Polo business is a Gateway to the past
Mount Morris couple taps into the family tree
Tracking down the places lost to time
The recipe for success? Add Pepper
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4 Home is where the hardware is
Whether it’s tools or tips people are looking for, they’ll find them, and a lot more, in Forreston, where a Mr. & Mrs. Fix-It are keeping the tradition of a neighborhood hardware store alive and well.
10 Your Gateway to the past
When the owners of a Polo antique shop looked at an empty storefront, they saw a space that was full of potential.
16
Tapping into the family tree
When a Mount Morris couple decided to turn a family tradition into a way to earn money, they looked for a business partner to help them, and they found one that was ready, willing and maple.
24 Wiped off the map
They’re the places lost to time — but we’ve found them again.
35 A recipe for success? Add Pepper
How do you keep your customers satisfied for 30 years? For the couple behind a Mount Morris restaurant, where there’s a Mill, there’s a way.
Jane and Gary Koeller, owners of Koeller Forreston Hardware.
or as long as Gary and Jane Koeller can remember, finding the tools they needed has been as simple as walking through the front door of 104 E. Main St. in downtown Forreston.
Today, they’re still walking through those doors — but now they’re unlocking them too, as owners of Koeller Forreston Hardware.
For as long as the lifelong Forreston couple can remember, the store has been part of their community, dating back to the late 1800s when it first opened. Today, as the latest in a long line of owners, the Koellers are not only keeping a store with more than a century under its tool belt going, but making their own mark at a place that’s become a Forreston fixture in this town of 1,500.
Gary, Jane and their part-time staff pride themselves on being able to help do-it-yourselfers do things themselves, connecting them with the tools they need and the expertise they can use for projects big and small. It’s a profession that puts them in the company of other smalltown hardware stores across the nation, a segment of the small business community that’s faced its share of challenges in a time when big box stores and online shopping have reshaped the business landscape.
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KOELLER
But the Koellers like to think they offer the kind of service that people won’t find clicking on a mouse or standing at a self-checkout. They know that goods and customer service are like nuts and bolts: They need each other in order to work — and they know their nuts and bolts.
For the Koellers, the local hardware store is a tradition that’s worth preserving, a place where a home handyman or woman can come in looking for that certain something they need for a project, and find a friendly and familiar face waiting to help them. They’ll do their best to answer any question that comes their way — what matters most, they say, is being willing to help, as they’ve done since they took over the store in 2015.
“People want to do things themselves,” Gary said. “If they go to the big box stores,
If you need to know the nuts and bolts of how to do a project around the house, the staff at Koeller Forreston Hardware can help — and they can sell you the nuts and bolts, too. “People want to do things themselves,” said Gary Koeller, himself a licensed plumber.
a lot of the time you don’t get that service. What we do here is tell them, ‘This is how you need to do it,’ and give them step-by-step instructions. You don’t want to leave out Step B because Step C won’t work; you’ve got to go step-by-step.”
In the century-plus that it’s been around, the store has expanded, today taking up five different buildings, enough space to provide customers with all their hardware needs, from paint to power tools and more. Affiliations with Hardware Hank and Do It Best have helped the Koellers bring many familiar brand names and promotional deals to better serve their customers.
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Over in the store’s Country Corner, customers can find locally made yard art, home furnishings and more: “With our Country Corner, we can offer little niche things that you’re not going to find in other places,” Jane said. “We can offer a lot of different things.”
They also offer a place where budding businesses can find a friend: The Koellers like to support local artisans by giving them a place to sell their crafts and creations — such as beef sticks from Johnson’s Processing in Chadwick and soap from Oregon Soap Shoppe — and they’ll also recommend local contractors to customers looking for help with projects.
