STARK — It’s an understatement to call Colborn’s Kitchen a family restaurant.
Jeremy Colborn, wife Kerri and sons Matthew and Trey work in league six days a week to bring some of the area’s tastiest fare to the dinner table.
“But it’s more than that,” Colborn said. “We’re family oriented behind the scenes and customer-wise. That’s important to us.”
He recalled one busy evening in which one of the customers, a Stark local, left the table to help wash dishes. Then there was the time a customer helped bus tables during a particularly busy evening.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re from Stark or Moran or Yates Center or Joplin,” he said. “You’re family here, and you get treated like it.”
The Colborns took over Stark’s only restaurant in February.
It’s only now they feel confident to celebrate the occasion.
“We’ve tried to get everything lined out with our menu, the service, the kitchen, in order to be able to invite in everybody. We’re finally comfortable enough with what we do to be able to handle a grand opening.”
That leads to Saturday’s celebration, in which the restaurant will host a street dance.
A portion of Main Street will be blocked off, hay bales will be placed alongside, and a salad bar — filled with ice and drinks in place of greens and dressing — to serve customers inside and out.
Live music will be offered by Chanute’s Lynn Oliphant.
Add to that a number of free drawings, $1 beer, door prizes, homemade desserts, along with a full selection off the Colborn’s Kitchen menu, and you have the makings of a memorable day.
“Weather permitting, God bless and everything works out, it should be a good time,” Colborn said.
FOR YEARS, the Colborn’s building was a dry goods and grocery store operated by Portia Murphy.
She sold it a few years back to Don Farmer, who did most of the renovations to the building’s interior, including the addition of a bar and dining area.
Farmer sold it to Loren and Regena Lance, who ran the restaurant briefly before selling to the Colborns.
“I’ve had to recruit the whole family,” Colborn joked.
Kerri oversees the servers and the dining area. Matthew also is a server.
Trey and Jeremy, meanwhile, help man the kitchen.
“We have one other cook and four other servers,” Colborn said. “We’re not a big staff.”
COLBORN’S is open every day but Monday. The menu depends on the day of the week.
The regular breakfast and lunch menus are set for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays, while
Thursdays are dedicated for Colborn’s monthly specials.
“We started out doing something different every Thursday,” he said. “One Thursday we’d do Mexican, another we’d do Italian or Cajun.”
But coming up with different specials each week “wore us out,” Colborn said.
Now they’ll focus on a single special item each month.
The Thursday specials in June are Kerri’s famed “Monte Christos,” slices of ham and Swiss cheese, turkey and cheddar between three slices of bread, battered with funnel cake batter, lightly fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar, with a dollop of raspberry jam on the side.
The dish has become so popular amongst the patrons, Colborn likely will keep it as a permanent special.
“We also do pigtails, which are real popular,” Colborn said of the pork line strips dipped in a Stark-style batter and fried.
Friday and Saturday fare include steaks, pork chops, fish, chicken and chicken fried steak, and his Philly cheesesteak.
Many of the dishes are prepared “Stark-style,” the name Colborn designates for pan-seared meats.
“Matty came up with the name ‘Stark-style’ because it sounded real cool,” Colborn said. “We started with the steaks and went from there.”
Stark-style involves more than just cooking, he added.
It also relates well to the diners, who come from as far away as Joplin to the east and Howard to the west, on a regular basis.
And that’s not counting the regular guests from Iola, Yates Center, Humboldt, Moran and parts in between.
Relying on a diverse clientele is a must for a restaurant that can seat more than 80 guests in a town of 66.
The family atmosphere helps maintain a relaxing, inviting environment, even when customers have to wait a spell. “Being on a 30-minute wait doesn’t bother anybody because there’s always somebody they can talk to,” he noted.
(The spacious dining area belies the cramped,kitchen area; “We can only cook so fast,” Jeremy said.)
“When you come to Colborn’s Kitchen, you’re family,” Coborn continued. “You have to drive 30 minutes to get here. We’re not a ‘by-chance’ type of thing, where somebody can just drop in. You have to want to be here.”
