One of the best restaurants in Kansas opens four days a week on the wind-swept plains, an hour beyond the nearest stoplight. In a county that’s lost more than half of its population, Fly Boy Brewery & Eats offers a renewed sense of hope — and a cheeseburger worth driving for.
It’s rush hour on a Friday evening in Sylvan Grove, Kansas, and Main Street is mostly empty, save for the rare truck or tractor.
But inside one of the rough limestone buildings, Fly Boy Brewery and Eats are filling up.
“We eat here as often as we can,” said Sandy Labertew, sitting at a table of eight. “Because the business is in Sylvan and we want to do as much as we can to keep things open here.”
Like thousands of other small towns, Sylvan Grove was built around agriculture, to supply and educate big families running lots of small farms in the area. There was a rail stop here where the grain went out and money came in.
Those days are long gone. Now the families are small, and the farms themselves are generally enormous and are increasingly owned by people living in distant cities. The railroad pulled out years ago. Since 1880, the town has shed 65% of its population.
It’s tough to make a living out here, and not the most obvious place to buy a restaurant. But that’s exactly what Grant Wagner did three years ago.
“I just got tired of making food for rich people,” Wagner said. “I wanted to go back to making food that I cared about for people I cared about.”
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Categories: Kansas, Business