community ^ dining
HAPPY GILLIS CAFÉ & HANGOUT 549 Gillis St. Kansas City, MO 64106
Hours: Tue-Sat, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. 816-471-3663
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout
salt-and-pepper shakers serve as centerpieces. Plaster and brick walls are painted pistachio, floorboards are varnished wood, and pipes are exposed overhead. Cacti sun in window boxes. One wall showcases 50 mismatched plates, saucers and platters, from vintage to crafted to a child’s whimsical drawing. A bar with stools offers additional seating for four and a coveted, southern window view. In warmer weather, a sidewalk patio allows diners to sit in front of the building’s red brick exterior with its vintage Coca Cola signage. In such a place, one expects to find comfort foods and lots of hot coffee. Happy Gillis, which serves breakfast and lunch, doesn’t disappoint. The menu, printed on white-framed blackboards, lists old-time favorites and trendier entrees, many using local sources. Choices include traditional biscuits and Broadway Butcher sausage gravy (a whole order will feed two unless you’re starving); breakfast burrito using Lo- cal Pig chorizo; grits and red eye gravy us- ing local heirloom grits and Ozark country ham shank; lunch specials such as bacon-
Experiencing the simple joy of ‘kitchen sitting’ by Rhiannon Ross
F rom the solo perch of the high chair as a youngin, we grow and descend to the lowlands of the communal kitchen table. Sounds play on the memory during that transition, including the scrape of kitchen chair legs scooching across a linoleum or hardwood floor. The first kitchen table of my memory was oblong, topped with silvery Formica, and boasted six metal legs. Consuming the center of the room in my parent’s flamingo pink kitchen, it was surrounded by six tur- quoise vinyl chairs. Here, I ate breakfasts of oatmeal and brown sugar or buttermilk bis-
cuits and gravy. Here, I also would beg my mother for a bite of her buttered toast with dollops of marmalade and a sip of her sug- ary, hot tea. When my father arrived home, the family – all six of us – would share our day’s activities while gathered around this table. We were a family of “kitchen sitters”. Pleasant thoughts of being a kitchen sitter came to me when I entered Happy Gillis Café & Hangout in the Columbus Park neigh- borhood. It was deja vu when I spied five vintage kitchen tables – some wooden, others laminated with metal legs – flanked with vinyl or wrought iron patio chairs. Kitschy
8 VINTAGEKC SPRING 2017
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