Kansas City Food Blog

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.

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.

 

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.

Use peanut butter to pay off your library fines

​If you owe the Kansas City Public Library a little dough -- you know, as in overdue fines -- you have until Sunday, October 18, to pay off that lingering debt and relieve your guilt by doing something good for the community.

This is Food for Fines Week at all the library branches. Library patrons who haven't paid overdue book fines are encouraged to being in "undamaged and unexpired boxed or canned non-perishable food items to any library location in exchange for one dollar reduction per item in overdue fines."

All of the food items will be donated to Harvesters: The Community Food Network, Kansas City's only food bank. It provides assistance for emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, children's homes, homes for the mentally disabled and shelters for battered persons.

The most needed items? Canned meat, peanut butter, canned fruits and vegetables and boxed meals. And consider yourselves warned: The librarians will not accept dented cans, nor will they take non-nutritional beverages such as soda, or beverages in glass or plastic containers.

 

Ruth Reichl says her book will be the legacy of Gourmet Magazine.

If you were driving through the Country Club Plaza last night about 10 p.m. or so, you might have seen the contingent of Foodie types -- Making of a Foodie blogger Jenny Vegera, or the slight lawyer who calls himself The Ulterior Epicure -- trudging back to their cars lugging a big ol' green hardback book. The tome was newly published Gourmet Today, the five-pound (at least) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardback with more than 1000 recipes compiled by the staff of Gourmet and its editor, former New York Times restaurant reviewer Ruth Reichl.

​Reichl (today's guest on KCUR-FM's Up To Date with Steve Kraske) was the featured guest last night at a book-signing dinner hosted by John McClure, the chef-owner of Starker's Restaurant. The dinner was such a popular draw that McClure's staff was forced to use two different dining rooms for the overflow crowd. Reich's publicist stopped by the table where I was sitting with American Restaurant chef Debbie Gold, writers Kimberly Stern and Darren Marks, magazine editor Zim Loy, radio personality Vicki Watson Walker and Master Sommelier Doug Frost -- who appears on the new PBS reality show The Winemakers on Saturday night. The publicist whispered a warning: "Please do not ask Ruth about Gourmet. She will not answer questions about it tonight."

Reichl's decade as editor-in-chief at Gourmet ended, quite unexpectedly, this week when publisher Conde Nast pulled the plug on the 68-year-old glossy food magazine. Reichl's comments about the book (which features a sticker announcing "A subscription to Gourmet magazine is included with the purchase of this book") were bittersweet. She praised her staff for the hard work on compiling and testing the recipes for the book: "Even the simplest recipe in the book, spaghetti with Pecorino romano and black pepper, which has only three ingredients, was tested over 12 times," Reichl said.

"I don't think there will ever be a book published like this again," Reichl said. "This will be the legacy for Gourmet magazine."

 

 

Joel O'Laughlin is waiting for his big break while waiting tables

​Joel O'Laughlin is a writer. He's a waiter. He's a writer and a waiter and the Reader's Choice for "Best Waiter/Waitress" in this year's Best of Kansas City issue. Since O'Laughlin -- who has also dabbled in stand-up comedy -- may have the perfect credentials for professional restaurant work, it's no surprise that his friends and fans sent in lots of ballots for the Kansas City native who has worked at Waldo Pizza for nearly a decade.

And what are those credentials?

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.

​Ever snapped at a family member for mooching too much of your burrito?

At one time, the world seemed to be divided between plate-sharers and those who wanted to eat separately, either out of dietary concerns, a germ phobia, or contentment with what they ordered. But when it comes to sharing entrees today, dining companions fall into one of three categories: the forker, the knifer or the sporker.

The forker is the most aggressive, reaching across you to spear all the good bits on your plate. Forkers typically are also displeased with their own dinner selections or just like yours better, meaning you better get used to someone else eating off your plate. You've got a few ways of dealing with a forker. You can learn to eat faster or simply suggest a game of mumblety peg.

 

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.

 

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.

The award-winning chef, who oversees the kitchen at the family-owned Jasper's Restaurant and is one of the official Cheese Ambassadors for Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and continues to host his popular Saturday morning radio show, Live From Jasper's Kitchen on KCMO-AM has added a few more responsibilities to his already overflowing platter. That includes promoting his newest cookbook, Jasper's Kitchen Cookbook, released this month from local publishing house Andrews-McMeel.

