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For the last eight years, Heidi Gardner has made New York City’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza her home as the longest-tenured female cast member currently on Saturday Night Live. While she’s proud to be part of the legendary comedy show as it toasts its 50th anniversary this weekend — with SNL50: The Homecoming Concert on Peacock on Friday, Feb. 14, leading up to the big SNL50: The Anniversary Special on NBC and Peacock on Sunday, Feb. 16 — a quick browse of her Instagram stories or a glimpse of her frequent red-and-gold outfits during the show’s goodnights leaves no doubt that her greatest love is her hometown of Kansas City.
“Kansas City is like a hug — it is like my comfort place,” the 41-year-old actress-comedian told Travel + Leisure on a call from KC last week. “I feel like myself when I’m here.”
She first heard that description from a friend who visited her a few summers ago. “She just felt a warm embrace from the second she stepped off the plane,” Gardner said. “I feel that way, but I grew up here, so it’s always felt like that to me.”
For most of her life, she said travelers tended to think of the city, which straddles Missouri and Kansas, as a “stop-over town,” but there’s been a shift in the last decade. “People are starting to realize there’s so much more here, and it’s turning into a destination spot, which feels really good,” she said.
Synonymous with the city is its barbecue scene — and Gardner is so well-versed that without missing a beat, she rattled off a list by specialties. For burnt ends, her top pick is LC’s Bar-B-Q, right down the street from where she grew up, while she goes to Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque for its ribs, Gates BBQ for the “most nostalgic sauce,” and Slap’s BBQ for its sausage that “legit melts in your mouth, like butter.”
Courtesy of Heidi Gardner
She also suggested first-time visitors head to River Market, which is a “cool open-air market with lots of vendors that’s very fun.” It’s also home to the Arabia Steamboat Museum, highlighting American frontier life. Also itinerary-worthy are throwback movie theaters Screenland Armour and Stray Cat Film Center, “which are just really nice places that care about movies — just really good vibes,” as well as Nelson Atkins Museum of Art and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in nearby Overland Park, Kansas, which just debuted a Jeremy Scott exhibit last weekend.
If you happen to be in town the first weekend of the month, she said not to miss out on First Fridays, when the Crossroads Arts District springs to life in an art gallery open house of sorts, along with artisan shops, food trucks, craft breweries, and art alleys.
One of her favorite spots to stay is the boutique hotel No Vacancy with a bar space called Le Lounge, where she celebrated her birthday last July, describing it as “transportive” since it “feels like Kansas City, but also Moroccan and European” and is “just so well curated.”
Since Kansas City is ultimately a “sports town,” she recommends catching a Kansas City Current (the women’s soccer team) game, especially because its venue CPKC Stadium just opened in 2024 and is the first stadium ever built for a women’s professional sports team, “which is a shocking fact,” and the games are “such a fun time.” Also worth checking out: Kansas City Royals games at Kauffman Stadium.
And, of course, there’s the biggest reason for Kansas City being on the map more than ever in the last decade: her beloved Kansas City Chiefs. “I won’t lie: having a world championship football team has helped us,” she said. Despite Sunday’s Super Bowl loss, she posted after the game: “Thank you for putting it out there every Sunday. You give us so much to smile about.”
Window or aisle?
Window.
Castmate who would make the best travel buddy?
Ego [Nwodim]. She has the best taste and will get you to the best restaurant, whether it’s considered the best or has something like the best soup dumplings. She knows everything.
Best SNL after-party location?
I’m going to be the only person who says this — and am probably not cool for this — but Rosa Mexicano. Rather than getting a steak at 3 a.m., I can get chips and really good guacamole and a margarita. That’s the perfect thing after a show.
Next destination on your travel wish list?
I want to go to Japan, especially Tokyo, because I’m still an amusement park person. I want to go to Tokyo Disneyland and Sanrio Puroland.
Must-have item in your carry-on?
Honestly, a toothbrush. I love to just brush my teeth halfway through the flight. It wakes you up.
