Seventy odd years on 31st Street
Since 1951
Kitty's was opened in the early 1950s by Paul Kawakami, a Japanese American who had been confined to a U.S. internment camp out West during the Second World War, and who arrived in Kansas City afterward on a one way bus ticket. He and his wife Kitty ran it together. They retired and sold the place in the 1980s.
Charley Soulivong took it on in 1999, along with the building and the recipes, and has run it with his family ever since. The tenderloins are still cut and breaded by hand, the same way.
Those details come from a Kansas City Star feature that still hangs framed on the wall inside, among the clippings and the business cards.
1951
On the sign out front
1999
Charley Soulivong takes over
4.7
From 1,751 Google reviews