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CODY
retains its look from when paint was first sold there decades ago; the colors showed customers what paint was offered then. The store is still matching colors today, but the color gallery has gotten a lot bigger
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The Koellers also set aside counter space to help raise money for local fundraisers, community betterment programs or people who are dealing with serious health issues. With its Change for Change program, customers can drop some coins or cash into a jar to help a different cause each month. September’s is for the Forrestville Valley Youth Mentoring Program,
which helps local grade-schoolers connect with after-school mentors.
“It’s a real nice way for people to feel like they’re helping someone,” Jane said. “Maybe they’ll throw their change in, or a couple of dollars, and all of that money goes to whoever we’re doing it for that month.”
Competition with big box stores in larger communities has been an ongoing tug-of-war for small businesses like the Koellers’, but they’ve sharpened their competitive edge by providing personalized service — knowing customers by name, taking an interest in what they’re working on, or going the extra mile for them, literally, by delivering bigger products.
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KOELLER
Connecting with customers is something Gary enjoys doing; and if it’s a customer with a plumbing problem, he’s happy to use his experience as a plumber to lend some helpful advice.
“There aren’t too many times when, even if we’re already helping another customer, we won’t acknowledge that they came in, nine times out of 10,” Gary added. “They might be quite a few steps through, but by being able to say, ‘Hey, Joe, how are you doing?’ It’s that kind of atmosphere that we want to have.”
The Koellers have also instilled that philosophy in their two employees, Chris Tillery and Karl Klasek, who’ve become a trusted part of the Koeller Hardware team, taking care of things when their bosses are out of town at national hardware conventions.
“I can’t say enough about how good our two part-time employees are,” Jane said. “Because of them,
we can go to the hardware shows and have people who we can trust implicitly to be able to run the store, open it and close it, and handle the customers. That’s really huge to have people like that working for you as well. It’s really important. They do a great job.”
When she’s not running the store, Jane keeps active in community events as the chairwoman of Forreston’s annual Sauerkraut Days planning committee that meets once a month. She also enjoys making freeze-dried crunchy candies — frosted cupcake saltwater taffies and chocolate layer bites, to name a few — that she sells as Grandma J’s Sweet Treats, both at the store and at local markets (find it on Facebook for more information).
Koeller Hardware, 104 E. Main St. in Forreston is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Find it on Facebook, go to koellerfor restonhardware.com or call 815-938-2240 for more information.
Making their business a place “Where hometown hardware tradition continues” is more than just a motto for the Koellers, it’s a belief in the importance of a local business making connec tions with their customers and their community.
“The thing that really goes with what all we have is that we have phenomenal customer service,” Jane said. “We will call people by name when they walk in the door. It’s a really big deal. You can park right out front and talk with us, get the information you need, and you can be on your way. You can get the part that you need. That’s how we can get ahead of the big box guys.” n Cody Cutter can be reached at 815-632-2532 or ccutter@shawmedia.com.
When the owners of a Polo business looked at an empty storefront, they saw a space that was full of potential; now they’re welcoming people to stop by to rekindle the past and get a spark in their eye at their antique shop — and even learn a little about Kim while they’re there
he things passed down to Jodi Horner through the years have been more than just mementoes and collectibles; they’ve been a gateway to a way of life and a livelihood.
Horner is the gatekeeper at Kim’s Gateway Antiques in Polo, where her passion for collecting has filled the store with more than just merchandise from days gone by, it’s filled it with precious memories too.
Memories of auctions and antiques. Memories of bric-a-brac and what-nots. Memories of family and friends — some who are gone, but far from forgotten, like the friend who is still with Horner every day she opens the doors of the shop she started a few years ago.
The Kim in the store’s name is Horner’s way of honoring a relationship that was born in a Barn and grew quickly into a cherished — but sadly, brief — friendship.
About 10 years ago, Horner was bidding on a vintage porch gable piece at the Chana Sale Barn. So was Kim Meyer — and though Meyer ended up winning, there were no hard feelings, just an easy friendship.
“We bid on a piece against each other that she won, and then she asked if we can go to lunch,” Horner said. “We became instant friends. We were friends for not even two years before she passed.”
