7 Years On Pacific Highway: Chicken Is Still A Hit At Rose's -- Hearty Food Draws Big Crowds To Landmark Roadhouse But Restaurant Owner Wonders If Old-Fashioned Inn Has A Future

On Pacific Highway South, amid the countless new fast-food restaurants and strip malls, sits a 61-year-old landmark to home cooking and tradition.

Rose's Highway Inn is one of the few pre-World War II businesses left on the highway that runs through one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. Its famous old-fashioned chicken dinners served on lace-covered tables still draw big crowds.

But its weathered neon sign and readerboard with missing letters ("Chicken and bs to go f r the per bowl") give the impression of a place that may be not only be out of place, but out of time.

Restaurant owner Jim Gennette doesn't say much to dispel that notion. He fears the steady stream of traffic along the highway will prove too tempting for Development Services of America. The Seattle firm owns the historic building at 26915 Pacific Highway S., and the 10 acres of brushy land behind it in Des Moines.

"I'm sure they're going to develop it somewhere down the road," he said.

But Gennette's fear is unfounded, according to Laurie Jewett, Development Services of America vice president.

"Any rumors that it is going to be developed in the next few years are strictly rumors," she said.

And after "the next few years"?

Jewett stands firm. There are no plans to develop the land around Rose's, she emphasizes.

That's good news to regular customers like Pat Hoffman. She is a Puyallup resident who has been dining at Rose's for the past 50 years. What keeps her coming back is hardly a culinary mystery.

"Mainly because they've got the best chicken in the state," she said.

Many other people obviously have the same taste. Gennette said that on a recent Sunday, the crew at Rose's served 350 dinners.

News that Rose's isn't going anywhere anytime soon means that old Highway 99, which was built by the federal government and completed in 1928, won't lose one of its few remaining old-timers.

One can find but a handful of them on the stretch between the Seattle city limits and Federal Way, including the Bernie and Boys Market, which opened the same year that Rose's did in 1937.

Bernie's, 9 miles north of Rose's in Tukwila, bills itself as the "Home of the Live Butcher."

Owner Bernie Salle and three of his sons are continuing a business that began with Bernie's father, Italian immigrant Nunzio Salle.

The store has overcome the murder of the founder during a robbery in 1956. More recently, one of the sons, Mike Salle, has battled a rare form of abdominal cancer. Chemotherapy caused his hair to fall out and prompted his brothers, Joe and Tom, to shave their heads in solidarity.

"It seems like it's one thing after another," Mike Salle said. "We just keep hanging in there. That's all we know."

This perseverance is what longtime businesses, such as Rose's and Bernie's, will fall back on as they strive to maintain tradition in the face of rapid change along Pacific Highway South.