Open All Night
The graveyard shift: Last summer the third — and last — incarnation of Sanderson’s Lunch, 7907 State Line, was bulldozed to make way for a big new drugstore. The first Sanderson’s Lunch, the famous one at 104 E. 8th Street, was torn down in the early 1980s after a 67-year run of serving “600 to 1,000 people a day … 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” according to one of its former owners, Art Lamb, who chronicled his life as a diner owner in a 1998 book called Sanderson’s Lunch. The old place never even had a restroom.
If I ever wonder why there aren’t more of those little mom-and-pop diners and truck-stop joints in Kansas City, I turn to Lamb’s book for a reminder of what a tough life it is behind that counter: chaotic hours, unreliable employees, bizarre customers (the rogues gallery at Sanderson’s Lunch included Crazy Betty, The Tasteful Lady, and Sally the Hooker). Not long after Lamb moved the original Sanderson’s Lunch to its second location, a freestanding diner at 38th and Main, he got out of the business.
Soon, that final reminder of the Sanderson’s legacy will get permanently eighty-sixed. (That’s the restaurant’s term for a dish the kitchen has stopped making.) The glass-and-metal building next to the Madrid movie theater will be torn down to create a much-needed parking lot for the newly renovated theater (originally built in 1925), which will become a 550-seat entertainment venue in 2001.
Goodbye, Sanderson’s. Luckily the classic diner and its no-nonsense cuisine live on in Kansas City. There are still breakfast and lunch grills, such as the Woodswether Cafe. In the historic Northeast, the cozy Wimp’s Place (6048 E. Truman Road) is tucked into one corner of a 1920s Spanish-style movie theater (now a church) and serves good burgers and breakfasts.
And if Nichols Lunch (39th and Southwest Trafficway) is the oldest and best-known of our 24-hour diners, it has a strong rival in the 49-year-old Heriford Grill (4613 Independence Avenue), where Johnny and Melody squabble good-naturedly behind the bright-orange counter and serve up fine (and cheap) cheeseburgers, tenderloins, and breakfast dishes, and a damn decent $9.50 T-bone steak dinner. The crusty and tender hash browns are still handmade by peeling boiled potatoes and slicing them up — no frozen stuff here. A pork chop dinner with salad goes for $4.20. And there’s always a selection of Golden Boy Pies (“Better than homemade,” says Johnny, taking a pull on his cigarette), including blackberry and raisin. If Melody heats up your pie, ask her about her new pit bull.
And although it’s not exactly a diner in the traditional sense, Charlie D’s Catfish and Convenience Store (82nd and State Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas) offers diner-style fare (tenderloin sandwiches, spaghetti, burgers and fries, homemade cobbler) in addition to the fried catfish and perch. And you can pick up a few groceries on the way out.
Finally, the owners and regulars of the venerable Romanelli Grill (7122 Wornall) would probably be insulted to have this dimly lit, 1940s-style restaurant called a diner, but that’s really what it is. However, it does boast a bar, so its more cosmopolitan patrons can have their fried catfish, spaghetti red, or cheeseburger with a Manhattan or a glass of Chardonnay.