Meyer, of Huntley, died of leukemia July 21, 2015. Horner grieved but pressed on with her love of antiquing, as a way to remember and honor her bidding buddy and cohort in collecting.
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Shannan Haenitsch and Jodi Horner of Kim’s Gateway Antiques in Polo enjoy peddling the past from their downtown store. One of the highlights for Horner is restocking it: “There’s a thrill of finding something when you’re out there picking to find something for the store ... ” A point of pride for Haenitsch: Bringing business back to formerly empty storefronts in his hometown: “My entire drive has been to put something back into town,” he said.
“We had a great friendship of collecting,” Horner said. “Even though she passed, I would still go to garage sales and go thrifting and go, ‘Wow, that’s old and worth some money!’ Or, ‘I could sell that.’ This is in memory of her. She would have told me to quit pouting and get back on my feet and keep doing what her and I did together.”
What Horner, of German Valley, did was turn that eye for a deal and passion for picking into a way to make money with her business partner, Shannan Haenitsch of Polo, who owns the downtown shop with her.
While Horner gets her share of customers who think she’s the Kim in Kim’s Gateway
Antiques, she said it doesn’t bother her; it just brings back happy memories, much like an antique does, reminding her of their friendship.
Even today, when she’s out on a picking adventure, she’ll dust off her memories of Meyer.
When Horner finds an old dustpan, she immediately thinks of her friend. There are some hanging on the walls at her store, with both long and short handles — as Horner and Meyer each had their preferences. They’re not there to make money, though, but rather to make Horner smile.
“I collected the short-handled ones, and she collected the long-handled ones. We kind of chuckled when we first met because she told me, ‘I collect dust pans,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, so do I.’ She’s like, ‘I collect the long-handled ones,’ and I go, ‘I collect the shorts.’ Now that she’s gone, when I find one I get even more excited because it adds to the collection.”
Like other everyday items, especially kitchen goods, dustpans were once used to advertise businesses, and when customers run across those old promotional items, it rekindles a long-forgotten memory. That’s what Horner and Haenitsch like to see when people shop at their store.
“My whole family was always around antiques,” Horner said. “I remember as a little girl going to auctions with my grandparents and parents, and always grew up around antiques. I had a love for them, and it’s just always been there. I can get sentimental with having a piece that belonged to this grandma, and another that belonged to that grandma.”
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Though Jodi Horner’s late friend, Kim Meyer (right), is gone, she’s never far away. She’s in the sign in the store’s window and in the memories
hanging on the wall at Kim’s Gateway Antiques — like these vintage dustpans, a favorite collectible the two shared, and the porch gable piece that came from an auction about 10 years ago. Jodi and Kim were bidding against each other for it (Kim won), and that led to a friendship between the two before Meyer died of leukemia in 2015.
Horner and Haenitsch have known each other for almost 10 years, and when they had an opportunity to buy a trio of downtown storefronts for a nice price three years ago, her desire to open an antique store came into play. The buildings had only been used sparingly since the mid-1990s, and the pair rolled up their sleeves to fix them up, preserving what wood flooring was left and uncovering the tin ceilings.
The antique shop takes up a room and a half of the space, with the remainder used as a resale shop, Gateway Big Box Resale, which carries newer items, many of which are overstock from big box retail stores.
The Gateway part of the name was Haenitsch’s contribution; Polo calls itself “Gateway to the Pines,” and the longtime resident came to enjoy his time there as a highschooler after his family moved there.
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Working with Horner has helped him learn more about and appreciate the “An tique” part of the store’s name. He enjoys chatting with customers about them, and said he’s proud of being able to help breathe new life into the downtown storefronts and helping them find a purpose again.
“I enjoy the sociableness,” Haenitsch said. “I enjoy putting back into the town. My entire drive has been to put something back into town. I moved here in eighth grade and had been in nine schools by then, and I finally decided that this is where I wanted to settle. Polo was where I wanted to be, and I enjoyed
being somewhere for the first time in my life. When I was in high school, downtown was full and every building had a purpose.”
