Chubby's: Popular downtown KC diner opens Northland location

One of the great things about living in parts of Platte County is the bustling streets, tall skyscrapers, and swarms of people usually associated with Kansas City’s downtown can be as near or far away as you want.

Chubby’s on Broadway, which has grown into a Kansas City icon for many, recently brought the all-day breakfast menu and old-style cooked burgers associated with their long-time downtown location to the Northland. Not known to have a high supply of breakfast or diner-oriented restaurants, the Northland is now home to a 24-hour diner that has served Kansas City for 23 years and opened its first satellite location on May 23 in the Boardwalk Shopping Center at 6332 NW Barry Road.

Chubby’s, a spin-off name of the favorite hangout “Tubby’s Drive-in” from the 1980’s movie Hollywood Knights, was started by the LaBruzza family in a small diner on Independence Avenue in 1988. The business later moved to a storefront space on Broadway before eventually expanding to the location it’s now called home for ten years. Nick and Vito LaBruzza took over the family business a couple years ago from their father, also named Nick. However, the Northland location is owned and operated by Vito’s brother-in-law, Vince Frew, whose sister married into the family several years ago.

Frew, a lifelong Northlander, had thought about and talked through several different ideas for an expansion, one of which included a Gladstone location and smaller concept of a 6am-2pm Chubby’s Express. But when 54th Street Bar & Grill opted to move across the interstate into Zona Rosa in 2010, they left a location already fitted to serve another quality restaurant. Having worked in AmeriStar Casino’s restaurants for nearly 11 years, it was in 2009 that Frew started working with his brother-in-laws at their Broadway location to learn the business better.

“I wanted to learn how they did things. They’ve been in business for 23 years, obviously they’re doing something right,” Frew said. “We had talked about putting one up here (Northland), but that one (on Broadway) keeps them busy enough, so I just licensed the name from them.”

While the concept and menu are identical, Chubby’s on Barry hopes to capitalize on the area’s breakfast and late night voids not only by serving breakfast all-day, but also staying open 24-hours on the weekends to capitalize on the handful of bars in the area open until 3 a. m.

“There’s very limited breakfast around here. I’d like to think our food is better than IHOP or Waffle House,” Frew said. “In that regard, I don’t think anyone can compete with us in terms of portion size and quality of food in my opinion. With the overnight crowd, we’ve got the potential to do really well.”

One difference between the Broadway and Barry locations is that the Northland location will soon have a liquor license and carry a limited selection of wine and beer.

“Hopefully sometime in August, we’ll have beer and wine,” Frew said. “A limited selection, because this isn’t a bar and grill, but we’ll have it available for people that want it.”

A veteran of the food service industry, Frew says they’ve gone through the same things any new restaurant goes through which explains his cautious approach to opening the business. He wanted all the kinks worked out before aggressively marketing the new location.

“We’ve had our ups and downs, but that’s expected and why we’ve gone light on our advertising with a softer opening. I’m a little more comfortable now and we’ll probably start advertising more soon,” Frew said.

Even with a presence that spans over two decades in Kansas City, Frew says there are as many people exciting about the opening of their restaurant as there are those who aren’t as familiar.

“There are a lot of people that were excited to get one up north after going to the one downtown, but we still get a lot of people that don’t know we’re here yet,” Frew said. “For as long as Chubby’s has been in Kansas City, there are still some people who’ve never heard of it.”

As far as menu items, Chubby’s will feature their old-style hamburgers, which are cooked on a flat-top, not on a grill, so as Frew says “all the juice stays in the burger, not a drop of seasoning on it like it has been all along.” To go with it, chocolate shakes and malts. And of course, the all-day breakfast menu features omelettes, biscuits and gravy, and other traditional morning choices.

