Breakfast at The Lunch Box is a Must.

The Lunch Box

330 US – 491

Dove Creek, CO., 81324

Phone: 970-512-0309

Hours of Operation: Mon – Sat, 8am to 8pm; Sun, 10am to 4pm

 

Breakfast time, not in any real hurry, socializing is a simple given, over great meals at affordably reasonable prices, then you know I’m writing about The Lunch Box in Dove Creek, Colorado.  Hubby and I recently had breakfast there, again, and spent a little over one hour enjoying the communal atmosphere, socializing with locals, talking with owner, Joshua, and most of all, enjoying those good eats. 

Joshua Robinson, grandson of Shelly King who began teaching Joshua, at six years old, the food industry, repurchased the old restaurant in 2023, and has accomplished the ultimate goal.Whether you’re reading reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor or Google, this restaurant has the highest rating on all of them with raves about breakfast, lunch and dinner.

He is not an owner that sits on his laurels, satisfied with past achievements and doesn’t bother to make efforts to improve or achieve more.  Oh no, this man is one of the hardest working business owners around, and he is highly respected and well liked.  It is not unusual to see him greeting customers with the biggest smile, and with regulars, he knows not just their names, but what beverages they like to start off with.  He also acts as waitstaff, cooks when necessary, and makes sure to personally instruct each staff member in their position, especially the kitchen staff.

But enough about Joshua, and more about the wonderful dishes offered on the breakfast menu.

Once in a while, steak and eggs has appeared, as a special, but is now a permanent dish.  A 6-ounce sirloin steak served with 2 eggs and home fries, yes, home fries!  The steak is lean, tender and juicy after being grilled to a perfect medium (well done is blasphemy!), the eggs the style you desire, and the home fried are small cuts of potatoes fried up with diced green bell peppers and onion.  Sorry, hash brown lovers, they have their place with a few dishes, but not with steak.

 

 

 

My overall favorite is the Pancake Breakfast featuring 2 eggs, bacon, ham or sausage, home fries and 2 pancakes.  The pancakes take up the entire center of a dinner sized plate, golden brown, light, fluffy, served with butter and syrup.  There is an option of wild blueberries added to the pancakes if you’re feeling fruity in the morning. Eggs are style desired and I always order the crispy, smoky bacon which, to be truthful, really need to ordered as a side as well.  This breakfast is for anyone with a huge appetite, but I always take half home to eat as my dinner that night.  Microwave for 90 seconds, and the scrambled eggs are still soft, the homes fries the perfect texture, and the pancakes just as fluffy and yummy as they were in the morning.

 

 

 

So, speaking of favorites, several dishes are ordered time and time again.  Huevos rancheros which is smothered in the housemade pork green chili; my fave, the Pancake Breakfast; the 1 and ½ pound Breakfast Burrito, and the Breakfast Sandwich featuring housemade Hatch chile mayonnaise, Hatch chiles, and cheese.  There is simple one or two egg breakfasts for those with smaller appetites, or need something fast due to being on the go-go-go.

 

 

Breakfast is served Monday thru Saturday, 8am to 10:30am, and Sunday, 9am to 10:30am.  However, it’s not unusual for Joshua to let someone inside earlier and cook them up a great breakfast as they’re "up and at 'em" before 8am.  The least busy days are Wednesday and Thursday, the very busiest Friday, Saturday and Sunday; but it can be unpredictable, especially in the summer months with tourists traveling through.

Oh dear, did you get up late, or arrive in Dove Creek past the breakfast hours, do not despair!   The lunch fare at The Lunch Box will definitely fulfill the hunger pains in your belly.  The most popular item is the burgers which sell an average of 140 per day!  Sometimes a new burger is invented, and a naming contest is held for bragging rights and gift certificate.  However, the main focus here is on breakfast, so you’ll just have to take my word, and those of hundreds of reviews that lunch, or dinner, is a must as well.

Mary Cokenour 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Well-Deserved Lunch at The Lunch Box.

With a to-do list of eight items, Roy and I were at work at 9am.  At work at our home that is.  The sky was dark, the wind steadily rising, and weather reports foretold rain and 40 F will be a nightly thing.  Also, seems that this year, our first snow will supposedly hit on October 1^st.  So, time to get off our butts, make minor repairs, and winterize.

