A restaurant on Belleville’s west end has a new owner.
The Route 13 Diner, located at 7309 Old St. Louis Road, is now in the hands of Chef Jimmy Kyle of Granite City.
I paid the diner a visit to talk with Kyle, or Chef Jimmy, as he prefers to be known.
During our visit, he greeted and welcomed every customer that entered the diner, introducing himself as the new owner. We talked about plans he has for the diner, how he came to own the place, and a bit about his background.
Named after chef’s daughter
The diner still sports the Route 13 Diner name and logo in the windows, but the place will become Zoey’s Diner, named for Chef Jimmy’s 11-year-old daughter.
Currently open seven days a week, the diner will continue to serve some of the items from Route 13 Diner’s menu.
Current items include the country breakfast (eggs, hash browns or American fries, a breakfast meat, toast or biscuit with gravy, coffee), omelets, breakfast sandwiches, burgers, country fried steak and more.
Chef Jimmy will drop some items and then add new ones, basing his offerings on what customers currently enjoy and would like to see added to the menu.
Additional menu items will include gluten free and vegetarian/vegan options.
“I want to accommodate everybody,” including those with dietary limitations and preferences, he said.
His primary motivation for offering a more dietary diverse menu is for daughter Zoey.
She has celiac disease , an autoimmune disease in which eating gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye and barley) causes damage to the small intestine.
The diner will also offer custom cakes and pies for all occasions, including gluten-free options.
Zoey’s Diner currently has a bar menu available for the Route 13 Bar next door. The menu consists of burgers, chicken wings, chicken strips, toasted ravioli and fries.
The official menu is still a work in progress. Once ready, it will be available at the diner and online.
About Chef Jimmy
Chef Jimmy is a veteran. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as a crew chief in aviation mechanics.
When I asked how long he served, he replied, “Too long.”
He said that with a smile on his face and feels gratitude and respect for his fellow veterans as well as those who continue to serve.
The diner will be veteran-focused, he said, and will offer discounts to military members and first responders.
Cooking is Chef Jimmy’s real passion.
He started to learn more about cooking with his mom and grandmother, who were both diabetics. He soon “fell in love with it and [has] been cooking ever since,” he said.
Chef Jimmy is an American Culinary Federation -certified chef with a Culinary Arts degree from Southwestern Illinois College.
The ACF is the “premier certifying body for cooks and chefs in America,” according to its website. Such a certification makes chefs more desirable for positions in the food industry.
He’s currently working towards his baking and pastry chef certification and will complete that program in May 2025.
He is also the vice president of SWIC’s Culinary Arts Club.
His culinary education included a course in food truck management, which he loved. Now that he has the diner, he will rent it out to a food truck operator for use as a commercial kitchen.
It’s helpful for a food truck to have a commercial kitchen – or a home base – to store supplies and prep foods, according to Chef Jimmy.
The original plan was to get a food truck of his own. However, the opportunity to own the diner presented itself. Route 13 Diner owners Jimmy Johnson and Trish Starks, who already knew him as a chef, approached him about buying the diner.
Chef Jimmy said that he needed to pray about it and think it over. He decided the opportunity came at the right time. The Route 13 staff stayed on, making the decision to buy the business easier.
By maintaining the current staff, he didn’t have to worry about providing and accepting applications, setting up interviews, or hiring and training new employees.
He wanted to make sure that everyone there still had a job, and he did what he could to keep from closing as ownership of the diner was transferred.
The diner was down for about two weeks during the transition, said Chef Jimmy.
A dream come true
It’s been his dream to have his own diner, said Chef Jimmy.
“This is where it started,” he said of the mom and pop places he remembers.
His goal is to bring back the feel of restaurants and diners like the ones he went to as a kid with his mom and grandparents.
He plans to give the diner the feel of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. He also wants to display photos of the building from when it housed other restaurants, including Wainwright’s and Moore’s Family Restaurant.
He’s currently on the search for historic photos and is trying to track down a jukebox for the place.
His mom, Barbara Kyle, who died in May 2022, wanted her son to one day open a place of his own, he said, adding that his family is his main reason for doing this.
He wants to provide a place where others can make memories with their families like he did with his own.
Zoey is the biggest reason of all.
The diner, the menu, even a gluten-free cookbook he’s writing, is all for her, said Chef Jimmy, who hopes to leave the diner to her one day.
About Zoey’s Diner
Zoey’s Diner is located at 7309 Old St. Louis Road in Belleville.
The diner was built in the 1950s for Les Wainwright, owner of Wainwright’s Hamburger Stand, which originally opened across the street from 7309 Old St. Louis Road.
Wainwright’s was known for serving one of the best burgers in town, according to articles in the BND’s archives. It closed in June 1986.
Sir William’s Restaurant opened in the former burger joint in September 1986 under the ownership of Don Moore, whose family owned and operated Moore’s Family Restaurant locations in Mascoutah and Cahokia at the time.
Moore named it Sir William’s after his father, he told the BND in 1986. “We wanted to try a new name,” he said.
The name lasted around six months before being renamed Moore’s Family Restaurant.
Moore retired in 2020, and the business was acquired by Johnson and Starks, who renamed it Route 13 Diner.
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Hours at Zoey’s Diner are currently 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily and will likely be extended at a later date.
Dine-in and carryout ordering are available. A discount is available for military and first responders.
For more information, call 618-397-8271 or visit the Route 13 Diner Facebook page .
7309 Old St. Louis Road Diner Clips by Jennifer Green on Scribd
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