Bryan Stalder
Contributor

I stumbled into Happy Gillis almost by accident nearly twenty years ago—long before Yelp stars and Google Maps arrows started steering us toward brunch. Back then, it felt like walking into an eclectic aunt’s kitchen: mismatched plates, handwritten menus, sunlight bouncing off a hodge-podge of vintage furniture, handmade kiln-fired coffee mugs, and the kind of comfort food that somehow tasted both nostalgic and new. I started taking my wife there for quiet breakfasts, and before long, I was telling everyone I knew about this little diner on Gillis Street. We had friends who lived a block east on Pacific Avenue, so we’d occasionally meet them there for lunch.

1940 Tax Assessment Block Folder, Kansas City, MO, District 2, Block 269

When I showed a photo of the place to my wife’s grandfather—who grew up in Columbus Park—he told me he once lived in the apartments across the street and delivered groceries to residents of “The North End.” He said the building that housed Happy Gillis had been a market in his day. Only years later did I learn more of the corner’s layered history; before Happy Gillis, Carmelo “Chee Bay” Guastello owned Gillis Sundries, which opened in 1946, transforming it into the kind of penny-candy-and-everything-else shop that became a community touchpoint.

_{A cup of coffee inside Happy Gillis, looking out an east facing window at the building on Gillis Ave. photo by Bryan Stalder}

So my wife’s grandfather very likely worked for an earlier grocery tenant that predated Chee-Bay’s, sometime in the late ’30s or early ’40s. I never confirmed it with him, and he passed away in 2011, but the timeline makes sense. His memory of delivering groceries on that corner, though, still feels like a small thread tying our family into the neighborhood’s long story. In 2009, when he first told me that story, his former address—1033 Pacific—had simply been a patch of grass next to the highway ramp for decades. Today it’s a modern townhome listed for over $600k.

_{A succulent inside Happy Gillis, looking out a south facing window at an apartment building on Pacific Ave. photo by Bryan Stalder}

That little corner at Pacific and Gillis became part of our family’s routine. Todd Schulte, who first opened Happy Gillis on March 1, 2008, built something that felt deeply personal to me. He even sold soup out the back door on weekends through “Uncommon Stock”—a side hustle I always meant to try but never did. When Josh and Abbey-Jo Eans bought the restaurant from Schulte in December 2013, the vibe changed—not for the worse, just different. I found myself drifting to Schulte’s other place, Genessee Royale in the West Bottoms, without abandoning Happy Gillis entirely. Then Columbus Park Ramen opened in the old soup space, and suddenly the corner felt alive again. I was rooting for the Eans family even harder when they moved to Spain in 2022 and passed Happy Gillis on to local restaurateur Cory Stipp, who hoped to keep the concept going.

_{An outdoor dining area in the alley behind Columbus Park Ramen, photo by Bryan Stalder}

But 2025 brought turbulence. A Fourth of July weekend air-conditioning outage soon gave way to deeper issues: staff resignations, uncertainty about ownership, and a long, quiet closure that stretched from summer into fall. Columbus Park neighbors worried the restaurant’s days were numbered. For a place that once served as a neighborhood living room, the silence was loud.

Now, that corner is starting a new chapter. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Pendleton Heights residents Helen Jo and Johnny Leach—the James Beard-nominated chefs behind The Town Company—announced they had purchased the space and will reopen it in early 2026 as Dear Donna. Their message was simple: “We will work very hard to accomplish that. The cooking, drink and hospitality will be comforting, warm, and reassuring. We will be there for you.”

It’s a promising sentiment, but one that arrives in a neighborhood that knows concepts don’t always materialize. When The North End closed in 2020, a bar-forward Mexican restaurant called Hibiscus was slated to take over the space—plans that quietly evaporated before WolfPack BBQ eventually moved in. Columbus Park residents have seen ideas come and go; they’ve learned to believe in a restaurant only once they’re finally seated at the table.

For me, Happy Gillis will always be that hidden gem Todd Schulte created—an unassuming diner that became a community anchor. Whether Dear Donna can capture that feeling remains to be seen. But the neighborhood misses having a gathering spot on that corner, and if the Leaches deliver on their promise of warm hospitality, I suspect Columbus Park and the greater Northeast community will show up for them the same way it once showed up for Happy Gillis.

For now, the lights are still off at 549 Gillis Street. But a new story is waiting to start—and around here, we know better than to count out a humble corner restaurant with a very long memory behind it.