Fine dining and comfort food converge in St. Joseph
Would you like rolls and cinnamon rolls with your dinner?” New customers at the Fredrick Inn Steakhouse & Bar might be caught off guard by this question from their server — or think they landed in restaurant heaven. The many regulars know the cinnamon rolls are just part of the draw of this longtime St. Joseph establishment.
For nearly 45 years, the Fredrick Inn has been where you celebrate a birthday, hold a business lunch, meet a friend or cheer on the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s a place to see old friends or make new ones.
The Fredrick Inn in St. Joseph is housed in a historical building that was built in 1916. The restaurant is known for its prime rib, spinach salad, bread pudding and complimentary cinnamon rolls.
“It’s kind of like ‘Cheers,’ ” says Amber McKnight, owner of the restaurant. “We have a lot of customers who have been coming here for years. They’ll walk in and talk to every booth because they know everybody before they sit down in ‘their’ booth and eat dinner. We have certain customers who come every Friday at 6:30 p.m. and sit at the same spot. They will be here unless they call us and tell us they won’t be. I have 12 of those standing reservations.”
Those dedicated customers are a testament to the charm of the Fredrick Inn, which is housed in a historical building that was built in 1916 in downtown St. Joseph. In 1980, Karen and Fred Harris opened the Fredrick Inn. The restaurant’s name is an homage to Fred and Karen’s brother, Rick. Don’t be confused; the restaurant is not spelled the same as its address on Frederick Avenue.
At 16, Amber started her career in the restaurant industry. She worked as a busser, server and manager at several St. Joseph restaurants, while earning a finance degree. “I actually became a stockbroker for two years, but decided I could not sit at a desk,” she says. As fate would have it, she was having lunch at a pizzeria across from the Fredrick Inn and found out it was for sale. Amber and her husband, Jeffrey, members of United Electric Cooperative, became the proud owners of the Fredrick Inn.
Today, visitors flock to this hometown favorite for its salad bar, hand-cut steaks, old-school cooking and more than a dozen rotating desserts. “For lunch, the food at the Fredrick Inn is like something your grandmother made you because it’s all homemade,” Amber says. “At dinner we turn into more of a fine-dining restaurant.”
The lunch menu changes daily, although some specials you can find the same day every week. “For example, Wednesdays are the only day of the week you can get gizzards,” Amber says. “You can get them for lunch or dinner, but only on Wednesdays.”
For lunch, you can choose from a handful of flavorful salads, more than a dozen sandwiches and comfort dishes, such as liver and onions, chicken strips and catfish. A popular option is the Dill Pickle Chicken Wrap. “It’s made with grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato and cheese,” Amber says. “Then we add our fried pickle appetizer and our own ranch dill sauce.”
Another popular lunch is roast beef. You can have it served with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, your choice of vegetable and a soup or salad. Or you can enjoy it as a Hot Roast Beef Sandwich. “Our roast beef is cooked low and slow,” Amber says. “It’s true comfort food.”
The Fredrick Inn’s chef selects the lunch specials each day. Amber updates the restaurant’s website and Facebook page with that list. She also faxes it to 45 local businesses so locals can plan their lunch visits.
The Dill Pickle Chicken Wrap is a lunch favorite with grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato, fried pickle spears and a ranch dill sauce.
At 4 p.m., the Fredrick Inn shifts to dinner mode. The large menu features an array of appetizers, including shrimp cocktail, fried cauliflower, chicken livers and crab Rangoon. The main dishes vary from hefty sandwiches and burgers to fried and grilled seafood to hearty offerings such as beef liver, fried chicken and pork chops.
Amber says the steaks are what keep most people returning to the Fredrick Inn. “The most popular is our rib-eye and prime rib,” she says. “But we also have wonderful salmon and grilled shrimp. Those are both top sellers, as well as our comfort food like chicken-fried chicken, country fried steak and chicken livers — those sort of dishes people can’t get somewhere else.”
The salad bar is a big draw. With every dinner entrée, customers can make unlimited trips to fill their plates with colorful greens and all the toppings, pasta salads, soups, potato salads, puddings and Jell-O fluffs. You can skip the salad bar and enjoy the ever-popular Spinach Salad, which features fresh ingredients and a sweet French vinaigrette dressing that has just a hint of onion.
Nearly everything on the salad bar, and the full menu, is made in-house. “We make all of our desserts from scratch, we hand cut all of our meat, we grind our own burger, and we cut and bread our own tenderloins,” Amber says. “Flavor profile and consistency is super important to us.”
Diners can choose from at least 15 desserts that are made fresh daily.
Don’t skip dessert at the Fredrick Inn. “We have a very expansive menu of desserts, and our customers know us for it,” she says. “We have everything from bread pudding to triple chocolate cake to cheesecake to a lemon Italian cream cake. People really know us for our pies. They range from coconut to chocolate to butterscotch to lemon to raisin. We also do homemade cobblers.”
The bread pudding is a bestseller, she adds. It’s made with their famous fresh-made cinnamon rolls. The chefs add pecans and apple filling to the mix, then top it off with some caramel sauce and whipped cream.
The Fredrick Inn also has a full bar, serving everything from martinis to cocktails to basic beers. They also have a drink menu that reflects the seasons and the staff’s favorite team — the Kansas City Chiefs.
The seasonal Caramel Apple Martini is the perfect complement for fall dining.
“Since the Chiefs do their training camp in St. Joe, we started a ‘Cheers to the Chiefs Drink Menu,’ ” Amber says. You can order a Travis’s Tailgate Tea, which is Tito’s vodka and sweet tea, a Super Bowl Punch, which is the restaurant’s house Long Island Iced Tea and a splash of strawberry, or the Bloody Hail Mary, which is a traditional Bloody Mary with bacon-infused vodka.
The Fredrick Inn is a perfect mix of historical charm, delicious food and good times. “I always tell people, if I can get you in here once, you will come back,” Amber says.