By 2pm, we had almost all of the list ticked off; two plumbing issues need additional parts and honestly, we did not want to deal with it anymore this weekend.  I had promised Roy that, if we got 80 percent of the list done, we’d splurge and have lunch out.  Mission accomplished, and we headed out to Dove Creek.

Once again, The Lunch Box is a friendly, welcoming restaurant and what we appreciate most is that we are remembered, and our business is just as appreciated as we are personally.  I can count, on one hand, the number of restaurants that treat us like this also, and they will assuredly get our business time after time.

 

So, what was lunch this time?  I had the DC Club Sandwich which had roasted turkey and ham (real turkey and ham, not any of that cold cut crap from plastic packages), tomatoes, red onions, lettuce, Hatch green chile mayo (just a little heat on the tip of the tongue, and went very well with the other ingredients), and grilled sourdough bread.  When this monster was served, I almost fainted…how was I going to eat this!  The sandwich width was 3 and ½-inches thick.  I measured how wide I could open my mouth, and no matter how much I stretched, it was only 2-inches wide.  Pressing the sandwich down a bit, had to be careful that the innards wouldn’t come shooting out the sides of the bread.  This sandwich was amazing in size, taste and overall enjoyment; only could eat one half, so the rest was a leftover for dinner time.

As a side, I ordered the sweet potato fries; crispy on the outside, so very moist and fluffy on the inside. 

 

Roy ordered the Chili Cheese Burger with shoestring fries; house made chili using the pinto beans they purchase locally in Dove Creek.  The burger was smothered in the chili, chopped tomatoes and shredded cheese.  I tasted a sample and this would be perfect on a cold, snowy day to help warm up the body; heck, just having a bowl of that chili will do that too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Facebook, Joshua, the owner, had posted a photo of the house made biscuits, and I asked him to save me a couple.  Besides them, I ordered a cup of the Pork Green Chili to pair with the biscuits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

See, Saturday is also our weekly “date night”.  We put on a movie, dating anywhere from the 1930s to the 1980s.  To go with the movie, I usually cook up a pizza, or buffalo wings with hand-cut fries.  Sometimes we order take-out to give me a break from cooking.  Well tonight we’ll be enjoying the other half of the DC Club Sandwich, biscuits and Pork Green Chili.

Mary Cokenour

Dove Creek Welcomes Back “The Lunch Box”.

The Lunch Box

330 US – 491

Dove Creek, CO., 81324

Phone: 970-512-0300

Hours of Operation: Mon – Sat, 8am to 8pm; Sun, 11am to 4pm

 

 

Patio Dining Area

1987, a year dedicated to Michael Jackson being “Bad”, Whitney Houston wanting to dance with somebody, “The Lost Boys” being found and staked, and most historically, Ronald Reagan’s visit to West Berlin, and his famous speech, imploring The USSR’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev to open the Berlin Wall.  Sorry, cannot resist this side note, but I was a university exchange student in 1979, and we had a guided tour of East Berlin, inside the wall area, and a guard in a turret actually turned his machine gun in our direction.  It was a horrible place just to visit, so imagine trying to live in its confines.

Anyway, while the world was experiencing what I have mentioned, and so much more, Paul Davis, of Dove Creek, Colorado, opened up his small diner, called simply “The Lunch Box”.  Little did he know that it would become an iconic part of Dove Creek’s history.  In 1995, Shelly King purchased the diner, and decided expansion was surely needed. At that time, Highway 491 was known as Highway 666, aka The Haunted Highway, so interest in this brought many a visitor inside the, now, full-service restaurant.  Unfortunately, due to illness, Shelly needed to sell his beloved Lunch Box in 2007, which became The Dinner Bell, and eventually DC Rack Haus.

Grandpa Shelly King

 

In 2023, the restaurant was up for sale once again and fate had a hand in this.  Joshua Robinson, Shelly King’s grandson, had moved from California (born and raised, but his family does have deep New York metropolitan roots) to Monticello.  Fate was knocking at his door and Joshua answered quickly, purchasing in October and wanting a grand opening as soon as possible.  He did not anticipate how much work needed to be done, but November 20^th was the grand day.  This was not just taking on, and continuing, the legacy of grandpa Shelly, this was an act of love for family history.  At six years old, Shelly began teaching Joshua the food business by allowing him to flip burgers in Shelly’s food truck.  For 18 years, Joshua worked in the food industry, but wanted a restaurant of his own due to his grandpa’s influence.

