Susie Lyon and Diane Cox: Transcript
Suburban Restaurant, Gilbert, traditional cooks
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MS.
COX: We have a lot of regulars.
MS. LYON: We have sons and grandsons and granddaughters of regulars that come in.
MS. COX: That have come in for 43 years, so, yeah, we have many regulars,
but we love new
customers, too. We totally do. We get a lot of new customers.
MS. LYON: Yeah. People say all the time, "I've lived here 15 years and I didn't even know this place existed." And I say, "Take a ride out in the country and look around because"—
MS. COX: We're here.
MS. LYON:—"You need to broaden your horizons. "This is—we've been here a long time, and you will be happy you drove this four miles to see us."
MS. COX: I'm Diane Cox, owner/operator of Suburban Restaurant for 43 years now.
MS. LYON: I'm Susie Lyon, and Diane and I have been partners now for ten years.
MS. COX: Our family, our parents started it in 1963.
MS. LYON: After they had health problems, we took over. They had a good business going, so—we must like it because we're still here.
MS. COX: Also we have family members that work here. We even have our little 8-year-old niece seating people occasionally.
MS. LYON: And our husbands occasionally help out if they have to.
MS. COX: We are known for our pork tenderloin. We have had the breaded pork tenderloin for 43 years, and my father had it before that at our previous restaurant, and then we started making the grilled tenderloin probably about ten years ago, and we won the award in 2004 for the best grilled tenderloin in Iowa. That was by the Iowa Pork Producers Association. Our tenderloins are made from the whole pork loin. A lot of people use the cutlet, the cheaper portion. We use the pork loin, and then we tenderize it. And our grilled tenderloin is just floured and grilled, and then the breaded tenderloin—of course we use our special recipe and bread it and deep fry it, and they are delicious. My father came up with that. I have no idea where or when.
MS. LYON: Most of our recipes are his recipes—
MS. COX: Yeah.
MS. LYON:—for all of our specials.
MS. COX: He came up with the breaded. We have to have our special breading.
It makes us
crazy when we don't. So, yeah.
My dad was a prisoner of war, so he—I'm sure he came up on a lot of foods when he was overseas.
MS. LYON: He was an amazing cook, too. I mean he had a real talent that—A lot of people can cook, but he was very creative. He was amazing. He's been dead for 20 years almost, and there are still things I'd like to ask him, like "How did you do that? How did you exactly get that," you know.
MS. COX: “How did you come up with that?”
MS. LYON: "How did you make that sauce turn out exactly that way?"—because he could make anything taste good. He was amazing. My mother didn't—she cooked at home and she was a good cook too, but she just never—
MS. COX: She was the personality.
MS. LYON: She had the personality to be in the dining room. She ran the
dining room. She
was amazing too. She was a waitress when she was 14, started out as a waitress
when she was 14 in the Depression.
MS. COX: She knew everybody.
MS. LYON: My dad was a perfectionist about a lot of things. He bought really, really good equipment. We still use his knives, we still use his pans. My mother was—she had—You know, we felt like the restaurant was when you opened the door, this was the first act of the play and you better be ready and you better know your lines and you better have everything ready, and they had a good business going.
MS. COX: We have people from Colorado that have to come and have a tenderloin. Anywhere that's not Iowa, they—
MS. LYON: Yeah, we had people from Arizona last night that came.
MS. COX: They can't get a tenderloin anywhere, so when they want a breaded tenderloin, they come and have their tenderloin. Of course, then there's the people that want a little healthier treat and they look and say, "I'm going to have a grilled tenderloin," so, yeah, we get a lot of crossovers, but our breaded is probably the most—
MS. LYON: The favorite.
MS. COX: Yeah.