Leona Yarbrough, iconic local restaurateur, outlived her restaurant
One of the best movies ever made about a restaurateur was the 1945 drama Mildred Pierce, based on a hard-boiled James M. Cain novel about a waitress who ambitiously, tirelessy builds a small empire of home-cooking restaurants — fried chicken and waffles were among the popular menu items. Former Kansas City resident Joan Crawford won an Academy Award playing the title role.
Three years after Mildred Pierce was released, a young woman from Vandalia, Illinois, Leona Yarbrough, arrived in Kansas City and got a job at one of the few restaurants in Kansas City owned and managed by a woman: Ann Peterson’s in the Fairway Shops on Shawnee Mission Parkway. Leona worked as a waitress, then a cook at the genteel suburban restaurant where customers filled out their own order forms and handed the completed ticket to the waitresses. Nearly two decades later, Yarbrough bought the restaurant and changed the name to her own.
Yarbrough, who was voted “Restaurateur of the Year” in 1985 by the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association, died at age 90 on September 5. She outlived both her namesake restaurant — the second location closed in Shawnee in 2009 — and her son, Ron, who operated the restaurants after she retired.
