From sausage to caviar: The Evolution of Kansas City’s neighborhood markets

My grandmother is the world’s best home cook, and unlike everyone else who believes this cliche, I’m the only one telling the truth. (Julia Child be damned.)

Inimitable in her ability to turn a simplified food pyramid of meats, starches, and “dairy-assisted” vegetables into a meal that nourishes soul-deep, she learned it all from the farm-reared sensibilities of her German immigrant mother. Sunday dinners of pot roast and potato dumplings — the latter, more akin to the fufu of Fannie’s West African Cuisine than the Southern biscuit-kind of Corner Cafe — survived generations thanks to a humble box mix found only at Werner’s Specialty Foods in Mission.

Then COVID hit. Global imports collapsed. That mix vanished from shelves and Amazon became our only option. While our family recipe was sav