by Mary Rupert
We went to Fuddruckers restaurant, which opened Aug. 11 at 1705 Village West Parkway, The Legends Outlets in Kansas City, Kan., for our first time recently on a Friday night.
The restaurant opened at the location of the former Cheeseburgers in Paradise. The two restaurant chains are both owned by Luby’s. It was getting toward 8:30 p.m. or so when we decided to try out the new place and see what it was like.
Never having been to the Fuddruckers at 87th and Metcalf before, I had no idea of what to expect. We drove through The Legends Outlets, past the Five Guys Burgers and Fries location, which is visible from the new restaurant, and there were not too many people in Five Guys at that moment. Then we pulled into the parking lot near Fuddruckers and it took a while to find a parking space.
I entered the restaurant and looked around and stood for a short while at the front desk area. Then I realized how much it had changed from Cheeseburgers in Paradise. There were no palm trees, no tropical decorations located around the room. There was no bar in the middle of the room serving margaritas. In the corner where musicians had played, there was now a kids’ play area.
No one was going to come forward and wait on us, I realized, and tell us to take a seat and wait 15 minutes. No, instead, we walked up to a counter at the back, ordered our hamburgers and side dishes.
I looked at the menu board and ordered The Fudd, the least expensive hamburger, costing around $5. It was a quarter-pound hamburger. My mind was sort of on keeping cholesterol low, and keeping the cost low, and I felt I might be able to eat one of these a month, maybe. Adding bacon and cheese and other items will raise the price of the hamburger a few dollars. I did not order the Double Stack, which is two quarter-pounders and cheese. There were alternatives including chicken on the menu.
Something familiar about the name The Fudd – it reminded me of Elmer Fudd, the cartoon nemesis of Bugs Bunny. Fudd, who pronounced his R’s as W’s (much as I did when I was in the early years of grade school), carried a gun and frequently chased after Bugs. Fudd’s famous phrase was “Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.”
Next I moved on to one of those new soft drink machines, which operate a little like a video game. I was going to get a Coke, but root beer was the first image I saw and I decided to try that. Then the image changed before I could hit the button, and I was looking at diet root beer and vanilla root beer as choices. Unwilling to wait until the images circled around again, I nailed the vanilla root beer button and left to find a table.
There were no open tables visible, I realized. We walked around the restaurant, looking for somewhere to sit and wait. Then someone got up near the door and left, and we sat there. There were also open patio tables, where lots of people were headed.
The atmosphere definitely was a high-energy, busy, buzzing place, filled with the sounds of young families. As we sat at our table, there was somewhat more than the usual restaurant traffic from people walking around trying to find a seat.
After a while, our number was called and we received our food. There was another trip back for fixings for the hamburger – a row of condiments, pickles, lettuce and tomato. The lettuce was bigger than the hamburger bun. The thought going through my mind as we used tongs to get these items was that hundreds of hands had already touched the tongs earlier in the evening. Perhaps it would be good at this point in the meal to return to the front of the restaurant and use the hand sanitizer provided near the entrance.
Then, the meal. The hamburger was as good as any other at Village West, I thought. It was cooked the way I had ordered it. I really liked the onion rings I had ordered, they were freshly prepared, not the frozen variety, and they had a light, not greasy texture. The vanilla root beer, something new to me, was pretty good.
The last time we visited Five Guys Burgers and Fries, there were a lot of teens and college-aged students there. I asked a 30-something, “Do you like Five Guys or Fuddruckers hamburgers better?” The reply was “Five Guys.”
As we left Fuddruckers, three employees stood near the door with huge smiles on their faces. They said “thank you” as we left. That was the best part about going there, and reason enough to return.
