We were craving breakfast and started searching places we’ve never been to or never reviewed. A quick Google search brought us to Derby, KS to a restaurant we had never heard of. Our latest visit brought us to Little Firehouse Cafe. The restaurant sits in the former Mija’s Restaurant which was a long time staple of Derby. Once new owners took over, they renamed it to what it is today. The menu is full of home cooked meals in a mom and pop atmosphere filled with firefighter memorabilia.
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120 N Baltimore Ave
Derby, KS 67037
316-788-8922
Tuesday – Sunday: 6am – 2pm
Cash/Card Accepted
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On the menu, we found many popular breakfast staples. If you don’t want breakfast, they also had burgers, sandwiches and other simple diner type dishes.
I went with one of their signature breakfast options that consisted of two eggs scrambled with onions, green peppers, and sausage and served with a side of hashbrowns and toast. My girlfriend went with the big A** pancake and two eggs. The big A** pancake was indeed big. It felt like it was around 12 inches long and barely managing to stay on the plate. It’s a sight to behold.
The very first thing my girlfriend noticed was how bland and watered down the coffee not just looked but tasted. After a couple sips, she was done with it. My two egg scramble breakfast was simple, made as ordered and satisfying. It’s a dish that’s hard to mess up but I had no complaints with it. The pancake wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t light and fluffy like you’d find at some of the popular breakfast spots in Wichita. While it was a fun visual gimmick and certainly “Instagram worthy”, it wasn’t a memorable pancake by any means.
Little Firehouse Cafe had a huge following in the morning we stopped by. You could tell they had so many regulars by all the conversations between guests and staff. It was like “Cheers” where everybody knows your name except people were there for the food. It was the exact vibe anyone would expect from a hometown diner. The service was fantastic and we had zero gripes about that.
The food just didn’t strike us as anything that would warrant rave reviews. But given the lack of locally owned diners in Derby, we saw why people loved it. For many people, they grew up eating at Mija’s so it’s what they know, like and are comfortable with. It really reminded me of Riverside Cafe.
Now I just need to figure out what the asterisk in Big A** pancake stood for. 🙂
Here’s their menu:
Happy Dining,
Eddy
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