Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
JONATHAN JUSTUS
Close to Home
Jonathan Justus is realizing a restaurateur’s dream—by going right back to where he st arted.
BY MARY BLOCH
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHANE LUITJENS
AFTER HONING HIS TALENT IN COSMOPOLITAN LOCALES LIKE FRANCE AND San Francisco, Jonathan Justus has settled in Smithville, Mo., a Midwestern town of about 6,000 just north of Kansas City. There, he and his wife Camille Eklof have created a sophisticated dining destination—but the location wasn’t chosen randomly.
Eklof saw opportunity in returning to Jonathan’s birthplace. The couple had always wanted to open a restaurant that would serve as an economic catalyst in whatever town they decided to set up shop, and it just so happened that the building on Main St. in which Justus’ family had owned a pharmacy for half a century was vacant. They envisioned Justus Drugstore: a Restaurant (816-532-2300; www.drugstorerestaurant.com) as the anchor for a renaissance in the town’s historic downtown district.
Justus’ career began as an artist, not a chef. He graduated from design school—but soon after lost the drive one needs to have a successful career in the fine arts.
“I was having a hard time staying motivated. Painting is solitary. But when I first got in the kitchen, I realized I was getting a similar satisfaction from what I was doing on the plate.
You have context, juxtaposition, texture—it’s all the same. And I liked the social and collaborative atmosphere of the kitchen.”
His masterful presentations are matched by the pleasing interior space, which Justus and Eklof designed and remodeled. The walls are replete with Justus originals, and the old soda fountain is now a bar, where a different elixir is invented every night to complement an already-inventive cocktail menu. The ever-changing wine list focuses on little-known vineyards.
Justus is on a personal crusade to transform the country’s grocery shopping and eating habits, and he takes the local food movement seriously—so the vast majority of the restaurant’s ingredients come from purveyors within 200 miles. But this takes time, so a good part of each day is spent scouting out the highest quality meats and produce from farms in the area. The peanut-fed, pasture-raised Berkshire pork comes from nearby Paradise Locker Meats, for example, the same place top New York City restaurants like Momofuku and
Del Posto get theirs. (Unlike more traditional pork, organic pork can be served medium-rare, so it’s juicier and not dried out.)
Eklof crafts bread in cast-iron pots and serves it with butter from a local dairy. Having once worked as a butcher, Justus finds a use for each cut of meat. And no portion of any vegetable is wasted; even their leftover juices are reduced into sauces.
Make no mistake; the enterprise, while small, is a team effort. In addition to being the bread baker, Eklof is general manager, accountant and server. Though confident the kitchen would run flawlessly if he were gone for several days, Justus is insistent that the restaurant couldn’t survive without Eklof for 24 hours.
Together, the couple has been seeing their dream validated with national recognition—The New York Times Magazine recently ran a feature on the restaurant—but they prefer their kudos to come from loyal local patrons. Winning over skeptical, steak-eating farmers was no easy feat, and compliments are like ingredients: They’re better when they come from closer to home.