Special session called after legislators fail to address jobs

Republican members of the Missouri House and Senate along with Governor Jay Nixon proved last week it isn't just the political divide between the parties that leads to an inability to accomplish some things; it's politicians themselves in general. Unable to pass any kind of legislation addressing the state’s economic situation with a jobs bill, also known as an economic development package, during the nearly five month period allotted to them by the Missouri Constitution, legislators must now convene a special session to meet what most Missourians agree is currently the state’s most pressing issue. Not only have our elected representatives wasted the resources and time given to them, they’ve asked for more to accomplish what they promised to voters was their top priority.

Partisan gridlock is something we’ve sadly become familiar with in Washington with Republicans and Democrats in a constant struggle for the upper-hand. In Jefferson City though, the situation is very different after the November 2010 elections gave Republicans historically wide majorities in both the House and Senate. To demonstrate, there are now as many freshmen Republicans in the House of Representatives as there are in the entire Democratic caucus. They could virtually run the mill on any issue they felt was a priority without Democrats being able to do much other than serve as an annoyance to stop it. The only thing standing between them in the legislative process is the Democratic Governor, Jay Nixon. To the dismay of many in his party, Nixon has made some very politically calculating decisions in his first term to avoid hot button issues that could be potentially harmful to his re-election. This includes being cautious when it comes to vetoing legislation sent to his desk from the Republican legislature.

With these factors in their favor, Republicans should have finally been able to put together their vision of a comprehensive agenda to strengthen a fragile economy, right? Wrong. Squabbles between the Senate and House are normal in the legislative process, but the Senate, which has traditionally leaned towards the more mature of the two as it usually holds more mild-mannered and veteran lawmakers, seems to have shifted away from that tendency recently to find itself just as likely to be an obstacle to pending legislation as the more populated House.

It may seem like forever ago, but the election of November 2010 was only nine months ago. One thing you won't forget is the message that rang true then and even truer now. Missouri and the United States need jobs. “Jobs, jobs, jobs” were the slogans repeated over and over again by candidates across the country. It’s now been seven months since many of those same candidates were sworn into office and the state of Missouri still has nothing to show for it.

Unlike members of Congress at the federal level, our state legislators serve part-time. January through May, for only a little over three days a week, they travel to Jefferson City to bring solutions to our state’s biggest problems. When the state constitution was established it wasn't thought there was a need for full-time legislators. It was thought they could easily meet their civic duties and have time to pursue other activities whether it was to establish a career, provide for a family, etc. At least that was the thought.

So with such limited time, most of us would feel compelled to dig in immediately and begin discussing, developing, and considering solutions to the state’s problems. In reality, what ends up happening is the first couple weeks of each session are mostly wasted. Any votes that do take place are procedural while much the rest are non-binding resolutions to serve as ideological benchmarks to cite in political mailers for the next election campaign. The majority of the rest of session centers on establishing a balanced state budget. Of course, there are other bills discussed and eventually passed, but many of the serious negotiations and time is spent on the budget. This is a problem as much attributed to the institution as it is the individual lawmakers.

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution and the principle of federalism are based in part on the ability for states to implement their own creative and unique ideas within their borders. This is the task state representatives and state senators are assigned. It is not to constantly grandstand and scold the federal government on issues in Washington D.C. of which they have no control, but to craft programs and policies on a state level that have the opportunity to succeed. This should be done even if it is, as they see it, in spite of obstacles presented by federal government; not to serve as an excuse for inaction. Elections have consequences most of which are rewarding, but with it also comes a burden of responsibility to do what voters were told you would do.

The Missouri legislature and state government in general don’t get the deserved coverage it needs to keep its citizens up to date on progress made on the state’s challenging issues. That’s why it’s easy for decisions made (or lack thereof) to go unnoticed by most taxpayers. One thing certain is while the opportunity to bring an economic development package forward was wasted earlier this year, unlike other issues that are continuously kicked down the road, Missouri will hopefully and finally have a jobs plan to carry out come September that both the wide Republican majority and Governor Nixon will praise. While politically slow and inconvenient for politicians, the wait is nothing compared to the people of Missouri and unemployed job seekers who need its contents the most.