Kansas City Food Blog

Who makes it at home anymore?

​Plenty of restaurants will be open on Thanksgiving Day this year. The holiday wasn't always a big business day for the restaurant industry; until the late 1980s, Thanksgiving was considered a holiday when most people preferred eating -- and cooking -- at home. But anyone who has ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the extended family knows it can be an ordeal: roasting that bird for hours, creating all those side dishes, trying to remember which relative won't eat pumpkin pie and which one insists on mince pie. Yes, some people like to do the Martha Stewart thing and cook elaborate Thanksgiving meals in their own kitchens, but that number is dwindling: The National Restaurant Association reports that 53 percent of Americans prefer their holiday fare ready-to-go.

Over the next few days, we'll offer a number of Thanksgiving Day dining possibilities here in Fat City -- the fancy, the cheap, the nontraditional -- but you're in charge of making your own reservations. We can't do everything for you.

At Ophelia's, that pretty upscale restaurant in Independence, executive chef Marshall Roth will be serving a buffet-style meal priced at $23 for adults and $10 for children. Call 816-461-4525 for reservations.

The metro's various Ted's Montana Grills (except for the one in Zona Rosa, which closed earlier this year) will be serving a $14 meal featuring traditional roast turkey and dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, country-style green beans, squash casserole, cranberry sauce and a yeast roll. The full menu will also be available all day, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., for diners who prefer bison meatloaf to turkey.

 

The Prime Rib Grill opened on Tuesday night

​Things didn't work out for poor Paddy O'Quigley's Pub and Grille at the corner of Walnut and 20th Street, so restaurateur Rod Anderson -- who had previously operated the two-story building as a catering facility called The Hollywood Room -- decided to open a steakhouse in the space.

The new restaurant, The Prime Rib Grill by Hereford House officially opened to the public on Tuesday night; longtime Anderson Restaurant Group manager Todd Brooks oversees the operation and Chris Jones is the executive chef.

Anderson reportedly no longer has an interest in the building one block to the west of The Prime Rib Grill -- the building that once housed the original Hereford House, which was destroyed in a fire last year. The blaze was later determined to be caused by a mysterious arsonist, and that building is apparently slated for demolition.

Anderson, who closed the Hereford House venue in Lawrence last year, has spent some dough on re-habbing the former Hollywood Room. The dark, comfortable interior evokes the old Hereford House (and includes a few pieces of artwork salvaged from the fire) although the menu boasts fewer steaks and focuses on slow-roasted prime rib, seafood, poultry and sandwiches.

The signs on the building still say it's The Hollywood Room, but new signs and an elaborate piece of art -- visible for many blocks -- are to be installed by next week, Brooks says.

The Prime Rib Grill is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays and 4-10 p.m. Saturdays.

Kozeta Kreka just wants customers to get cozy

​To her family and friends, Kozeta Kreka is simply Cozy. And that's the name Kreka -- a native of Pogradec, Albania -- gave to her new restaurant, Cozy's Cafe.
The placed opened two months ago at 6740 W. 75th Street, directly across the street from Fritz's Chili and the Petco store. Kozeta ran her own candy company before leaving Albania with her husband Albert and two children in 1997. For a few years after moving to Kansas, Kreka was a manager at the Town Topic in Mission; that's where she got the idea to open her own coffee shop. Cozy's Cafe serves espresso, cappuccino and home-style meals -- including breakfast all day -- from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The menu has plenty of traditional diner fare -- pancakes, omelets, burgers, meatloaf dinners -- as well as dishes that Kreka says she would find on European bistro menus: a panini spread with whipped cream cheese, eggs, bleu cheese, sour cream and parsley; tortellini in a cream sauce with bits of ham; and her own homemade baklava.

On weekends, Kreka's husband and teenaged daughter Vilma help out in the restaurant, which had been a long-vacant convenience store before the Kreka family took a lease and started cleaning the place up (including building a kitchen and new bathrooms) last May. The restaurant is as neat as a pin and the prices are so inexpensive you may think you're in Albania and not Overland Park.

Heather Ryan serves up the Irish potato soup

​Why did it take me twenty years to finally stumble into Rockhurst High School's annual Heritage Ethnic Food Festival? A friend told me not to miss the event, which took place last Sunday, because he insisted "it's the best food deal in town."
I'm sure I rolled my eyes, but I was game for a good deal. For $7 admission (I'll confess, I missed the Mass that kicked off the event at 10 a.m.), I could take a plate and stroll around tables generously -- and that's an understatement -- laden with dishes prepared by Rockhurst parents, volunteers and alumni. 

"It's not a big moneyraiser," said Judie Scanlon, Rockhurst's special activities coordinator. "It's really a way to celebrate the diversity of our students and community."

