This KC restaurant is known for a gimmick. But it also has the best burger in town
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The Gen Dare is the best, but most underrated burger in Kansas City. And I blame that on the trains.
We’re not going to retell in great detail the story behind those toy trains that convey the Gen Dare and other deliciousness to your table at the three Fritz’s Railroad Restaurants, because the trains always get all the attention..
But for newbies, here are the basics: You grab a seat, but no server takes your order. You tell the kitchen what you want to eat by the landline phone at your table.
A few minutes pass because they cook to order. Then the whistle from what sounds like a steam locomotive blows, and everyone in the restaurant looks up to see a train carting a box of food to someone’s table. Which table!? Maybe yours! Maybe somebody else’s! Will there be a derailment?
Tension mounts as the Skat Kat delivery system that the late Fred F. “Fritz” Kropf perfected in the 1970s gets the food to who is supposed to get it — usually — and the customers eat hearty.
Yes. I agree. It’s fun and incredible.. But the trains began as a gimmick to get customers in the door to order from a menu headlined by the best burger in the metro and perhaps the galaxy, and I don’t think it gets the appreciation it deserves.
Before the trains became a big hit a half century ago, there was the Gen Dare.
Like many burgers on the menu, it’s named in honor of a Kropf relative. Gen was what Fritz always called his wife, Virginia. As for the Dare part, it’s a mystery, says their son Fred, who with his wife, Mary, own the KCK restaurant at 250 N. 18th St., that his late parents opened in the mid-1960s. Fred and Mary later added restaurants in Crown Center and Shawnee. Their son Fred helps run them.
“I don’t know where the Dare comes from,” Fred No. 2 said of Fred No. 1 (Fritz). He always had these dynamic ways of coming up with sayings and names. So he came up with the Gen Dare.”
Fritz was also inventive in his sandwich creations to differentiate his menu from the fare at McDonald’s, Burger King and all the rest.
The Kitchen Sink is topped with hot sauce, mayo and grated Parmesan cheese. The Yak comes on rye bread. The Gen Dare is all about the hash browns.
“It’s just something he came up with,” the middle Fred said. “He was just trying to make a living, and he always had some kind of odd sandwiches, and that was one of them and it was kind of a hit.”
A burger with hash browns on top; that’s the elevator pitch, but there’s more to it.
Picture the deliciousness: Sesame seed bun toasted on the flat-top grill. Mustard, ketchup and sliced pickles cover the bottom half of that bun as the rest of the scrumptious package is prepared.
Sliced onions are seared on the grill then pressed into one or two 2-ounce beef patties that have never been frozen. Fred No. 3 showed us how it was done at the Shawnee restaurant. Once those flavors have married, he flips the burger or burgers over and tops them with American cheese.
(One patty is often enough for me because there’s more to come.) Then he tops what is already a darned good cheeseburger with a mound of hash browns. They’re shredded potatoes, not manufactured rectangles zapped in the microwave like the greasy kind at Mickey D’s.
Topped off with the other half of the bun and that’s it. The Gen Dare comes wrapped in paper along with the rest of your food order and, if somehow I forgot to mention this, arrives at your table by train. Servers deliver liquid refreshments by hand because — and I did forget to mention this — that train pulling the box of food is (caution!!) above your head and you can imagine the bad hair days that might have led to this safety measure as Fritz rolled out the system when Jerry Ford was president.
Decades after it went on the menu, the Gen Dare remains a favorite at all three Fritz’s locations, but especially at 18th Street.
“It’s just kind of old school,” middle Fred said. “We’ve lived off of our food there long before the train. Eighteenth Street still has that clientele that came there long before there was a train and ate the food.”
I don’t go back that far. The Star’s first story on the trains appeared on Sept. 2, 1976. I didn’t come to town until 1985. But I do remember when KCK was the only location, and it’s where I always return for its cheerful dive diner vibe.
My wife and I stopped in for lunch on a recent Friday and I ordered the usual: a Gen Dare single ($5.19), along with a Fring basket (a regular order of crinkle cut fries and two fried onion rings, $4.19) and a regular cherry limeade ($3.29).
As we waited for the food to arrive at our booth with its orange cushioned seats and white Formica table, we read the titles of hits from the 1980s still on the play list of the small table-side jukebox that no longer seems to work. Then I excused myself to view another relic.
On the wall was a yellowed, framed copy of a newspaper column I wrote about the place in 1998 declaring the Gen Dare the best burger in the galaxy.
My views on some things have changed over the last quarter century. But on that, I won’t budge.
This story was originally published July 11, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
