Inspired by Lamar’s golden age of pizza, Mother Tucker’s blends nostalgia, comfort and family fun
STORY AND PHOTOS by Sara Schafer
Every town has a restaurant that becomes part of its story. In Lamar, that place was Pappa’s Pizza. For decades, families gathered to feast over buffet pizza for birthdays, sports victories or trips to town.
“Pappa’s Pizza had been in Lamar ever since I was a little girl, and it was the place to be,” says Jenny Tucker. “It eventually closed its doors, and Lamar didn’t have a pizza place for 25 years.”
Jenny and her family set out to fill the hole Pappa’s Pizza left in Lamar. In 2020, they opened Mother Tucker’s Pizza, which is served by Barton County Electric Cooperative. The restaurant carries that legacy forward, serving recipes inspired by the flavors of the old Pappa’s Pizza and buffet-style experience that made pizza night an event.
Uncovering Culinary Secrets
Before Pappa’s Pizza closed, Jenny’s in-laws became partners in the business. She started by turning to them for advice. They searched through records and tested long-time employees’ memories to identify the culinary secrets that made that pizza so delicious.
“Very little was written down,” Jenny recalls. “If it was, it would say ‘a scoop of this.’ That was a very hard part of opening because the ingredients they used 25 years ago aren’t necessarily what we could come up with today. Plus, the ovens are different. So, we just tried to create a profile very similar to what Pappa’s Pizza had.”
Great pizza starts with a great dough. Jenny says their pizzas feature a Midwestern-style crust — not too thick or too thin. It’s crispy on the outside but also chewy. Luckily, they found a better starting point for the sauce recipe, so it required far less tweaking.
For the toppings, Jenny and her team were adamant about finding high-quality ingredients. “We were wanting the same flavor of pepperoni and beef that we remembered from Pappa’s,” she says. “I bet we tried 50 different products. Same with the cheese. We wanted a very high-grade cheese, so we use a Wisconsin-cheese blend. We wanted to make high-quality pizza with high-quality ingredients.”
Nod to Mom
Jenny and her husband, Jeff, have three adult sons. When the boys were teenagers, they all saved their mom’s phone number in their phone as: Mother Tucker. “I didn’t realize that until I picked up one of their phones,” Jenny recalls. “I thought, I’m just going to let that one slide. When we needed to come up with a name for the restaurant, I thought, ‘Well, it definitely cuts through the clutter.’ ”
Jenny’s 30-year friend Michelle Hardman is general manager of the restaurant. “We wanted to follow the mother theme with the menu,” Michelle says. “I remember the night that we made our supreme pizza and wanted a catchy name. So, we named it Motherload.”
The Motherload features pepperoni, sausage, beef, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, black olives, bell peppers and onions. If you want to skip the vegetables, go for the Meaty Momma. It is topped with pepperoni, beef, sausage, Canadian bacon and bacon.
The Hen House includes Alfredo sauce, chicken, bacon and ranch dressing. Take Me Back Taco is a classic taco pizza featuring beef and is topped with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and crunchy chips. The Just Try Me BLT includes sweet Vidalia onion sauce, bacon, lettuce and tomatoes. “The reason we called it that is because a BLT pizza is probably not something a lot of Lamar people had ever had,” Michelle says.
The menu is rounded out with five sandwiches and a variety of appetizers, including cheesy breadsticks, dill pickle fries and fried portobello mushrooms. They also offer chicken wings and two styles of nachos. Diners can order from the menu and eat in the restaurant. Or they can carry out food or order pizzas to take home and bake. The highlight for most diners though, is the buffet. It is filled with piping hot pizza and a large salad bar.
“People come here for the great pizza, of course, but just as much they want to eat the salad bar and our homemade dressings,” Jenny says. “We chop our own lettuce and all the vegetables. It’s very time consuming, but people love it.”
Be sure to leave a little room for dessert. Sweet treats at Mother Tucker’s include several flavors of dessert pizzas. “We have a few common ones, like the cherry, apple and Bavarian chocolate chip,” Michelle says. “We do seasonal ones like strawberry in the summer. They are all great, but our cinnamon sticks tend to be the go-to dessert for a lot of people — and they are heavenly.”
Dinner With a View
Mother Tucker’s is in the former Lamar Country Club Golf Course clubhouse, which is now Jeremy’s Creek Golf Course. “The view is gorgeous,” Michelle says. “When we tell people we’re at the golf course, I make sure they know they don’t have to get a golf cart before they can have their slice of pizza.”
Customers range from local residents to those traveling along Interstate 49. Michelle and Jenny say their team makes everyone feel like family. When you walk in, you see a huge U.S. map adorned with hundreds of pushpins to showcase customers’ hometowns. Mother Tucker’s has a large patio that can be rented for special events, and it is a great place to celebrate a birthday.
“We have a pizza birthday hat for guests to wear,” Jenny says. “We take your picture and put it on our Facebook page. Then we print it and put it up on the wall by the front door. People will look for their picture, so make sure we get them printed.”
For longtime residents and first-time visitors alike, Mother Tucker’s Pizza isn’t just a place to eat. It’s where birthdays are celebrated, stories are shared and a small town’s favorite tradition lives on, one slice at a time.
Email Sara Schafer at sschafer@ruralmissouri.coop.