Starting next Saturday, September 19, Mirabile will begin teaching monthly cooking classes at different Hen House Markets in the metro; Hen House was the first sponsor of Mirabile's radio program and he continues to create recipes and promotions for the stores. The new series of cooking classes -- titled "Learn! Shop! Cook!" -- begins at the Hen House Market at 6235 Chatham Road with a class in Italian cooking. "It will include the fundamentals for an authentic Italian Sunday Sauce," said Mirabile. The October 17th class, held at the Merriam Hen House Market at 5800 Antioch, will focus on Harvest Cooking. The November 14th class, "Say Cheese," will create recipes using different cheeses and the best pairings of cheese, fruit and wine.

The classes are limited to 25 people and cost $15; for information or to enroll, call 913-321-4223. 

 

This meal is all about peace, not peas

​Deb McLaren wants to change the world or, at least, talk about changing the world. McLaren, who sells fresh fruit to local restaurants from Fieldstone, her father's orchard in Overbrook, Kansas, recently returned from a trip to San Francisco where she hung out at the Peace Cafe, the meeting place at the Red Victorian Peace Center that Sami Sunchild runs at 1665 Haight Street. McLaren became so charmed by the Cafe's weekly "Peaceful World Conversations," she's decided to start a Kansas City version.

"It's something that takes place every Sunday at the Red Vic," McLaren said, "and brings together a group of diverse people talking about the experiences that matter in their own communities and in the world. There are rules about the discussion, though. No religion and no politics. It's all designed to give people a chance to look at our similarities and differences in a respectful, friendly atmosphere."

Last Sunday, McLaren invited a dozen friends, from different walks of life, to join her for Sunday breakfast -- and peaceful world conversations -- at You Say Tomato at 28th and Holmes, which was great as far as morning cuisine goes, McLaren says, but too noisy for serious conversations about world peace. McLaren's looking for a new Sunday venue for her next gathering, which she hopes to launch next week. McLaren is hoping to add a few new talkers to the next meal; if you're interested, she can be reached at dmclaren@kc.rr.com.

 

​Ten years ago, you were much more likely to see Kansas City native Mike Elder -- a Chevrolet-certified auto mechanic -- working on an car engine than fussing with the details of a cake.

But that was ten years ago. Since then, it's cakes, not cars, that dominate Elder's life. You can see for yourself this Monday, August 31 at 9 p.m. on the TLC series The Ultimate Cake-Off. Mike and his mom -- who co-own Cakes by Cheri & Mike in Clinton, Missouri (although Elder says that "99 percent of our business comes from Kansas City") -- will compete with two other culinary contestants in a challenge to create an "edible masterpiece." The winner of the segment -- and Elder won't reveal who it is -- received $10,000.

How did Elder jump from automobiles to pastry? "Well, I was always the one drafted to help out my Mom when she started her baking business. She baked cakes in the basement of our house. My sisters weren't that interested," said Mike, who graduated from Hickman Mills High School in 1992 and moved to Clinton a decade later to work with both his mother and his father Larry, who owns an automobile restoration company. But Mike discovered a particular passion for pastry: sculptural cakes. His gift has made him kind of famous, in the Midwest anyway.

Holy crap! The rest rooms in Branson's Shoji Tabuchi Theater win the grand prize

​

The ballots have been counted and the Shoji Tabuchi Theater in Branson, Missouri, wiped out the competition in the 8th annual "America's Best Restrooms Contest" sponsored by Cincinnati-based Cintas Corporation, which manufactures restroom hygiene products and services. The contest was open to online voters who cast ballets through the contest's Internet site.

The Shoji Tabuchi Theater was honored, according to the press release touting the winners, for its elaborately decorated crappers, which feature marble fireplaces, a hand-carved mahagony pool table, period antiques, lion's head sinks, leather chairs, stained glass and chandeliers. The other winners included Baltimore's Tremont Plaza Hotel, New York City's iconic Radio City Music Hall, the Zeffirino Casino at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas and Chicago's Drake Hotel.

The only restaurant that made the final Top Ten list in the competition was Seattle's Canlis Restaurant. In Kansas City, a couple of tasteful rest rooms come to mind: the bathrooms at the InterContinental Hotel and at the Capital Grille -- but neither hold a candle to Shoji's palatial pooporium.

"How about 'Good Food?' Too vague? Well, how about 'Pretty Good Food?' No?"

​

Kansas City has had a long history of restaurants with names that sort of say it all. In the first half of the 20th century, most of the restaurants in town -- according to the City Directories of the period -- didn't even have names: most were listed simply by the names of the owners. This tradition continued well into the late 1930s, when Mrs. Fairie Myers -- whatever happened to her? -- ran her namesake restaurant at 924 Winchester. In the 1930s, a lot more little eateries and diners had names that said a lot about the cuisine in three words or less: Sanitary Lunch, One-Minute Lunch, Nifty and Dandy, Jolly Made Shop and my own favorite, the Roasty Toasty Sandwich Shop, which once served roasty toasty sandwiches at 2456 Troost. I wish it was still there, but it's long gone -- like most of this neighborhood, actually.