The inventory of antiques comes from Horner’s own finds, as well as those from a handful of vendors who sell their own items. Unlike stores where vendors are arranged by booths, merchandise is grouped together by kinds throughout the stores, with vendors’ number on the price tags.
It’s an arrangement that’s worked well for both vendors and custom-
“I like this a lot better,” he said. “The salt and pepper stuff is here, the bedding stuff is there, and everything is in categories. I was leaning toward having her do booths at one point because that’s all I had ever seen, but after being in one, after being through a third or fourth one I’m tired of looking.”
Horner likes to keep the inventory fresh so that there’s always something new — and old — to see. Stuff is marked to move, so if someone sees something they like, they shouldn’t wait to buy. And if they don’t see something they like, stop back again; there’s a good chance it’ll be there, with new items coming and going all the time. Customers can also fill out a “wish list” so that Horner can keep an eye out for things when she’s out picking. If it’s Phillips 66 memorabilia someone’s looking for, however, they may have to take a number behind Horner. Those pieces of petroliana are personal to Horner, having grown up around the gas station in Mount Morris that her grandparents Vernon and Minnie Burke owned for many years.
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Farm Raised Beef
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A passion for the past, an appreciation for antiques and an understanding of the emotional connection people make with them helps guide Horner on her hunts — and of course, there’s still the thrill of finding that certain something a customer’s been looking for, or tracking down a treasured memory of her own.
“One of my vendors once opened up a corn crib, and I went through that and didn’t want to leave,” Horner said. “There’s a thrill of finding something when you’re out there picking to find something for the store, or find something for your own collection.” n
Kim's Gateway Antiques, 108 W. Mason St. in downtown Polo is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Find it on Facebook, email kimsgatewayantiques@ gmail.com or call 815-4412886 for more information.
Cody Cutter can be reached at 815-632-2532 or ccutter@shawmedia.com.
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ook at a maple tree and you’ll see a lot of things. A place where you can have it made in the shade as you cool off on a summer day. Limbs that limber little ones clamp on to and crawl over as they see how high they can climb. A home for a trusty treehouse. A place where birds can rest and squirrels can nest.
When the Hough family of Mount Morris looks at a maple tree, they see an untapped resource.
There’s a bounty beneath the bark of a maple, and the Houghs have turned the trees’ slow flow into a cash flow at Hough’s Maple Lane Farm, where they mine the gooey gold inside for the syrup they sell.
If you’re already licking your lips thinking about the oh-so rich, golden brown syrup oozing over a stack of flapjacks, here’s something else to think about: that sweet treat
At left: Rob and Lynette Hough have been making and selling maple syrup on their farm since 2008, tapping into a family tradition that goes back to his great-grandfather, who farmed in Stephenson County. “There’s a fondness to doing what your forefathers did,” Rob said.
has some health benefits, too. The sap inside is rich in magnesium, calcium, iron and thiamine.
But there’s no doubt about it, it tastes pretty darn good, too — on pancakes or waffles, of course, but other food too: cookies, ice cream, carrots, even salmon. If you an eat it, you can eat it with syrup, too.
The Houghs collect sap from trees all over town to make their syrup, and process it at the family farm. The novelty of naturally made syrup isn’t lost on the Houghs — it’s been a family tradition for a long time, since the days when Rob Hough’s great-grandfather used wood taps and buckets and kettles over a fire to make the maple syrup that’s been a part of many a family recipes.
Trees can be part of the planet’s prescription for what ails us, and the Houghs — Rob (Who also is Mount Morris’ fire chief), his wife Lynette, and their children Rebecca and R.G. — are happy to help people discover their benefits, especially the ones that taste good.
“It’s a natural sweetener,” Rob said. “All we do is boil water out of it. It’s amazing what nature gives you.”
