A culinary delight

Businesswoman enjoys the basics of life: food, family, friends and fun

[MARCH 28, 2000]  In 1965, Joyce and Mel Kinzie and their two older children came to Lincoln. Because of Mel’s service in the U.S. Army and the corporate policy of the time that called for transferring management employees frequently, they had moved 13 times in 10 years. The "bustling little city" of Lincoln looked like a place to put down roots and stay. It was probably a good decision for the Kinzie family, and it was certainly a good decision for Lincoln.

 

It still is. For a dedicated group of patrons, it would be difficult to imagine Lincoln today without Vintage Fare. A little before noon on weekdays, lines begin to form inside the place Joyce calls her "lunch business" at 414 Pulaski St., where she’s behind the counter making sandwiches, ladling out one of her two homemade soups or dishing up the day’s fare. Sometimes the lines go right out the door and down the sidewalk, but her customers wait willingly. They know the food they are going to get is "made from scratch," fresh (the rolls are baked daily), healthful (Joyce doesn’t serve fried foods or use additives or preservatives) and most of all, delicious.

 


[Kinzie's kitchen, remodeled by husband Mel, displays some of her collection
of brass and copper and her dinnerware, which she collected over the years
from antique shops]

 

Many customers come for carryout, taking sandwiches, salads and desserts back to their offices. Others, like Marilyn Weingarz, prefer eating in, seeing people they know, chatting a while. "You meet so many interesting people while you’re eating the excellent food," she says.

The Maple Club, on 1458 State Route 121 just outside of Lincoln, offers other opportunities to enjoy Joyce’s food, perhaps at a dinner theater, a private party for a club or business, a wedding reception, or a special occasion such as Christmas, Easter, or Mother’s Day. While the young and well-trained wait staff will probably serve the food, Joyce will be behind the scenes, in charge of the entire dinner production.

In 1988, Joyce opened the Maple Club as a dinner theater with a partner, the late Alan Tidaback. One year later she began serving lunch on weekdays at Vintage Fare. But her history of community involvement goes back to her early years in Lincoln.

 


[Kinzie prepares the day's food in the Maple Club before transporting thecuisine to downtown's Vintage Fare]

 

Her children, David, Catherine and John (who was born after moving to Lincoln) attended the Lincoln public schools, so Joyce became involved in school affairs, along with the Lincoln Junior Women’s Club, the First Presbyterian Church and the League of Women Voters.

One of the League’s projects was a study of the school districts in the Lincoln area, which then had five elementary districts and a separate high school. The study recommended combining all six existing school districts into one. Joyce was convinced that a unit district would be "the best educational climate" for Lincoln students and ran twice on that platform for a seat on the Lincoln Community High School board. She was defeated both times. The community wasn’t ready to accept the idea then, and, although several of the elementary schools districts have since combined, it still has not become a unit district.

But one disappointment did not stop Joyce from continuing to work for her children’s schools. She was appointed to a seat on the Elementary District 27 board, where she served for 10 years, several of them as president.

Joyce was also an early member of the Community Concert Association, which she remembers as "a struggling group of about 300," and helped steer it to become the successful program it is today. With Tidaback, whom she describes as "the moving force," she worked to establish the Lincoln Community Theater, which puts on three to five plays every summer.

She also sat on the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital Board and was president of the Junior Women’s Club. Her leadership was "outstanding," says fellow Women’s Club member Judy Lumpp.

The "bustling little city" that Joyce and Mel saw in 1965 quickly became home, even though both still had family back in Minnesota. The children were in school and doing well. But in order to stay, the Kinzies had to make a difficult decision. Mel, who had been managing the Jupiter Store for the S. S. Kresge Company (a transition from the old five-and-10-cent stores to the coming K-Marts), was asked to move again. He made a "corporate compromise" and chose to go to Decatur to manage a K-Mart so the family could stay in Lincoln, making the daily commute for more than 10 years.

From the beginning Joyce and Mel have been regular members of the First Presbyterian Church. Joyce was on the search committee that brought the Rev. Bruce Allison to the Lincoln church in the early 1980s. "He quickly became one of my dearest and best friends," she says. "He was the most Christian person I’ve ever known. He was the definition of compassion and he was completely non-judgmental. The fact that he loved to cook was another bond." His sudden death in 1990 during a surgical procedure was a great blow to the church and to Joyce.

She lost another good friend when her business partner, Tidaback, a former Lincoln Community High School vocal music teacher, died in 1994. During their partnership the club put on five or six shows a year, each running for three weeks. Some she remembers as outstanding were "H.M.S. Pinafore," "Grease," "On Golden Pond," "I Do, I Do" and "Same Time Next Year." With the help of many talented theater people in the area, she still provides dinner and entertainment at the Maple Club.

"I think she is to be highly commended for starting the Maple Club dinner theater," says Valecia Chrisafulli, a longtime friend. "Once she has a goal and a vision she works hard to achieve it. Joyce is a big picture thinker. She knows how to put concepts together for the best interest of everyone in the long run.

"Life needs some continuity, and we tend not to value old things. We have a 30-second attention span. Let’s keep the look that has been part of our community," she says. "If we have the vision, a functional building can be put within those walls."

