KRETZER’S BUILDS CRAB LEG DESTINATION FOR TRAVELERS

Through their namesake restaurant and the recently opened Locust Street Pub, L.D. and Tina Kretzer have served the communities they call home.

Originally from Centralia, and with several years of bar and restaurant experience between them, the couple opened Kretzer’s Grill and Bar in Hoyleton in 2003.

Tina said the business that would define she and L.D.’s lives for years to come came to her as a wild idea that found traction following support from local officials.

“This building was previously a daycare and several other things before that,” said Tina of the restaurant’s 218 E. St. Louis St. location. “It eventually became open, and I got the idea to open up a restaurant. We wrote a letter and presented it to the town board, and they all agreed. That got our wheels turning.”

Starting minimally in the early years, the Kretzers would soon find their niche in crab legs, a local favorite that L.D. and Tina’s restaurant is now widely renowned for.

“We started out small with sandwiches, and that progressed. We would do steaks or a fish dinner,” Tina explained. “This town has always been known for its crab legs, though. A lot of people kept asking us to do crab legs, so we tried it, but just on the weekends.”

The demand grew rapidly, however, and the Kretzers, seeing they could offer them all week, were happy to give their customers what they wanted.

“We run crab legs seven days a week,” he said. “We’re told by the major distributors we buy from that we are the number one privately owned crab leg location in the United States. On average, we sell 20,000 pounds of crab each month.”

The notoriety of Kretzers crab legs would spread far beyond southern Illinois, the L.D. and Tina welcoming several out-of-state regulars on an annual basis.

“We’ve got a lot of regular customers from St. Louis and Chicago. There are customers that drive down from Madison, Wisconsin each year for king crab legs,” L.D. advised. “We have regulars from Nashville, Tennessee that come in once a month. We have so many customers that come in from [Interstates] 57 and 64.”

L.D. said he and Tina keep a map of the United States in the front their restaurant, with pins in each of the states their out-of-state members hail from. As of this writing, there are only two states without pins – Massachusetts and Vermont.

Having gained plenty of notoriety over the last two decades, the Kretzers chose to expand more than their menu, with L.D. saying a total of 16 building additions have been made to their longtime location.

After 26 years in Hoyleton, L.D. and Tina relocated back to Centralia, where they quickly launched their latest venture, The Locust Street Pub, in December of 2023.

“We had been trying to buy a place in Centralia for some time,” L.D. recalled. “We had a bar in Nashville that we had sold last spring, and we were looking for another place when [The former Skipper’s Inn] became available.”

The Kretzers bought The Skipper’s Inn outright and immediately embarked on a remodeling phase which they said is still ongoing. In addition to the influx of additional space, the new revisions will include kitchen space and a drive thru.

“We are going to put in a kitchen next spring. We’re offering sandwiches now, some Italian beef, pulled pork, and some tacos. We switch it up every now and then,” Tina said. “We’ll have a restaurant in there next year, and a drive-thru, but it will still be a bar first.”

L.D. said he and Tina viewed the endeavor as a way to give back to their home community.

“We love to give back to the communities that have supported us all these years,” said L.D. “We always tried to give back over the years. We would give turkeys to the Thanksgiving dinner at the Poplar Place, and things like that. Then we came back to Centralia, our first thought was that we needed to give back.”

With their flagship restaurant firmly secured as a southern Illinois hotspot and their newest operation growing larger by the month, the Kretzers seem poised to continue their legacy of service and kinship in their respective communities.