Tag Archives: Kansas

December 25, 2014 · 12:46 am

Eating en route to Dodge City: Liberty, Mo (Stroud’s chicken), Lawrence, ks (Wheatfields), Salina (cozy inn)

Fine dining en route to dodge city Kansas from Des Moines for Christmas:

– Stroud’s (“we choke our own chickens”) off I 35 north of Kansas City). We didn’t think we’d be able to stop here because there is usually a long wait but we drove right into a prime parking spot on a Tuesday night at 8:15 pm (albeit holiday date) and sat at the small bar rather than waiting  40 minutes for a table. Great pan fried chicken and what everyone needs after a chicken dinner – killer cinnamon rolls, buttery and warm. Perfect stop before picking our son up at the Kansas City airport.

– Wheatfields bakery in Lawrence where we learned we could avoid the long line for take out pastries and bread if we ordered breakfast as well at a counter with no line. And good grub too although I just had a small croissant (still recovering from Stroud’s.) Our waitress enthusiastically recommended another old tome bakery in town for its cream cheese donuts. Next time. (And there will be…)

– Cozy Inn, we took up three of the six seats at the counter in this shoe box of a burger joint, with a great view of the two tattooed guys cooking sliders on a griddle. Forgot how good those sliders are..small and mighty, slightly rare with grilled onions and pickles (no cheese or fries allowed) on a small moist white bun.

– Ad Astra, a hipster coffee shop around the block on Salina’s main drag where I had a good chai latte and found a great used book about Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton, a sweet older lady from small town Kansas who painted brilliantly wicked self portraits. (One of which hangs in our kitchen nook.) We met her in the late 1980’s when some friends and I were playing pool at a bar and met her nephew, or some such, who called her to see if she was receiving visitors. She was . So we went to her house and she served us lemonade and showed us around and let us buy signed posters of her work. Only in Kansas!! She died in 1993 I see from the book (which I had to buy!)

The sun is finally out with endless blue sky, bald brown hills, the occasional wind-whipped tree and lots of gleaming white whirling wind turbines. Life is good.

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May 26, 2013 · 3:48 am

Kansas City and Lawrence dining

We splurged on dinner Friday night in downtown Kansas City at a cool new restaurant that harkens back to the 1920’s mob era and allegedly produced whiskey during prohibition. I have it on good authority that the Rieger Hotel Grill does indeed has in the men’s bathroom reading “Al Capone pissed here.” The food was very good – soft shell crab with lemon aioli and greens; pork cheek with “local polenta” ( according to the menu) and ” some kind of pea and carrot thing” (according to D.). it has a nice vibe, an old fashioned narrow high ceilinged storefront with nice impressionistic paintings of what appeared to be a symphony orchestra (bravo!). Good to see these kinds of places popping up in reclaimed once dying parts of downtown. must check out another newcomer nearby, Anton’s Tap Room.

In Lawrence, after staying at a tolerable (and cheap) Quality Inn, we breezed through the farmers market which had several guitar playing folk singers and lots of green onions. We ate breakfast at the brand new location of Milton’s, which moved to a bigger place around the block from its previous spot on Massachusetts Ave. (fun fact: Lawrence is was named after Lawrence, Mass. Outside Boston, which must have been a bigger deal in the 1850s when Lawrence Ks was founded as a Free State bastion…where John Brown hung out.) Good French toast at Milton’s although we were tempted to eat across the street at The Bourgeois Pig, for the name alone! Picked up a bread at Wheatfields Bakery, a couple of Jayhawks Basketball t-shirts ( because the males in this family cannot get enough of them) and hit the road again, heading West.

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December 24, 2012 · 8:19 pm

Politically incorrect tank/good stops for dogs in Kansas

Found a good place to walk Ernie near paxico Kansas on interstate 70 west of Topeka in the flint hills (supposedly…doesn’t look much like the flint hills here. It’s a rest area with a strange concrete bunker -like structure built into a hill. There is a nice hilly stretch of land for a dog to do its business. None back on the road. We were not sure how Ernie would do hanging out in the car by herself so we ate in shifts at the chipotle in Topeka. If the weather was warmer we might have been able to sit with ernie on the outdoor patio. Are there any chain restaurants that permit dogs? I know this is Kansas not France but maybe there are.

