TV Restaurants

What Happened to Café on the Route After Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Closed verified

As of September 2026, Café on the Route has closed — confirmed via the business's own closure notice, April 28, 2026.

Primary source
triplednation.com ·
Secondary source
Yelp ·

Last verified

What the source shows: TripleD Nation's write-up on Café on the Route states it closed permanently on New Year's Eve 2012 after posting a farewell message on Facebook on 2013-01-02, and a Yelp listing updated August 2026 still marks the business as closed.

  • Season / episode Season 2, Episode 2
  • Original air date
  • Address 1101 Military Ave, Baxter Springs, KS 66713

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What happened after Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives featured Café on the Route in the 'Route 66' episode, spotlighting chef Richard Sanell's crusted catfish and Aztec chicken with rum glaze, avocado, and green chiles, served inside a converted 1870 bank building in Baxter Springs, Kansas. Sanell, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and his wife Amy opened the restaurant in the late 1990s inside the former Crowell Bank building — a structure robbed by Jesse James and Cole Younger in 1876 — and also operated it as a bed and breakfast. According to TripleD Nation's profile of the restaurant, Café on the Route closed permanently on New Year's Eve 2012, after roughly 14 years in business, posting a farewell message on Facebook on 2013-01-02; the closure was attributed to personal reasons. A Yelp listing updated in August 2026 still shows the business as permanently closed at 1101 Military Ave.

Featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives

Season / episode
Season 2, Episode 2
Original air date
Episode title
Route 66
What was featured
chef-driven Route 66 fare in a historic 1870 bank building
Role
Featured restaurant
Name on the broadcast
Café on the Route

Frequently asked questions

Is Café on the Route still open in 2026?

As of September 2026, Café on the Route has closed — confirmed via the business's own closure notice, April 28, 2026.

What happened to Café on the Route after Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives featured Café on the Route in the 'Route 66' episode, spotlighting chef Richard Sanell's crusted catfish and Aztec chicken with rum glaze, avocado, and green chiles, served inside a converted 1870 bank building in Baxter Springs, Kansas. As of September 2026, Café on the Route has closed — confirmed via the business's own closure notice, April 28, 2026.

Is Café on the Route permanently closed?

As of September 2026, Café on the Route has closed — confirmed via the business's own closure notice, April 28, 2026. We publish a closure only with a dated source behind it, and we say plainly when it has not been independently confirmed.

Where is Café on the Route located?

1101 Military Ave, Baxter Springs, KS 66713. That is the address on the record as of September 7, 2026.

What season and episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives featured Café on the Route?

Season 2, Episode 2 of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, first aired October 8, 2007. The episode is titled “Route 66”.

Every status on this site carries a confidence label and a date, and names the source it rests on. Read the Editorial & Corrections Policy for what each label means and how quickly we act on corrections. The questions above are generated from this record's own published fields — we never publish a question we cannot answer from the data.

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Nearest tracked restaurants

Visit info

Address
1101 Military Ave, Baxter Springs, KS 66713
Venue type
cafe
Official website
None found

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Sources

  • triplednation.com — https://triplednation.com/cafe-on-the-route-baxter-springs-kansas/
  • Yelp — https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-on-the-route-baxter-springs-2

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Record ddd-0043 · last verified .