Last winter, I was a guest on a radio show with Mary Merola, the founder of the Function Junction store in Kansas City -- she's the lady on the right in the photo -- and a terrific sport. I teased her, unmercifully, on the air about whether it was considered good manners to bring a cheese ball (the appetizer, not a weird date -- although I have brought both) as a "hostess gift" to a holiday party. I could tell by Mary's expression that one would never dare bring a cheese ball -- dairy or hu
Wilkie and Merola ladle up the soup​Was it nearly six months ago that Fat City reported that the the owners of Function Junction, Mary Merola and Rebecca Wilkie, were making plans -- big plans -- to greatly expand the culinary store on the third-floor of Crown Center?
It was the last Function Junction in the city after Merola closed the flagship store on the Country Club Plaza in late 2008; the city had once been home to several Function Junctions -- long before rivals like Crate &