And for those few of you driving further west, there is a dandy little rural park off highway 156/96 just before Great Bend, kansas where we had the good sense to stop and let Ernie out to stretch and, as fate would have it, throw up. One more hour in the car and then we are in…Wright, Kansas. our destination.

Hours later and we just had to stop with Ernie at one of highway 50’s highlights in the small town of Offerle…the tank in the local park, a memorial to Vietnam vets. With Santa aboard. And a politically incorrect name painted on the barrel. We are not in Iowa any more.

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September 3, 2012 · 2:58 am

Boot Hill, Jalisco, bella Italia…dodge city,kansas

i made a rare visit to the boot hill museum in dodge city this morning to pick up some souvenirs for a Peruvian man my son is living with in Lima. Turns out he is a big fan of westerns so figured he’d like some dodge city stuff. Not sure his wife will. I was surprised by how busy the gift shop was. I didn’t stick around for the midday gunfight. Too much of that going on in the real world these days. Tonight we returned to our favorite Mexican restaurant in dodge, tacos Jalisco, where I tried the garlic shrimp rather than my usual carne asana (we had had steak for Sunday lunch…this being Kansas). Shrimp was good and always an interesting scene, full of Hispanic families and even some african Muslims. That’s dodge these days, with lots of immigrants working in the meat packing plant. We also went last night to Bella Italia, Italian food but everyone we saw working there was mexican. Very sweet people. Food, not great. We hit the road for nine hour drive back to Iowa. Word has it Obama will be back in Iowa again this week (and I will be away again during his visit.)

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September 2, 2012 · 2:57 am

Delano district, old town, Vietnamese-Cajun food in wichita

After barreling down interstate 35 for six hours, much of the time in the dark and rain, we made it to Wichita at about midnight. Did I really live there? It seems another life, another person, another time. And it was 1987. Wichita had some surprises then and it has them now, little pockets of coolness that a come as a pleasant surprise. The Delano district, a five-or-so block stretch of west Douglas, west of the Arkansas river (that’s pronounced aR-Kansas river I quickly learned when I moved to Kansas from connecticut, and don’t you forget it) wasn’t mUch during the late 80s, sort of a poor man’s downtown with nuts and bolts shops, the carpet shop, the auto body shop. There were always a few interesting places that are still there like Hat man jack’s, a great hat store (where I bought a floppy hat for our Peru trip) and the original Nuway, a loose meat sandwich shop. Now there are lots of restaurants,belittle boutiques, bakeries, tattoo parlours. Among our favorites:

Sugar sisters bakery, bike man, Sweet cheeks (for hip-organic chic mommies and babies),la galette cafe and crepes, TJ’s Burger House….you get the idea.

We also stopped briefly at the old town farmers market downtown where a bluegrass string band planned near the cold ales Keen Kutter building, now a hotel. We picked up some succulent plants for a song, at a stand run by a nice transsexual woman,drank some good cherry lime made, entered a raffle for a quilt run by deaf Kansas. On the way back we hope to try a Vietnamese-Cajun restaurant we just read about in the nytimestravel section. Surprise!

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December 28, 2010 · 2:50 am

From Wright,Ks. back to Des Moines

No weather problems this time – and smooth sailing the entire nine hours, for which we were grateful, especially given what friends and family are dealing with on the East Coast. We stopped in the slowly reviving town of Greensburg – which was devastated by a tornado several years ago – at a hip looking coffee shop, then onto Wichita where we opted for our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon, which was packed and has the world’s fastest service, and pleasant service, and mighty good Bun (all around us people seemed to be ordering what N and I ordered #45  Bun – noodles, shredded lettuce – with char-broiled pork and a fried spring roll. We stopped at N&J, our favorite middle eastern place, to pick up some humus and homemade chips and one, just one, piece of baklava, to bring home. In Kansas City, we dropped by Gates to pick up ribs to take home for dinner. Yes, it’s all about the food. Good to be back here, although it’s at least 20 degrees colder and a lot snowier than Kansas.

