Throwed Rolls

June 23, 2025

Sikeston, Missouri, is a spot along I-55 that if you’re not heading there, quickly recedes in your rear-view mirror. Leaving the highway, though, should mean a visit to Lambert’s Café. There you have a chance to catch “throwed rolls.” Yes, that is “throwed,” not “thrown.”

Taking a seat, be ready, because wait staff will pitch fluffy, warm rolls, which may hit you in the head if you’re not ready to make the catch. Our grandsons Noah and Patrick, without being warned, caught three each. You can check: http://www.throwedrolls.com.

An American road trip wouldn’t be complete without a Lambert’s, or Loveless Café, near Bellevue, Tenn., or Rocky’s Grill, in Brevard and Bonnie & Clyde’s in Marshall, N.C., or Cosmic Rabbits in Greenville, S.C., or any of hundreds of odd, one-only eateries across the land, all pushing some kind of dream. Loveless does the Southern thing, Rocky’s the Fifties, Bonnie & Clyde’s, guns and vigilantes. Cosmic Rabbits does tea with a dose of Star Wars.

Lambert’s does have two other sites, in Ozark, just south of Springfield, Mo., and Foley, Ala., about 40 miles south of Mobile. They both throw rolls.

Backing up: our original plan, on leaving St. Louis, was to drive to Memphis and spend a day or two, then head to Nashville, which would have come to about 500 miles. A fallback was a pit stop at Sandy’s cousin Mike’s office in Cape Girardeau. Mike was the mastermind behind the family reunion in Chapel Hill, Tenn., reported here two weeks ago.

St. Louis to the Cape is about 116 miles. From there I guessed we’d get a state road back to Paducah and retrace our steps to Nashville on I-24. Instead, Mike invited us to follow him to lunch. Lambert’s was the place. He mentioned it to his staff assistant before we left his office. I noticed her smile.

We followed Mike for the 30 miles to Sikeston. This was new country for us. Cultivated fields, mostly corn, stretch to the horizon. Eastern Missouri isn’t Kansas, but it’s close. We whizzed by Kelso, Blodgett, Benson, other small towns, counting barns, tractors, and grain elevators shimmering in the Missouri noon sun. The Mississippi winds south a few miles east of the highway. From a distance, Sikeston didn’t look like much.

Lambert’s seems to occupy half a city block. It was Tuesday, but the cavernous dining room was packed. The walls are lined with hundreds, maybe thousands of license plates from everywhere. Model aircraft swing from the ceilings. We sat, I spied something airborne. Noah reached up and caught the fat homemade roll. A waiter standing nearby launched another. Patrick grabbed it in mid-air.

We learned that Earl and Agnes Lambert opened Lambert’s on March 13, 1942 in a cramped building on Sikeston’s South Main Street. Their son Norman took over running the place in 1976. On the website he explains that he threw his first roll on May 26, 1976. He tried to serve rolls to someone, but couldn’t get to the customer through the lunchtime crowd. The fellow yelled, “Just throw it!” So he did, and everyone joined in. “What once was a job was now fun. … We never have been, nor ever will be, a suit-and-tie joint.”  

The Ozark location opened in 1994, the Foley site in 1996. The Sikeston restaurant moved to East Malone Street in 2002.

Lambert’s is a comfort-food place. The menu features country fried round and ribeye steak, barbecue ribs, meatloaf, pulled pork, country ham steak, hog jowl, frog legs, fried catfish, and chicken cooked any way you like. You can get a vegetable plate. There’s a kid’s menu with kid-size portions of all of the above.

I went off reservation and had a burger. The kids had their usual, chicken fingers.

Everything comes with two sides, but the real deal is the “pass-arounds”: servers, all in red bow ties and suspenders, haul around pots of fried okra, black-eyed peas, tomatoes with macaroni, fried potatoes with onions. They don’t stop coming, it’s all you can eat. I thought the okra and peas were excellent. We asked for some rolls to go.

We gawked at the big hall as the wait staff made their rounds. The lunch crowd kept coming, the rolls kept flying. We thanked our smiling server, who said be sure to come again. The lobby featured a Model T, an old telephone booth, and bric-a-brac. I browsed the gift shop, but didn’t feel any of us needed a Lambert’s teeshirt or coffee mug.

I didn’t get to ask why the other locations are in Ozark and Foley. The distances mean Lambert’s is a tour stop for us, with no other reason, thus far, to visit those towns. Really, no other reason to visit Sikeston. We pulled out of the packed parking lot onto the hot interstate. 

As we slogged down I-55 I sensed in Lambert’s a little bit of Cracker Barrels I’ve known, which also push hard on the country shtick. Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores is a monster, with 660 outlets in 45 states. What’s the appeal of all this country theming? Americans like the off-the-highway casualness, the home-cooking menu. They like the rocking chairs and farm implements near the door, the license plates nailed to the walls. Why? They just do.

We sped through light traffic to Caruthersville, Mo., then swung onto near-empty I-185 and crossed the fast-moving Mississippi. Sandy closed her eyes. In a few minutes we were in Dyersburg, Tenn., at the far western end of the state. A friendly lady at the rest stop sent us down U.S. 412 to Jackson and I-40. In two hours we crossed the Tennessee River, in three we were inching through rush hour in downtown Nashville. For dinner, the kids wanted pizza.