As Plaza area restaurant changes hands, customers say why they have loved it
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- Cafe Trio sold to W. VinZant Restaurants after 21 years of local ownership.
- Owners Youngers and Nguyen earned customer loyalty through community ties.
- New leadership plans to retain piano music and holiday décor traditions.
As everyone in the restaurant business knows, it’s not just what’s on the plate that makes a place special.
At Cafe Trio, a Plaza-area restaurant that this month, after 21 years, was sold to the W. VinZant Restaurants group, it means that it’s more than its “mac daddy,” a macaroni and cheese dish routinely rated among Kansas City’s best.
And, said patrons — regulars who have stayed devoted to the restaurant since its opening in 2004 — it goes beyond the fig and goat cheese flat bread, or P.E.I. mussels or drinks with names like Liquid Cocaine.
The true nature of the restaurant, they said, is captured in the soft, live piano music played in the dining room. Pianist Tim Whitmer has played every Thursday night there for nearly 20 years. It’s found in the opulent decorations that fill the restaurant and hang from its ceiling at Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day.
It is to be found in the waitstaff, like Richard Strong, 69, who has worked at the restaurant since its first day in June 2004, and who greets the hundreds of customers he knows with hugs and smiles and questions asking how’s your life and how are the kids and how is everything with you on this fine day.
In toto, it is the owners who are life partners, Chris Youngers, 52, and Tai Nguyen, 53, who have been the heart of the restaurant. In 2004, with former partner Al Richey, the trio started Trio in what had been the former Papagallo’s restaurant space, 3535 Broadway. In 2009, it took over a spot on a rise east of the Country Club Plaza, with a deck overlooking Mill Creek Park, at 4558 Main St.
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Whitney VinZant, founder and chief executive officer of the W. VinZant Restaurant group, owner on the Plaza of Gram & Dun and Heritage by Bo Lings and 11 other regional restaurants, called the arrangement with Youngers and Nguyen a “partnership” to bring new investment to the restaurant.
VinZant this week said that although the name of the restaurant could change in the new year, and that the interior is certain to change (He is working with Heather White, owner of the restaurant Tailleur, on the design), he also plans to keep the piano and the holiday decorating.
“I mean, I just love how unique that is for Kansas City. We want to, we’ve got to, keep that stuff going,” VinZant said.
Longtime customers react to Cafe Trio change
Still, change is change. Although Nguyen and Youngers said they plan to be at the restaurant daily through the end of December, long-time patrons are taking stock.
“I’m so sad,” said Jan Marcason, the former Kansas City Councilwoman, who, with her husband, Dick, has been a regular and steady customer since Trio opened. “I haven’t gotten over Tai and Chris leaving. . . .We’ve been going there forever.”
Her husband, she said, “called it my ‘Cheers’ bar,” based on the television show. “I would go there and I would know everybody. We’ve gone there for birthdays, every year for our anniversary. The same booth. I mean, just the ambiance, the energy there, the waiters are super nice. The food was good. I love how they decorate for the holidays. They make every dinner special. The vibe is just so positive.”
Lance Oroczo and his partner Darrel Brenneke went to Trio when it first opened on Main Street.
“We quickly became good friends and customers, and we have been going ever since,” at least several times a month, Orozco said. “We’ve celebrated most of our special occasions over the years there: birthday parties, retirements. You name it.”
At Halloween, they’re there in costumes. At Christmas, New Year’s, on Valentine’s Day, they’re there.
In return, Oroczo said, both Youngers and Nguyen have been there for them, even in ways they never expected.
“I’ll give you an example,” Orozco said. “You know, we’ve known them forever. But I never really told anybody that my mother passed away a couple of years ago. She lived in California. They (Tai and Chris) sent the most beautiful flower arrangement that just appeared there.
“I didn’t tell them where I was having the service.”
Orozco imagines that maybe they heard of the death, or perhaps they found the service on the internet.
“But they did that all on their own,” he said. “That’s what kind of people they are. And they do, and not just for us, but they do it for a lot of folks. And their staff, oh my gosh, their staff has really grown up with them.”
Richard Strong worked at Papagallos before he came to Trio on day one.
“Tai and I have the pleasure of working with him every day since,” Youngers said.
Cara Mercier, their lead server, has been with Trio since 2009, he said. Lucinda Wandfluh, the private dining and events manager, has been there since 2011.
“We know them,” Orozco said. “They’re like extended family.”
“It was like the ‘Cheers’ bar when you came in,” said customer Dalene Bradford. “They knew who you were.”
She continued, “It was just one of those go-to places when you want to get a group of friends together, to celebrate something, or commiserate something,” she said. “They were there.”
A fixture on the Plaza
Though sorry that the restaurant has changed hands, long-term customers say they can only feel glad for Youngers and Nguyen. Twenty-one years is a long time to run a restaurant nightly, through the Great Recession of 2008, through vandalism during the Black Lives Matter protests, through the COVID-19 epidemic, a cataclysmic event that caused tens of thousands of restaurants nationally to shut their doors for good.
Trio endured.
“It’s an exhausting amount of work, and it’ll still take every second you want to give to it,” Youngers said.
Their customers, their friends, they all said they have earned whatever comes with a new partnership.
“It’s a hard business, man,” said long-term customer Michael Lintecum. “They’ve worked so doggone hard. I don’t know how they do it.”
From the beginning to now, he said, “they always gave it their absolute all. It’s a very warm spirit. And that always comes from the top. . . It’s just a wonderful experience. I don’t know, it feels like you’re home.
“Those guys, who have just worked their tails off, I think they certainly deserve a break.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2025 at 2:54 PM.
