Porgie’s Pig

Let’s get one thing straight, as it were, about Georgie Porgie. The singsong nursery rhyme that introduced the literary character goes like this: Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie/Kissed the girls and made them cry/When the boys came out to play/Georgie Porgie ran away. What I always assumed was a harmless childhood ditty is actually a history lesson loaded with double-entendre. In fact, the man believed to be the real Georgie — a 16th-century nobleman named George Villiers— wasn’t just kissing girls and making them cry. He was smooching at least one boy, too.

And not just any boy, but a rich and powerful one. Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, was dallying with his sugar daddy, England’s King James I, at the same time that he was allegedly dillying with the queen of France. Instead of running away when the boys came out, Georgie became embroiled in all kinds of political intrigue before he was stabbed to death in 1628.

Not every historian believes that Georgie Porgie was the bed-hopping Villiers. British author Chris Roberts insists that the rhyme has nothing to do with sex and is, instead, a “childhood obesity warning.”

Here in Kansas City, the diner-style restaurant known as Georgie Porgie’s is named after its original owner, George Glaholt, not some conniving courtier. Here, one is less likely to think of a rollicking romp in the hay and is more inclined to think of obesity — childhood and otherwise — when staring down at a platter of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, four strips of bacon and a biscuit. Then again, a friend of mine, who has done more than his share of dillydallying in the city and likes to roll into Georgie Porgie’s right after a romantic rendezvous says, “The coffee is strong, the music is loud, and no one gives a damn if you walk in without combing your hair.”

True on all counts. No one is going to mistake this new incarnation of Georgie Porgie’s — just as laid-back and eccentric as the original venue at 8111 Wornall — for the Classic Cup or even Sharp’s. The tables are relics from 1940s-style kitchenette sets, and the walls are adorned with all kinds of weirdness: vinyl 45s and LPs held up with thumbtacks; framed photos of Jim Morrison, Elvis and the Beatles; album covers, vintage postcards, comic books and paper illustrations of 1960s automobiles.

“If the coffee won’t wake you up, the music sure will,” said my friend Ned, noting that the sound system’s noise level hovered somewhere between that of a high school dance and a 1973 eight-track player cranked up to full volume. More percussion was coming from an unsupervised brat pounding his spoon on the next table over. I cursed myself for not popping a couple of Tylenol before heading out for a morning meal.

“OK, so it’s not a good place to cure a hangover,” Frankie said as he looked over the laminated sheet listing the extensive breakfast menu. “You get a lot of food for the money, you know?”

This was the first kind word Frankie had said about Georgie Porgie’s since he’d started tagging along with me to the restaurant. He hadn’t been a big fan of the Georgie Porgie’s on Wornall. (“At least you could smoke in there,” he said.) On his first visit to the new location (where smoking is forbidden), he’d been scandalized when the skinny teenage waitress slouched at a table eating a waffle instead of taking our order.

It didn’t bother me — I had once been a skinny, teenage, waffle-eating server myself, before a grizzled veteran waitress smacked me upside the head and taught me how to be a professional. One of the charms of Georgie Porgie’s is that it’s just like eating in a Beatles-era rec room and having your food brought out to you by your best friend’s bratty younger sister.

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“I used to wait tables at the old place, back when I was just a kid,” the auburn-haired server explained, her hand on her hip.

“And how old are you now?” I asked, taking a sip of water from a bright-pink plastic tumbler.

She shrugged nonchalantly and said, “Nineteen.”

There’s something to be said for precociousness, but our gal would have benefited from having a tough old hash-house waitress show her the ropes. The restaurant’s proprietor, Don Baldwin (who co-owns the business with George and Connie Glaholt), told me that it took a couple of months to find the right servers. He must be right, because it’s obvious that the regulars clearly adore the inexperienced but friendly young women whom he’s hired to work the floor. It took Baldwin a little longer to get the kinks out of the kitchen. The plan was for the Glaholts’ son, Nick, to return and take over kitchen duties, but Nick’s previous employer kept cajoling him to stay. Finally, Nick moved over to Georgie Porgie’s, and now the breakfast and lunch platters exit the kitchen at a much snappier rate.

Snappy is good, but the restaurant still has some issues. The morning I dined there with Ned and Frankie, I opted for the popular Connie’s Sampler: two eggs, two strips of bacon, one sausage patty, one pancake, one wedge of French toast and a half-order of fried potatoes. It looked great until I flipped over the French toast and found that the bottom side was practically charred. The pancake was big and thick and as heavy as lead; after three bites, I was ready to send up the white flag.

Ned raved about his Fat Albert: a pile of fried spuds topped with eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, green peppers and melted cheese. “It’s the low-cholesterol dish on the menu,” he said before swiping half of the biscuits and gravy that I had ordered. “Marvelous,” he announced, and indeed they were — fluffy biscuits thickly blanketed with creamy gravy loaded with ground sausage. Frankie went for simplicity, ordering the “Big Breakfast” list’s No. 1 item: the two-egg special that combines potatoes, eggs, bacon or sausage, and toast or a biscuit.

“Breakfast is good,” he said, “but I hate drinking juice out of 1960s plastic glasses.”

Hell, I told him, I don’t like drinking coffee out of hard plastic mugs. (That actually happened just once at Georgie Porgie’s; the next time, I had a porcelain mug with a molded dog’s head on the side and a chip on the rim.) But it’s all part of this particular restaurant’s distinctive zaniness. It’s so unlike any other diner in the city (including its stodgy predecessor in this location, the ill-fated Grace a Bistro on the Edge) that I’m willing to overlook some of the weirdness.

Baldwin’s plan is to expand the hours to 9 p.m. when he obtains a wine and beer license in December. He won’t bother with an elaborate dinner menu, though; instead, he’ll continue to serve breakfast dishes right up to closing, along with the lunch menu and a daily dinner special — home-style stuff, he says, such as fried chicken and meatloaf.

The kitchen turns out decent hamburgers on thick slabs of Texas toast, a first-rate patty melt and crispy home fries nearly as thick as tree branches. I haven’t worked up enough nerve to order a Hawaiian garden burger (it’s the same as the regular garden burger, but with a slice of pineapple) or the “dessert of the day.”

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I vaguely remember asking about the daily dessert offering, though, and was disappointed that it wasn’t “puddin’ or pie.”