June chef Josh Adams's take on the truck stop breakfast
During the vaudeville era, “Will it play in Peoria?” became a shorthand way of asking whether something would go over with mainstream America. These days, Peoria, Illinois is emblematic of the nation's economic state, with major layoffs at the Caterpillar plant and other businesses.
But there is a major bright spot in the town: chef Josh Adams’s June restaurant. Adams left Chicago’s Vie to come back home, and his year-old restaurant has proved to be more than a case of local boy does good: June has gained nationwide attention, both for Adams's progressive cuisine and for his farm-to-table message. (This commitment to local ingredients is new to Peoria, even though the area is largely agricultural.) Adams has established relationships with farms such as Thunder Valley, in nearby Princeville, which has an 80-acre plot of crops grown exclusively for June. Soon Adams will work with them to start growing wheat for the restaurant’s pastas and breads.
As for the menu, Adams isn’t playing to the middle; his globally inflected dishes—featuring kimchi in some instances, rabbit sausage pierogis in others—are comforting and delicious, but still progressive. At last night’s James Beard dinner in New York, he showed off some of his greatest hits (made with ingredients that he drove from Peoria to New York himself), including the one year-round staple: a poached egg served over butter brioche, coffee-smoked shiitake mushrooms, housemade guanciale, and hollandaise. “To me,” Adams says, “it’s all the best components of a truck stop breakfast. The coffee-smoked mushrooms even remind me of the leathery smell of truck stops.” Next up for June is an online store selling the restaurant’s popular pickled items and jams.
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