Topeka Capital-Journal
May 22, 1991

The North Star Supper Club is a good place to eat, particularly if you’re hungry and like steak and french fries smothered in chicken gravy. It isn’t very sophisticated, but the place has been there so long, and created so many temporary gluttons, it is more than just an institution. It is almost a shrine to meat-and-potatoes people seeking the ultimate fat fix.

It might qualify Topeka as the cholesterol capital of the free world, but for the faithful who keep returning it is the only place to go if you want a meal fit for four linebackers and their Dobermans.

Dinner there is a can’t-miss deal, because the steaks are large and uniformly good
And the fries and gravy are served on the plan the Okies call “pitch till you win.” In
other words, you get all you can eat, and the gravy served with the assurance from the waiter that it is low calorie stuff.

It is lower, maybe, than a double banana split but not by much. Patrons devour it with the promise they’ll turn over a new leaf tomorrow, and If the Lord will see them through this one frenzy of feeding they never again will succumb to the temptation.

You probably are thinking by now that your favorite local retired newsman is trying to write himself into a free meal at this North Topeka feed lot. Not so. I was there last Saturday night and am now on the fat wagon, at least until somebody talks me into sliding off. It won’t be difficult.

Actually, most of my trips to the North Star are made on what I call the Snidre plan. That is, they are made at the suggestion of someone else, usually from out of town and who insists on paying. I have found that adding 100 points to your cholesterol in one sitting is less stressful if it is free.

In a way, my cholesterol count is a victim of the club’s far-flung fame. Our son, Steve, works on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and when he visits here he insists on dinner at the North Star. “You hear a lot about it in Washington,” he said, “particularly from people who work with the Kansas delegation.”

My brother-in-law, Warren Linville, lives in Umatilla, Ore., and has had heart surgery. His doctor allows him one steak a week, but when he arrived here last week he said, “I’ve been holding off for a month, just so I could go to the North Star and splurge.
Sheriff Ed Ritchie told me he has taken people from all over the globe there, “and there never has been one who wasn’t impressed, and who didn’t want to go back.

“My daughter and son-in-law live in England and when they visit here the highlight of the trip for him is dinner at the North Star. Of course, if you’ve ever eaten a steak in England it would help you to understand that.”

Back when Bud Wilkinson was coaching football at Oklahoma he had a player named Dowell, whose a father was wealthy and an avid rooter. It became a ritual that “Mr.
Dowell,” as he was known, would make all the road trips and buy dinner for the OU coaching staff the night before the game.

In the mid-1950s I tipped off Mr. Dowell about the North Star, and in return got invited to dinner every time OU was in town. As you can see, I have been a freeloader for a long time. But the point is, Mr. Dowell and the Sooner staff declared the North Star the best steakhouse in the conference, if not in the country.

The North Star is a private club, and is very strict about it now. The last time my son and I were there we had to wait while the management dug deep into the records to find my old membership. It wasn’t always that way.

Ritchie remembers it as a sort of after-hours place, leaning more toward hamburgers than steak, and serving drinks long before Kansas decided to legalize sin. I remember it when it was about half the size it now and, like a speakeasy, they looked you over before they let you in.

The waiters there are as much an institution as the place itself. Bill Mitchell was first, once the club really got into food, and David Benson came soon after. They had a pecking order in that Bill got the choice customers and David got what was left.

Then Bill moved on, David moved up and Charles Johnson moved in. How long has this been going on? There is a framed magazine article on the wall that says David had been there 44 years in 1988, so he would be in his 47th year now.

But a lady behind the bar said the magazine got it all wrong and that David has been there 39 years. David himself, waiting on us, said he has been there 41 years.

David surely has the right number. After all, he is a vice president Bank IV and he has been moonlighting at the North Star all these years. Another remarkable thing about this man with two jobs is that never writes down an order, and patrons vow he never has gotten one wrong.

Last Saturday night, there were 10 us. The orders included different steaks, some shared and cooked differently, and some whoppers. There were orders for different salad dressings and for a variety of drinks. David listened and when he brought it all out nobody complained.

The Robinson brothers, Jug and Chet, got the North Star rolling after World War II, and they, and the waiters, made it famous for good food and a lot of it. It was handed down in the family, and later bought by Dave Vogel and his wife, Willa. He died about four years ago, and now she runs it.

It is riding high. It’s not fancy, and some spurn it. But the people who go there go not for fancy, but for food. If they leave hungry it’s only because they don’t like what’s bad for them.