Just Cured - Experience Fine Foods

For most of my adult life, I have had the fortune of being a regular at a hole-in-the-wall eatery. During my law school years, it was a place called Albert’s Tavern (more restaurant than tavern, I promise). Albert and his wife, Maryanne, treated me as if I were family. The payback for that treatment was my (willing) obligation to pitch in whenever the restaurant was busy. That restaurant is long gone, but I will never forget the kindness and generosity its owners extended to me.

For the past several years, my place has been an establishment named Tucker’s. Open for 62 or so years, Tucker’s has operated continuously in this location for nearly 60 years — on a block that has seen more than its share of problems and several lifetimes of change. Joe and Carla Tucker took over the operation of the restaurant from his parents 30 years ago; Mrs. Tucker still works every day. If you visit, you will recognize her from the pictures of her as a stunning young woman adorning the walls.

Everything about the place is old, from the straight-backed wooden booths along the wall to the counter stools and from the cooking griddle to those photos from the 1940s and 50s. Yet, to me this space feels almost like another home.

I often describe Tucker’s as the most inclusive 600 square feet in our city. The Tucker family’s guests range from the poorest of the neighborhood’s poor to CEOs of multinational corporations and from struggling artists to world renowned musicians.

My wife and I ate lunch there today. Our dining companions included a number of young men in their boxer shorts and jeans cinched to their lower thighs, a few older neighborhood gentlemen who had clearly seen happier times, mothers with toddlers in tow, Franciscan brothers or priests from the church next door, tattooed and pierced bohemians, businessmen in suits and a dozen high school students along with their three teachers on a field trip from a town about 90 minutes from here. Although the crowd was loud and the staff was showing the strain of handling the party of 15, there was no sign of tension at all. Everyone was happy to be sharing a midday respite of home cooking and fellowship.

It occurs to me nearly every time I walk in that door that if only there were a few more places like this one, the world would be both safer and happier.

Postscripts:

Those of you who have been checking in for news of Just Cured and its business will have your patience rewarded. I expect to be posting next week significant developments in the progress toward product release.

I will make a public apology to a dear friend for hoarding this post. Nearly a year ago, she asked me to publish on her site an email quite similar (from what I remember) to this that I sent in response to her essay about a like place in a different city. I declined at the time; maybe I knew I was saving it for another time and place.