The diversity was celebrated by dishing up samples of traditional Irish, Italian, Middle Eastern, African, French, Mexican and German cuisines. It was all terrific and I know I ate a lot more than seven bucks worth of food. In fact, I wasn't hungry for another 24 hours.

At least now I'll be on the lookout for next year's festival.

Nadia Pflaum

Tubs o' goodness

​Holy casseroles. Eighteen of them, to be exact. It was a great turnout on a chilly, wet night, which means Kansas City's first casserole party was truly a success. Fork yeah!

After seeing 18 casseroles lugged through the doors of Pryde's Old Westport, each swaddled in warming towels, I had a whole new respect for Emily Farris' original, Brooklyn-based party -- can you imagine taking a casserole on the subway? Farris told me that one year, a lady shlepped her casserole from New Jersey (a two-hour trip) to compete. And no, she didn't win.

Nadia Pflaum

Gina, Andy, Stewart and Carter chowed down

​Sadly, "Deconstructed Manicotti," my entry with Katie Bartle, wasn't a winner, either. She'd baked Italian sausage, ricotta cheese, spinach, penne pasta and cherry tomatoes with egg as the required "binding ingredient." (My job consisted of bringing the serving spoon.) Still, we mustered up some applause for the three dishes that stood above the rest, according to the four judges: Gina Kaufmann from KCUR's Walt Bodine Show, Andy Dandino ("The best eater I know," Farris said), Stewart Lane of Lon Lane's Inspired Occasions, and Carter Holton, a pastry chef from the River Club and Le Fou Frog.

Nadia Pflaum

MC Farris

​Third place went to Chris Cindric and Katherine Whitson for "Jordan's Birthday Request," a mother's Mexican-inspired casserole creation that she said her son craves. Shannon Grantham took second place for her "Hunka Hunka Burnin' 'Role," which she revealed to contain a vegetarian meat substitute (gasps all around!). The Casserole Cassanovas (aka Jenny Harris and James Patterson) were the big winners with "Cluck, Cluck, Toot, Woo!" another Mexican casserole that contained loads of cheese, Ro-tel, chicken and beans (hence the toot). The winners took home fancy new casserole dishes from Pryde's.

We losers, meanwhile, availed ourselves of the free beer. Thanks to Farris (who had signed copies of her book on hand) and Pryde's for an educational, if fattening, evening.

Wilkie and Merola ladle up the soup

​Was it nearly six months ago that Fat City reported that the the owners of Function Junction, Mary Merola and Rebecca Wilkie, were making plans -- big plans -- to greatly expand the culinary store on the third-floor of Crown Center?

It was the last Function Junction in the city after Merola closed the flagship store on the Country Club Plaza in late 2008; the city had once been home to several Function Junctions -- long before rivals like Crate & Barrel moved to town.

After the Plaza store closed, Crown Center executives encouraged Merola and Wilkie to expand into the vacant retail space (formerly occupied by a toy train store) adjacent to their shop. Since Merola had long wanted to have a demonstration area -- the best way to display and sell cooking products -- blueprints were drawn up for a full Viking commercial kitchen to be installed in the newly expanded store.

Emily Farris is crazy about casseroles, seriously

​Emily Farris, blogger and author of the cookbook Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven (Penguin, 2008) hosts her first Kansas City Casserole Party next Monday, November 16 at Pryde's Old Westport. It's open to anyone who wants to compete in the casserole competition, but space is limited and the last day to register is this Friday (read the rules and regulations here).

Farris, who works part-time at Pryde's, began hosting casserole parties at her apartment in Brooklyn five years ago. The events garnered enough press -- in The New York Sun, the New York Post, the New York Times -- that Farris was able to land the cookbook deal with Penguin. Next Monday's event is the first time she's hosted one of the parties in her home town.

Former Pitch columnist Gina Kauffman, now co-host of The Walt Bodine Show, will be one of the judges for the Kansas City Casserole competition. The winner gets a gift certificate from Pryde's.

It's girly, but the portions are man-sized at Shabby Hattie's Tea Room in Parkville

​Professional seamstress and former cocktail waitress Marcia Cherrito (the niece of local entertainer Frank Cherrito) had a dream: She wanted to open her own little tea room that served baked goods, breakfast, lunches and tea.

Last week Cherrito threw open the doors to her turquoise-and-teal tea room on downtown Parkville's main drag (113 N. Main). Shabby Hattie's Tea Room and Boutique (named for Cherrito's paternal grandmother) serves breakfast from 8 to 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays.

​Located across the street from Cafe des Amis French Restaurant, Shabby Hattie's serves salads and sandwiches -- including an excellent house-made chicken salad, a changing array of soups and pastries and a featured quiche every day -- in a dining room where each of the tables is cloaked with a 1940s-era vintage tablecloth and the china dates back to the 1920s. Side orders include excellent old-fashioned ham and pea salad or a dilly pasta salad.

