At this restaurant, 2 Kansas City treasures mix heart and soul into the scrambled eggs

Your Guide to KC: Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.

Bob Kendrick, poetry in perpetual motion, whirled into Niecie’s Restaurant, paused at a table or three and glided into a booth. Before we ordered, longtime Niecie’s waitress Sheree Jackson materialized with an iced tea and an orange juice for the man who eats here three or more times a week when he’s not out of town.

Small wonder Kendrick says “I feel like Norm from ‘Cheers’” when he comes here.

No doubt Kendrick, the beloved and familiar president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, generates that feeling in plenty of places. But even if Kendrick is an extreme example, the sensation isn’t exclusive to him at this soul food mainstay at 6441 Troost Ave.

“They make all the customers feel special,” Kendrick said.

That extends beyond the gratifying menu to the inviting vibe: the considerable personalities of waitresses, spirited chatter, the syncopated clatter of dishes and music underscored by a lot of ‘70s hits at just the right volume.

Somehow, some way, it all merges into a buoyant background chorus instead of a distracting blare.

It’s, well, “Easy,” the Lionel Richie song that happened to be playing as Kendrick started to describe why the upbeat scene is a haven for him.

While he has no off switch, this is a place he doesn’t have to feel on.

“I’ve had business breakfasts here as well, but even they become less formal …,” he said. “Whatever it is that I feel, it seems like everybody else feels that same thing.”

That’s certainly how I’ve absorbed it every time I’ve gone since Kendrick introduced me a few years ago.

And that’s why I figured for this “Uniquely KC” enterprise I’m working on for the next few months that it might be illuminating to spend time with two distinct Kansas City institutions at once.

“He’s the real one,” Denise Ward, aka Niecie, said with a smile as she stood tableside.

But Kendrick would tell you the opposite about the restaurant established in 1985 by Ward and her husband, Perry, at 5932 Prospect. (They moved in 2009 to the current spot, where they are open from 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.)

And it’s a tale he appreciates on multiple levels, including that he can relate the NLBM’s precarious early journey into a Kansas City jewel to Niecie’s improbable start on its way to becoming a KC gem.

‘We threw it all in’

Funny how things unfold sometimes. Ward’s fulfillment of this dream actually began with another dream deferred. If she had her way, she would have been a professional singer.

“I ain’t all of that; if I was, I’d be out there like Beyoncé,” she said, laughing. “It’s my little second talent, but that talent had me starving.”

For a time, she reckoned she was going to be a grocery store cashier long-term before she lost the job. Unsure what to do next as a 25-year-old, Perry reminded her she was quite a cook.

That persuasive notion and the opportunity to buy a small restaurant site came with an asterisk: They had to sell or pawn almost everything they owned.

“We threw it all in,” she said.

All of a sudden, that was almost 40 years ago — an eternity in the restaurant business that reflects this one’s particular foundation:

It’s about as family-made as any business could be, including Perry running “all over the place,” as Ward put it, and three of her siblings, a son and a stepson on board.

Not to mention staff kinship and continuity that largely goes back decades. The newest employee, she said, has been there more than four years.

The enduring family force from which Ward conjured all this, though, happened to be seated at a booth right by us the other day. Her 91-year-old mother, Theris Griffin, still has breakfast every Tuesday at the restaurant she inspired and helped launch.

“All the recipes are hers,” said Ward, who tweaked and added some over the years but reminds that “the base is hers.”

That bedrock of soul food and hospitality rooted in her mother’s life back in tiny Aubrey, Arkansas, population 108 as of the 2020 census, is implicit in Niecie’s abiding motto: “Good Food, Served Right.”

The “Good Food” part of that especially speaks to traditional favorites like biscuits and gravy, catfish, chicken with waffles, fried and gravy-smothered chicken, oxtails and wings. And then some.

The pancakes and French toast get rave reviews, too. And you can count Kendrick in that more conventional and predictable part of the breakfast menu. He nearly always orders his version of “The Daily”: scrambled eggs with American cheese and dry white toast, for starters.

“That doesn’t change,” said Kendrick — albeit acknowledging that on the “rarest of occasions” he asks for the fried pork chop breakfast.

From there, it’s a matter of whether he’ll get the bacon (crisp) or the sausage and what he’ll choose among hash browns, grits, fried potatoes or rice.

Lest he overindulge, though, Kendrick always carries his own little bottle of Stevia sweetener.

“If I’m going to eat these eggs and bacon and hash browns,” he said, laughing, “I don’t need to drink my calories.”

‘It is personal!’

But the “Served Right” part, and the welcoming mindset that comes with it, makes it all taste even better.

“We’re just down-home country folks,” Ward said.

As such, she emphasizes what she calls “natural” hospitality. She figures that should mean staff don’t get too personal with the clientele, but …

“That’s the way they feel with most of my customers,” she said, laughing. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, (but) it is personal!”

It’s certainly that to Kendrick, who on his way here typically drives by Forest Hill & Calvary Cemetery on Troost and figuratively tips his cap to the burial sites of Buck O’Neil and Satchel Paige.

Niecie’s reminds him some of the buzz and feel of the old Maxine’s, a favorite of Buck’s, and he finds it easy to picture Niecie’s in the heart of 18th & Vine back in the Negro Leagues era.

“It does hearken back to yesteryear …,” he said. “This would have been one of the businesses that would have absolutely been flourishing in that time and space.”

Just like in this time and space, where Ward also found a way to keep alive that earlier dream.

From 5 to 7 p.m. every first Friday (except June and July) she sings “old school” at the restaurant.

“It’s free, good clean entertainment,” she said, smiling and adding, “All you’ve got to do is come hungry.”

As with the menu, she adds “my little bit of flavor to it” as she walks around singing and is happy to have people to join in.

Nothing fancy, she says, just fun.

Like everything else about Niecie’s, where they’re always glad you came.

Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.