Shuttered Kansas truck stop restaurant revived by cook who dreamed of having his own place
Back in February, the restaurant inside Newell Travel Center in Newton suddenly closed, leaving truckers hungry and locals who grew up eating there after football games or Sunday services a little sad.
Now, the restaurant — formerly known as Charlie’s — is about to reopen with a new name and new cook in the kitchen.
Rob Sowles, a longtime kitchen manager from Oklahoma, says he will reopen the space as Rob’s Country Kitchen. The restaurant is almost ready to go, he said.
Once open, he said, his hours will be 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
He’ll serve all-day breakfast, half-pound burgers and truck stop favorites like chicken fried steak, grilled pork chops and steak dinners. Sowles said he’s seen the old Charlie’s menu, and though his will be smaller, it will feature dishes made with higher quality ingredients.
He checked around, he said, and he believes he’ll be the only restaurant in town serving 8-ounce hamburger patties.
“All of our burgers are going to be big — big and juicy,” he said.
A serendipitous stop
The story of how Sowles ended up in charge of the restaurant is a serendipitous one, he said.
He and his wife, April, moved to Newton from Marlow, Oklahoma, where both had been working at a truck stop: she as manager and he as kitchen manager. But they eventually decided they needed a fresh start, Sowles said. The area where they lived was getting rough: It was plagued with drug use, and their teen daughter was falling in with the wrong crowd.
The couple decided on Kansas, then “threw a dart at a map.” It landed on Newton, and they moved there a year ago.
April got another management job, and Sowles started driving trucks. The couple was “amazed” by Newton, he said, where they observed couples walking down Main Street holding hands.
“It was like in movies,” he said. “Where we come from, there was none of that. We didn’t let our kids walk to school where we were from.”
Not long after they moved to Newton, Sowles said, his daughter’s grades shot up, and she made lots of new friends.
But April was working long hours, and Sowles decided he couldn’t go on the road and leave his kids, ages 8 and 14, home alone for long periods of time. He stopped driving trucks.
Then one day, he said, he was driving around and noticed Newell’s — a big travel plaza at 200 Manchester Ave. that has been operating in Newton since 1981. He’d never seen it before, so he stopped in. The owners, who live out of state, were there that day interviewing potential managers for the vacant restaurant space. Sowles overheard and approached them, offering his services as a cook.
Before he knew it, the owners had convinced him to reopen the restaurant himself.
Good country cooking
The old Charlie’s space was a wreck, Sowles said, and he’s been working for months to clean it up. He’s hired a good crew, he said, and some of them even volunteered their own time to help him get the restaurant cleaned up.
Having his name on the door of the restaurant is a big deal for Sowles, who was an addict for 20 years before getting clean. He’s been sober for a decade, he said.
When he was younger, he was adopted by his grandmother. By the time he was 12 or 13, he was cooking for his family.
“She taught me how to cook, and having a family with Alabama roots, believe me, there was some good country cooking going on,” he said.
His grandmother was impressed with his skills in the kitchen and always told him he should open his own restaurant. She was the only person in his family who never gave up on him, he said, even during his darkest times.
She didn’t live long enough to see him get clean — much less get a chance to run a restaurant with his name on it. But he knows she’d be pleased.
Sowles has been updating his progress on a Rob’s Country Kitchen Facebook page, and locals have been following along.
“The positive support I’ve gotten from that community surprised me,” he said. “This little town has been awesome for me and my wife.”
Rob’s Country Kitchen menu
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