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December 23, 2010 · 2:45 pm

Driving to kansas for xmas – part three

Exciting topic, I know but best I can do today. We’re leaving earlier than planned and driving straight thru (a nine-hour trip to dodge city) rather than stopping overnight in Topeka) thanks to forecasts of snow and freezing rain in Iowa and Kansas on Friday. Good news is once we get to Dodge City should be fairly pleasant weather – highs in upper 30s, lower 40s – and maybe no ferocious winds like last year or major snows like years past. Will be warmer than Des Moines too which will be in the teens over the xmas holiday.

Meanwhile, stumped on where to eat in Kansas City en route. We’d normally eat at Gates or Arthur Bryants but BBQ isn’t an option for our family vegetarian. Oddly, I know where to eat more in Wichita or Salina than in K.C.Oh well, I’ll have 3 hours in the car to think up something.

 

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July 26, 2010 · 12:20 am

salina, Ks.

Oh that I could share some of the secret charms of Salina, Ks. with you but alas we saw nothing of it but the inside of the Ramada hotel. Such is the reality of my husband’s family reunion. I did hear tell that Salina is the terra-cotta capital of Kansas – no small feat considering how much terra-cotta clads the buildings of Wichita – but I didn’t get to see it – or visit some of our favorite restaurants such as the Cozy Inn and Jim’s Chicken. We did stop today on the way home at Freddy’s – the frozen custard/steakburger chain we first discovered in Oklahoma which seems to be expanding across Kansas. (We last spotted it in Hutchinson, now it’s in Topeka and Junction City.) Very rich custard – maybe too rich. My stomach hasn’t been right since – and eating Gates BBQ, which we picked up in Kansas City, probably won’t help. But fortune favors the brave….

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July 24, 2010 · 9:03 pm

lawrence ks

Our $49,99 ($57 w/tax) hotel room in Lawrence wasn’t bad at all – spacious, clean, sort of soft  beds but sleepable. There were some loud party girls at 2 a.m.  but that’s to be expected. So for the record, the motel is the Virginia Inn. I’d stay there again.

we ate breakfast at Milton’s on Massachusetts – good hearty omelette and strong coffee then walked along the street in the blistering heat, stopping in at vintage shops and KU apparel stores. Kids got the obligatory jayhawks t-shirts although lily got her’s  at a vintage shop.

we’re now at the ramada inn in Salina, ks. for a family gathering and this is the only sight  I’m  likely to see here.

t

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February 17, 2010 · 9:13 pm

Kooky Kansas: pt. 5 Lucas


One attraction I’ve longed to see during several trips to Lucas – but haven’t yet caught up with – is a traveling museum  featuring  “The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.”

I’ll give you a moment to absorb that properly.

It’s a clever idea – by an artist and free spirit named Erika Nelson who moved to Lucas, next to the Garden of Eden. She drives her museum (inside a van)  to kitschy roadside attractions, often in little towns  that overcompensate for their littleness by producing a LARGE version of something or other that, with hope, puts the town on the map. Then she makes small versions of  these large things and exhibits them in her  van, err museum.

Nelson has also compiled a state-by-state list of the world’s largest things and I’m pleased to report that I’ve seen several including the World’s Largest Swedish Coffeepot and Cup in the small Iowa town of Stanton (which doubles as a water tower); the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Ks. (although this claim is disputed by Minnesota twine-ballers)  and the World’s Largest Tire near the Detroit airport (a highlight of my Michigan youth).  There is a larger point – that these quirky things make these towns and cities distinctive and, as such, should be celebrated. (Nelson is into “combating genericana” i.e. all the generic fast food restaurants and chain stores you see in one town after another that makes them all seem the same.) Check out the list at – www.worldslargestthings.com/wllist.htm

One final (as if) note about Lucas: this is the only place where I eagerly look forward to eating baloney – in this case homemade Czech bologna made at Brant’s Meat Market, an 85-year-old store on Lucas’  tiny main drag. The beef jerky is good too!

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