I stopped in for lunch yesterday and was impressed by the superb quiche and a first-rate grilled cheese sandwich on hearty wheatberry bread. Cheritto bakes her own scones, muffins and cinnamon rolls each day. For more information on the menu and hours, call 816-587-1044.

Max Chao is back in the Crossroads

​Last year, Max Chao was working as general manager for the newly opened Masalas Authentic Indian Diner at 91st and Metcalf in Overland Park. Masalas had opened in the spot where Chao had, for three years, been running a casual dining restaurant called Ohana Hawaiian Grill.

But Chao says he was "downsized" by the owners of Masalas a few months ago, and started looking for new employment opportunities. When he stopped by restaurateur Casey Adams' Nara a month ago to say hello to his friend Koji Sakata, Nara's sushi chef, he was encouraged to talk to Adams about a job. Adams had recently hired former Room 39 general manager Kathi Rolfing to oversee his restaurant's operations; she had been "downsized" from Room 39's Leawood location and was looking for a a change in the Nara menu of hot Asian dishes.

Nara is just a block north of the spot at 1728 Main where Chao was the chef-owner of  Max's Noodles & More, which was razed years ago to make room for a parking garage.

Chao, who grew up working at The New Peking Chinese Restaurant, which his parents created and later sold, has added several of his Pan-Asian signature dishes to the Nara menu and creates different lunch specials every day.

Beginning with tonight's First Friday menu, Chao says, Nara is going to focus more on organic ingredients, using produce from local farmers. Chao is creating a new version of his Kimchee Trio using organic daikon and Napa cabbage.

Welcome back, Max.

 

​Anthony Spino III, who with his brother Vito runs the family's Italian restaurant, Anthony's, at 701 Grand, has a deal for you this month: Bring twenty bucks and a packaged mix (brownies, cakes, biscuits, muffins) or board games and/or personal hygiene products to the restaurant on Wednesday, November 18 and get a dinner and wine tasting to benefit ReStart Inc., an interfaith ministry working with the homeless.

Anthony and his girlfriend Kymberli Cutler recently donated a new stove to ReStart's Youth Emergency Shelter. "They only had a refrigerator and a microwave," Spino says. "They needed something they could really use for cooking. Right after we paid to have an electrician get enough power to the stove, the kids at the shelter baked cookies for the firefighters down the street. That's why we're encouraging our patrons to bring in cake, cookie and muffin mixes, so they kids can continue to learn to bake things."

ReStart also needs the personal hygiene items (shampoo, deodorant, toothbrushes) and board games, Spino says.

For the November 18 event, he'll have two seatings, the first at 5:15 p.m. and the second at 7:30 p.m., for dinners that include a soup, a small entree and dessert as well as wine samplings. For reservations or more information, call 816-221-4088.

 

​The Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition has launched an "Eat Local For the Holidays" campaign to let people in the Kansas City metro know about where they can find and buy locally sourced produce and meat.

"The holidays are a perfect time to add another dimension to how we think about food because we are already making thoughtful food purchases," says Gretchen Kunkel, president of KC Healthy Kids and a member of the GKCFPC. "By adding just one locally grown item to your holiday meal, you can begin to make a difference in the strength of our local food system."

As part of the campaign, the KC Healthy Kids Web site has a list of what's in season, what's available and the stores and farmer's markets that are selling local and organic produce. A number of indoor farmer's markets are still open.

It would be possible for everything that's on your table (with the exception of cranberry sauce) to have come from within 100 miles of Kansas City. There is also a collection of restaurants that use locally sourced meat and produce.

And as long as you're trying to shop local, here's one additional suggestion for this holiday season. That's right, it's the bacon explosion. You can now buy it in Olathe at the Kansas City Barbecue Store. So, remember. Buy local and buy bacon.  

[Image via Flickr: Robb North]

The night of the living on the Day of the Dead at Club 15-Twenty

​This is the first year that Kansas City has hosted the national convention for the Mexican Restaurant Association, a three-year-old non-profit organization whose mission is "to integrate all Mexican restaurants while promoting the vast diversity of Mexican gastronomy and culture."
Kicking off the three-day conference was an opening night party last night at Club 15-Twenty, celebrating El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead or All-Souls Day) with a buffet created by many of the visiting chefs. They prepared tamales, pipian, mole poblano, ceviche and tacos Dorados at the Guadalupe Center and brought the steaming trays of food over to the nightclub.

​Among the parties celebrities were noted author Jose "Pepe" Iturriaga, one of the great culinary writers in Mexico and the creator of the definitive guide to Mexican street food. But most of last night's guests were local restaurateurs, including El Patron owner Arturo Cabral and his mother Estela (right), Maria Chaurand of the popular La Fonda El Taquito, and Arturo Romo of the Taqueria Mexico mini-empire.

