K & H Truck Plaza & Family Restaurant

• 1043 Crescent Street
• Gilman, IL 609386
• (815) 265-7625
• Website
• Menu

My kids have never spent six days at my parents before and B has never spent that much time away from us.  It was a nice break for J and I as we got to spend some time together and my parents had a blast with the kids.

Our plan was to spend Wednesday night at my parents and leave early in the morning to head to Cincinnati for our little mini-vacation.  I wanted to get up early and get on the road because we lose an hour heading back in to the Eastern Time Zone.

My mom was able to get five of the six days off work but she had to be back in at 4 AM on the Thursday we were leaving.  She waitresses at a truck stop that was sort of on our way back to I-65 so she asked if we’d stop in for breakfast so she could say good-bye.

K & H Truck Plaza has been around as long as I can remember in the small Iroquois County, Illinois town of Gilman.  The restaurant is part of the truck stop complex on Crescent Street (US-24) east of the Interstate 57 interchange on the south side of town.  The restaurant building is part of the main gas station and they use the same entrance.  You go right for food or left for snacks.

I’ve known about K & H forever but I really don’t think I’ve ever been there before.  We always ate breakfast at my uncle’s place in the town I grew up in and we weren’t really adventurous as I am now.  We were creatures of habit so if we went out, it was to the place in town.

My mom met us as we walked in the door.  And too us to a table right near the front.  The restaurant is two big rooms.  One had a number of tables while the other was more of a lunch counter type space.  The space is decorated as a down home diner with tile floors, a drop ceiling and ceiling fans providing most of the light

There were a few booths near the front near the lunch counter and that’s where my mom told us to sit.  She followed with some menus and got drinks while we looked over the menu.

K & H is a classic greasy spoon truck stop diner with a classic greasy spoon truck stop menu.

J kept it simple by ordering the Griddle Breakfast with 1 pancake.  The plate includes two eggs and a meat.  She chose the eggs scrambled and the meat baconed.  Her breakfast was a hearty way to kick off this road trip but not something that was going to make the four hour drive uncomfortable.

We were really trying to force the kids to eat even though neither really wanted anything.  For B, we ordered the Egg and Pancake breakfast off the kid’s menu.  The plate came with a Mickey Mouse pancake, scrambled eggs that he refused to eat so we gave them to L, and bacon.  I put a lot of butter on the pancake hoping he would eat some.  We got maybe half of the pancake in him and a few bites of bacon.  Not as much as we hoped but more than it looked like we were going to.

L could pretty much live on toast for breakfast but we made her get something besides just bread.  We got her the Egg, Meat, and Toast kid’s breakfast.  The plate had the toast she wanted alongside scrambled eggs and bacon.  Eating the toast was not an issue but we had to push the other stuff.  I ended up eating a lot of leftover bacon which just seems blasphemous.

I was the one that went for the big, heavy breakfast.  I picked the Two Egg Breakfast with a Ribeye.  I honestly was not expecting such a huge plate of food.  The ribeye was a full on like you’d get at dinner ribeye steak.  It was juicy, slightly pink and had that awesome greasy griddle crust.  The plate came with two eggs (over medium), hash browns, and toast.  L stole half of my toast which was fine because I could not finish the plate.  The hash browns alone were enough for a meal.  They were very crispy all the way through and I couldn’t stop.  I needed to get some of the hash browns out of the way though just so I had enough room to cut the steak.

I have no idea what our bill actually was because my mom never gave us one.  She said she was buying since we gave her the chance to say good-bye to the grand kids before we left town.

K & H Truck Stop & Family Restaurant has been around for so long despite the presence of a national chain truck stop just down the street because of what they do in this restaurant.  I keep using the world “classic” to describe this truck stop diner and that’s meant to be a compliment.  When you think of greasy spoon diners, K & H is what you’re picturing.