Chiefs Coach Andy Reid is right: This Kansas City classic has the best burgers in town

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In the ’70s and ’80s, when my grandpa worked at the long-gone TWA downtown, he’d eat a Town Topic hamburger for lunch nearly every day.

Sometimes with fries, other times with a chocolate malt. But always a hamburger.

“And he’d tell me he’d eaten a salad when he came home,” my grandma told me recently, rolling her eyes with a smile.

Forty-some years later — and 86 years since the tiny diner first opened near Union Station — not much has changed about Town Topic.

The squat building with its signature sparkling marquee sits at 2021 Broadway Blvd., in the heart of the Crossroads. There are only about eight or nine seats inside, leather-bound stools lining the long counter and window, but they turn over fairly quickly.

Everything about Town Topic still feels old school, from the black-and-white checkered floors to the stainless steel ceiling and retro countertops. Every order is handwritten on a notepad, passed down to the grill cooks, and put together in front of you. It makes you feel a part of the bustle, transported 50 years back in time.

The menu is still classic, too.

Famously 5 cents then and $4.75 now, Town Topic’s cheeseburgers are hands down the best in the city. Midsized patties sizzle on the grill in front of you, smashed atop grilled onions, then layered with pickles on a toasted bun and adorned with just the right amount of ketchup and mustard.

“The process hasn’t changed a bit,” explains Misty Waite, a manager at the diner for 13 years. “It’s simple, but it always worked.”

Simple is perhaps the best description of the food. It’s greasy, for sure, but miles better than greasy fast food. The grilled onions elevate the burger’s juiciness, and every bite is a perfect medley of cheese and meat and condiments.

“It’s just the taste,” Waite says. “I don’t know, you can’t beat it. It’s just something about ours … just everything about it.”

She’s right — it’s better than your average burger. Even Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid, a man who loves his cheeseburgers, has said Town Topic serves the best in town.

I’ll usually pair my double ($6.75) with a side of delectably crispy tater tots ($3.50), best doused in ketchup straight from a classic squirt bottle. I’ll add on a strawberry malt ($5.20), so thick it’s served with a spoon.

There used to be 12 Town Topics throughout Kansas City, Waite tells me. Now, only two remain: the Broadway location I visited recently and another that’s hardly two blocks away, at 1900 Baltimore Ave.

Pictures of former employees line the top walls, watching over customers as they dine at the counter. “I need to replace those with newer older ones,” Waite says. She wants people, visitors and workers alike, to recognize the faces in the frames — like Shirlene Miller, who for 47 years served customers at Town Topic and died recently at age 85.

Because above all else, the diner itself is a community. Everyone knows one another’s name, and everyone’s eager to learn their stories.

“I’ve seen quite a few people grow up,” Waite says.

As I finish up my last few tater tots, licking lingering salt off my fingers, a mom and her young son walk in. It’s his first time here, she explains to the cashier, who beams with excitement and understanding.

It makes me remember when my grandparents brought me for the first time, back when there was still one in Mission. I was young, maybe 8 or 9, but I still remember my awe knowing how beloved this faded, compact diner was to so many Kansas Citians, past and present.

The mom takes a picture of her son holding up his milkshake, ketchup dotting the corners of his mouth.

“Have they changed at all from when you were here?” he asks.

She shakes her head with a smile. “It feels the same.”