Tiny cafe in tiny Kansas town gets big crowds for its Friday-night German buffet

It might be the most Kansas experience you could have.

Hop in your car on a Friday night and point it north on I-135. You’ll drive past miles of farm fields, zipping by Newton and Goessel, and after about an hour — not long after you’ve passed the giant, white Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church on K-15 — you’ll arrive in Durham, population 106.

When you pull up to the Main Street Cafe, it will appear to be the only business open on downtown’s main drag, and the main drag is a gravel road. Every available parking place will likely be taken.

You’ll step inside the door and join the 80 or so other hungry people who have nearly doubled Durham’s population for the night, drawn by the promise of a German buffet, a table full of homemade cream pies and a whole lot of family-style, Mennonite cooking.

Main Street Cafe is owned by Wendell Wedel, a Durham resident and member of the Church of God in Christ Mennonite. His much-loved eatery serves breakfast and lunch Mondays through Saturdays and opens for its popular German buffet on Friday nights only. That’s when his cafe turns into what feels like one giant church potluck.

Wedel admits that his buffet is not strictly German, though it has several German dishes. Nonetheless, it has become known across the state as a German buffet.

Each week, people will crowd into the tight entrance, waiting for a table to free up in one of the two dining rooms. When they’re finally seated and their iced tea is ordered, they are invited to grab a round divided Styrofoam plate and fill it up from the tiny buffet set up on two folding tables that are loaded with crock pots and small steam table.

Even though the buffet is small, the food is plentiful. It includes Wedel’s signature homemade sausage, available both baked and smoked, plus a crock pot full of tender sliced brisket. It also has fried catfish and hush puppies with tartar sauce from a squeeze bottle. There’s mashed potatoes with an ice cream scoop as a server, a crock pot full of baked potatoes, a dish of sauerkraut, and a bowl of chicken gravy. There are also big baskets of flaky biscuits and pillow-y yeast rolls, both homemade.

Every few minutes, Wedel’s sister-in-law brings out a new serving of vereniki, a traditional Mennonite steamed dumpling that’s stuffed with cottage cheese and meant to be topped with sausage gravy, which is conveniently warming in another nearby crock pot.

Those who still have room when they’re done with the buffet — and everyone appears to have room — can peruse another folding table that’s overloaded with slices of pie: banana cream, coconut cream, chocolate cream, cherry, blueberry, peach, pumpkin, apple. There’s also cherry cheesecake assembled in a a square baking dish, a pan of bread pudding, and lots of homemade cookies. There’s even a self-serve, soft-serve ice cream machine.

The dining room is packed with people who have spilled out of the cars parked out front. The license plates on those cars show that people have traveled from counties near and far — Harvey, Marion, McPherson, Dickinson, Butler, Sedgwick — and they appear to be a mix of city folks, farm folks and members of Wedel’s church, many in traditional Mennonite dress and head coverings.

All eat with equal enthusiasm.

Seldom a slow Friday

Wedel opened Main Street Cafe 23 years ago, and he’s been drawing crowds ever since. He and his wife, Linda, are two of Durham’s 106 residents.

Wedel grew up watching his mother cook, and when he married, he ended up in the kitchen assisting Linda with her role on the church food committee. One year, the committee needed him to make large quantities of burgers for an auction, so Wedel — a welder by trade — made a griddle using a half-inch steel plate and scrap iron from the sides of a stock trailer. He and the griddle produced 600 burgers for that auction.

In the late 1980s, Wedel started making sausage, and word of its deliciousness spread until everyone in town wanted it. People started telling him he should open a restaurant, and eventually, he did. He heard that the cafe in downtown Durham was closing, and a local banker offered to help him finance the remodel if he’d take it over.

The Main Street Cafe opened on Oct. 4, 1995. In 2001, Wedel added the buffet, though it was a tight fit. He had to relocate his salad bar for the night, and traffic was still pretty congested.

Three years later, he was able to expand into the building to his north, giving him a second dining room and more space for the buffet. Since then, he’s rarely has trouble filling his place with customers.

Main Street Cafe also serves breakfast Mondays through Saturdays from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m. — traditional favorites like bacon and eggs, pancakes, omelets, hash browns, biscuits and sausage gravy and homemade cinnamon rolls. On holidays and special occasions, Main Street Cafe offers a breakfast buffet. (The next will happen on Saturday.)

It serves lunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and on Wednesdays, bierocks are the special. Fridays are chicken fried steak days. The rest of the lunch menu is populated with burgers, sausage sandwiches, pork tenderloin sandwiches, shrimp dinners and honey glazed ham dinners.

And pie. There’s always pie.

But the big draw is that all-you-can-eat German buffet, Wedel said. People often are surprised that it’s only $14 (with tax), especially since it includes brisket and dessert. Most restaurants don’t include all-you-can-eat dessert on their buffets, Wedel notes, much less a pricy meat like brisket.

Word spreads each year he’s open, and if you visit on a Friday, you’ll easily spot Wedel. He’s the man with the white beard and the no-longer-white apron, buzzing around the dining room, chatting with customers and clearing tables as quickly as he can, waiting for the next line of cars to drive down that gravel road.

“We seldom have a slow Friday night,” he said.

Main Street Cafe

What: A destination eatery in Durham, population 106

Where: 517 S. Douglas, Durham, 620-732-2096

Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays for breakfast and lunch, 5 to 8 p.m. Fridays for the famous German buffet

Website: wedelcafe.com (all the mainstreetcafe.com addresses were taken)

This story was originally published October 25, 2018 at 5:26 AM.