Former Duff's chef Jimmy Voss offers a taste of nostalgia at West End Grill and Pub

After returning to St. Louis from Texas, Voss is recreating favorite items to honor the former Central West End restaurant’s legacy.

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Once upon a time, when he wasn’t traveling the country cooking for the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Voss was executive chef at the beloved Duff’s restaurant. For nearly four decades, Voss served as the culinary voice of the iconic Central West End eatery, up until it closed in 2013.

Seven years and innumerable lamentations about its closure later, Voss is ready to give St. Louis diners a nostalgic taste of the gone-but-not-forgotten restaurant. Now back in town from Texas, the veteran chef has linked back up with fellow Duff’s alum William Roth of West End Grill & Pub, where he’s serving as the restaurant’s executive chef—and the two are conspiring to pepper the restaurant’s menu with a little taste of the past.

“Duff’s was a magical moment in time,” Voss says. “We’ve put together some of the favorites, but at the same time, we want to hear from Duff’s veterans about what they want without planting seeds in their brains. Do they have a memory they want to discuss? What do they remember?”

Roth and Voss are thrilled to be working together again at WEGAP and are excited about the restaurant’s regular bar and grill offerings. They see bringing back some Duff’s favorites as a chance to honor the former restaurant’s legacy while building business for the current one as it undergoes the industry-wide challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. As Roth explains, he and Voss were inspired to bring back some of the old favorites by the overwhelming nostalgia that they hear from guests.

“The nostalgia has always been there,” Roth says. “People have talked about Duff’s ever since it was going out. There are Facebook groups about it; we have a group of former employees who comes in once a month for happy hour. About every two weeks, I hear someone say, 'I wish I was at Duff’s and could eat this.' It’s never really gone away.”

The timing for the Duff’s project at WEGAP was right for Voss, who recently moved back to St. Louis. There, in a small town about an hour outside of Austin, he worked alongside another Duff’s alum, Kate Tilton, serving as executive chef at her restaurant, Kate’s Place. Happy with the mild Texas winters, Voss might have stayed until he retired from the business were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted Tilton to indefinitely shutter the restaurant. Faced with the prospect of waiting the pandemic out in Texas or figuring out another path, Voss returned to St. Louis.

“I was talking to people and maybe going to do some consulting, and then William called one day and wanted me to come help,” Voss says. “He had me help him get the menu going, and now we’re ready to roll.”

As Voss explains, the plan is to roll out a handful of rotating Duff’s dishes, which will likely change on a weekly basis. These old favorites will be available as weekly specials on WEGAP’s menu, as well as on a forthcoming catering menu the two have created. Both emphasize that diners should not fret if they don't see their personal favorite dishes on the new list of offerings.

“Just tell us what you want, and we can make it,” says Roth. “As long as Jimmy is here, we can do it.”

Though he’s eager to hear these suggestions from Duff’s fans, Voss already has some plans for his initial offerings. These include black bean–filled ravioli served with jalapeño crema and guacamole, a dish he was told he was crazy for making back in the 1980s, when conventional wisdom said pasta was supposed to be Italian through and through.

He’s also excited to again be cooking the French tomato soup (flecked with herbs and filled with hunks of bacon), Duff’s famous Creole crawfish cakes served alongside remoulade, and the former restaurant’s signature pepper steak with brandy mustard cream sauce and mashed potatoes.

“It’s a few of the old favorites, but we also want people to tell us what they want,” Roth says. “With Jimmy at the helm, of course it will have the Duff’s spirit to it.”

As for Voss, the opportunity to reengage with some of his past creations has given him the opportunity to look back on an exciting career that started as a dishwasher at Duff’s in 1974 and included a 10-year gig as the touring chef for the Grateful Dead. One day, he hopes to write a book about it, but for now, he’s focused on bringing some nostalgic joy to the lives of WEGAP patrons and Duff’s loyalists.

“We’re rewriting the history book here,” Voss says. “It’s magical that we are still here when so many places have closed down. It’s amazing to think of it. Ninety percent of my recipes are handwritten and sitting in a lemon box. All of them are icons of Duff’s. It's a little piece of magic in time that we are bringing back.”

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