Cafe Thyme at Powell Gardens: It’s all in the Thyme-ing
Summer months make an ideal time to visit Powell Gardens, the botanical gardens located about 45 minutes outside Kansas City in Lone Jack, Missouri. It’s currently an explosion of color and fragrance. And as we reported last February, there’s a new culinary team operating the venue’s restaurant, Cafe Thyme: Eddie Osborne, Guy Campbell, and actress turned restaurant manager Brenda Nelson. The trio of entrepreneurs took over the restaurant from its previous operator, Michael Foust of the Farmhouse (Nelson’s former employer) in March.
Cafe Thyme has never really lived up to its potential, probably because it’s been treated as something of an afterthought. It’s not a full-service restaurant but it always has aspirations to be more than a snack shop. Nelson and company are trying hard, but some of the same old problems linger on.
“Hey, we’re still very much a work in progress,” Nelson says.
