Play the Memory Game, Part One

I received an e-mail today from a reader named Miles who has a very good memory about Kansas City restaurant history — I mean, he remembered that I was a waiter at a restaurant called Mama Stuffeati’s more than 20 years ago — but has a mental block at recalling specific details.

“I’ve been wracking my name trying to remember the name of a restaurant that was at 38th and Main Street,” he wrote. “Sanderson’s moved there in the late 1970s or early ’80s.”

That little diner was razed in 2001. It was the second location for the legendary Sanderson’s Lunch, which was a fixture in downtown Kansas City, at 104 E. 8th St., for more than half a century. Sandersons’ original location may have been the last restaurant in Kansas City to have operated without a working bathroom.

But the glass-and-metal diner that Miles remembers was another diner, one from before owner Art Lamb moved Sanderson’s to 38th and Main in the mid-1980s. Does anyone remember the name of that restaurant?

Miles would also like to know the name of the restaurant — it was actually a cocktail lounge — located in an actual airplane, that stood near 43rd and Main for much of the 1960s. I’m sorry I missed that place and I’d like to know the name of it too. I do know it wasn’t the Jet Lounge: that was the name of the bar in the long-razed State Hotel at 10th and Baltimore.

Any readers out there with answers for Miles?  — Charles Ferruzza