Sycamore Stories
Gifting of the painting from Kit and Cathy Salter to Sanford Speake.
Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) wrote passionately about the need to preserve the magnificent trees of the Yosemite Valley for future generations. He encouraged us “to love and live with trees, and to be free from schemes and care and time as [are] the trees themselves.” Julia Ellen Rogers, author of The Nature Series book “Trees” published in 1917, believed that “to know a tree’s name is the beginning of acquaintance—not an end in itself.” Thus, she encouraged her young readers to begin tree friendships.
My sycamore friendship began with one acquaintance and later branched into another. When Kit and I moved for a brief time to New Mexico in early 2005, we missed the rivers and green woodlands of Missouri. After moving back seven months later, we acquired a plein aire painting of a solitary sycamore in an open field. Local artist Sue Van Buren created the Van Gogh-like oil with a palette knife, laying down thick layers of brilliant color on her canvas. With its thin, irregular branches and flaking plates of bark that reveal its ghostly white under bark, the sycamore fairly shouted at us from the canvas. The image spoke to us as trees do, and “the beginning of acquaintance” took root.
The same thing happens with people. Relationships begin and like trees, they flower, mature, and become a part of the landscape and life of a place. When we first moved in 1988 from Washington, D.C. to Boone County, we sorely missed the rich array of restaurants that literally lined the urban neighborhood we’d walked through daily. The first restaurant in Columbia to gain our regular patronage was Cornerstone on 8thand Walnut. When we needed a quiet table for two and a slow dining experience, Cornerstone provided it. It helped us gain acquaintance with our new town.
When Trattoria Strada Nova—a Columbia-based Italian restaurant on north Ninth Street—opened, it quickly became a downtown hotspot. Owned and operated by Rocky and Cheryl Galloway, it was where we made acquaintances in Columbia’s culinary community that continue to this day. It was also a foot in the culinary door for many, including Myah Green who is now the chef at Park Restaurant. Fresh out of Hickman High School where she took culinary classes in baking and pastry, Myah landed a job at Trattoria Strada Nova as a pastry line chef before beginning her own culinary journey through some of the best kitchens in Columbia.
Trattoria Strada Nova’s waiters, line chefs, and sous chefs—among them Sanford Speake and Michael Odette—made each dining experience memorable. We instantly felt at home when we walked in the door. Each table felt like a family table. We so loved the waiters and cooks there that we invited them all to Breakfast Creek one magical summer night for an outdoor feast prepared by Rocky Galloway in honor of sous chef Michael Odette who’d decided it was time to plan his own next culinary endeavor in Columbia.
In 2005, Sanford and Jill Speake and Mike Odette and Amy Barrett began fantasizing about opening a restaurant of their own. They had all worked in numerous Columbia restaurants but wanted to support themselves and their families by doing what they loved: cooking and serving food and drink to their friends and family in a restaurant of their own. When a space became available on the southwest corner of 8thand Broadway, Sycamore Restaurant came to be.
On the restaurant’s website, Sanford and Jill Speake explain the origin the restaurant’s name. “We are named after a tree because we want to be rooted in our community, and change and evolve with each season, and each year. We wanted our menu to relate to what our customers would recognize, but elevated. We wanted it mostly to be driven by what was in season and local. We wanted to work with mid-Missouri farmers, ranchers, and dairies. Over the years we have developed amazing relationships with these people and places through their products. Our children have grown up here, and staff have continued as chefs, and managers, in their own restaurants.”
Sycamore proprietors Sanford and Jill Speake and their sons
In August of 2018, Sanford and Jill became the sole proprietors of Sycamore. Like all restaurants in Columbia, they have found 2020 a challenge due to the restrictions on indoor dining during the coronavirus pandemic. They are committed to following the city’s mask ordinance and ensuring social distancing. Their menus/drinks prepared by Chef David Ivancic, Lunch Chef Chris Huston, and bar manager Melanie Lising continue to be available indoors and for takeout/curbside delivery from 11:00 am -9:00 pm Monday-Saturday.
For Thanksgiving, Kit and I ordered a holiday takeout meal prepared in Sycamore’s kitchen. While picking up the meal, we walked to the back of the restaurant to booth #12 where our Sycamore oil painting now lives. The painting is our gift of thanks to Jill and Sanford Speake, Michael Odette and to our acquaintances within Columbia’s extended culinary family who have been valued friends during our three decades in Columbia. For all they do to feed our community, we give grateful thanks.