Last week, Fat City's Jonathan Bender reported on the opening of Cafe Gratitude in the Crossroads: the vegan restaurant at 333 Southwest Boulevard, a licensed satellite operation of the California restaurants of the same name. The local owners, Natalie and Mike George, have gotten quite a bit of press for bringing the concept (which includes dishes named "I Am Fortified" and "I Am Transformed") to Kansas City. But they owe a little gratitude to the real pioneers in meatless food service in Kansas City, like Unity founders Charles and Myrtle Fillmore.
In the summer of 1906, the Fillmores opened Kansas City's first all-vegetarian restaurant, the Unity Inn, on the first floor of an old frame house at 913 Tracy. The restaurant opened, like Cafe Gratitude, with meatless cuisine and good intentions. Perhaps intentions that were too good. During the opening weeks of the original Unity Inn, patrons could pay as little or as much for their meals as they wished. It was a noble gesture, but the Fillmores sadly learned that some people in this city didn't understand the real meaning of the word gratitude.
Why not ask an important figure from the past: Bill Gilbert, the dapper-looking octogenarian and co-founder — with his father, Joe Gilbert, and Paul Robinson — of Kansas City-based Gilbert/Robinson restaurant empire.
Gilbert/Robinson was a major player in building the American casual-dining concept in the 1970s and '80s. The company was sold off, in pieces, in the 1990s, but Bill Gilbert still continues to work as a consultant. Today, Gilbert spoke to the members of the 40-Years-Ago Column Club at the Plaza III Steakhouse, the iconic local steakhouse that Bill Gilbert and his partners opened in 1963. When asked what he saw as the future of the restaurant industry, Gilbert said that "change is always the case. Every day there are new ideas, new change, a new innovation."
Discussing the current culinary trend, gourmet hamburgers, Gilbert says, "Once there's a hot new concept introduced, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. A few years ago it was steakhouses, and there was a glut of overbuilt, overdone steakhouses."
And Gilbert well understands how the current economy is affecting today's restaurant business. Long before the Gilbert/Robinson partnership became a chain powerhouse, exporting the Houlihan's Old Place and Bristol Seafood Grill concepts across the United States, Joe Gilbert ran a lunch counter at the junction of Ninth Street and Delaware — during the Depression.
Yesterday, Fat City reported on the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Westport Flea Market, which began in the summer of 1981, serving burgers in the middle of an eclectic "mall" of vendors selling everything from baseball cards to Zenith Hi-Fidelity record players ... and everything in between.
What interested me is the life of the big old building at 817 Westport Road before Mel Kleb opened the original Westport Flea Market. The current owner of the business, Joe Zwillenberg, has a menu from a previous tenant — the Place in Westport — a restaurant that also sold burgers and beer. But I have yet to find anyone in the restaurant community who recalls ever eating at the Place in Westport in the late 1960s and early '70s. That includes restaurant consultant and chef Bonnie Winston, who was very much on the scene during Westport's evolution as a dining and drinking destination; Winston created the menu for the trend-setting Prospect of Westport.
The building has an interesting past. And thanks to Steve Noll, executive director of the Jackson County Historical Society, I've learned a little more about the checkered history of 817 Westport Road.
A Fat City reader this morning sent us a link to a story in the Scotts Valley Patch, an online newspaper covering the Scotts Valley community in California's Santa Cruz Valley, about a chef, David Smith, who has Kansas City connections. According to the article, David Smith -- celebrating his 20th year cooking at Peachwood's steakhouse at the Inn at Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz -- was formerly a chemistry professor at UMKC and the chef-owner of a successful restaurant, the Triple Crown, "a horse-racing-themed Kansas City-style steakhouse."
Smith left the Kansas City area in 1989 after 15 years of operating the Triple Crown. I have no recollection of the restaurant, so I called chef Smith in California to ask: Where in the hell was it?
The last time I dined at one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants in the city, Pho 97, I noticed that a few storefronts to the east, the original entrance to the long-shuttered Vista Theater -- a 1932 movie house at 26th and Independence Avenue -- was slightly ajar. Peeking in, I could see the original concession stand. The candy cases, like the theater, had been long empty. After a massive fire on May 12, there's nothing left of the old movie theater or the storefront that had been occupied, in the 1960s and '70s, by the notorious Villa Capri restaurant.
No, not the 50-year-old Villa Capri still owned by Tony Scudiero at 8126 Metcalf, but the East Side venue next to the Vista Theater, where Cork Civella and Carl DeLuna were secretly recorded by FBI agents on June 2, 1978, discussing "the Genius." This meeting later inspired a subplot in the Martin Scorsese film, Casino.
The flurry of comments inspired by Jonathan Bender's recent post about the Kansas City restaurants that, perhaps, shouldn't be institutions provided a few lumps -- and I don't mean in the cream gravy -- to the 78-year-old Stroud's, Kansas City's best-known fried-chicken restaurant. No matter what you think of the dishes served at this beloved restaurant -- which moved from its original roadhouse location to a building on Shawnee Mission Parkway in 2008 -- you have to give it credit for outlasting all of its competition.
There were several more popular fried-chicken spots than Stroud's over the last seven decades, including the Green Parrot Inn. (The famous Wishbone Restaurant came later -- in 1948.)
Last month, three entrepreneurs -- Tony Olsen, Bob Baker and Ben Wine -- reopened the former Neighbor's Cafe (which closed in January) in Lee's Summit as the Neighborhood Cafe. The new menu is almost identical to the one offered at Neighbor's Cafe, including the complimentary cinnamon roll served during breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The restaurant at 104 S.E. Third Street in downtown Lee's Summit has had nearly a dozen names over the last 60 years, including the Kozy Korner Cafe and Ford's Family Restaurant.
After the jump, try to guess which names were not attached to this dining venue since it became a restaurant in 1951.
It's been a long, long time since anyone ordered a cheeseburger in this long-vacant building, on the southwest corner of Linwood Boulevard and Troost. But back when it was a Katz Drugstore, there used to be a snappy lunch counter. The structure, which dates back to the mid-1930s, still has some fabulous Art Deco details. Wouldn't it make a great restaurant today?
This vacant location actually has a less interesting history than the land it stands on. Nearly a century ago, it was the site of the old Bodine's All-Night Drugstore. That's right, Walt's dad.
This week's Cafe review in The Pitch gives a little history of the 96-year-old hotel building that now houses the new Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange. But the restaurant's co-owner, Ryan Maybee, is becoming something of an expert on the history of both the Rieger family that built the property and their various business interests.
And it's a fascinating story.
| In 1882, the long-forgotten Vienna Model Bakery, Cafe and Restaurant stood here. |
Milk & Honey has the best I've had in KC. http://milkandhoneykc.com/
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