Any time I travel and visit a funky cool breakfast spot, as I did this weekend in Kansas City, I always wonder why Wichita does not have such a place.
Don’t get me wrong — I like our breakfast options here. The Beacon’s Traditional is one of my all-time favorite dishes, and I could live on Copper Oven’s skillets and Riverside Cafe’s breakfast burritos.
But many other cities have fun and offbeat little breakfast places that specialize in cool decor and unique dishes, utilizing vegetables, fresh ingredients and out-of-the-box recipes.
Yesterday morning, I visited Succotash in Kansas City — a fun and delicious spot with thrift store light fixtures, white pleather lounge chairs for booths and servers with beehive blonde buns piled hiply atop their heads. And the food was killer. The above pic is of my breakfast, a banana walnut French toast made with super thick bread and drizzled in caramel sauce, served with a side of scrumptious bacon and two over-easy eggs.
My sister, Annie, had an omelet overflowing with veggies, including thick portabello mushrooms and fresh spinach. The toast was made from a homemade bread, laced ever-so-slightly with a garlic flavoring. She also sampled a bizarre fresh-made-juice, made of blended carrot, celery, cucumber, tomato, parsley, beet, ginger, garlic, spinach and jalapeño. I thought it looked repulsive, but she loved it.
I’ve visited other unique breakfast places on other trips, including Orange in Chicago (home of the Fruity Pebble pancakes) and Aretha Frankenstein’s in Chattanooga (home of the Waffle of Insane Greatness).
I’d love to see something like that pop up here. Hint hint hint.