The places are set, ready to be taken advantage of by your party.
Food & Entertaining
Dining Without Doing Dishes
For hassle-free home-cooked meals not at home, The David House delivers.

Sometimes you just don’t feel like cooking. Especially during the hectic holiday season when it involves feeding extended family and shopping with a grocery list as long as Santa’s “Good Boys and Girls” list, not to mention preparing your guest rooms for when those top pants buttons start to pop and the tryptophan kicks in. It’s not that you’re family-unfriendly, you just want quality togetherness, not a bunch of work.

Monica Leibowitz at The David House gets it, but she’s loved to cook ever since she learned to peel a potato as a child in her native Romania. As proprietor of The David House, Monica brings her lifelong love of cooking and hosting to the private dining, overnight and special events establishment. “I love to accommodate people and make them feel like they’re somewhere special, because they are,” she says.

The David House is one of the oldest buildings in Bonner Springs, built by A.J. Bond in 1912. The David family, including the mayor and town marshal, moved in shortly after and stayed 30 years. Later families embraced the history of the home and preserved it. When Monica and her partners purchased it in 2007, they, too, maintained the home’s original details but renovated it for modern living.

Rather than renting individual rooms, guests rent the entire house, which includes three bedrooms, two dining rooms, an office, kitchen, bar and loft media room. Reservations begin with basic accommodations but can include additional services such as a cocktail party, bunko party or poker night.

“Many Bonner Springs residents definitely take advantage of this place when friends and family are in town, but we also have a lot of girl groups or church groups from surrounding areas who need a place like this,” Monica says.

She also suggests use of the space for Mother’s and Father’s Day brunch, bridal events, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties and reunions, as well as dinner any ol’ night of the week. That gave me an idea.

My husband and I occasionally participate in a small, informal Sunday Supper Club, Monday Meal or Taco Tuesday with some good friends, depending on our schedules and culinary whims. As the name implies, dinner could be as easy as browning meat or as complex as Greek dip taramosalata. Mostly we enjoy the wine and company, so when we recently expanded the group, we turned over the cooking duties to Monica.

A cool fall evening brought eight of us together at the home, just off K-32, a mile west of Highway 7. Monica served wine from behind the bar but moved efficiently from there to the kitchen, where heavy smells rolled out into the hallway. Large pocket doors pushed back opened the first floor up for mingling, but they can easily be closed off for other events such as corporate meetings, making a wall for a projector screen.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner can be plated or buffet-style. We opted for a more casual spread with a selection of prepared meats and vegetables set aside in the hearth room. Everyone took a spot in the living room, facing each other at tables set up in a square. We took our time, pouring many libations before finally calling it quits. While staff retrieved and cleaned our plates, we dawdled out to the wide front porch under a glowing frame of white lights that outline the building. This part of town is rather sleepy except for the trains that pass through, thunderous yet calming, seemingly wrapped up in the past history of the house. When it got too cold, we returned inside where the fresh cream was being whipped and the pumpkin pie was being pulled out of the oven. Our delicious meal had its finale and we could head home without having to do the dishes.

“I want everyone to feel at home and say the service was good, too,” Monica says, stating the ideal combination for a weary cook looking to outsource dinner.

913.667.8222
www.thedavidhouse.com