Iron Skillet, Joplin, Mo.

After making the rounds on Memorial Day visiting our various family cemeteries, we stopped at the Iron Skillet, a truck stop in Joplin long known for their good food. Sadly, the food quality has declined considerably, and even my mother thought the food was just so-so.

We started with their soup and salad bar. It's large, but all very basic stuff. They have the nice tradition, though, of using an ice cream freezer to store the metal skillet-shaped plates so they are icy cold and don't wilt the diners' gourmet iceberg lettuce. My mother also got a bowl of their turkey noodle soup.



For her main course, my mother got the grilled calf's liver and onions. There was an ample serving of liver, though I thought the slices were very thin (only a problem because that leads to over cooking and toughness) and quite a mound of grilled onions on top. They rested beside a huge mountain of mashed potatoes, and the entire dish was drenched in brown gravy.


I had the smothered pork chops. My two pork chops were covered with grilled onions and sauteed mushrooms, came with mashed potatoes, and, like the liver, was well lubricated with brown gravy. It was, unfortunately, a commercial mix gravy, and they used a little too much base, because it had a slightly bitter taste to it. The potatoes were lumpy and lacked flavor—salt, butter, cream, something, was needed.


We wanted to have some blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream, but we were both too full to order, even one to split.