East Side Stories

When Jeff Fitzpatrick, who owns Café Maison (see review, page 37), told me he worried that potential customers might consider his cozy French bistro too far east, it didn't occur to me that many restaurants east of Main Street don't get the attention, particularly in the media, garnered by their western neighbors.

Take the soul-food buffet restaurant G's To Please Finest Soul Food (1350 East Meyer Boulevard), located on the back side of The Landing shopping center in the space formerly occupied by The Cornbread Café. Although it's been open for six months, I didn't know a thing about the place until I happened to drive by the mall a week ago and notice its yellow banner flapping over the windows. Once I stopped in for lunch, I learned the restaurant isn't well-known outside of its immediate neighborhood (which includes the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Cleveland Chiropractic College and Rockhurst University and their respective student populations, attracted by the buffet's inexpensive prices).

Like its predecessor, G's To Please -- named for its owner and cook, Gary Ersery -- changes the items on its buffet daily. But the dishes typically include fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, a well-stocked salad bar and hot dinner rolls or cornbread.

Ersery, who previously operated Todd's Deli and Soul Food at 82nd Street and Troost, says he's doing much more business at the bigger location, particularly on Sunday afternoons, when an after-church crowd packs the place. It isn't the most well-laden soul-food buffet in town (an honor that goes, hands down, to the Peach Tree Buffet on Eastwood Trafficway), but Ersery's fried chicken is very good, and so are the gravy-drenched baked chicken, the pepper beef and the fluffy dinner rolls. Beverages -- nonalcoholic only -- are included in the price of the meal, which is $9.90 for customers who eat in the restaurant and $9.70 for those who take their meals to go.

Just around the corner, at 6200 Troost, the building that was formerly KC's Rockin' Rib House is undergoing a complete personality change to go along with its face-lift: A sign in front of the venue announces that it's soon to become The Shrimp Shack.

And Stroud's, probably the city's most famous east-side restaurant, didn't miss a beat last month when a kitchen fire caused an estimated $15,000 in damage. Despite all the hoopla on the TV news, my favorite waitress there, the unflappable Kathleen, shrugged it off. "It was a little fire," she said. "There wasn't any structural damage."

All the more reason no one should be chicken about traveling east of Main.