"A rare lady," is the way another long-term friend, Dr. Deane Doolen, describes her. "The root of her person is that she is so intelligent. She can interpret and separate the wheat from the chaff." She is also a nurturer, especially good with older people," he points out.

"My mother and father were very fond of Joyce. My sister moved to Seattle, so they didn’t have a resident daughter. Joyce became their surrogate daughter. Joyce and Mel made my parents' senior years a good bit more pleasant than they would otherwise have been."

"She does so many things that no one ever knows about," says another friend, Marty Fulton. There are so many people she has fed when they are sick or have family problems—she shows up on the doorstep with a meal. She has a wonderfully big heart and is extremely generous."

 

 

 

 

Joyce learned to understand and respect good food at an early age. "My mother just inherently knew how to cook. She didn’t write down recipes, but she made the best food I ever tasted. She made meat loaf that was as good as prime rib.

"She was an unusual woman for her time. She always worked, most of the time as a seamstress in what we today would call a sweatshop. She one was of the earliest union members, joining the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. After work she came home and cooked a really fine meal because she felt that was good for us."

Her mother, Bessie, came from Lebanese parents. Joyce describes her cooking as "modified Middle Eastern, to suit an American husband." At the home of her Lebanese grandparents, she remembers, "We had real Middle Eastern food: tabouli, baklava, cabbage rolls with lamb and rice, stuffed grape leaves, yogurt and kibbie (ground meat and cracked wheat cooked in oil)."

Like Joyce, her mother was a risk-taker. "Mel’s first job when he got out of the Army was in a bank in St. Paul," she remembers. "The bank had decided to start an employee lunch program. They took a little corner in the basement and turned it into a kitchen. My mother wanted a job then, so she went to the bank and said, ‘I can do that.’

"No one told her what to do or what to cook. She did all the buying, planning, and cooking, and she served the bank employees a fabulous lunch. Thinking about it, I find the parallel overwhelming. She did virtually the same thing I do at Vintage Fare."

From Mel’s mother, Lily, Joyce learned about German/Midwestern cooking, especially baking. "When Mel was in the Army his mother wrote to us every week. We seldom got a letter without a recipe, which she called ‘receipt.’ The recipe didn’t just list the ingredients, but gave directions on just how to make it."

Another big culinary influence was her church. "In St. Paul we were active in church, and there were always suppers, banquets, sunrise breakfasts. I was taken under the wing of the older women in the church and learned to cook in quantity. Even if I was just peeling potatoes, I was seeing how it was done."

Joyce continued cooking when she came to Lincoln. "I had a friend in the catering business, Barbara Gleason. She needed people to help work. I was a stay-at-home mom then, and I would help."

When Barbara moved away, Joyce and Pat Bay formed Lincolnland Catering, which they continued together until Joyce opened the Maple Club. Bay still runs the catering service.

Later Joyce and Mel bought the Gem Restaurant, in the building that now houses Vintage Fare. "It was not my kind of food," Joyce recalls. "It was big breakfasts, a lot of fried food. That kind of food served a wonderful purpose in its day, but you can’t eat like a farmer if you don’t work like a farmer.

 


[Making sandwiches or ladling soup right in front of the customers is part of the Vintage Fare experience]

 

"I love what I do now. I call myself an ‘inspirational cook.’ That means I cook what I’m inspired to cook that day. I like the challenge of just going in and doing it, not saying, ‘I have to fix this and that today.’

"Although some items are always on the menu, flexible food preparation allows me to take advantage of the best ingredients available at the best prices. When strawberries are ripe I’ll make strawberry pie, but I won’t promise you one in January.

"What I do gives me a lot of satisfaction. I’m putting myself into the food I make. I want to have control of the process from beginning to end. I can hire help, but I can’t hire the desire I have to make it come out right," she explains.

Serving the food at Vintage Fare completes the process that begins early in the morning at her kitchen in the Maple Club. "People share their experience of my food with people they bring in. Because I’m here, I get a first-hand response. My clientele is not just people that work downtown, but also people from out of town. Two ladies from Bloomington come almost every other week, for example."

 


[Every customer appreciates Kinzie's personal touch]

 

Doolen says if there is one word that describes Joyce, it is "multifaceted." Not only is she the consummate cook and the competent businesswoman, she is a devoted and creative gardener. She doesn’t believe in lawns (why waste energy and resources mowing?) so she has most of her yard in garden and ground cover and is always looking for a new perennial to add to her collection.

It’s hard for her to pass an antique store because she might find another interesting piece of her china pattern, Franciscan’s "Coronado." The pattern came out the year she was born and was last made the year she graduated from high school.

None of her furniture came from a retail store either. "I’ve always liked giving old things new life," she says. Her dining room table once belonged to her mother.

An avid reader, she doesn’t feel her day is complete if she hasn’t spent several hours at night with a good book, and she is current on the major films of the day.

Lumpp sums her up. "I think she is truly a beautiful person. She has a kind voice, a warm smile and the best recipes in the world."

 

[Joan Crabb]

 

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