In the past few months, metro area restaurants have been struggling to hire the employees required to handle the uptick in customer traffic, which will likely only increase this year. To compensate, owners have been forced to limit seating, cut back hours, encourage staff to log more hours, or work more.
After 26 years, the owners of Malone’s Grill & Pub (8742 Watson) closed for good on Monday, and the owner of F&B’s Eatery (3543 Hampton) announced at least a temporary closure this week as well, both citing many of the same reasons.
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On a broader scale, expansion plans across the metro have been back-burnered or cancelled, and today, “lack of staff” has forced another restaurant, Original J’s Tex-Mex Barbecue (7359 Forsyth), to close temporarily.
Mike Randolph, the accomplished local chef who owns the restaurant with his wife, Liz, says the problem “is not a lack of business; it’s a lack of employees,” notably cooks. (The fast-casual restaurant doesn’t require much front of-house staff.) The Randolphs also own Half & Half in Clayton, where, due to its longevity, staffing hasn’t been as big of a concern, according to Randolph, who was also the menu consultant and helped design the kitchen at Edera in the Central West End.
Original J’s opened in November 2019 in a strip center just outside the Clayton city limits. The restaurant is the couple’s tribute to Texas-style barbecue, known for its signature cooking method (low and slow), choice of fuel (100 percent post oak wood), and use of simple seasonings (“salt, pepper, and not a whole lot else,” according to Mike Randolph.
The interior was designed to feel like the come-as-you-are restaurants of yesteryear: tongue-in-groove wood planks, wipeable blue-checkered tablecloths, mismatched tiffany shades, and photos and paintings displayed in an Artmart’s worth of wooden frames. Specialties of the house included beef brisket, burnt-ends tacos with smoked tomato jam and queso, and an unusual take on smoked wings.
Randolph says the tentative plan is for Original J’s to regroup and reopen in September, “when the Wash U. students and, hopefully, the Clayton office workers return,” he says, “and when there are some people to hire again.”