Today is the official launch of Tri-National Mexican Gastronomy Week, with several lectures by visiting chefs, including Alma Cervantes Cota from Morelia, Mexico and Felipe Gaytan from Dallas.

The conference continues through Wednesday afternoon, with most events taking place at the Guadalupe Center.

Judi's Bakery expands to a third location

​The North Kansas City-based Judi's Bakery, which also operates a location in the Legends complex in Wyandotte County, opened its third store a week ago in the Parkville Commons Shopping Center at the intersection of Highway 9 and Tom Watson Parkway. Like the Legends location, all the baked goods -- doughnuts, cookies, cakes, sweet rolls -- are delivered from the main commissary bakery on Burlington Avenue. 

Some servers love to dress up ... I wasn't one of them

​I did a lot of things as a waiter that I'm not particularly proud to confess. I threw tip trays at stingy customers (prom kids were the worst), I once used a foreign accent when working in a Greek restaurant (I was bored!) and more than a few times served caffeinated coffee to customers who demanded decaf. What can I say? The caffeinated java was fresher.

One thing I would not do was wear a costume on Halloween. My theory was this: The customers didn't give a damn, and who the hell wanted to run back and forth from the kitchen wearing Dracula's cape or God only knows what? Halloween night could be horrific enough without adding insult to injury.

Over the years, a few patrons stopped in for dinner before attending costume parties. Back when I worked at a vegetarian restaurant, there was the man carrying a bloodied fake hand who thought it would be hilarious if he left it in the middle of the lettuce bowl on the salad bar. The sticky fake "blood" got over everything and the owner kicked out the jokester after we had to toss the contents of giant bowl of iceberg lettuce in the trash.

The worst times, though, were when Halloween fell on a full moon. Whenever that happened, there was a strong likelihood that the restaurant could be filled with real-life zombies, bloodsuckers, aliens, ghouls -- and cheapskates!

 

 

Midtown's Russell Stover's Candy Kitchen bids a bittersweet farewell

​Saturday will be the final day for the sweet little Russell Stover store on 51st Street -- the 51st Street Candy Kitchen -- before the popular confectionary closes for good. It's been a neighborhood candy shop (it also sold ice cream and baked goods) since 2000. Now that the newly built Russell Stover in Fairway has opened at 2814 Shawnee Mission Parkway -- which also has ice cream and a candy kitchen and a lot more parking -- the modest shop near UMKC is giving it up. There won't be any big candy sales, according to the staff at the 51st Street location. "They're going to take all the inventory to the other stores in the metro," one manager said.

The 51st Street location, just around the corner from the Russell Stover corporate offices, was the last Russell Stover shop left in Kansas City's urban core. The other stores are in suburban areas. That wasn't always the case, though: Kansas City once had several Russell Stover shops, with their distinctive blue glass facades, including the little shop at Linwood and Forest:

 

Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library

​ 

 ....which now looks like this:

​

The restaurants are gone, the matchbooks linger on....

​Even though it's illegal to smoke in restaurants anymore, one of the symbols of those carefree, let's-light-up-shall-we days -- the matchbook, or box of matches imprinted with the restaurant's name and logo -- is suddenly back in favor, according to an article this week in The New York Times. People love matches because they're free, they're a memento of a pleasant meal or a first date, they're always handy to have around the house and, most important for the restaurant industry, they're an inexpensive form of advertising.

"Particularly during this challenging economic time," the story quotes the National Restaurant Association's Maureen Ryan, "matches are an effective way for restaurants to get their name in front of people without spending a lot of money."

And if you hold on to them long enough, those snazzy matchboxes and matchbooks often outlast the restaurants that give them away. Note the matchbook covers above. Discuss.

 

 

 

The ancient Mayans prized the beverage created from the cacao

There was quite a bit of hype leading up to last weekend's opening of Chocolate: The Exhibition at Union Station, so I wondered if there would be a line to get into the interactive touring show -- created by Chicago's Field Museum -- on Sunday afternoon. The answer was no, and that was fine. After all, who wants to fight crowds for a glimpse of the historical relics?

Of course, many of the "relics" in this particular exhibition are artfully constructed replicas depicting the history of chocolate: the cacao pods and seeds growing in the MesoAmerican rain forest, the Aztecs and Mayans who ground the seeds and blended them with spices to create a beloved beverage (one thought to serve as an aphrodisiac). That drink apparently enchanted the Spanish conquistadors, who brought cacao seeds back to Europe. There, variations of chocolate emerged -- first as a hot beverage made with sugar and milk and, later, as the confection we know as chocolate candy.