The sign, above, for Nice Food, a Chinese take-out restaurant at 7557 State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas is short and to the point. The joint, which is tiny, serves nice food. Cheap too. The menu features 22 different combination plates, all including an egg roll and pork fried rice, for $6.50. For big appetites, the place sells most of its dishes by the quart: a quart of Kung Pao Shrimp sells for $9. There are also Chief's Specialties. That's right, Chief's, not Chef's. Those are the costly specials here, like Seafood and Beef for $10.95.

One of the nice things about Nice Food is that it still serves classic Chinese-American dishes that have been dropped from a lot of modern Chinese restaurants: Chow Mai Fun, Egg Foo Young, and Chow Mein -- and a Pu-Pu Platter that includes one egg roll, one spring roll, two crab rangoon, two pieces of teriyaki chicken, two fried chicken strips and two pieces of shrimp toast for $7. The appetizer selection also includes buttermilk biscuits and French fries. That sounds nifty and dandy to me.

 

 

 

Tags: Chinese-American, Kansas City Kansas, Nice Food, restaurant names, take-out

Go ahead and make your Wednesday breakfast plans now, since tomorrow -- Wednesday, August 5 -- is National Waffle Day. A celebration is in order!

If you insist on making waffles at home, you might get into the real meaning of this holiday by watching Imitation of Life, one of the few American movies where pancakes and waffles mix with heartache, early race relations and frustrated​ maternal love. You'll never look at maple syrup with a dry eye again.

Yes, with a good waffle iron -- the kind you frequently see at garage sales and thrift stores -- and a basic waffle recipe (or this great malted waffle mix sold by Williams-Sonoma), it's easy enough to make hot, crispy waffles at home. But I still maintain the best waffles you can eat are those served in restaurants or diners.

Why? No mess to clean up, the waffles arrive ready to slather with butter and real maple syrup. The best waffles I've eaten in town have been, unsurprisingly, at Waffle House. The worst, hands down, are these.

 

(Image via Flickr: Monaz)

Maybe it was the brain freeze that hit me after my second sip of an ice-cold apple cider slushie, but I forgot to ask Mike Gerhardt -- who owns the Pome on the Range Orchards & Winery in Williamsburg, Kansas -- if "Pome" is a play on pomme, the French word for apple. I mean, it was a giant, helium-filled apple, bobbing up in the sky over I-35 South, that caught my eye when I was heading back from a visit to a weird, Children of the Corn kind of small town south of Ottawa. I couldn't get out of that hideous hamlet fast enough.

But Pome on the Range, which is operated by Mike and his wife Donnie, made the southern expedition worth it. The orchards are easily accessible off Exit 176 on I-35 and the little shop is well-stocked with jugs of excellent cold cider, Alma Creamery cheeses, jams, jellies and salsas -- there are no fresh apples yet (apple season begins in September; check the Web site calendar for details), but the Gerhardts are selling wonderful fresh peaches and sweet corn! And apple, peach, elderberry and blackberry wines.

​It sounds like a bad culinary pun, but it's true: Chef Cole Mowry has a lot on his plate these days.
In the next few weeks, he'll turn 50, become a father, move to Virginia, maybe open a coffee house, definitely be changing diapers and making his own organic baby food.

A year ago, he was just wondering if he would ever find another restaurant job -- but he was also enjoying a vacation with his new wife, Caralyn. Meanwhile, he'd been having some unusual stomach cramping. Then, last October, three days after his first wedding anniversary, Mowry was diagnosed with colon cancer.

He now considers himself lucky to get the diagnosis: One local physician, after hearing of his intestinal complaints, refused to approve a colonoscopy for Mowry, telling him, "You're not 50 years old yet. We can't do that."

Fortunately a second physician signed off on the procedure, which revealed a large tumor. "When I came out of the anesthesia," Mowry recalls, "there was no one there except my wife. She looked at me and said, 'It's not good.' "

Well, these were the five most horrible questions I heard during my years as a waiter -- and, to the best of my memory, my immediate responses.

1) "Um, there's a mouse under our table, it just ran over my shoe. Can you catch it?"

My answer: "Yes, but let me move you to a different table first." (You know, the one near the mousetrap.)

2) "Excuse me, I think there's a dead body in your men's room."

My answer: "Again?" (Then I ran to get the manager who found out, thank goodness, it was just a drunken customer who had passed out)

3) "When my girlfriend gets back from the bathroom, would you please sing this cute little song I wrote for her? It goes to the tune 'Hey, Big Spender."

