Dorothy D’s Cafe sells burgers, chili dogs and memories
The long mustard-colored building at the corner of Fifth Street and Troup in Kansas City, Kansas, has had one hell of a life. At least three businesses owned by the Dickens family have come and gone from this location, and a new venue has just opened. It’s still all in the family.
In the 1950s, one part of the building was the location of the John E. Dickens & Sons barbershop. The venue closest to the corner was operated as a tiny cafe – with a counter and a few stools – by his wife Dorothy. In the 1960s, their daughter Mary Hollingshead had opened her own little business in the back.
“It was a juke joint,” says Kim Dickens, the granddaughter of the late John and Dorothy Dickens. “In those days, Fifth Street was filled with bars and clubs. My Aunt Mary had The Place. It had a jukebox, a pool table, and I think she only sold beer. But everyone knew about it.”
The building at 2001 North Fifth Street had been empty for quite a while when Kim Dickens decided to reopen the little grill operated by her grandmother Dorothy from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s.
“I’m serving all the same things that my grandmother served,” Dickens says. “Except breakfast. And I’d like to start offering that, too.”
Dickens quit her job as an administrative assistant at KU Medical Center, took her savings and reopened her grandmother’s long-shuttered snack shop. (“It never had a name,” Dickens says. “But everyone in the neighborhood knew it was there.”) She has a lot of plans for a venue that offers only carryout dishes: burgers, cheeseburgers, pork tenderloins, chicken wings, taco salads and onion rings. Dickens calls her carryout business Dorothy D’s Cafe, after the original owner, Dorothy Dickens, who died in 1996.
Kim Dickens makes big, juicy burgers and insists that her fried chicken wings are the best in the area, which borders the historic Quindaro neighborhood. The prices are certainly right: A double cheeseburger basket, with onion rings and fries, costs $6. Two chili cheese dogs cost $4.
Dorothy D’s Cafe is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and closed on Saturday and Sunday. The phone number is 913-371-4000.