The exhibition is beautifully mounted but text-heavy and not nearly as "interactive" as one might hope. (Small children won't have much to do while the adults stop to read all that historical text.) That said, the collection of Meissen and European porcelain chocolate cups and saucers was beautiful. According to some of that text, saucers were invented to keep drops of hot chocolate from spilling on elaborate 17th-century gowns.

The exhibition -- which runs through January 3, 2010 -- exits into a rather modest "gift shop" that includes a variety of imported and domestic chocolate candy and bags of dried chocolate-flavored pasta. Why pasta? You'll have to do a little more reading to find out: It can be cooked and served with a mole sauce or, the package suggests, "as a dessert."

 

 

You'll be pie-eyed by the selection at Parkville's Pie Room

​A couple of weeks ago, KCUR-FM's Walt Bodine Show devoted half of its twice-monthly Restaurant Critics program to the subject of pies. (You can listen to an archived edition of the show here). The program generated a lot of phone calls, including one from a Parkville resident who wanted to give a shout out to the two-month-old Hawthorne House Pie Room at 6008 N.W. Bell Road.

​The Pie Room isn't a restaurant, although you can walk right in and eat a piece of pie there (with a cup of java or a soft drink) on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Hawthorne House is a special events and catering facility built on the grounds of the old David Farm (the original site of the Bell Road Barn Theater), complete with a chapel. But owner Irene Sparks turned the ground-floor meeting room into The Pie Room, selling slices as well as whole pies -- the daily offerings are listed on a hand-written board.

When I finally found the place after driving all around the hamlet of Parkville (here's the clue: you turn at the Sonic Drive-In on Highway 9 and keep going until you see the Hawthorne House sign), there wasn't another car in the parking lot and I wasn't sure that the place was even open. But a very nice lady was in the spacious room, just waiting for a pie patron to stop in.

That day's selection included chocolate cream, lemon chess, buttermilk pumpkin, cherry, rhubarb, caramel apple pecan and butterscotch meringue.

One of the best burgers in Kansas City ... is in Lawrence

The much-touted Burger Stand at Dempsey's Irish Pub in Lawrence, Kansas, added a few new hamburgers to its menu last Saturday.

The Burger Stand is the creation of Lawrence chef Robert Krause, best known for his seriously upscale Krause Dining at 917 Delaware. Krause added the gourmet burger business to the existing Dempsey's (623 Vermont Street) last February with chef Simon Bates.

Customers order their burgers and fries up at the bar and, if the place isn't too busy, someone will bring out the plastic mesh baskets of beef burgers. If the joint's jumping, customers have to listen for their names to be called out over the sound system and then go pick up the burgers themselves.

The burgers aren't cheap -- most are in the $8 to $9 range and that doesn't include fries -- but really excellent.

There's nothing like a Farms Tour to build a healthy appetite

​Seventeen farms participated in last weekend's Kaw Valley Farm Tour, sponsored by the Kaw Valley Agri-Tourism Council, but I only made it to three. That's because I got hungry and tired of driving on Kansas back roads, so we decided to stop touring and venture over to Lawrence for lunch.

​But before I voted to officially detour from the Tour, a friend and I made it to the Blossom Trail Bee Ranch in Baldwin City, where owner Richard A. Bean was selling jars of honey and foil-wrapped loaves of homemade zucchini bread. He showed us how a beehive worked -- it involves lots of little stinging bees, don't you know -- and pointed out his "nectar menu" sign, explaining how different flowers create different-tasting honey. He was only selling clover honey that day, however. I bought a jar, with a slab of honeycomb inside of it, to give as a gift, but it was such an attractive jar I later changed my mind and decided to keep it myself.

The next stop was the Ad Astra Alpaca Farm, also in Baldwin City, where Claudia and Bob Hey raise gentle alpacas. They're beautiful animals, to be sure, but I started sneezing before I could "feel the serenity" that supposedly comes from being around them. I don't know if that means I'm allergic to alpacas ... or serenity.

It takes a man with a long pole to make apple butter

​Actually, come to think of it, things could be much wilder in Weston, Missouri this coming weekend, when the historic hamlet hosts its annual Irish Festival on Friday, October 9, through Sunday, October 11 at O'Malley's Pub & Courtyard.

But this past weekend was Weston's 21st annual Applefest Celebration, which was only wild if you couldn't find a parking spot. And they were damn hard to come by, let me tell you, unless you wanted to park out in the suburbs and walk (as many people did) or wait for one of the schoolbuses shuttling folks from the outskirts of town.

​Applefest took over the quaint town's main drag with all kinds of vendors -- potters, scented-candle makers, a family selling jars of candied jalapeno peppers (they passed out samples -- not bad!), and a massage therapist offering ten-minute chair massages. Right in the center of Main Street, a team was cooking apple butter in a big copper pot over an open fire. I got up close to the bubbling brew, which smelled delicious, but I'm not sure why the cooks -- all men, it seemed to me -- needed such a long, long stirring stick unless it had some Freudian implication. A friend of mine was selling jars of the apple butter at a table right next to the copper cauldron and told me there was a reason for the long wooden paddle and that it had something to do with bees. Since Saturday was sort of chilly, we didn't see any bees, but they apparently go wild over the aroma of cooking apples. Maybe like this?