I will be adding tidbits of history in the rest of this article, but I must get to the food; the absolutely most delicious menu items we tried out.  There are three menus: breakfast, lunch/dinner and children’s.  There is so much variety, but here are the favorites: Breakfast – Breakfast Burrito, Country Fried Steak with green chili, Hatch Breakfast Sandwich; Lunch/Dinner – Country Fried Steak (choice of creamy country gravy or green chili), Fried Chicken Sandwich, Patty Melt, Cheeseburger, Hatch Cheeseburger, Chef or Greek Salad.  Now this list is only of local favorites, but there is so much more!  Oh, make sure you are very hungry, and want to take home leftovers; the portions are huge and at very reasonable prices.  Shelly always taught, “Good food + Huge portions + Great prices = Customers continue to come back.”

 

Children's Menu

 

Breakfast Menu

 

 

Lunch-Dinner Menu, Page 2

Lunch-Dinner Menu, Page 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visiting The Lunch Box gave me a day off from cooking, so we purchased four dishes to feed us throughout lunch and dinner.  First is Roy’s favorite sandwich, the patty melt, but this was no ordinary patty melt, it was a double (yes, you can order a single).  Two all-beef patties, smothered in a rich and tangy Swiss and white American cheese blend, grilled onions between toasted marble rye bread.  A comfort food addict’s dream sandwich.

 

 

 

The country fried steak was so amazing, I actually woke up during the night craving another platter of it.  This is Angus beef, fresh not frozen, trimmed and cut down on premises.  The coating is so crunchy good, any bits that fall off are quickly picked up and devoured.  Several times it was, slap Roy’s hand, and “this is mine, get your own!”.  It comes with a serving of crispy outside, fluffy inside shoestring fries and green beans.  Oh, but not our average, just picked out of the garden beans.  No, these are Haricots Verts, a French style green bean which contains more vitamins of the B group, vitamins C and K and minerals such as magnesium, iron and manganese.  The country gravy is creamy, smooth with a hint of cracked black pepper, so as to not overwhelm.

 

Dirty Fries are loaded nachos, but using shoestring fries instead of standard tortilla chips.  The toppings are green chili, cowboy beans, green onions, cilantro, cheddar cheese and sour cream.  The pinto beans are purchased locally in Dove Creek and cooked up fresh in-house; pork shoulder is used for the green chili as it is more tender after roasting.  Let me tell you that a bowl of that green chili with pork, plus fry bread, would make a complete meal in itself.  However, while grandpa Shelly did make his own fry bread, that is not an option nowadays.  But hey, get some fluffy housemade biscuits instead!

 

 

 

 

Pork Green Chili and Country Gravy.

 

A huge condiment selection at every table.

 

But I digress, the Greek salad came loaded with Romaine lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives, roasted chicken, red onions, pepperoncini, feta cheese and the creamiest, smoothest dressing.  Every bite was a new taste sensation due to the ingredient combinations the fork picked up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roy and I are so looking forward to going back and trying out many of the other menu items, like the burgers (1/4 lb. pounders).  One of the waitresses walked by carrying a cheeseburger plate; the burger was actually sitting out the sides of the bun and about an inch thick.  My eyes popped, and you know no one was doing a 1980’s, “Where’s the beef?”, yell.

 

Speaking of the wait staff, the second you walk in, you are greeted with a welcoming and friendly, “Come on in, and sit anywhere you like”.  Joshua opened up the building to make it roomier, airier and the sunlight allowed to brighten up every corner. We sat at the “Grandpa Shelly Memorial Table”, and felt honored, and yet also felt like he was there to make sure we were happy.  The staff are very attentive; depending on experience, they start at the bottom and are trained in every skill needed in a restaurant.  That way, there is always someone to step in when a staff member needs off.

 

So, if you want really good, I mean really good food, welcoming and comfortable atmosphere, a staff who cares about your needs, then you must go to The Lunch Box. If you want to hear more in-depth history, Joshua Robinson will not be shy about pulling up a chair and happily chat with you.

Mary Cokenour