My answer: "Sure." (Big mistake. The lyrics included: "The minute you wrecked my new car/I could tell you were the world's worst driver, a real big loser...")

4) "Would you take a drink to the guy in the pink shirt over there? That one, sitting at the table near the window? Take him a drink and tell him that Angela said he's the biggest asshole she ever dated."

My answer: "No, but if you want to write it on a piece of paper, I'll try to slip it into his lasagna."

5) "What would you say if I told you I forgot my wallet and I need to run home to get some cash to pay for this meal?"

My answer: "I better go ask the manager." (Who said, "It's OK, he has an honest face." We never saw the customer again).

 

(Image via Flickr: Sean Dreilinger)

 

 Kansas City still holds many mysteries to me. Like the venerable downtown saloon, The Quaff Buffet, right, at 1010 Broadway. The current owners have operated the Quaff since 1954, but the bar didn't actually start serving food until the early 1990s. So where did the buffet in the title come from?

Well, I think I may have one answer. While doing some research through the City Directories for a program I gave at the Kansas City Public Library last week, I found out that in the years during and following the end of Prohibition, there were two kinds of buffets in Kansas City. Well, maybe more if you throw in the tradition of calling a whorehouse a "buffet flat." But that's another story.

Now back in the 1930s, there were the buffets that actually served food -- although not buffets in the sense that they were "all-you-can-eat" joint like a Ryan's Steakhouse or a Home Town Buffet or the dozens of Chinese buffets scattered all over town-- but a combination bar and dining room, like the long-gone El Sereno Buffet and Restaurant, below, which once served American and Italian dishes at 800 Walnut Street.

 I love the postcard for the El Sereno Buffet, which claims the place is the "Home of the Hot Tomato Chaser." If anyone finds a recipe for such a drink -- I don't know if it had booze in it or not -- there are a couple of library employees who would like to taste one. The El Sereno was apparently famous for its fried shrimp, one of those dishes that probably tastes really good with a Hot Tomato Chaser.

And that brings me to the other kind of buffets.

There was a long spell after Prohibition ended in 1933 when there were liquor stores that didn't serve food, but still called themselves buffets, like the Rialto Buffet, the Lobby Buffet and Frank and Georgia's Buffet. The name of the Quaff Buffet may be a relic of that era.

But the only kind of buffet I want to visit is one that has "All You Can Eat" connected to the title.

The image of a hardcore gamer subsisting on Cheetos and a Mountain Dew may need an update. Example A: this how-to for carving the Mario Bros. 1-UP mushroom out of a radish.

Food culture and design are leaching into video-game junkies' virtual and offline worlds. Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington, allows you to have food and beverages delivered to your seats via the Nintendo Fan Network -- a wireless network at the stadium that works with the hand-held Nintendo DS.  

The idea of robots eating people didn't seem likely just two weeks ago. But that was before Cyclone Power Technologies announced on July 7 that it had finished the biomass engine system that would power the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) from Robotic Technology Inc.

In short hand, that means a robot that draws its power from whatever organic material is available. EATR, which looks like Wall-E's head attached to a yellow pine wood derby racer, is a rolling scout designed for the Department of Defense.

In a little over a week, biomass had been interpreted to mean people. CNET picked up a report by FOX News and the suggestion that mechanized cannibalism might soon commence.

Our carcasses and those of other animals are, apparently, full of energy.... And given that EATR is being created for some military purposes, there should be plenty of battlefield corpses for it to feed on.

It seemed like a real-life version of The Matrix was happening, wherein humans had been turned into batteries. In an effort to address the rumors, Cyclone felt compelled to issue a press release explaining the company wasn't secretly aiding a robotic takeover.

"We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission," stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone's CEO. "We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter.

In other words, EATR is a vegetarian. Cyclone further clarified that it will only consume twigs, grass clippings, and wood chips as fuel, in a process termed "foraging." It's also nice to know that Cyclone is not a front for Cyberdyne Systems.

In addition, there will be no further confusion between the dietary concerns of robots and zombies. Robots will apparently turn up their mechanical noses at brains.

If people are still worried about the EATR robot, the simplest way to keep it an herbivore is just to force it to sit through a screening of the documentary Food Inc. When they see what humans eat, they'll probably pass on taking a bite of us. 

[Image via Flickr: atp_tyreseus']

Since I do more complaining about the work involved in keeping up my tiny little urban garden than I do actually working in it, I needed a serious dose of inspiration to see how magnificent a vegetable garden can be. A friend insisted that we take a Sunday afternoon trip to Powell Gardens to meditate among the apple trees, herbs, pole-climbing beans and grape vines in the one-month-old Heartland Harvest Garden. It was a nice cool afternoon, so I was up for an energetic walk around the grounds -- especially after indulging in a delicious artery-clogging double-cheeseburger the previous afternoon.