Caro Scarimbolo/Courtesy of NBC
In fact, it was Gardner herself who campaigned directly to her SNL boss Lorne Michaels for the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce to host the show before Taylor Swift was in the picture — the ultimate proof of how respected she is at the comedy mainstay broadcast live from 30 Rock’s Studio 8H.
“When I started there, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m at Rockefeller Center!’” she recalled of her first season in 2017. “There’s so much to look at, and you think of the history of the building with SNL and The Tonight Show.” Nowadays, it’s a bit of a different feel: “I’ve made friends with so many of the security guards, it’s like walking down a row of friendly faces as you get to work.”
Still, the magic of passing through the building’s lobby is never lost on her, as she reminds travelers to take a moment to look up at the murals — the same piece of advice her co-star Colin Jost passed along to T+L last year, recounting the storied past of Spanish artist José Maria Sert’s fresco.
“Take a good look around the walls,” she said. “Plus every Saturday, they bring in these new floral arrangements in the most giant vases I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s just really impressive — such a beautiful space.”
But she said the SNL staff’s latest hotspot is down in the Rockefeller Center basement: Lil Sweet Treat. “We’re all obsessed — it’s an addiction, and it’s bad,” she said of the candy shop with a rotating offering of international gummies and sweets. “You’ll go in one day and it’s gummy fish and frogs, and the next they’re getting so specific, like gummy Ferraris and ashtrays — they’re running out of items!”
Always seeing the comical side of things, Gardner — who often has sketches and Weekend Update characters she’s penned on air — admitted travel experiences often make for SNL sketch fodder, like a recent incident on a delayed flight where the gate agent kept updating the passengers that they didn’t have a pilot, but that flight crew was on a group text with another pilot who was willing to come in. “It was like me on a group text with my friends, except this is an airline!” the actress-comedian said.
Will Heath/Courtesy of NBC
Gardner’s always been close to the travel world because her mom was a travel agent. “Travel was all around me,” she recounted of her childhood. “But she was a single parent and had two kids that she was running around all the time, so when she got to travel, she traveled alone. But I heard a lot of good stories!”
She did eventually get to pack her bags too, on road trips to Branson, Missouri, which she called a “sober Vegas.” Along the way, she and her older brother Justin would fight over a single Game Boy before it ran out of batteries, making stops at Dairy Queen and McDonald’s along the way.
Her most memorable childhood trip was when her grandparents took the siblings to Walt Disney World — instilling a love of theme parks, which she still has today, as well as themed motor inns, once staying in a decked-out Renaissance room.
These days, her approach to travel is simple, like a recent pre-Thanksgiving California road trip to Ojai, Santa Barbara, and Malibu. “I feel so grateful to have been there just a couple months before the fires,” she said. Along the way, she rode horses on the beach and stayed at San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara and Nobu Hotel Ryokan Malibu, where it was “really peaceful to go to sleep next to the water listening to the waves. It was a really special trip.”
She also keeps it light as an “absolute under-packer” with the smallest version of Away’s The Carry-On. “I do not like over-packing at all anymore, to a fault. I always have enough underwear and socks, but everything else I’m re-wearing quite a bit.”
That said, she said her overall travel persona is “kind of confusing and ever-evolving,” musing “I want to think of myself as an adventurer and an explorer. I did those things in Hawaii, but I was like, I could have just laid in my room the entire time, looked out the window at the beautiful view, and gotten up for poke bowls and shaved ice. I think because the job I do is so overstimulating, at certain points, I don’t need an overstimulating vacation.”
But there are parts of working on the famously hectic live show that she hopes she can incorporate into her own life better. “When I went to Hawaii, we were supposed to have an hour layover in Honolulu but got delayed a day, so we ended up spending the night and I was so frustrated about it,” she admitted. “I’ve learned to deal with the unexpected and chaos in my job, and I was like, ‘Heidi, you need to embrace the unexpected and chaos in real life — especially when you get an extra day in paradise!'”
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