DINING GUIDE: Burns Cafe combines good food with friendly atmosphere

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JULIE ANDERSON
In operation since May 1, 1995, the Burns Cafe & Bakery continues to attract large crowds of patrons.



“We didn’t know what to expect,” said Rachel Koehn, owner. “We had definitely underestimated what the town of Burns and the surrounding areas could do.”



The busiest time for the cafe is Friday evening, when the street in front of the cafe is lined with cars and people are standing outside waiting for a table.



Anywhere from 140 to 150 people are served on Friday evenings. Among those are the regulars who show up each week.



The cafe also boasts an extensive guest. Its patrons have come from: more than 50 cities and towns in Kansas; 34 states spanning California to Florida; several foreign countries including Brazil, Germany, England and the Netherlands.



“It’s been a lot of fun, and the most fun is learning to know the customers and the regulars who you really get to know,” Koehn said. “It’s just fun. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun.”



In just a couple of years, she has gotten to know people by name, almost personally.



The cafe offers a variety of home-cooked meals.



“Most of (the recipes) are from home-how mom taught us to cook,” Koehn said. “It is mostly what we grew up with.”



The cafe offers daily specials as well as other meals, including hamburgers, chicken strips, meat loaf and ham. Most of the dinners come with potatoes or fries, a vegetable and the salad bar.



For dessert, the Burns Cafe offers several items, but its reputation is built on homemade pies.



A favorite meal on Friday evenings, besides the ham or ribs special, is the chicken-fried steak.



“I’m not saying this bragging, but customers from everywhere say they’ve never tasted chicken-fried like ours, so they must be good,” she said.



Koehn also offers baked goods for purchase, including cinnamon rolls, pies, poppy seed bread, banana bread and noodles. She and her assistants have made cookies when people order them and have decorated a few cakes-as long as they weren’t too fancy, Koehn said.



When Koehn started the restaurant, she did not have any experience running one. To help her, she brought in her sisters, who had worked in a bakery in Missouri.



Koehn never doubted it could work.



“We just decided we wanted to try it,” she said. “We figured this was Burns, and it couldn’t be that tough.”



Koehn still has a few things she would like to do with the cafe.



“Further down the line, we would like to expand the kitchen and get more into the bakery line. But we don’t even have any time set on that yet because it would be total renovation back there because the kitchen is so small right now,” Koehn said. “And then we didn’t know what we needed to do first-whether to enlarge the seating capacity or do the kitchen first.



“When you see the line on Friday nights, you think you need to add more seating capacity. But if you do that, you need more kitchen space, too.”



Koehn has a few theories about why the cafe is successful.



“I don’t think it’s anything we have done necessarily,” she said. It’s just-I don’t know-good food.



“Part of the charm, I think, is just the drive out to a small town, for people to get out of their bigger town. Then you add the food and the friendly atmosphere. It’s just everything put together.”



The four waitresses and four cooks employed at the cafe are mostly family members.



“With a lot of it being family, we sort of know what each other is going to do. We don’t even have to say it, coming from a large family and knowing how to work together,” she said. “That’s a real big plus.”



The cafe is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 5 to 8 p.m. Friday.

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