Unique KC is a star-studded series that explores what makes Kansas City so special. Do you have nostalgic memories of a Kansas City-area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories and maybe we’ll write about the place in a future story.

For decades, the long-closed Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm Restaurant was a popular dining spot.

Now Thaddeus Stephenson wants to bring it back. Somehow.

Several readers wrote to The Star with fond memories of dining at the restaurant on U.S. Highway 40 and Lee’s Summit Road.

For Thaddeus, however, it was the site of nightly lock-ups and ultimate hide-and-seek games (which were sometimes spooky, he added, recalling some ghost stories). Here he carried hot baked goods to customers, shoveled sidewalks on snowy winter days, and watered flowers with his mother in the summer.

His lip trembled as he reminisced about the restaurant his grandfather, Les Stephenson, opened with his twin brother, Loyd, in the family orchard in 1946.

There, he did a bit of everything, including serving customers and handing them their bills: “Ever since I was a kid, I always say, ‘Sign here. This is your copy, this is mine,'” says Thaddeus, sitting in a booth at Jasper’s Italian Restaurant, where he now works.

Thaddeus, now 38, recently pulled out two jars and placed them on the table: apple butter from his new company, Stephenson’s in Kansas City.

He has been canning the apple butter using Stephenson’s original recipe – it was once spread on the restaurant’s rolls and apple fritters and sold in jars to take home – and he hopes to have it on grocery store shelves in the fall.

Thaddeus has met with producers but can’t reveal any details yet, so stay tuned: It’s coming.

And soon he hopes to launch a line of seasonings for Stephenson’s favorite dishes, like corn relish, green rice casserole and beef brisket.

(This brisket seasoning is something “everyone wants to get their hands on,” Thaddeus said.)

And even though people will always beg him to reopen Stephenson’s restaurant, Thaddeus is content that this small part of his family’s legacy lives on.

Opening a restaurant that does justice to the original would be “a monster,” he said. But this is a good compromise.

“Hopefully with this launch the Stephenson name can get back into people’s homes,” he said.

Apple fritters and green rice casserole

Walter Cronkite, Harry Truman, Lady Bird Johnson and Jimmy Carter all dined within Stephenson’s rustic walls.

But the restaurant started small.

After Les and Lloyd returned from World War II, they decided to open a restaurant in their family orchard near their parents’ home. The 40-seat cafe offered a limited menu.

Over the course of its 60-year history, the restaurant has been renovated and expanded at least five times to accommodate more guests: at one point, there were 350.

It remained in the same place while growing beyond the original foundation.

In its heyday, customers waited for their table in the lobby and drank free cider from the barrel—as many sips as they wanted. The interior was lined with wood from an old tobacco barn, while the exterior was a classic barn red.

One wing of the restaurant housed a country store selling jams, jellies, relishes, candies and other old-fashioned goods. Another wing housed a cocktail lounge with a cider press in the center.

“Wherever possible, the apple theme was taken up in curtains and other decorations,” said The Star in 1966.

Main courses included creamy baked chicken (a favorite of many), beef brisket, and hickory smoked ham steak.

“I’ve never eaten chicken like this before,” enthused The Star. “It’s brown, juicy and literally falls off the bone.”

Each dish was served with a green rice casserole, a baked potato, bread and apple butter, corn relish and a salad of choice. (The mixed salad was served with a piece of cheese in the shape of a carrot and a sprig of parsley on top.)

In memory of Stephenson’s

Barbara Young, now 86, regularly dined at Stephenson’s with her late husband, David. She wrote to The Star and suggested an article about Stephenson’s as part of the Uniquely KC series on restaurants that disappeared but were not forgotten. And she was one of many. Several other readers shared her enthusiasm.

Young’s favorite time to visit was in the spring, when the apple trees surrounding the restaurant were in full bloom.

“You always felt welcome and always felt special,” she said.

She always ordered the pork chops. Nobody made them like Stephenson’s.

“They were perfectly seasoned and always tender,” she said.

One evening in 2007, Young and her husband were heading out for a casual date when they realized the restaurant was closed.

After decades, the restaurant that had hosted thousands of locals – and presidents – was finished.

Thaddeus said the family was “tired and exhausted.” As the brothers grew older, they decided to close the business. The memorabilia was sold at auction in the summer of that year.

It was later demolished and a QuikTrip gas station now stands in its place. Both Les and Loyd have since died.

But even 17 years later, people still fondly remember the restaurant.

One of their most loyal fans is Jasper Mirabile, owner of Jasper’s Italian Restaurant, where Thaddeus works. Mirabile was friends with the brothers, swapping stories about the industry and attending conferences together.

When Mirabile was thinking about themes for his monthly supper club, he approached Thaddeus about the possibility of creating a Stephenson’s-themed menu. Thaddeus was flattered

They sold about 200 tickets in just a few minutes, and Mirabile said they easily could have sold hundreds more.

“We had all of Stephenson’s surviving relatives — the nephews … the cousins ​​– here for dinner that night,” Mirabile said. On the menu: favorites like pork chops, baked chicken, green rice casserole and apple fritters.

(Earlier this year, local chef Rick Mullins recreated the doughnuts for one of his pop-up dinners called “Historical Exploration of Kansas City Cuisine.”)

In fact, it was the repeated interest of the general public that prompted Thaddeus to launch his own line of Stephenson products.

“The people who ate here that night were just in love, and that made me want to do the same,” Thaddeus said.

Further confirmation that he is on the right track: in 2010, shortly before his death, his grandfather Thaddeus called to apologize.

“What do you have to apologize for?” Thaddeus remembers asking.

Les said he was sorry the restaurant was no longer there. He had wanted his grandson to take over the management one day.

“‘I didn’t see anyone else smoking a cigarette when you were doing this job,'” he said.

Thaddeus felt vindicated in his decision to continue in the restaurant industry, and now as he moves forward with his plans for Stephenson’s of Kansas City, he is honored to carry on the family name.

“Other people laid the masonry decades before me,” Thaddeus said.

Unique KC is a Star series exploring what makes Kansas City special. Do you have nostalgic memories of a Kansas City-area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories, and maybe we’ll write about the place in a future story. Email Jenna Thompson at [email protected].