4 Kansas Highway Diners That Only Open on Certain Days

Table 529 sits on Main Street in WaKeeney, a block off Interstate 70, and it doesn’t keep the hours a typical small-town cafe does.

It’s not the only one.

These are the Kansas highway diners that only open on certain days.

1. Guy & Mae’s Tavern

Guy & Mae’s Tavern sits right off Interstate 35 in Williamsburg, the kind of exit a driver only notices because of the sign.

Franklin County offers little else at that exit besides fuel stations, which makes the tavern’s crowded weekend nights stand out even more.

The tavern posts hours of Tuesday through Saturday, and it’s closed Sundays and Mondays without exception.

Friday nights get loud.

Friday and Saturday nights run late, with the kitchen serving chicken-fried steak and tenderloin sandwiches until close to midnight.

Then the whole building goes dark for two straight days.

Tuesday’s the earliest you’ll get a table again.

2. Prairie Nut Hut

Prairie Nut Hut serves mountain oysters and chicken-fried steak out of Altoona, where Business U.S. 75 crosses K-47 in Wilson County.

The restaurant opened as a tavern in the 1940s before adding its trademark mountain-oyster plate in the late 1960s.

A six-stool counter still runs along one wall.

Regulars still toss peanut shells straight onto the wooden floor, a house rule nobody bothers to sweep up between customers.

Prairie Nut Hut is closed Sundays and Mondays, open Tuesday through Saturday only.

The building sits dark both days, no exceptions.

3. Aunt Netter’s Cafe

Aunt Netter’s Cafe runs out of a small storefront on Highway 40 in Lecompton, a Douglas County town on the Kansas River.

The cafe sits about a block from the state’s Constitution Hall, the building where Kansas Territory once wrote a pro-slavery constitution in the 1850s.

Homemade pies, cinnamon rolls, and cupcakes built its name, alongside a breakfast menu that isn’t afraid of ghost pepper cheese.

Aunt Netter’s Cafe is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, open Wednesday through Sunday instead.

Friday’s the only day dinner is served, with the kitchen staying open until 7 p.m.

4. Table 529

Table 529 opened on WaKeeney’s Main Street, a block off Interstate 70 in a town sitting roughly halfway between Kansas City and Denver.

WaKeeney has held the title of Christmas City of the High Plains since 1950, thanks to a lighted tree the town puts up every December right off the interstate.

The restaurant only opens four days a week, Tuesday through Friday, and stays closed all weekend plus Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday keep to lunch, 11 to 2, while Thursday and Friday add a dinner shift from 5 to 8.

There’s no walk-in dinner outside those two windows.

Chicken Annie’s Original, Closed Mondays

Chicken Annie’s Original serves family-style fried chicken dinners out of Crawford County, reached off U.S. Highway 69 between Girard and Pittsburg.

Girard sits a short drive from Pittsburg on U.S. 69, and the two towns share the same stretch of highway that put Crawford County’s chicken dinners on the map.

The restaurant is closed Mondays.

Its kitchen only runs dinner hours Tuesday through Saturday, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday’s the exception.

On Sundays, Chicken Annie’s opens at 11 in the morning and stays open clear through 8 at night.

That’s the one day a walk-in doesn’t have to time a visit around dinner hours.

Crawford County’s Chicken House Roots

Crawford County’s fried chicken tradition didn’t start with just one family kitchen.

Chicken Mary’s opened a few years after Chicken Annie’s, in the early 1940s, after Joe Zerngast’s health forced him out of the mines and into his wife Mary’s kitchen instead.

Mary cooked out of her home kitchen at first, then moved the operation into a bigger space by 1945 once the crowds outgrew her table.

Ted Gebhardt came next.

Gebhardt’s opened in 1946, after Ted spent months testing a fried chicken recipe until it was good enough to serve to strangers.