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"Almost" counts in sauce: Jim's spaghetti

© Lee Ward

Southern Spaghetti Dinner

When you say “Jim’s Spaghetti” to anyone in Huntington, W.Va., there’s no confusion; everyone knows you’re talking about Jim Tweel and the spaghetti sauce served at his restaurant, Jim’s Steak and Spaghetti House.

Some days, you’ll still see the 94-year-old owner standing in front to greet patrons as waitresses in white uniforms serve piping hot plates of white fish and steak as well as their trademark pasta and meat sauce and melt-in-your-mouth cream pies. As is the custom in the restaurant business in Huntington, Jim’s is closed Sunday and Monday, but every other day serves lunch by 11 and doesn’t stop feeding people until 9 p.m. It’s convenient for those who work downtown, but it’s also a draw for tourists; even John F. Kennedy stopped there when he visited the state in the 1960s.

But it’s the sauce - that tomato-rich, meaty, tangy sauce – that has made Jim’s a legend. As with most food legends, stories circulate as to what goes into it. His cooks, of course, are sworn to secrecy. But what happens when a cook retires? Will a chef break that kind of oath?

Perhaps.

Like an urban legend, one will overhear from time to time a mention of someone’s aunt who used to wait tables at Jim’s or someone’s uncle who was a restaurant supplier, and there was always a secret to share about the preparation of the beloved sauce: a pinch of nutmeg, a dash of hot sauce, even a whole grated carrot per pot. In recent years, a recipe, titled “Jim’s Spaghetti Sauce,” has been passed around this Tri-State area. It produces a sauce that’s fine in texture and full of meat – not a traditional Italian sauce, but one that’s been adapted by our Appalachian culture from the recipes brought here by Italian immigrants who moved here for work in the coal mines. This recipe does closely resemble Jim’s product, but is not the original. My husband, whose palette has reveled in the occasional thrill of getting “real thing” since he was a child, knows the difference.

“Not tangy enough,” he declared after his first taste of my first batch built according to the recipe. So I set to work to “break the code.” After several pots of several months, I may not have duplicated what Jim has made his fortune from, but I have come as close as anyone has (of course, you can tamper with it, too). To be fair, I’m calling my recipe “Almost Jim’s Spaghetti Sauce.” Besides, who would challenge the mystique of a recipe of epic proportions?

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