The Soul (Food) Survivors

• Yes, some people do think that DelHi’s Buffet serves Indian cuisine — but it doesn’t.

I was unhappy about all the restaurants that closed in Kansas City in 2011 but particularly the end of the beloved Peachtree Buffet — the original venue on Eastwood Trafficway — one of the finest examples of Southern cooking in the metro and a real bargain to boot. (The Willis family, who operated the buffet, has opened a new sit-down restaurant in the same complex serving, by most accounts, the same tasty cuisine.)

But the metro isn’t without soul-food restaurants and buffets. There’s the fabulous Papa Lew’s Soul Delicious at 2128 East 12th Street. And a new discovery — to me, anyway — that frequent Fat City commenter Dillo suggested that I visit: DelHi’s Southern Cuisine Buffet at 8055 State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas.

The restaurant, owned by a quartet of friends, including Edna and Linton Donnell, has operated in a strip center on State Avenue for the last two years, serving lunch and dinner in a dining room painted the color of raspberry sherbet. It serves a slightly more elaborate array of soul-food specialties than Papa Lew’s, and everything I tasted was delicious.