But all that give takes some work, and that’s where the Houghs come in.
They tap into the trees, collect hundreds of gallons of sap, boil it to make the syrup, bottle it, and sell it from the small sugarhouse on their 10-acre farm and at vendor markets throughout northern Illinois. January, February and March are the busiest months of their year, with all of the collecting and boiling, with weather conditions dictating their exact schedule.
“It’s become quite the center of our operation,” Rob said. “The spring is so busy with us collecting sap, tapping the trees, boiling it down, and then we sell it throughout the year.”
It’s not just all work and no play, though, the family enjoys sharing their family tradition with customers, and it’s fun to tell them all the different things that go great with maple syrup.
While making the syrup is nothing new to Rob’s family, he didn’t get into doing it until about 25 years ago.
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Rob’s great-grandfather, Ralph Angle, farmed between Cedarville and Dakota in Stephenson County, where the land was rich with maple trees along and near Cedar Creek (it was next to land owned at the time by Hull House founder Jane Addams, who was from Cedarville). Ralph’s daughter, Ginny, would tell young Rob stories about the days when she and her father would spend time in their woods and go “sugaring,” the process of gathering the sap that would become syrup.
Does sugar come from trees? Not exactly, but the thought of it piqued Rob’s curiosity.
“Those stories were just so interesting to me because I would think, ‘Why is she talking about sugar when it’s maple syrup?’” Rob said. “When you’re a little kid, all you think of is, ‘You just drill a hole in a tree and sugar comes out?’”
It wasn’t until later in life — when Rob thought back to Grandma’s stories and GreatGrandpa’s hard work — that he started thinking about passing along time-honored traditions and the lessons he learned to his own family, like helping them understand that
“food doesn’t just come the grocery store,” he said. It’s all part of nature’s plan, so he started making plans of his own.
He and Lynette moved to their Mount Morris farm in 2000 and they began making maple syrup eight years later.
“I think it’s interesting to carry on a family tradition, but also if you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you’re going,” Rob said. “There’s a fondness to doing what your forefathers did.”
Rob still has some of the wood taps Angle once had, but these days he uses smaller, metal ones.
Syrup doesn’t just come from trees ready to pour. It takes time and toil — and a lot of sap. It takes about 43 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup after all of the water is immediately boiled out of it through a wood-fired evaporator. The family likes to keep it simple: no coloring, preservatives or chemicals added to the finished product. When all is said and done, they make about 50 gallons of syrup each year, from about 2,150 gallons of sap.
Some trees produce sap better than others, but they all need to have one thing in common: The trunks must be at least 10 inches in diameter in order for sap to be drawn out safely, so as to not to hurt the tree.
Although they have maple trees on their own yard, they aren’t big enough to be tapped into yet; so they gather from larger trees elsewhere in town through friends and family, as well as from the trees at Sunset Golf Club. If there’s a maple tree in town with a large blue bag attached to it, it’s more than likely the Houghs’.
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Hough’s Maple Lane Farm, 3788 N. Mount Morris Road in Mount Morris is open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Find it on Facebook and Instagram, go to houghsmaplelanefarm.com or call 815-734-6006 to find out what markets it will set up at, or for more information.
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“The reason why you can’t start with smaller than a 10-inch tree is that if you tap that area, it wounds the tree; it heals, but it doesn’t move sap in that exact area ever again,” Rob said. “Each year if you have to move the tap all over the tree that’s smaller than 10 inches, you’d eventually girdle the tree, no sap would move, and you’d kill the tree. We spend a lot of time looking at the tree health, measuring and doing it correctly, because if we do it wrong it will kill the trees.”
The weather plays a part in production, too — a successful sap harvest “totally” depends on the weather, Rob said.
“The tree has to be cooled for so many nights, so generally in late January is when the trees start getting ready to be tapped,” he said. “They need to be freezing at night, and above freezing during the day for the sap to move up and down the tree. Once we drill, the tree starts to close that hole off, so we have 45 days, give or take, for that hole to close. We don’t want to tap too soon because we might not be moving sap, but if we tap too late, we might miss a bunch.”
