21 rooms & Las Vegas grandeur made long-gone KC area restaurant iconic: ‘We were huge’

Uniquely KC is a Star series exploring what makes Kansas City special. Are you feeling nostalgic for a Kansas City area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories, and we may write about the place in a future story.

In 1975, Carroll Meyer would stroll down the long hallways of his North Kansas City restaurant.

His 21 dining rooms, altogether, could seat some 2,000 customers. The restaurant was bedecked in pirate decor — netting, treasure chests, anchors.

Bring Las Vegas to Kansas City: It wasn’t Carroll’s initial goal when he opened the Gold Buffet at 503 E. 18th Ave. , but more than a decade in, that’s exactly what he did.

While diners munched on their choice of 80-plus menu items, performers like comedian and actor Red Skelton would launch into their routine, eliciting a roar of applause from the crowd. The performer to take the stage the next month might be Jerry Lee Lewis or The Oak Ridge Boys.

At the time, the metro had an Overland Park bus, a downtown bus and so on. But the North Kansas City bus was simply called The Gold Bus, in honor of the acclaimed restaurant.

An advertisement from 1975 boasted: “You haven’t seen Kansas City until you’ve visited the Gold Buffet …”

Truth be told, the late Carroll Meyer was captivated with the lavishness of Vegas. He visited often, to see the stage lights and feel the thrill of sitting at the poker table. The savvy businessman (and good friend of Len Dawson ) looked like a movie star himself, son John Meyer said.

While the restaurant was in operation from 1961 to 1994, the comedy and musical acts only lasted a few years, in the ‘70s. But from its Iowa bowling alley origins, the Gold Buffet was a shining star to many throughout its lifetime.

“We were huge,” said John, who helped manage the place when he was old enough. “We served over half a million people a year.”

Built to impress

In its heyday, its seven buffet lines offered turkey, roast beef, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese pizza, Italian sausage and so on.

A dessert cart brought out treats, like fudge pie, cherry tarts or cheesecake.

Susie Fairley remembers the deviled eggs particularly well.

As a child, Fairley visited the Gold Buffet for good grades and her grandparents’ visits. Its 30,000 square feet felt mesmerizingly huge.

“I thought it was beautiful,” Fairley said. “There was so much of everything. … It seemed very much what Vegas would be like.”

The crystal chandeliers, dim lighting and velvet booths gave the swashbuckling restaurant a luxurious feel. Each dining room had a different name and theme.

The Hacienda, John recalled, was a Spanish-style dining space with stucco and dark wood. The Amber Room was covered in gold accents, and customers sat in bright coral chairs.

But its most spectacular area by far was the Celebrity Room. That’s where the Gold Buffet’s shows took place. A heavy gold curtain separated a stage from a room with crimson walls and floors. Spectators sat at tables draped in white cloth and ate by candlelight.

Once a month, the dining room lights would darken. Then a spotlight would land in the center, as the curtains flew back. The audience clapped and cheered for whomever was standing center stage, sometimes a big name from Hollywood, like Foster Brooks.

When the Gold Buffet first opened, stringent liquor laws in North Kansas City prohibited alcohol anywhere in the restaurant, except the members-only Pirates Club room, which cost $5 to join.

Kids who cleaned their plates were offered free (plastic) gold rings. That was young Fairley’s favorite part. Her sister’s, too.

“They had it real lavishly displayed with gold coins … like a treasure chest,” she said.

John Meyer remembers the rings. His father had the idea to hand them out because he hated to see children waste food.

Especially their food. A Star writer raved about it in a 1967 review.

“It’s a rare buffet dinner line in which you can’t find at least one dish that you think is pretty good,” wrote Bart Everett. “But much rarer is the buffet line in which there are enough dishes you consider really good to cover your plate.”

Iowa beginnings

While the Gold Buffet became very grand, it started humbly outside the Kansas City area.

In the ‘50s, Carroll and his father, Alvin Meyer, built a 10-lane bowling alley in the small town of Winterset, Iowa — the birthplace of John Wayne. They decided to offer a small buffet at the alley on Sundays, which eventually attracted out-of-towners.

“Next thing you know it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then it was every day,” John said.

Folks were driving some 40 minutes from the big city of Des Moines, Iowa, for the buffet. Originally, it was called the Gold Room.

In 1961, Carroll drove to North Kansas City to look at another bowling alley with a convention-style restaurant next to it. He liked what he saw. The 500-seat space became the Gold Buffet’s second location.

Carroll kept the bowling alley next to it, which also served food. Later, he expanded the restaurant to include 1,000 seats.

When he built his showroom in the ‘70s, the Gold Buffet doubled in size yet again. But the Vegas -style shows stopped when “we found out we couldn’t make much money off those,” John said.

On peak days, the Gold Buffet could serve 6,000 people. It was a multimillion dollar business then, and at one point, John planned to open locations in Denver, Omaha and Indianapolis.

But the restaurant’s popularity tapered off when more buffets began to open north of the river. The restaurant closed voluntarily for a couple of days in 1992 after a few sour visits from the health department.

In 1994, with John running the Classic Cup Cafe on the Country Club Plaza, and Carroll in his late 60s, the Gold Buffet closed .

The buffet became the AMF Pro Bowl Lanes and Finnigan’s Hall shortly after, but that closed in 2021. There’s nothing open there today.

Right before the restaurant closed, Fairley, her sister, and her father all had lunch one last time at the Gold Buffet.

The three piled their plates high one last time and reminisced about the shows they saw, the food they tasted.

Is there anything like it in Kansas City today?

“No,” Fairley said.

“There’s really nothing I can compare it to, in terms of scale of all the food they had. Just how it was decorated, kind of like a casino, in a way.”