Dagwood’s Cafe – 1117 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, KS 66103 – (913) 677-0747

Geo and I decided to go to Sunday breakfast at Mama’s, the famed diner that resided on Bell Street for so long and recently moved into the old Nichol’s Lunch location on SW Trafficway. But the Sunday morning crowd is probably Mama’s biggest cash cow, which means there’s always a huge line and lots of commotion (and justifiably so – the food is great). So we headed down to SW Boulevard in KCK to visit Dagwood’s, a decades-old, working-class diner in an old, industrial neighborhood.

The food and atmosphere at Dagwood’s are classic diner, which means they don’t need much explanation. But it is diner food done extremely well, if crisp hash browns and a chicken fried steak that’s modestly breaded, crispy outside and very tender inside are any indication of overall quality of fare.

The real star of the breakfast menu is the sausage gravy. The traditional white sauce has no tired, floury taste, and it holds a generous amount of tender breakfast sausage which itself is not overcooked to the point that it just provides texture. No, no. This sausage adds an intense savory component to the gravy, which is equally good over the chicken fried steak or the very fluffy plate of biscuits we got to share. The gravy takes tabasco sauce very well, too.

Dagwood’s is about 5 minutes from the Crossroads district and 10 minutes from midtown, which should make it an easy destination on a lazy Sunday morning. Or at any other time, really.