Now Open: Cozy’s Cafe

​To her family and friends, Kozeta Kreka is simply Cozy. And that’s the name Kreka — a native of Pogradec, Albania — gave to her new restaurant, Cozy’s Cafe.
The placed opened two months ago at 6740 W. 75th Street, directly across the street from Fritz’s Chili and the Petco store. Kozeta ran her own candy company before leaving Albania with her husband Albert and two children in 1997. For a few years after moving to Kansas, Kreka was a manager at the Town Topic in Mission; that’s where she got the idea to open her own coffee shop. Cozy’s Cafe serves espresso, cappuccino and home-style meals — including breakfast all day — from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The menu has plenty of traditional diner fare — pancakes, omelets, burgers, meatloaf dinners — as well as dishes that Kreka says she would find on European bistro menus: a panini spread with whipped cream cheese, eggs, bleu cheese, sour cream and parsley; tortellini in a cream sauce with bits of ham; and her own homemade baklava.

On weekends, Kreka’s husband and teenaged daughter Vilma help out in the restaurant, which had been a long-vacant convenience store before the Kreka family took a lease and started cleaning the place up (including building a kitchen and new bathrooms) last May. The restaurant is as neat as a pin and the prices are so inexpensive you may think you’re in Albania and not Overland Park.