Diner review: Kickers on South Broadway

Sooooooo.... the St. Louis Diner Review in it’s tireless effort to illuminate and educate continues to try and find new and useless ways to spend time and eat breakfast. The Diner Review has been lax and useless as far as getting you more diner news and reviews. First the news.

We have another casualty in the St. Louis diner community in that the dreaded Uncle Wimpys on south... way south Broadway (almost to Lemay) has bitten the dust. I am not sure when the dreaded closure took place but this is one that frankly I will not miss. the place was kitschy, Full of coke and highway 66 fake memorabilia and it had two front doors. That is bad luck and of course just wrong. The Riverside Diner (also on south Broadway) closed early last year and it was a much better place but alas...gone.

The question must rise as to why these diners are closing. There is a fine group of people living in the area and easy access and parking. Granted you do not get a lot of the west county traffic but that certainly cannot be considered a bad thing. No, there is another culprit involved and that appears to be a number of bars on the same strip that also serve breakfast and that brings us to Kickers.

Kickers is the old “Lighthouse” which was the old Dieckempers. There is a shit load of history in the place. I had visited the bar the afternoon before in an effort to find another place to hide and saw the dreaded sign “Breakfast every day from 7:00 A.M. Seemed to portend great things. I began quizzing the bartender regarding the breakfast menu and was informed his omelets were to die for with home made sausage and biscuits and gravy and breakfast potatoes. They are home cut.
The next morning I showed up with my most reliable dining companion at 7:15. I was greeted in a friendly manner upon entering the establishment by a 50 ish woman in a rakish hat who was the waitress and after some brief negotiations she brought me an iced tea. I read the paper in the dim lighting at a nice table for 6. No booths in the place which is a little sad but there is a full bar and a couple of high tables in the bar area with stools. The other room was where i was sitting and there are a number of large tables and appropriately poor light.

The tea was good. My dining companion arrived and immediately started chatting up the waitress. In the future i need to remember to maintain a portion of the paper to read after his arrival while he is chatting up the waitress. If I had done that I would not have had to hear about the fire which had burned house badly and left her this morning with watery eyes, a runny nose and slight smell of pulled pork. Not that there is anything wrong with pulled pork. She also explained that it was “Kickers” because the group of owners were all soccer players. I should have realized that they day before when they were playing the AC Milan v. AC International Club Match. Might be a good place to catch world cup games this summer.

He got coffee and then went into a rather long ordering process involving eggs, sausage and toast... but it still took a long time. I was able to quickly order a 1/2 order of biscuits and gravy, breakfast potatoes and home made sausage patties. I want to be very clear, there was nothing wrong with this breakfast. But there was nothing spectacular either. The breakfast potatoes were in deed fresh cut and crispy and were pretty good. The biscuits were slightly puffy but very good and the gravy was good old fashion cream gravy. The home made sausage was the biggest disappointment, not because there was anything wrong with it but because it was just adequate. I wanted some spice and some flavor and got fairly bland pork sausage. Still, nothing wrong with it, just nothing special. The cook is also one of the owners and I am pretty confidence that he would make me whatever I wanted.

A key element is of course that you could get a cold bottle of Busch with your breakfast if you need one and that just stinks of America and makes me proud.

Over all I give the place 7.5 on the 10 Slinger scale and that is mostly because it has tremendous ambience and excellent help.