​At one end of town, folks from one church were selling apple pies; at the other end, under a tent in a parking lot that had been designated as a "food court," the members of the Weston Christian Church were selling the most fabulous baked apple dumplings -- with or without ice cream -- that I've tasted in a long, long time: soft, succulent baked apples encased in a light, flaky crust.

 

You can eat corn or walk through the stalks at Ciderfest

​The first weekend of the Louisburg Cider Mill's annual Ciderfest & Craft Fair started last weekend, but another weekend of festivities is planned for Saturday and Sunday, October 3 and 4 on the grounds of the cider mill on Highway K-68. It's about 30 minutes from Midtown -- here are simple directions -- and the family-friendly event features an elaborate corn maze, a pumpkin patch, and lots of very good things to eat.

The freshly made Kettle Corn (pictured above) had such a potent aroma it was difficult to pass this booth without buying something. In fact, there are a lot of seductive scents at this festival, including barbecued meats and the sweet, succulent perfume of freshly-picked apples in the cider barn.

Unlike that other Apple Festival I attended a couple of weeks ago, where there were shockingly few apples to be seen or eaten, the Louisburg Cider Mill has an abundance of fresh apples and apple delicacies such as the most delicious cider doughnuts ever. The apple cider, of course, is fantastic and so are the apple slushie drinks.

​The Craft Festival has some vendors that don't fall into any traditional craft category, like the inevitable Tupperware Lady and the Pampered Chef sales teams, but there were some real crafty people too, selling pottery and halos -- not just for saints and angels anymore, I now understand -- and the friendly Bruce and Cindy Silvest of Golden Ridge Farms in Osawatamie, Kansas. The Silvests are "nuts about pecans" (it's their business slogan) and their booth was filled with bags of glazed pecans (the French vanilla glazed variety are particularly fine) as well as homemade jams and jellies.

​We decided against a stroll through the meandering corn maze -- I have Children of the Corn nightmares about things like that -- but we did stop to listen to an excellent bluegrass band and wander through the well-stocked "Country Store" (which sells jugs of cider, apples, cider doughnut mix, jams and relishes) where, behind a window, we could watch ladies making those cider doughnuts in front of our very eyes. It looked so easy, I toyed with the idea of buying a package of the mix, but then I had an epiphany: I prefer eating doughnuts to making them.

Mission's Fire Wok has odd hours, but good food

​It's hard to imagine that any restaurant in the metro would be closed on Saturday nights. After all, that's traditionally the most lucrative business night of the week in the food service business. But seven years ago, the Huywh family -- who have operated the Fire Wok Chinese Restaurant at 5820 Johnson Drive in Mission for 24 years -- decided to close on Saturday and Sunday nights.

The second-generation members of the family, who were now running the restaurant with their parents, had started having children and wanted to spend some time with their own families.

But this cozy neighborhood restaurant, which offers both buffet dining and menu service, has a loyal following of customers who don't mind the venue's eccentricities. Not only is it closed on Saturdays, but the dining room shuts down early by modern restaurant standards: dinner is only served from 5 to 8 p.m. (Fire Wok also serves lunch, Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.)

It's certainly not the most elaborate Chinese buffet in Johnson County -- which has plenty of them -- but the quality is better than most. Diners can cobble together a little salad from a tiny "salad bar" (I saw several variations on the carrot theme) or start their meal with a festive square of Jell-O.

The buffet is laden with the usual Chinese buffet fare, but mostly chicken dishes: Empress Chicken, Sesame Chicken, General Tso's Chicken, Lemon Chicken, Szechuan Chicken, Fire Wok Chicken, Cashew Chicken, Sweet and Sour Chicken and, interestingly enough, Springfield Cashew Chicken -- which is not a standard staple on local Chinese buffets.

Poco's is now in the buffet business

​

A lot of people were very happy when we announced, last month, that Lorenza "Poco" Guiterrez had plans to re-open her popular namesake restaurant at 3063 Southwest Boulevard. Poco's had been an interesting concept from the very beginning: Guiterrez had taken over the old Waid's restaurant, which had been serving breakfasts -- including those terrific malted waffles -- and traditional American diner lunches for years. Before she began serving dinners, Poco built up a pretty steady breakfast and lunch business, mixing her own Spanish and Mexican dishes with the pancakes, waffles and omelets that had been standard items on the former Waid's menu.

