Where Kansas City Meets After Midnight

Photo by Chris Mullins

If you live in Kansas City long enough, you’re going to have a night end (or morning begin?) at Town Topic. The 24-hour burger joint on Broadway is always full of characters. I got to write about a few for Punch. The first paragraph is below. The whole piece is here.

As the clock nears midnight on a recent Friday in October, the line is out the door at Town Topic in Kansas City, Missouri. Strangers willingly converse as they inch toward a smiling waitress, her white pad in hand. She slides orders to the cook working the flattop, where burger patties sizzle in neat rows. Conversation bounces off the white subway-tiled walls, but eyes remain fixed on the Formica counter, eager for the moment those wax paper–wrapped burgers and fat golden onion rings get stuffed into a white paper bag. The wait is torture. The wait is everything.