Jeremiah's Is Back, and the Rumors Are True

 Sunday Spotlight

As a writer, sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring against you on a story. You reach out to the sources, nothing. Do the research online, nothing. It's frustrating because you know there is a story there just waiting to be told, but every time you try, the information just doesn't quite present itself.

This story was the complete opposite. This story jumped right into my lap. I hadn't planned on writing it this week, but I got a chance to try out Jeremiah's, and the rumors are true. This place is amazing, folks. Downright worth the drive, so we simply had to make it the Sunday Spotlight for this week and tell you all about it.

About a month ago, I saw a Facebook post about Jeremiah's reopening in Sikeston. I reached out to someone I believed was connected to the restaurant, got a phone number and then, because life has a funny way of getting in the way, I never followed up. I wasn't even sure there was a story there yet. I don't get to Sikeston very often, and as a publisher who has to decide where to spend limited time, there are plenty of stories that are easier to get to and more immediately in front of us.

Then last week I was at a meeting of downtown Cape Girardeau business owners following the recent gun violence in the area. I introduced myself to someone as being with The Missouri Stream, formerly The Commerce Dispatch. A man standing nearby heard the name and approached me afterward. It was Patrick, part of the ownership group at Jeremiah's, the same restaurant I had reached out about weeks earlier. He invited me down to have a meal, see the restaurant and take a look at the new mural inside. When fate sends me a story, I listen, so we went the next evening.

Walking into Jeremiah's is a little strange at first because the building feels like several different eras decided to occupy the same space and somehow made it work. From the outside, it is an old brick building that has clearly lived a life, but it isn't run down. The entrance and awning give you a hint that there is something a little more polished waiting inside.

Then you walk through the door and the place changes. There are the huge mirrors. The distinctive half-circle light. The remnants of a room that once belonged to a very different era of Sikeston nightlife. There is an almost old-school elegance to it, and nobody tried to turn an old building into a fake version of something it never was.

Patrick and the ownership group seem to understand what they have.

The building has a history that goes far beyond Jeremiah's. In the 1970s, Jim Starns built the light fixture that still helps define the room, and the building became a disco bar at night. Rex’s was there. Kimo’s Deli was there. The Back Door was there. Other businesses and people passed through those doors, and for generations of people in the area, the building became part of their own memories.

Weddings, reunions, homecomings and parties happened there. People celebrated there, and people gathered there when they were saying goodbye to someone. Some of those memories have literally been brought back into the building too. People have brought in old pieces of its history, including an old work shirt from Phil Brenson, an old Rex transom and an old Chemo's Deli sign. They are part of the restaurant.

While I was there, I watched an older couple walking through the building, pointing at things and looking around like they were walking through a photo album. I wanted to stop them and ask what they remembered.
Unfortunately, they left before I got the chance. But I understood what they were seeing.

Patrick told me that when you have a building with this much history in it, you are really just its steward for a little while. That seems to be the philosophy behind what they are doing with Jeremiah's. They want to make it their own without destroying what made the place special in the first place. There are plans to bring even more of that history back, including restoring the old Hotel Del Rey sign on the roof and putting the giant Jeremiah's signage back where it can be seen from across the street.

At Jeremiah's, the building is only part of the experience. I went in with a pretty simple plan. I wanted to eat, look around and see what they were doing. My fiancée and I ordered a few things, including gumbo, chili, steak sandwiches and mac and cheese. I also tried the pork belly bites. 

The gumbo immediately got my attention.
I lived in Texas, and when you live there, trips into Louisiana are not exactly unusual. I have eaten enough Cajun and Louisiana food to know the difference between something that is simply called gumbo and something that actually tastes like someone understands what they are doing. This gumbo is the latter. The version I had was made with chicken and andouille sausage, with seafood available by request. The rice is served separately, the way I prefer it, rather than turning the entire bowl into a pile of rice with some gumbo hiding underneath it. It had the flavor I was looking for. It tasted like gumbo.

Then there was the chili. I have eaten a lot of chili over the years. I have eaten chili at restaurants that specialize in it, and I have eaten Guy Fieri's chili in Branson.

Jeremiah's is better. It is one of the best chilis I have ever eaten actually. 

Patrick told me he uses four different peppers, including Hatch peppers. You can taste the peppers, but the heat doesn't bury the flavor. There are actual chunks of beef in it, and it has enough heat to get your attention without turning the entire bowl into a contest of who can suffer the longest. I would come back just for the chili.

The mac and cheese had a little kick to it as well, which I liked. The steak sandwich was excellent, and my fiancée ordered hers medium-well. It came out exactly the way she wanted it, which sounds like a small thing until you have spent enough years ordering steaks to know how often restaurants miss that target.

