Be advised: When placing a meal order at The Elms, Batavia, you have to resist the temptation to tell the server to start at the top of the menu and keep the goodies coming.
Instead, you may want to follow the lead of more than two decades of Elms customers-go back again and again, and work your way through the menu one specialty at a time.
Start with a full slab of barbecue ribs for $11.95, or a barbecue beef sandwich for $2.65, suggests owner Ray Morrison, who prepares the meat at his own smokehouse.
If hamburgers are more to your liking, you may want to try the charcoburger for $1.50 or the pizza burger for $2.50. Morrison, a former meat cutter, is so fussy about the ground chuck used for Elms hamburgers that he grinds the meat himself.
“That way I know I’ve always got a product that our customers can count on to be consistently good,” he said.
Ray and his wife of 35 years, Geraldine, opened the restaurant in 1970.
“We always wanted to work together,” she said.
Ten years ago, the Morrisons built a new restaurant on the same property with indoor seating for 55 and an outdoor dining deck for 40.
Ever loyal to their carry-out customers, the Morrisons offer the convenience of a canopied walk-up “cone window,” where any menu item from an ice cream cone to a fried catfish dinner ($4.25) or a broasted chicken dinner ($4 to $5.50) can be picked up. The window also doubles as a popular snack spot for local youngsters.
If the down-home cooking and homespun warmth found at The Elms reminds patrons of the ma and pa restaurants that once dotted rural and suburban America, the coincidence is purely intentional, said son Curt Morrison, who after attending college, decided to join the family business full time.
“When people come to our restaurant, it’s like we’re having company over,” he said. “This is our real home; we’re here at the restaurant a lot more than we’re home.”
———-
The Elms, 912 Main St., Batavia (about fives blocks east of Main and Illinois Highway 31), is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed on Sunday. Call 708-879-1194.
