Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [207]
Bunker Hill Café
6th and Elm Sts.
785–483–6544
Bunker Hill, KS
D Weds–Sat | $$$
Located in a blink-and-you-miss-it crossroads community, the Bunker Hill Café is a rugged limestone building that opened as a drugstore then became a pool hall. Today it is a destination steak house, open for supper only Wednesday through Saturday. It’s a small place, no more than a dozen tables, with a menu that includes shrimp, catfish, chicken, and even a vegetarian dinner, but red meat is the café’s raison d’être. Filet mignon is available in sizes that range from 2 to 16 ounces, sirloin from 4 to 16. There’s also bacon-wrapped ground beef and occasionally Kansas elk and buffalo. Our sirloins were laden with juice, tender but not at all tenderized, a joy to slowly savor. It was late summer, and on the side came beautiful, full-flavored tomatoes and corn on the cob, as well as the house specialty, honey bread (available for puchase by the loaf).
Décor is Plains rustic: lots of mounted trophies and naturalist pictures on the wall and a couple of wood-burning stoves for warmth in cool weather. As seating is limited, reservations are advised.
Chicken Mary’s
1133 E. 600th Ave.
620–231–9510
Pittsburg, KS
D | $$
“It’s crazy, isn’t it,” Chicken Mary’s son mused to us one hot summer day many years ago. “What’s all this fried chicken doing out here anyway?”
It was a rhetorical question. The man knew perfectly well why the narrow lane off Highway 69 between Frontenac and Pittsburg, Kansas, is known as the Chicken Dinner Road, but he also knew that a couple of strangers hightailing up toward Kansas City had to wonder: why, in the middle of nowhere, are there two flourishing restaurants—Chicken Mary’s and Chicken Annie’s (not to mention Chicken Annie’s Annex)—that specialize in nearly identical dinners of deep fried chicken?
Mary and Annie have long ago gone to their reward, so Mary’s son—no spring chicken himself—explained that in the hard times of the 1930s, his father and Annie’s husband both worked in a nearby mine. In 1934, Annie’s husband lost a leg in a mine accident. To make ends meet, Annie opened a little restaurant and served her specialty, fried chicken. Only a few years after that, Mary’s husband had to quit work, too, because of a bad heart. “There were three of us kids to feed,” the old man recalled. “And my mother could see how well Annie was doing selling chicken dinners out here. She took a hint and opened her own place, Chicken Mary’s, just down the road.”
A tradition was begun. The rivalry has made this unlikely farm road a chicken-lover’s mecca for six decades. The meals are ritualized family-style feasts: plenty of ultra-crunchy deep-fried chicken and mashed potatoes or German potato salad, with side dishes that include German coleslaw, green beans, baked beans, and spaghetti, plus ice cream for dessert. (Poultry-frowners can order chicken-fried steak.)
Note: Chicken Annie’s is a short walk up the road, at 1143 E. 600th Ave. We’ve never eaten at both in the same trip, nor do we feel we have done enough research to rate one place above the other.
Corner Pharmacy
429 Delaware St.
913–682–1602
Leavenworth, KS
BL | $
Located in a well-tended Victorian building that dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century, the Corner Pharmacy is a trip back in time not only for its soda fountain treats and breakfast-served-all-day (to 6:00 P.M., closing time), but for the low-single-digit prices for meals. A cup of coffee costs less than a dollar, including