​Now Guiterrez is back in business, but with a twist.  Patrons can order off a menu, or eat from a buffet. Hey, I'm all about buffets, but Poco needs to re-think her current arrangement since visually this buffet is a disaster. I stopped in for breakfast last Saturday and noticed the customers at the five or so tables were all enjoying one of Poco's famous soups: menudo. 

On the main steam table, which is crammed into a ridiculously tight and tucked-away corner of the dining room, Poco had set out trays of the breakfast fare that was her calling card in this restaurant's previous incarnation: chorizo scrambled with eggs, chilaquiles, refried beans, pancakes, bacon and sausage, miniature vegetarian omelets -- the steam table couldn't keep them hot enough, although everything tasted very good. OK, well, not quite everything. Poco needs to forget the cold, hard "garlic toast," and the pastries looked better than they tasted.

Poco and I have a mutual friend in the restaurant business who told me that he's going to help her create a less confined, more appetizing buffet display. "The buffet idea has all kinds of possibilities," he told me, "but it needs a little work. Maybe more than a little."  

 

He was wasting away in Margaritaville...with bratwurst

For years I've driven by the yellow banner announcing the annual Oktoberfest celebration at the Our Lady of Sorrows Church at 2552 Gillham Road -- and then missed the shindig. But last weekend, I decided to finally celebrate the German festival -- on historic Dutch Hill -- and see what I had been missing. In culinary terms, not so much. But my friends Bob and Linda drank German beer and sang along with the performer, above, who didn't seem to have a lot of German songs in his repertoire but, damn, his knowledge of Top 40 hits from the 1970s was pretty fabulous. 

The tickets were ten bucks and for that, we got a lukewarm bratwurst on a bun, a generous scoop of German potato salad, stewed apples in a thick cinnamon-sugar syrup and a choice of pastry from the dessert table. "It's just like a church picnic," said Linda. We watched the Balloon Man make a parasol, a Spiderman and a hat out of long balloons and then, overwhelmed with festivity, we left. 

Later that night, I received an e-mail from a high school friend now living in Munich, Germany. He had just returned from celebrating Oktoberfest. He ate, pretty much, the same meal I did, proving that even in Germany, Oktoberfest is something better than wurst.

 

The Northeast's Esther Saladino McMurray will be honored on Wednesday

If you've traveled east on Independence Avenue recently, you may have seen the sign, above, on the side of the Avenue's venerable Mayfair Cleaners. And you might have wondered: Why is Mayor Funkhauser celebrating Dairy Queen?

Well, it's not just any Dairy Queen, but the city's oldest Dairy Queen -- my favorite one, in fact, at 2535 Independence Avenue -- which opened on July 4, 1952. No, this wasn't the first Dairy Queen to open in Kansas City, it was actually the fifth. Yet the first four have been torn down over the years, giving this particular venue a special importance.

But it isn't the Dairy Queen that the mayor and the northeast community are honoring on Wednesday, from 5 to 7 p.m. It's the lovely lady behind the counter: Esther Saladino McMurray. Esther and her husband John celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on September 12; this month also marks the 43rd anniversary of Esther working behind the counter: Esther was the store's first employee in 1964 and bought the DQ from its original owners 16 years later. She and John have run it ever since, mostly by themselves: the bullet-proof glass window is a more recent addition: "The neighborhood is on the upswing," Esther told me back in 2001, when the glass and metal screens were installed, "but you still have to have security."

Esther turned 75 this year, John turned 80. "But age is just a number," Esther said today. "If the Lord provides you with good health, age has nothing to do with it. That's what I tell people when they ask if John and I will ever retire. As long as the Lord gives us the energy to get up every day and open the store, we're going to do it."

And maybe eating an occasional classic DQ treat helps too. After all, the McMurrays continue to sell a lot of DQ items that other Dairy Queen stores dropped years ago, like Crunch Cones and Banana Supremes. They refused to give up on those treats and, damn it, so have I. I'll be there on Wednesday to honor Esther's four decades of queendom ... and to eat a Crunch Cone.

 

Each new season brings renewed hope for restaurants around the city. Chefs have the chance to design new dishes based on seasonal ingredients and get recharged with a completely retooled menu.

Happy Gillis launched a new breakfast and lunch menu last week. New for breakfast is a croque madame (Bichelmeyer ham, swiss, pear and grain mustard topped with a soft egg, $8) and The Keller-esque BLT (Webster City bacon, lettuce and tomato with an egg, $8). Lunch got a serious overhaul and a heavy dose of comfort food. There's the medianoche (roasted pork loin, Bichelmeyer ham, pickle, swiss, mustard and mayonnaise, $9), a torta (grilled chicken, salsa, queso fresco, avocado, cabbage and cilantro, $8), and not my mom's meatloaf (white cheddar, dijon mustard and jalapeno, $8).

