30 miles from Boise, this drive-in gets compared with In-N-Out. It’s the experience
It’s been a labor of love for Bob Clauson, owner of the popular Roe Ann Drive-In. The restaurant, where customers still pull into a parking space and use a phone to place their orders, was founded in 1957 by Clauson’s father, Paul.
Generations of Emmett kids and their parents and grandparents have come to Roe Ann’s for Wimpy Burger (a hamburger with added ham and cheese), a Big Bob (with three quarter-pound patties) finger steaks (with barbecue sauce rather than cocktail), and orders of potato sticks or fries (with half of his customers asking for tartar sauce rather than ketchup). It’s an Emmett thing.
Many customers wash their meal down with a nonalcoholic scotch and soda. It’s not on the menu board, but the staff serves it up just the same, delivered to diners’ cars.
Not much has changed since Clauson took over the business in 1974 when his father was killed by a drunken driver as he rode his motorcycle home from work. Throughout the years, the crowds have remained, now split, he said, between longtime customers and Emmett newcomers.
“It’s not because we’re the fastest place in town, for sure,” Clauson, 71, said in an interview. “I’d like to think it’s because of the food, but a friend who runs three or four restaurants in Boise tells me it’s not because of the food: It’s because of the experience.”
Stephanie Pinch, who grew up in Emmett but now lives in Billings, Montana, posted on her Facebook page when she came home for a visit in late January.
“I can’t come home without visiting this place,” she wrote, tagging Roe Ann’s and following her post with emojis for a happy face, a hamburger, fries and a drink. “It didn’t disappoint!”
Emmett resident Charlie Russell said Roe Ann’s — the name taken from Clauson’s formal name, Robert, and his sister, Joanne — remains one of her favorite places.
“It’s been almost the same since I was a kid, and the mushrooms are amazing,” Russell said by email. “They don’t have them anywhere else like that.”
Noelle Weybright, who grew up in Emmett and now lives in Pocatello, equated Roe Ann’s with getting her driver’s license at age 14.
“It was cruising town,” Weybright wrote by email. “It was (nonalcoholic) cherry scotch and soda. It was everything good about driving.”
Clauson, an uncle to actor Aaron Paul, who was born in Emmett, estimates he’s hired more than 500 workers over the years, many of them teenagers working their first jobs. He taught them not only work skills but life lessons.
“Some of the kids that are working for me now, not only did their mothers work for me, but their grandmothers,” Clauson said. “I feel like I am a father to a lot of these girls that never had one. That’s rewarding.”
Tammi Eiguren worked for Clausen during her senior year of high school in 1980-81 and said he was a “very good influence.”
“Business would get quite slow in the cold winter months,” Eiguren, who grew up in Montour north of Emmett and now lives in Twin Falls, said by email. “He always allowed me to work my full shift — as long as I stayed busy. I would pull the machines out from the wall and clean behind them. I would paint. I helped him rewire some of the telephones in the stalls outside and helped him design the menu.”
He said it’s also fun to see former customers who have moved away when they come back. Sometimes, he says they look at him as if they can’t believe he’s still there. People have a great love for nostalgia.
“I think it’s interesting, just like In-N-Out, their food isn’t that great,” he said. “But when people go there, they’re all smiles, and they think it’s so good. You’ll get a business to the point where people think it’s better than it is. And we’re actually at that point.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
