Bird on a Wire

I’ll admit it — I’ve been in a funky chicken funk ever since Mike Donegan, the owner of Stroud’s Restaurant & Bar, decided to let Kansas City have its way and peck up the property at 85th Street and Troost in order to replace the aging Troost Avenue Bridge and widen the street. Donegan accepted the city’s financial settlement and says he’ll move the historic restaurant — even picking up the whole building, by some accounts — to another location. And that’s what frightens some people. Move Stroud’s? Where? A friend of mine has had a recurring nightmare ever since Donegan announced that the historic roadhouse would close on December 31.

“In my dream, I’m driving to the new Stroud’s,” my friend says, “and I’m driving and driving and driving, and I suddenly realize that I’m in Olathe. That’s when I wake up screaming. I don’t want to drive to fucking Olathe.”

As of this writing, Mike Donegan hasn’t announced where he might move his beloved restaurant, and he’s keeping his cards close to his chest, so for all I know, it could be in Olathe. Or the Crossroads. Or smack in the middle of the Country Club Plaza — no one has leased the ill-fated Canyon Café space, right?

There is a historical precedent, I suppose, for Stroud’s to consider a move to the suburbs. When Helen Stroud opened her beer-and-barbecue shack in 1933 (the year that Prohibition was repealed), she picked a location that wasn’t just suburban. It was literally and metaphorically beyond the city limits, which ended a bit north of 85th Street. The other side of 85th was considered “out in the county,” and with no city laws to crack down on the hooch joints, it became prime real estate for some raucous roadhouse action.

Back in the day, party animals could eat and drink cheaply at joints like Stroud’s — which was listed as Stroud’s Barbecue in local phone books until the 1960s — or the Cottage Inn, the Dixie BBQ and the Silver Moon Tavern and Barbecue, now the site of B.B.’s Lawnside Barbecue.

Stroud’s didn’t establish a reputation for its pan-fried chicken until the meat rationing of World War II made the bird a cheaper culinary choice than beef. But economy wasn’t the only reason. By the early 1950s, fried chicken was one of the most popular dishes any restaurant could offer — even Italian restaurants. When the late Jasper Mirabile opened his namesake dining room at 75th Street and Wornall Road in 1954 (when this neighborhood was still practically the end of the streetcar line), he served spaghetti, pizza and fried chicken.

Helen Stroud sold to Mike Donegan in 1972; by the end of that decade, when Stroud’s was serving a four-piece chicken dinner (including soup or salad, potatoes, gravy and cinnamon rolls) for $4.25, it had already outlasted all its best-known rivals, including The Green Parrot and the legendary Wishbone. That’s one of the reasons Stroud’s is considered sacred turf by many of its fans: It’s among the last relics of Kansas City’s culinary past.

Knowing that December 31 is the last call for this famous restaurant, I had to make at least one more pilgrimage to the shrine of pan-fried chicken and pay homage to a place that holds more historical significance (for me, anyway) than any number of “official” Kansas City Historic Register sites (the Acme Cleansing Company or the Kansas City Young Matrons Clubhouse, for example). The building isn’t much to look at, inside or out, but for fried-fowl fanatics, it’s chicken mecca.

That would explain why even the whiniest patron waits patiently for a table here. On the early Sunday evening that I arrived with Lou Jane, Marilyn, Bob and Ned, we walked in the door right after the Chiefs game ended. Within seconds, the “waiting area” adjoining the bar filled with post-game revelers in red jackets. We were told, optimistically, that it would be 30 minutes for a table, but we stood around for more than an hour until our names came up on the list.

“It’s always worth the wait,” said Lou Jane as we made our way through the cramped dining room, which hasn’t changed in decades. The tables are still cloaked in red-and-white-checked plastic, the wooden floors are rough and scarred, and the frilly curtains at the windows are either off-white or nicotine-stained (or both).

We shared chicken livers first, a huge, sizzling pile of them that we bravely snapped up with our fingers. After eating a half-dozen of them, splashed with cream gravy, Ned confessed, “I feel like a heroin addict. I can’t stop.”

Sherry, the 27-year-veteran waitress (who has a Bettie Page hairdo and an uncanny memory), brought out dressing-drenched salads for everyone else and a bowl of chicken noodle soup for me. It’s terrific soup, with fat, doughy noodles and big chunks of white meat floating in a pale, fragrant broth. (I dropped a hot liver in the liquid and discovered a new culinary sensation.)

The noise level was deafening, which meant I couldn’t hear anyone at our table except Ned, who marveled at how calm and cool the waitresses seemed and how effortlessly the skinny busboys could balance heavy trays on their fingertips. Finally, the heavy tray laden with our dinner arrived. (I had already started to polish off the cellophane-wrapped crackers in the plastic mesh basket.) Bob, Ned and Marilyn ordered chicken — the four-piece dinner that cost less than five bucks in 1979 is now $13.75 — and Lou Jane opted for a custom-made meal: one big breast and a fat, breaded, fried pork chop. “It’s not on the menu,” she said, “but they’ll do it.”

I looked longingly at the big platter of crispy, golden chicken, but I had been lusting for catfish, and that’s what I got, already neatly deboned and served with enough tartar sauce for a dozen more fish — along with a foil-wrapped baked potato drenched with butter and sour cream, and a hefty handful of thin-sliced cottage fries. Before I bit into the crackling fish tail, I devoured two thick squares of cinnamon-glazed biscuits slathered with butter. I can’t remember if that was before or after I grabbed a chunk of Lou Jane’s moist, juicy pork chop.

“You act like you haven’t eaten for days,” chided Marilyn. The truth is, when I know I’m planning to indulge at Stroud’s, I often do eat lightly for a couple of days so I can stuff myself silly and not feel too guilty. The food is decadently unhealthy by modern standards (which is why my friend Merrily hasn’t set foot into the place in 15 years — “There’s nothing on the menu that’s not fattening,” she says). But I have a healthy way of rationalizing my gluttony: If a meteor hits Earth or a massive earthquake splits the New Madrid fault, I want to die with a Stroud’s chicken leg in my mouth.

A friend and I returned a few days later. At 6:30 p.m., there was already a big crowd swarming around the front door. I knew that the quoted one-hour wait meant two hours, so we went somewhere else. The next night, I arrived a few minutes after the joint opened at 4 p.m. and got a table right away. Forty minutes later, the dining room and waiting area were packed.

“I wonder if it’s because people know this place isn’t going to be here much longer,” said my friend Bob, unrolling a red cloth napkin. Our server, Shannon, disagreed. “It’s always like this,” she said.

I longed for fried chicken but perversely ordered the fried shrimp instead because I hadn’t tried them before. There were only five shrimp on the plate, but each was as big as a drumstick and surprisingly succulent under thick, crackly armor. Bob thought the chicken-fried steak was “pretty peppery,” but the beef was tender, and he smothered the damned thing with an entire bowl of gravy.

Bob isn’t a big fan of Stroud’s cinnamon rolls, and I admit, they have to be devoured right away, while they’re still warm and soft; once that glazed surface hardens, they’re not nearly so good. Still, I was sleepwalking one night and ate three very hard rolls right out of my refrigerator, then went back to bed and dreamed that the new Stroud’s had opened … right next to my house.