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The Houghs sell their syrup in 2-ounce, half-pint, pint and quart sizes. They also have a half-pint smoked variety that Rob makes in the family smoker.
The syrup also is used in granolas, snack mixes, cinnamon rolls, on pecans and in maple leaf-shaped candy even pets can get a taste of the trees’ treats, in maple-flavored dog treats and cat nip.
Lynette also has experimented using maple syrup as a substitute for sugar when cooking.
“I enjoy finding new recipes to use maple syrup and maple sugar in,” Lynette said. “I took a meatball recipe that called for having brown sugar in it, and I switched it out for maple syrup. We can use it for what you’d use with sugar. When our kids were growing up and they’d have friends over, we’d take it with ice cream and root beer and make a root beer float with it. It’s something different than the regular.”
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“Part of the whole deal is to show people that it’s not just for putting on pancakes,” Rob said.
The Houghs take their syrup and creations — as well as their knowledge of syrups’ benefits — on the road to the Mount Carroll Farmers Market once a month and at craft shows throughout the year. This fall’s show stops include Sept. 14-15 at The Pec Thing at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds in Pecatonica; Oct. 5-6 at Autumn on Parade in Oregon; Oct. 12 at the Backroads Barn Sale at the Carroll County Fairgrounds in Milledgeville; Oct. 19-20 at Holidazzle back at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds; and Oct. 26 at the Mount Carroll Pumpkinfest.
They’ll also open their home store for a pair of local tourism events: Sept. 28 during the Back Roads Market, and Oct. 13 for the University of Illinois Extension’s Ogle County Farm Stroll.
Can’t make it to any of those events? The Houghs also sell their products at Vintage Chicks and Feed in rural Leaf River, as well as Merlin’s The Other Side Boutique and the Stronghold Center, both in Oregon. You can also find their syrup at Krogman’s Homegrown Meats in rural Shannon and Arrow Farm Meats in rural Rock City.
If you miss out, you’ll just have to wait until next year’s batch. With sap collected only during the winter, when it’s gone, it’s gone. However, that doesn’t mean their small farm store is closed in between syrup seasons. The Houghs also sell maple-flavored products from other syrup makers, such as maple syrup barbecue sauce and maple-flavored root beer, both from Wisconsin,
W PED OFF THE MAP OGLE
Being in the restaurant business for more than 50 years, Jocky Kamberi has acquired a taste for good food — and he’s not the only one. His customers have too, and that’s helped make the restaurant and bar he and his wife Lindita own a Mount Morris tradition.
Along state Route 64, The Pepper Mill has been welcoming customers for 30 years now, and with all those years running the place, you might think there’s a secret ingredient to the Kamberis’ success, but it’s really no secret: It’s his customers.
“We’ve been here for 30 years and people keep coming back,” Jocky said. “There must be something neat here, maybe the menu, or that the town really needs it, but they keep coming back.”
His decades of experience in the food industry helps, too. Kamberi not only knows how to set the table, he knows how to set the mood, serving up a warm and welcoming supper club atmosphere that keeps customers coming back for more.
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Below: Lindita and Jocky Kamberi have made The Pepper Mill restaurant in Mount Morris a dining destination for 30 years.
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Whether it’s a special night out, winding down after enjoying a local event, or just getting out of the house and letting someone else do the cooking, the Kamberis give people a pleasant place to pull up a seat and enjoy the ambiance. A mixture of rustic and retro, the cozy surroundings of wood and stone walls combines with low lights to provide customers a relaxing place to unwind, enjoy a drink at the bar or a bite to eat at one of the tables.
And no matter where they sit, the aroma of fresh-cooked food gives diners a preview of what’s to come: hearty portions all around, including several varieties of chicken, sizzling steaks, seafood, ribs, burgers and fries, and more.