The pork belly bites were good, although I thought they could have used a little more crispness. Patrick explained that the restaurant's smoker was down and they were temporarily using a convection oven and liquid smoke. Under normal circumstances, the pork belly is smoked for about four hours. That is the kind of conversation I appreciate because it gave me some insight into what was actually happening behind the scenes. I have worked in restaurants and around restaurant operations before. I pay attention to things like that.

I also pay attention to the menu.

Jeremiah's menu is built in a way that a lot of restaurants could learn from. There are steaks and other items priced for someone who wants to spend serious money on dinner. There is a roughly three-pound tomahawk that comes out family style and can feed two or three people. There are people who can walk in, order a great steak, drinks and appetizers and spend several hundred dollars without thinking twice about it.

But there are also options for people who cannot do that. You can come in for a bowl of chili, a baked potato or cornbread. There are less expensive options that still let someone sit in the same dining room, enjoy the same building and be treated like a customer instead of someone who wandered into the wrong restaurant. If I had limited money and wanted to take my family out for dinner, I could still come to Jeremiah's. I would have to be more selective about what I ordered, obviously, but I could still bring my family into the same place where someone else might spend $500 on a dinner. That is a difficult balance to pull off.

Patrick told me that was intentional. He wanted someone celebrating a big occasion to feel comfortable spending a lot of money, and he wanted someone who just wanted a good bowl of chili to walk through the same doors and feel just as welcome. They pulled it off. The food matched the prices. The menu has enough variety to give people a reason to come back without feeling like someone simply dumped every possible restaurant concept onto one piece of paper.

And the restaurant itself was busy enough on the Tuesday night I was there to make me wonder why I had waited this long to get to Sikeston. The dining room was around half full when we were there, and there were several people at the bar. Nobody looked like they were sitting around wondering when their food was going to arrive. People were eating, drinking, talking and enjoying themselves.

What really stuck with me was Patrick.

He is part of the ownership group, but he is clearly the face of the operation and the person deeply involved in what happens inside the restaurant every day. You can hear it when he talks about the place, and you can see it when he moves through the building. He knows what is happening.

During our visit, I watched him correct employees a few times. One newer waitress, who had only been there about a month, accidentally brought something out in the wrong size bowl. Patrick corrected it professionally, no yelling and no making an example out of her in front of a customer. He simply fixed the problem and kept moving. That may not sound like much if you have never worked in a restaurant.
I have. It was a pleasure to watch.

There is a difference between being the person in charge and actually knowing how to run something. Patrick seemed to understand almost every moving part of the operation. He was watching, working and paying attention the whole time, and never in a way that felt like he needed everyone in the room to know he was the boss. That is hard to fake, and I loved seeing it.

The more I learned about how Jeremiah's came together, the more I realized there was a lot of planning behind it. Patrick had a medical device business in Cape Girardeau that is largely able to operate without him being involved in every minute of the day. He has also been involved in real estate. His brother Ryan works in the high-end meat and restaurant industry in Southern California, and those conversations helped shape some of what eventually became Jeremiah's.

The building itself had been on their radar before Patrick ever seriously considered becoming involved with a restaurant. At first, he wasn't sure. Then he started learning what the building meant to Sikeston. That changed things.

The menu, the kitchen and the building were all planned carefully, and even the experience of walking through the front door seems to have been considered. Someone took the time to build this thing on both sides of the menu. The paper side and the kitchen side.

That is one of the reasons Jeremiah's felt like a restaurant that had already made it through its first year or two of jitters and was figuring out how to become something permanent. The restaurant business has gotten even harder since COVID, and I walked out of Jeremiah's thinking, holy shit. This guy has something here. It is a combination you don't see every day. A good idea, good execution and a great leader helping to build the thing. That is a pretty damn good recipe for a restaurant.

They were working on a new mural outside too. Katie Coleman, a Dexter artist, was working on the exterior when I was there, and she has also been involved with the artwork that brings some of the building's history back into the restaurant. Watching the pieces come together made sense once I understood what Patrick was trying to do. The mural is a history lesson without feeling like one. It gives the building a chance to remember what it used to be while still becoming something new.

That is the best description of Jeremiah's as a whole. Something old that has been given another chance.

I had heard the name Jeremiah's a million times before this week. For a lot of people in this part of Southeast Missouri, the name means something immediately. Those memories go back much further than my own experience with the restaurant. I never ate there during its earlier life. Now I have. And I left thinking something I did not expect to think when I drove to Sikeston that night.

I have a reason to drive to Sikeston for dinner now.

I have never been particularly interested in making the drive just to eat at Lambert's. I have always thought the place was a bit overrated. Jeremiah's is different.

Bring a hundred dollars and make a night of it, or bring less and order from the more affordable side of the menu. The food is good. The staff is good. The building is cool, and you can feel that you are sitting in a place that has been part of a lot of people's lives.

And I can't wait to go back and try the crispy fried chicken sandwich.

Patrick told me to come back for it. It's maybe the best around.

I believed him.

By Justin Stewart Burns

Publisher, The Missouri Stream