If we had only visited the Harvest Garden -- which boasts an outdoor kitchen facility -- one day earlier, we might have been able to attend the latest class in the ongoing "Garden Chef Series." Paula Winchester of Herb Gathering, Inc. conducted two sessions of a class where she prepared a menu that included black tea cheese crisps, caper and pumpkin seed green tea cream cheese and exotic lychee nectar black tea rice.

This week's special event at the Harvest Garden takes place on Saturday when Powell Gardens celebrates its "Sweet Corn Festival" from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There's an additional admission fee to get into the Heartland Harvest Garden, but it includes the opportunity to sample freshly picked corn, shop for corn, watch a chef's presentation, listen to live banjo music and learn tips for growing corn in your own back yard.

The Heartland Harvest Garden has its own little dining venue called Fresh: A Garden Cafe, which serves a variety of delectable-sounding dishes from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. I've not dined there yet, but I want to, particularly after reviewing the menu, which features a gazpacho "with fresh crusty bread," a "Mean Green Panini" with marinated vegetables and house-made ricotta cheese, a summer lamb wrap and a corn-and-potato pizza.

A Powell Gardens employee assured me -- in a whisper -- that the food at the Heartland Harvest Gardens was vastly superior to the fare at Cafe Thyme (where I've never had a decent meal) that's the "official" restaurant in the Powell Gardens Visitors Center.
 

Charles Ferruzza Collection

Well, you can't get a fried chicken dinner at the long-razed Green Parrot restaurant (right) which once stood at Highway 50 and State Line and didn't serve liquor and catered "only to connoisseurs of selected foods, well-prepared."

But if you're in a chicken-eating mood tonight, there's alway's Stroud's, one of the Peachtree restaurants, Lew's Soul Delicious Buffet and dozens of other -- to borrow a formerly famous commercial jingle -- finger-lickin' good joints.

Tags: fried chicken

Yes, today is National Catfish Day!

No, not the giant, man-eating catfish that was allegedly discovered in the Guangdang Reservoir or the former Kansas City Athletics star "Catfish" Hunter...but the smaller, whiskered variety that was, before the days of quick refrigerated deliveries, the closest thing Midwestern diners had to "seafood" for many years.

Once a staple on menus in the heartland, it's not so easy to find fried catfish on a lot of modern restaurant menus: it's a dish that's not so good for your cholesterol, alas -- but Kansas City still boasts some first-rate catfish dinners.

Here are just a few of my top choices for fried catfish in the metro. This is, by no means, a complete list. In fact, I'm eager to find out, from readers, the joints I'm leaving out.

• Stroud's. There's nothing quite like pan-fried catfish and the Stroud's version is big, flaky inside and gorgeously crisp and crunchy on the exterior. The complete dinner is $16.95.
• Papa Lew's Soul Delicious, 2128 E. 12th Street, offers whole fried catfish on Fridays and Sundays on the soul food buffet. One fish per customer, please.
• The Gaf Pub & Grill, 7122 Wornall Rd., is located in the old Romanelli Grill which was legendary for its whole fried catfish. Gaf owner Ray Dunlea wisely kept the dish on the dinner menu.
• The Bamboo Hut, 10111 E. 40 Highway in Independence. One of the last remaining roadhouses in town still serves stiff drinks and whole fried catfish.

 

(Image via Flickr: jeremiah_owyang)

 

Tags: Bamboo Hut, catfish, Papa Lew's Soul Delicious, Stroud's, The Gaf

I love eating at church festivals for the following reasons: the food is usually very inexpensive, the fare is often home-made, and the atmosphere is very convivial. It is, after all, hosted by a church!

Last Sunday, I was scheduled to go to brunch with a couple of friends but I requested making a culinary detour first: to the "Taste of St. Anthony's" at the historic St. Anthony's Catholic Church at 318 Benton Boulevard in the old Northeast. The church is right across the street from the old (and empty) Joseph J. Heim mansion, built in 1889 from the fortunes of the Heim Brewery and Electric Park.

Somewhere, I had seen a poster for the "Taste of St. Anthony's" advertising food booths offering fare from different countries -- and a cake walk! My friend Georgina warned me not to eat too much food at the festival since we were going out for a fancy brunch afterwards, but the aroma of the grilled italian sausage sandwiches (above) clouded my judgement and before I could stop myself, I had purchased $10 worth of food tickets!