JP Wine Bar has added online reservations as part of its dinner service, which now features full-sized main courses. Besides a yellow fin tuna tartare ($14), the spinach-ricotta gnocchi (brown butter sauce, $9) looks like a nice way to begin a meal. The six new entrees include: grilled American lamb chops (tiki masala marinate, orange basmati rice, saffron, lentils, grilled leeks, yellow curry, $25) and the five peppercorn ribeye (broccoli rabe, chickpea fries, chimichurri sauce, $25). And since it's JP Wine Bar, you don't have to worry about figuring out the right wine pairing.

Bottoms Up: Shawn Moriarty is mixing it up in the West Bottoms

​Ten months ago, we reported in Fat City that the City Tavern had dismissed its very popular bartender Shawn Moriarty. The post garnered a lot of comments, including a couple from City Tavern owner Dan Clothier, referring to himself as Lucifer. At the time, Moriarty wasn't quite sure where he might wind up. Well, the congenial mixologist is back in the bar business: He's mixing cocktails behind the beautiful bar at R Bar at 1617 Genessee, the stylish saloon that officially opened this week in the former Sutera's restaurant space in the West Bottoms. It's a striking bar, created by the Dolphin Gallery's John O'Brien out of antique doors -- and Moriarty looks pretty dashing behind it.

The devil was in the details....

​

I had never attended the annual Applefest hosted each autumn at the Grinter Place Historical Site at 1420 South 78th Street in Kansas City, Kansas. But you know, I'm always up for a cup of cold cider and an apple fritter, so last Saturday, I drove out to see what was going on in the oldest home in Wyandotte County as it hosted the 33rd annual Applefest.

There were many vendors scattered around the grounds of the historic property, including a Tupperware saleslady and a booth dispensing informational material from one of those Curves fitness clubs -- and the usual assortment of bazaar-type fare: hand-crocheted baby clothes, gift items and gee-gaws, goat burgers.

​Goat burgers? Hell yes, two guys were grilling the goat patties -- available with or without a slice of American cheese -- and I was assured they were lean and healthy. I've eaten goat meat in Indian dishes, of course, but this was my first actual goat burger. Not bad, actually, although it was a little too lean for my taste.

What I couldn't find was apples. I had missed the apple pie competition at 1 p.m., but I did wander into the historic home to see what was being offered at the bake sale. The pickings were slim: some overpriced fudge, a chocolate bundt cake and a cherry pie.

Over in the Grinter House gift shop, a little lady in a gingham gown was selling jars of apple butter and in little styrofoam bowls: slices of fresh apple splattered with caramel-flavored ice cream topping. "These are caramel apples," the lady said solemnly. Well, if you say so, honey.

There wasn't a drop of apple cider to be found, even though there was a demonstration -- if you can call it that -- of a kid dropping fresh apples into something that looked like a meat grinder and rotating a lever that ground up the apples into pulp; the juice was strained into a copper kettle. It was all for show. "You can't actually drink that stuff," an onlooker told me. "It's not pasteurized." You mean people didn't drink apple juice before Louis Pasteur?

I did, after much searching, find a booth with two very nice women selling packaged slices of apple cake, apple fritters, apple bread and jars of hand-canned pickles. After debating between the cake and the fritters for about five minutes, I finally pulled out my wallet and bought ... the pickles.

Missing Missy? Try the Piano Room

​

Now that the space at 1911 Main Street that was formerly known as Bar Natasha -- cabaret, restaurant and watering hole -- is the much more flamboyant  Flo's Cabaret (which is also a restaurant and bar, although the live entertainment is now less about live singing and more about lip-synching), fans of the old venue are wondering whatever happened to the legendary Natasha Fatale herself: former owner Missy Koonce, who named the club after the character she played in a stage version of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Koonce -- actress, singer, theater director -- is back behind a bar, but it's not hers, it's the Piano Room, in south Kansas City, a cozy storefront saloon at 8410 Wornall Road where pianist Dave McCubbin has tinkled the keys for years -- even back when it was a theater crowd hangout known as Inge's. Missy is the singing bartender every other weekend, from 6 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. She alternates weekends with another Bar Natasha performer, Heather Price.

"We wear headset microphones," Koonce said, "and sing from behind the bar."

Koonce also tends bar at the joint two days a week: Wednesday and Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. I asked her if there was much bar business in the morning. "Sometimes," she said, "we've got people waiting at the door when I get there to open the place up. There's a group of guys who walk their dogs in the morning and sometimes, when they're finished walking the dogs, they all stop in here for a cup of coffee. It's very lively."

The Piano Room doesn't serve food, so if you want a doughnut with that cup o' java (or straight Scotch, like the guy sitting next to me when I stopped in at 11 a.m.), you'll have to walk over to Price Chopper -- several doors down in the same shopping strip.