Gene’s Restaurant was located at 1095 N Green Street, owned by Gene and Zack Thomason.
Gene serves classic Southern cuisine by Sara Anne Corrigan
Brains, barbecue and burgoo. The classic three B’s of Southern cooking. Add a breakfast menu that includes hominy grits, and you can be sure that Keith will himself wax Southern before meal’s end.
At Gene’s Restaurant and Barbecue House, 1095 N. Green St. in Henderson, we found all of the above and much more. Best of all, we found it in a relaxed, down home environment that was itself classically Southern.
At Gene’s, there is someone named Gene who clearly is in charge. Who handles everything from the cash register to clearing the occasional table.
He’ll schlep the iced tea, too, if he sees an empty glass. And if he knows you, he may come by and sit a spell at your table. At Gene’s a remarkable number of people do seem to know each other. And Gene, too.
Open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, some deletely real peopa real Gene’s is about breakfast and the kind of lunch that doubles as supper but which might not fairly be considered dinner.
We’re talking sandwiches here. Lots of sandwiches. And barbecue. And salads and vegetables. Basic vegetables like stewed tomatoes, okra and pinto beans. At Gene’s they also serve “plates.” Now your
“plate” is your basic full meal kind of deal, beginning with a sandwich or barbecued meat or other baked entree fleshed out with anything from classic fries and coleslaw to a choice of salads and baked vegetables. There’s also cottage cheese and fruit. Prices at Gene’s rarely exceed $5. Desserts, all of which are made on the premises, include pies mostly. But on a recent lunch hour, I found — and loved — a peach cobbler ($1.25) that the kitchen thoughtfully heated up for me before placing a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Keith and I had breakfast at Gene’s about a week ago. We went on account of the grits which Keith was only hoping he’d find there and which, of course, he did.
The breakfast menu includes a full range of traditional fare common to Tri-State restaurants and at competitive prices. The difference is, with the exception of some of the waffles and “fancy” stuff, you can have breakfast whenever you want it. Even at night. That’s how our waitress explained it. The eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy and grits that we worked our way through that morning were home-cookin’, finger-lickin’ good. It cost barely more than $7. My plate lunch for $4.95 included a medium portion of barbecued pork which was tender, flavorful, and bathed in a thin but not overly vinegary Kentucky-style sauce. I loved it. The side dishes I chose included a creamy-style and unusually piquant cole slaw, a similarly flavorful kidney bean salad and a dish of hot breaded stewed tomatoes that were good enough to die for.
I contemplated, but passed up, the opportunity to have a bowl of burgoo, having been alerted by a Kentucky friend that the popular regional potage is made differently on her side of the river than it is on mine. Something about oxtails, she said.
References:
Evansville Press July 19, 1990