Kamberi said his commitment to quality is a top priority, something that’s not always been easy in recent years, as the restaurant industry has faced its share of struggles amid rising costs and changes in people’s dining habits.
“With everything you see, I don’t cut corners, I buy the quality stuff,” Jocky said. “I try to keep the same quality of stuff all of the time. I’m not trying to buy cheaper things because it’s cheaper to buy it, it’s the same quality all of the time. I could get a lot of stuff cheaper, like meat, but I don’t want to do that.”
PEPPER MILL cont’d to page 38
With five decades in the food industry, Jocky Kamberi knows what keeps customers coming back for more, and for three of those decades, he’s been serving it up at The Pepper Mill — seafood, steak chicken and more.
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One of the dishes he enjoys serving up and customers enjoy eating is one he brought with him from his time as a cook in suburban Chicago. It’s an “everyday special” at The Pepper Mill, and one with a familiar name: Chicken Jockey comes with five large battered chicken strips served with a choice of dipping sauce. Jocky started making it while working as a cook at a restaurant in the Chicago suburbs and it became a hit.
“People really love it,” he said. “When I used to work in the suburbs, we could come up with ideas to put on our menu, and if people liked it, it would stay there.”
Catches from the seafood menu include deep-fried cod and scallops, fantail shrimp, fried catfish, orange roughy and baked white fish and salmon. Can’t decide between cod, scallops or shrimp? There’s a plate with all three available as well.
Like liver and onions? It’s on the menu, served with baby beef and bacon. Pork chops are there as well, along with New York strip and ribeye steaks; the steaks come with options to add shrimp, grilled onions and sauteed mushrooms. A kids menu offers smaller portions for those 12 and younger. To top it all off: ice cream for dessert.
Come on a certain day of the week — except Monday, when the Pepper Mill is closed — and enjoy some of the entrees at a discount: pork chops on Tuesday, ribs on Wednesday, New York strip on Thursday, cod on Friday, and fried chicken on Sunday. Hungry for prime rib? It’s Saturday’s special, and the only day it’s served.
While The Pepper Mill has been around for decades, its history dates back even farther. Before the Kamberis bought it in 1994, it was Elliot’s Supper Club. With the new owners came a new name, one that came all the way for Las Vegas, where Kamberi came across a place called Peppermill Restaurant on the Vegas strip.
PEPPER MILL cont’d to page 39
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While adding their own flavor to the business, the couple decided not to change the look of the place too much. They also kept one of Elliot’s popular menu items: The Grinder hamburger, served with ham, lettuce and tomato. The approach has worked well, attracting both new customers and keeping old ones — some of whom have been eating there longer than the Kamberis have owned the place.
The Pepper Mill, 10 E. Hitt St. in Mount Morris, is open 4:30 to 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday, and 4:30 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Find it on Facebook or call 815-734-4141 for reservations or for more information. WANT TO BUY THE RESTAURANT? Owners Jocky and Lindita Kamberi are retiring and have put it up for sale. Call or visit the restaurant for details.
While Jocky spends much of his time in the kitchen, Lindita makes the rounds around the tables serving up food, drinks and smiles. After 30 years in business, many customers know them on a first-name basis and some have become friends.
know someone else on a firstname basis. After 30 years, the couple has decided to put the restaurant up for sale and retire (it was on the market as of press time in August).
“I want to enjoy the rest of our years left,” Jocky said.
Though their days serving customers are drawing close to a close, their emphasis on quality isn’t coasting to the finish line, and even as they get ready to enjoy retirement, they’re proud of the mark they’ve made in Mount Morris and are grateful for the countless customers they’ve served through the years.
Like any restaurant, word of mouth can say a lot about a place, and the Kamberis hope that the word their customers say is “Yum!”
“I like the people,” Lindita said. “I like being a server to them, and I enjoy doing it.”
It might not be long, though, before customers will get to
