restoring broker node / zookeeper question

I have two questions:

1.

We plan to initially run Kafka without partitioning or replication, simply
having two single node Kafka (broker) servers in two geographically diverse
locations. Using periodic backups/snapshots across locations for disaster
recovery.

Our producer / consumer applications will process to/from each location.

For such configurations, is it possible to run the Kafka broker without
Zookeeper? If not, any plans for such a simplified configuration? We'd
like to remove the extra app from the stack (Zookeeper) since it's not
being utilized.

2.

If we need to restore a Kafka node (simplified design above), I was hoping
Kafka and Zookeeper could bootstrap itself as long as we can restore a copy
of the /tmp/kafka-logs data. This dir contains the topics, log data, and
high watermark.

Unfortunately, it seems without the Zookeeper data, we cannot restore the
node.

Is there a way to restore a Kafka node if the Zookeeper data cannot be
restored? What are the specific requirements to restore a Kafka broker
from backups, if the /tmp/zookeeper must also be restored, are there any
inconsistent state issues (i.e. backup of /tmp/kafka-logs and
/tmp/zookeeper are not synchronized)?

Thank you!