Crepes or biscuits & gravy? Kansas City cafe, wine bar to serve French and Southern
Clarence and Kim Cole have been catering events across the Kansas City metro for 15 years.
For eight of those years they have been looking for a permanent location where they could also have a restaurant, bakery and wine bar.
Now they have it in the Crossroads.
The couple plan a late June opening for Foodlove Cafe at 2101 Broadway Blvd., the space that Broadway Deli occupied before it closed in 2019 after less than two years.
“Everything has to line up,” Kim Cole said. “We would look at a space that wanted us but we didn’t like the space, or we liked the space and they didn’t like us and wanted a national tenant. We had to get the right lender.”
She describes the menu as a fusion of Southern American and French cuisine using recipes from her grandmothers. Clarence has a marketing degree, and Kim trained at the former L’École Culinaire on the Country Club Plaza.
Breakfast will include omelets, biscuits and sausage gravy, vanilla pancakes, quiche Lorraine, frittatas, stuffed French toast (soaked in custard and stuffed with orange marmalade cream or vanilla cream), crepes, and a la carte items such as sweet potato chutney and English muffins.
For lunch and dinner, look for Parmesan chicken patty sliders, corn chowder, French onion soup, fried chicken and baked chicken, ribs, stuffed tilapia and Poulet & Des Poires (a butter-seared chicken breast topped with chardonnay-soaked pears and drizzled with béchamel sauce, served with potato truffles).
The dessert menu will include such items as cheesecake, banana pudding trifle, strawberry torte, chocolate mousse parfait and “slutty” brownies (with a cookies and cream filling).
After the couple started their catering business in 2005, customers urged them to open a restaurant. But they were also busy raising four children (their youngest, 22, graduates from college this summer), working full-time jobs and participating in their church.
On May 22, their 31-year-old daughter, Suzanne Cole, was a victim in a head-on crash just a few blocks away on Broadway. The other driver apparently lost control of the vehicle and crossed the grass median, according to the Kansas City Police Department, but driver impairment is under investigation.
“Some days I just wanted to quit,” Kim Cole said. “That was a Saturday and we had a bunch of deliveries. We were just in a fog of shock. But people have been praying for us and telling me not to give up on my dream. She would love this place.”
Hours will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays; and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays.
It will have happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and complimentary parking in a covered lot nearby.