Bar-B-Que Sauce

On May 1, 1948, Forrest H. Kitchin and his wife, Delores (Dee), opened a little drive-in restaurant at 3812 South Logan Street in Lansing, Michigan, advertising its specialties as hamburgers, hot dogs, root beer, and “thick malteds” and offering “free movies one night a week all summer.” But one thing apparently bedeviled the Kitchins from the very beginning: their last name.

Sometimes the restaurant was advertised as the Kitchen Drive-In, or Kitchen’s Drive-In, while other times it was the Kitchin Drive-In, or Kitchin’s Drive-In. (It would take nearly 20 years for the confusion to be resolved.) Nonetheless, the drive-in was a hit from the beginning, and by the early 1950s the Kitchins were offering curb service outside (with television every night instead of the weekly movie) and counter service inside, seven days a week, with “a complete line of foods” that included French fries, fried shrimp, fried chicken, and pies. “We Make Our Own Ice Cream,” newspaper ads for the drive-in said, which surely made its 29-cent banana splits even more tempting.

Kitchin’s Drive-In advertised hamburgers at 20 cents (“We serve them on fresh buns with plenty of mustard and onions,” the ads said), as were the foot-long hot dogs it called “Peeping Pups.”

In 1953, three years before Ray Kroc would begin to install Taylor milkshake machines in McDonald’s restaurants all over the country, Kitchin’s Drive-In was offering its customers “the New Soft Ice Cream,” as well as “Shrimp in a Basket” and “Chicken in a Basket,” with everything on the menu also available for takeout.

While ads for Kitchin’s listed Forrest as the owner, Dee, who had been cooking since she was a child, presided over its kitchen. She once told a reporter that her main hobbies were visiting restaurants and collecting recipes, adding that during the winter months, when the drive-in was closed, she would experiment with items she wanted to add to the menu.

In 1957 Kitchin’s Drive-In began offering home delivery of pizzas as well as shrimp and chicken dinners from 6 p.m. to midnight, and it soon introduced “electronic car service,” with two-way speakers replacing the car hops. But Forrest and Dee were apparently itching to do something different, and in 1966 they sold most of the equipment at the drive-in, completely remodeled the building, and opened the Bar-K Ranch Steak House in its place. A huge fiberglass steer stood atop the restaurant, and a life-size horse greeted patrons inside. Newspaper ads for the Bar-K Ranch Steak House described it, somewhat inexplicably, as the “the best thing to come along since Custer’s Last Stand!”)

There had been another big change: The Kitchins had officially, if not legally, become the Kitchens. They operated the Bar-K Ranch Steak House until 1974, when they put it up for immediate sale, citing “other business commitments,” and a franchised Perkins Pancake House—the city’s second—opened at the same location the following year. Forrest Kitchen went on to build a successful second career as a real estate agent, and in future years the site where Kitchin’s Drive-In once stood would become home to a Theio’s restaurant, Jackie’s Diner, and, most recently, Wing Heaven Sports Bar.

In 1994, after eight years of debate, Logan Street was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Print Recipe

Bar-B-Que Sauce

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Forrest H. Kitchin and his wife, Delores (Dee), owned and operated Kitchin’s Drive-In at 3812 South Logan Street in Lansing, Michigan, from 1948 to 1966. This recipe, developed by Dee Kitchin, is not so much a barbecue sauce as a smoke-flavored “Coney Island” sauce—or “dressing”—for the foot-long hot dogs the drive-in sold as “Peeping Pups.”

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste
• 1 pound ground beef
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 2 cups chili sauce
• 2 tablespoons liquid smoke
• 1 teaspoon monosodium glutamate
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon celery salt

Instructions

1

Put ground beef and onion in stewing pot with one cup water, salt, and pepper. Stir over low heat and cook until meat and onions are done, forking often to keep meet in very fine pieces. Don’t allow to become lumpy. When cooked, add remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat until well seasoned.

2

In a large saucepan, combine the water, salt, pepper, ground beef, and onions. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the beef and onions are done, using a fork or potato masher to separate the meat into very fine pieces.

3

Add the chili sauce, liquid smoke, monosodium glutamate, cayenne pepper, paprika, and celery salt, and simmer over low heat until the mixture is smooth and free of lumps.