Fine Dining At Jimmies Place

When they first built this place back in the late 1960's I was doing photography for the North Dade Journal, a neighborhood weekly owned by the Miami Herald, and the paper's office was in the same shopping plaza as the restaurant. A few doors away is my dentist's office, Carl's Shoe Repair is across the parking lot, and across the street was Jaybo's, a photo lab owned by Jay Spencer, the then newly retired chief of photography at the Big Paper downtown. He had one of the first 2 hour E-6 (Ektachrome) labs in South Florida, did high quality black and white as well as color printing, stocked a variety of professional films including 4x5 sheet film, chemicals, and printing papers, had a reasonable selection of big rolls of background paper, carried Nikon cameras, and bought and sold used photo equipment. North Miami's photographers were really sorry to see Jaybo's close about a dozen years back.

When this restaurant first opened it was laid out much like a Burger King, with a walk-up self service counter, and tables and chairs scattered about the room. It was to be the start of a chain named after some Miami Dolphin football player, but soon failed. Then it became part of a local chain of sit down restaurants named Ranch House. After they went under a few years later several of the locations were taken over by members of one family, but as I understand it they're actually individually owned. What they share is decor, menu, and they sort of share a name. It varies from Jimmies Place to Jimmy's Place to Jimmie's Place, etc. The food is good plain American diner fare, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Good wholesome food at reasonable prices with friendly waitresses.