Jonathan Justus

Jonathan Justus is a Kansas City–area chef whose farm-to-table restaurant Justus Drugstore, opened in 2007 in his family’s former drugstore in Smithville, helped pioneer hyper-local, technique-driven cooking in the region. A repeat James Beard Award semifinalist, he works alongside his wife and business partner, Camille Eklof.

Biography

After cooking in San Francisco and France, Justus and Camille Eklof opened Justus Drugstore in downtown Smithville, Missouri, in 2007, converting his grandfather’s old drugstore into a destination restaurant.¹ Its hyper-local focus — foraging, fermentation, and Missouri sourcing — and refined technique drew diners from across the region and national press.

The couple closed Justus Drugstore temporarily in 2018 to open Black Dirt in the South Plaza — but received an offer for the Smithville building too good to refuse, and the drugstore never reopened.¹ Black Dirt closed shortly before the pandemic. In 2024 Justus was consulting chef at Gizmos Tavern in Smithville, in the former Humphrey’s Bar & Grill.¹ In 2025 the couple announced The Parker Hollow, a West Coast sustainable-seafood restaurant with a raw bar, in the nearly 150-year-old former Frank’s Italian building at 100 Main Street in downtown Parkville; Justus chose the name after researching the site’s historical ties and finding nearby Parker Hollow.¹²

Legacy

Justus is among the chefs who put the Kansas City area on the national fine-dining map, championing local sourcing and a sense of place years before “farm-to-table” became common — and continuing to shape Northland dining.

See also

• the-parker-hollow
• smithville

Sources

Citations replaced 2026-09-08. This page previously cited a Feast Magazine closure report and an unlinked “IN Kansas City Magazine / KC Star” reference for the James Beard semifinalist years. The Feast URL returns HTTP 429 with no Internet Archive capture; no resolvable source was found for the Beard claims. Both are flagged in the body rather than carried on unlinkable citations. KCUR supersedes the closure account and corrects it: the 2018 closure was intended to be temporary.

Footnotes

1. Joyce Smith, “A new Parkville restaurant will bring Justus Drugstore owners back to Kansas City food scene,” KCUR 89.3, June 8, 2025 — Justus “notably started his career at top restaurants in such major markets as San Francisco and Paris”; the couple “gained national renown by opening Justus Drugstore on Smithville’s Main Street in 2007,” in Justus’s grandfather’s former drugstore, focused on “nose-to-tail, root-to-stem, foraged and fermented ingredients” and so local it served no seafood; national coverage in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Travel & Leisure and The New York Times Magazine; “The couple closed it temporarily in 2018 to open Black Dirt restaurant in the South Plaza. But they got an offer for the Smithville building that was too good to pass up, so it never reopened. Black Dirt closed shortly before the pandemic”; 2024 consulting chef at Gizmos Tavern in Smithville, in the former Humphrey’s Bar & Grill; the former Frank’s Italian at 100 Main St., Parkville, as the future Parker Hollow, and the name’s origin in the nearby Parker Hollow. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Joyce Smith, “Hog Island to Parkville: Justus Drugstore owners docking new seafood concept in historic Parkville,” Startland News, June 2025 — the West Coast sustainable-seafood concept with a raw bar in the former Frank’s Italian building in downtown Parkville. ↩