About 80 years ago, as a strip of macadam became the automobile's link from Chicago to Los Angeles, the location whose current address is 17352 Manchester Road rose up as an oasis for travelers along the newly designated Route 66. It was the way west, and travelers could pretend they were emulating their forebears by sleeping in rustic cabins and eating at the early roadhouse that came to be known as the Big Chief.

The bill of fare, of course, was simple and filling food: blue-plate specials for 40 cents and steak dinners for 75 cents. The original restaurant continued service until the mid- to late 1930s, and the motel rooms became lodging for workers at the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works in the '40s.

In the late '50s, the place became a bar but, by the '70s, it had lost its original identity, housing, among others, a roofing company, a printer and a company that made mantles. The building was extensively rehabbed, and the restaurant was reborn as the Big Chief Dakota Grill in 1993, adding loads of artifacts from the Old West and supplementing the menu with exotic dishes such as bison, elk and alligator.

The restaurant subsequently had at least two more owners, closing its most recent chapter about three years ago after a run as a family-oriented steakhouse.

Now, it's back, with some of the Old West memorabilia still scattered about the dining room but otherwise putting its history behind it, even to the point of dropping the Big Chief and renaming the place B. Donovan's Steakhouse Grill. I might have thought that the new owner at one point worked for the NCAA, but in fact Steve Smith had previously owned another restaurant under the B. Donovan's name in Fenton, as well as working at and subsequently owning the Frailey's restaurants.

What does seem to return to the location's roots, however, is the menu: simple, hearty roadhouse food served in huge portions. At $15 and under for almost everything, the prices are quite reasonable.

B. Donovan's describes itself as the "home of the 'dirty' wing," offering those — cooked, then dipped in hot sauce and fried — as well as the traditional hot wing, a barbecued wing, a honey-barbecued wing, a honey-mustard wing and a "double-dipped" wing, which is a "dirty" wing with one more dipping and frying as part of its process. Our samples of each style had merit, all of them with skins from crispy to very crispy and with the appropriate accents from their various sauces, moderate in size as opposed to the jumbo wings that show up at some places, and with moist and perfectly cooked interiors.

Sticking with the fried motif, the ribs at B. Donovan's are also described as fried, slow-cooked in a convection oven to start but then finished in a deep-fryer, resulting in a crusty edge unlike traditional barbecued ribs. Missing was the deeply ingrained smoky flavor of slow-smoked ribs, but the different approach turned out to be very enjoyable, producing meaty, bulky ribs with tender but still very firm texture.

Marinated short ribs came four to an order — two off-bone, two on — and had the dense texture you'd expect from braised beef ribs, but the marinade left a bit too much salt and herb residual flavor for my taste. The battered shrimp was an order of nine butterflied large shrimp, but the breading was too thick in comparison to the shrimp, and in general, the dish was forgettable.

In addition to the wings, the appetizer menu features potato skins, chili-cheese fries, quesadillas and the like. We had the skins and the fries, and both were giant portions suitable for two or three as appetizers — good but basic bar food. 

The bread pudding dessert was average, the "chocolate lover's spoon cake" a little better than average.

The wine list, and the overall spirits offerings, are decent (including generous pours), but hard to reconcile with the straightforward nature of the menu. The reds include a Shiraz, a Malbec and a Sonoma Valley Claret, and you can spend $12.75 for a glass of Frog's Leap Zinfandel or $17.50 for a glass of Moët and Chandon White Star champagne. There are also wine flights — red, white or Missouri — of three glasses for $8.50, and there's even a Grand Marnier flight for $45.

Our service was clunky, with too-long waits on one visit and irregularly arriving courses on the other: The salad came before the appetizer, and then the two entrees we ordered arrived about five minutes apart.

The entrance to the renovated space is now via the patio at the rear — closer to the parking lot and a considerate nod to nonsmokers who would have had to walk through the smoking section had the entrance remained at the front.

The space is painted in red and tan, and with the Old West photos and artifacts spread out more now, it seems more respectful to its heritage and less like a tourist trap full of cowboy kitsch.

But along with the changes, the location is also no longer fitting of the designation of "destination restaurant." That's OK, because even though many of the buildings of the old hamlet of Pond are still intact right down the street, the suburbs have encroached on the area, providing a good market for a neighborhood steakhouse and family restaurant. Thus closing the book on the Big Chief, while opening a new chapter on B. Donovan's.

jbonwich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8133