Kon Tiki - Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Opened March 1963.

The Kon Tiki opened as part of the new La Louisiane Restaurant, owned by Rube Levine and Jimmy Sholtz -- featuring steaks, seafood, and Italian cuisine.

Rube and Jimmy retained Mr. Edward Chun, formerly of the Polynesian Room of the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. Mr. Chun was nationally famous for his Cantonese specialties, and personally supervised the preparation of the Kon Tiki's Cantonese creations.

Later, La Louisiane became House of Chun, so presumably Mr. Chun took over the main restaurant as well.

This space was reputed to have become a gay bar in its later years.

Kon Tiki was open until 1990.

The area, south of Linwood Boulevard to 34th Street, between Main and Gillham, was deemed blighted and ridden with crime in drugs in the late 1980s, and these buildings, as well as other homes, apartments, and commercial buildings, were demolished in the early and mid-'90s as part of the so-called "Glover Plan" to be replaced by the Midtown Marketplace development, a large commercial development anchored by big box retailers Home Depot and Costco.