Recently I lunched for $5.40 at Joe Clark’s Restaurant and Bar in Fenton.
Clark’s has a steamtable-cafeteria line. You pick up your tray and utensils and slide it along the salads, desserts, entrees, and rolls. My teriyaki beef patties were splendid as were the mashed potatoes and brown gravy, canned corn and a cup of homemade ham and bean soup. Fried chicken is the Monday lunch special but they were sold out when I arrived. The place started in 1951 as Joe Clark’s Dining Room. A sign outside still says “Joe Clark’s Dining Room. Steaks 5-10”. The hours have long been changed. Lunch has been a fixture for years and the bar operation opens at 8 a.m. (Lunch is served from 11 to 2 weekdays).
Joe Clark was an auto mechanic with a knack for figuring things out. A veteran customer told me recently that in 1975 he walked into the restaurant with a complaint of unevenness in his false teeth. “Joe said ‘Take them out and give them to me,’ Joe went to the backroom with my teeth, He put them on his meat saw, then put them on his sanding wheel. My teeth have felt great ever since.” Joe died in 1989.
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Back in 1992, I coerced a pal to have lunch with me at Joe Clark’s. We both enjoyed the place, which was, and still is, adorned with stuffed animal heads, including a ram, elk, deer, Texas longhorn and a boar. (I sat underneath the boar today). My friend, Carl Campbell and I liked the lunch meeting so much that we’ve met almost every week since. Tomorrow, we visit our 796th different restaurant in the St. Louis area.
(Read more on Joe Clark’s and 83 other area restaurants in my 2009 book, Breakfast, Lunch and Diner, available in all St. Louis bookstores and at Amazon.com.)
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