Don't Ask For A Dinner Roll At This Restaurant Unless You Have Good Hand-Eye Coordination
If you like restaurants that do things a little differently, you may want to visit a Missouri eatery that is notorious for throwing food at customers. Specifically, the servers are known for tossing large dinner rolls to diners. (Fortunately, other menu items like chicken-fried steak, ribs, and pulled pork sandwiches remain safely grounded and on plates.)
The restaurant in question is Lambert's Cafe, which first opened in the eastern Missouri town of Sikeston in 1942. Whether due to the restaurant's oh-so-Southern food like chicken and dumplings and soulful fried catfish or the quirky roll-throwing, Lambert's was enough of a success that in the '90s, a second and third location opened in Ozark, Missouri (just south of Springfield), and Foley, Alabama (near the Gulf Shores), respectively.
Here's how it goes: If you want a roll, simply raise your hand and servers chuck one your way. And these aren't necessarily small throws: Online videos (there's plenty on YouTube and TikTok) show servers hurling them several yards across the dining room. While Lambert's is over 80 years old, the roll-throwing tradition was born in the '70s: The story goes that a cranky customer was waiting for waitstaff to bring rolls across the crowded restaurant and yelled words to the effect of "Throw the damn rolls!" Norm Lambert, the son of the restaurant's original owner, obliged, and the roll-throwing stuck. Now, Lambert's reportedly serves (or throws) around 7,000 rolls on a busy day.
@abbyinthegalley Catching Rolls at Lambert's Cafe lambertscafe restaurant review fyp
But there's a downside to throwing things at customers
Roll-throwing became a major draw, with Lambert's dubbing itself "Home of Throwed Rolls." It's intended as a playful practice (customers reportedly throw them back at servers sometimes), but it has caused surprising headaches for the business. There's at least one instance of a customer attempting to sue Lambert's for roll-related damages.
In a 2014 case, a woman at the Sikeston restaurant claimed she was hit in the eye by a roll and suffered a detached cornea, permanently damaging her vision. She sued for at least $10,000 in medical fees, with the lawsuit calling it a "dangerous practice" and accusing the restaurant of failing to train its employees in safe roll-throwing (via USA Today). The restaurant has publicly stated that rolls are thrown in a gentle arc, and not aggressively. That said, when that 2014 case received major publicity, a restaurant manager did indicate that Lambert's insurance had paid medical bills in other case of roll-induced injuries.
It's hard to assess whether that 2014 case was serious: Remember, the oft-derided case of the woman who sued McDonald's (one of the chain's biggest mistakes) after being burned by hot coffee was actually quite severe. However, the Lambert's lawsuit was widely criticized as frivolous, and the attorney behind it was later suspended for professional misconduct, although it's unclear whether the roll-throwing case was a factor. Nevertheless, litigation hasn't prevented Lambert's from continuing to launch dinner rolls across its dining rooms.