Carlameta Anderson, devoted chef behind KC’s Carla’s Cafe & Catering, dies at 83

Editor’s note: This feature is part of a weekly focus from The Star meant to highlight and remember the lives of Black Kansas Citians who have died.

When Carlameta Anderson was at her lowest, laid off from her job of 23 years with only two to go until she could have retired with her full pension, she didn’t wallow in despair. She thought about her dream.

She had cooked and baked many delicacies the whole time she worked at Western Electric, now a part of AT&T. Family and friends came to anticipate her pillowy cream puffs, Italian cream cakes and soft, sweet hermit cookies, filled with old English walnuts, pecans and raisins. There were endless home-cooked meals of fried chicken, macaroni-and-cheese and chicken tetrazzini, usually with fresh-from-the-oven dinner rolls. Loads of hand-mashed potatoes — never store-bought.

The long-held goal she had of opening her own restaurant, hatched while she was getting her master’s at Friends University, was easy to put off as her employment continued and allowed her to provide for her only child, Marcia Miller, now 65. After Anderson was let go as part of a company-wide round of layoffs, Miller said she felt wronged, a feeling that grew the more she learned.

There was a numbered rating system for employees and her mother’s figure had dipped low enough that she was dismissed, even with her seniority at the company, Miller said. She soon noticed, however, colleagues of hers with similar numbers started transferring to the New Jersey branch, taking a move instead of a firing. It was an opportunity she would have taken to secure her pension.

Her anger faded as she thought about the opportunity in front of her. Knowing Kansas state laws prohibited businesses from preparing food in the same kitchen also used by a family, she and her father, Walter Jordan, immediately cleared out the recreation room in their family basement and put in a full working kitchen.

Carla’s Cafe and Catering was born, below two other kitchens, its rich, confectionery scent wafting upward. But the business would one day move into a space all its own.

Anderson, with her typical stubborn tenacity, was only looking ahead.

“She always told me, ‘You can’t unscramble eggs,’” Miller said over a recent phone call. “So you know, some people say, ‘If you have lemons, make lemonade,’ but she always said, ‘You can’t unscramble eggs.’ So she started Carla’s Cafe and Catering.”

Anderson, whose short-lived but well-remembered neighborhood cafe garnered a reputation in the 1980s for lovingly crafted dishes that somehow tasted like home, died on March 17 after her health had been declining for several years, family said. She was 83.

Her business, always staffed by cousins and aunts and grandchildren, moved into a location at 1320 N. Fifth Street in 1984. But she wanted to maintain the familial feeling at its core, hoping that when people sat down at a table, it felt as if they were “coming to the house to eat a meal that she had prepared,” Miller said. She harped the importance of the little things, in her no-nonsense cadence.

Her long list of hand selected ingredients were a major part of her process; each week she purchased pounds of potatoes; fresh milk and cheeses; and trusted “name brands” like Stokely green beans.

“It had to be just right. Everything had to be a certain way,” Miller said. “‘If I’m sitting down eating, this is the way I want my food to taste; this is the way I would prepare it for myself.’ That was just her.”

The seeds of her passion for cooking and entrepreneurial spirit were developed when she was just a young girl, the daughter of Walter and Beatrice Jordan.

It was, as Miller said, “the Jordan spirit” in her.

“She got the entrepreneurship very deeply in her veins from our family,” she said.

Called to the job

Anderson was born on February 4, 1939, the second child in her family. Her older brother, who was several years older, was killed in Germany during World War II, when he was in the back of a truck that crashed down an embankment, Miller said. She grew up as the oldest of three children, and was inspired, more than anyone else, by her parents.

Her father, also a veteran, started a trade school with another man specifically for Black veterans, an often-overlooked group that struggled to get jobs. He had other ventures on the side: A bicycle rental service for local kids; a corner grocery store and ice house; a fleet of trash trucks. He owned several properties in town.

Her mother and father later divorced, and her mother showed Anderson through her actions how to be an independent woman, Miller said. An aspiring comedian, she moved to Chicago to go up on stages as part of the famed Chitlin Circuit that was like a nationwide network of entertainment acts produced by and for Black people. But she would come back often to cook a big meal.

Food, in their family, was a constant passed down from generation to generation, with each new class of cousins tweaking the specifics. Take the candied yams, for example: Anderson’s sister would throw them into a pot raw, still hard, before adding sugar and placing a cover on top, letting everything caramelize until it was glistening.

Anderson would do the exact same thing, except she would boil the yams before dropping them into the pot. She felt it made the dish a little softer.

“They both were delicious yams — both came out candied — but the way they both did them was two different styles,” Miller said. “Both of them taught by my great-grandmother.”

Among the relatives, Anderson was known for her drive and her persistence, and it wasn’t always a flattering description. She was known to get her way, Miller said. Her convictions were strong.

At age 16, she pleaded with her parents to let her marry a man, Joe Miller, and they eventually allowed her. She gave birth to her one daughter a year later, when she was 17. Their marriage ended in divorce not too much later and in 1959 she wed Dunbar Anderson Jr. The marriage would stick.

As her life was changing and coming into focus, she was at the same time relentlessly pursuing her education: She got her undergraduate degree at Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas and then her associate’s degree at Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kansas. She then went to Wichita to get her master’s in human resource management at Friends University, as she was holding down her job at Western Electric.

She often took community college cake-decorating classes, too, and then insisted people like her daughter as well as her cousin, Broderick Henderson, take them too.

Henderson, a Democratic Kansas state representative who has served the 35th district since 1995, worked with her for several years at Carla’s Cafe when it was still a catering-only enterprise in her family’s home.

“I considered it a great opportunity,” Henderson said. “She taught me a lot.”

‘Do it from your heart’

There was always something going on in the kitchen, especially during their busy time around noon, he recalls.

In the ovens, there were peach cobblers or multi-layered wedding cakes slowly baking, and usually a finished pastry sat out on a table. Henderson would put the finishing touches on cakes, garnishing the top with frosting or little candies, like he learned in those classes. He would watch Anderson work in awe — she began baking as early as 4 a.m. sometimes.

They catered many public events in spaces like Black churches or funeral homes. What the up-and-coming community leader learned from his cousin was the value of steadfast professionalism, respect for the customers and a desire to do something as good as you possibly can.

She would often toss a little something extra into their bags, like a treat or a decoration. A perfect final detail.

“She wanted to make sure that when you left her restaurant or her catering event, that you would, pretty much, remember her,” Henderson said. “She was very conscious of making sure everything was set up accordingly and everything went as planned.”

Miller remembers her mom would do things like bring trays of macaroni-and-cheese and chicken tetrazzini down to First Baptist Church upon hearing they were hosting a tea event. She had taken one look at the menu and declared, “That’s not food to feed anybody for a tea.” She brought crates of water and soda with her as well.

People would often stop her to pay for her gas, or many times her breakfasts at Perkins. They were repayments for favors long ago.

“It happened like six, seven times,” Miller said. “God pays people back when you do things from your heart.”

Later in life, her actual heart began causing her serious problems, with arteries that were severely blocked, eventually requiring the implementation of a pacemaker. She was moved into the hospital on Feb. 9 as her condition worsened. She died about a month later.

Her loved ones have been left to think about the heart she had that was filled with a love of people.

“Treat people well who treat you well — that’s the lesson my mom gave me,” Miller said. “And you just do it from your heart.”

This story was originally published April 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.