West, the Lone Ranger, Marylyn Monroe, 40’s / 50’s stuff. The wait staff was all dressed in black shirts and pants, matching the overall palette. Music hovered slightly over the din, Sinatra, big band, classy, it complimented the photos on the walls. The din was a problem. The smooth walls and floor, high ceilings and lack of drapes made the whole place too ‘soundy.’ It was like sitting in a crowded gymnasium, every sound carried and echoed. A booming voice occasionally emanated from the bar side, I could make out the voice but not actually see the person it belonged to.

The menu was simple, Bobby decided on a classy, minimal approach, which I appreciate. Steaks, Lobster, Shrimp, Chicken and a few burgers and sandwiches. The prices seemed a little uptown, but this apparently wasn’t going to be a ham and beans joint.

We decided rather quickly, but waited quite a while for anyone to notice. The waitress finally came around with a small, generic spiral notebook and jotted down our orders, including drinks, tea, tea and Coke.

The drinks arrived rather slowly, heavy stemmed glasses, tea, but no ice. There were slight hints that there at one time was ice, but there was none in the glasses. Looking around we noticed that the other tables were being served water. We never were. We also had little plates like for bread, but never got that either.

The Food:

I went all out and ordered the 6oz. filet mignon, with baked potato and green beans. Angel asked for the New York Strip, potato and asparagus (yuck). Adam went for the blackened chicken sandwich and steak fries.

This was our last contact with the wait staff for a half hour. We watched them scurry about, several times they stopped and counted aloud to figure out a table number. Trays of food were taken to one table, then another, until the correct table was found. Water was served and refilled except at our table.

At one point a tray-laden waitress stopped at our table and asked “Burger and Tilapia?” No, not ours. We were getting hungry, some bread would have been good. “We should have said yes to the burger and tilapia.” I offered. It did look good. At one point I took the bread plate and held it suspended over the floor, offering to drop it just to get the staff’s attention. Angel shook her head at me. Our tea was gone, Adam’s Coke was nearly so. Nearly twenty five minutes in to the wait our server did stop, probably because I was holding up my empty glass. “Can I have my tea with ice this time?” I asked, not in a scolding way. She smiled and returned promptly with fresh drinks, without taking away the empties.

Several times members of the staff joined up and pointed at tables with confused looks.

Like I said though this was expected.

The food finally arrived and about all I can say about it was that it was very, very good. The steaks were superbly cooked to order, peppered just enough. The potatoes were soft with crunchy skins, the green beans were tender but not too much so. Angel offered to let me taste her asparagus, I hissed and spat at her. She enjoyed her steak, at one point picking up a slightly pink chunk, staring at it on her fork, and quoting a line from her favorite movie said: “I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.”

Yeah she can quote the movie, pretty much the whole thing. To which I responded: “Whoa. Déjà vu.” Watch the movie, it’ll all make sense.

Adam finished his completely which as you know by now means everything was great.

Summary:

The waitress came by again, eventually, and took away the empty plates and dropped off the bill. It came to sixty dollars and change. What was noticeable was that we weren’t even offered desert even though there was a desert sampler tray a few feet away. We didn’t really want desert, but I’m just saying, we weren’t even offered. From bill drop off to return was about ten minutes. Not as bad as it could have been but still kind of slow.

I’ll repeat myself, the wait problems were fully expected. A new crew in a new restaurant hasn’t had the time to nail down all the timings and organization. I would have been stunned if it had gone any better.

The price was higher than I expected for Hillsboro, but the quality of the meals was better as well. I went in assuming this would be a small town diner affair with greasy fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was not. Bobby is going for a more upscale venue. I hope it works out, I really do.

Yes we will be back, the food was simply great. I do recommend it with certain caveats, that it is still new and there are definite service kinks because of it.

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*Lettered highways. This is a Missouri thing. It can often be confusing and infuriating. There is apparently a method behind the madness which is rather poorly explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_supplemental_route

Highway B and Highway BB are near each other, but not the same, nor do they intersect. The double letters usually indicate a lesser road than a single letter. This system has been known to cause problems with 911 dispatch trying to determine an address. This can also make for somewhat embarrassing statements as I once had to when I lived outside Republic ,Mo., “I live near PP and TT.”