Real Ragu Sauce Doesn't Come in Jars

It's ironic that if you mention ragu to most Americans, they think of the epitome of convenience - jarred spaghetti sauce. If you mention it to someone who has tasted the real thing, though, it conjures almost the opposite mental image - meat cooked for hours in sauteed vegetables and sauce until it falls apart into shreds, creating a luscious, rich sauce with incredible meatiness.

On Sunday, I prepared this masterpiece for friends with a couple culinary quirks. One does not eat ground meats, and one is allergic to onions. The proscription on ground beef was not a problem for ragu - only bastardized short-cut recipes employ ground beef, but the absence of onions called for a bit of adaptation. I increased the celery and garlic substantially - I would have happily substituted shallots, but I wasn't sure if the onion allergy would extend to shallots. I'll do a lot to increase depth of flavor, but putting a friend into anaphylactic shock seems extreme.

To make my version, I started with 4 pounds of boneless beef chuck short ribs. These have become my go-to meat for stews, chilis, and other recipes where "stew meat" might otherwise be called for. The meat is marbled, tender, tasty and easily available at Costco.

Most recipes call for the meat to be browned in oil, but I'm a Kansas Citian, and I love my grill, so I browned the meat close to charring and made the neighbors drool. I figure that by dripping the fat through the grill, I may be avoiding a little bit of fat in the sauce, and it adds a better flavor than I can ever achieve by browning in a saute pan. That's just Kansas City Culinary Improv - if you prefer to brown the meat on a stove top, then do so.

After the meat was seared on the grill, I roughly chopped a few carrots and 6 stalks of celery, and minced around 12 cloves of garlic. That went into a big pot with some olive oil, and I sauteed them until they started to soften up. While that was going on, I added the meat after cutting it into chunks, and I added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and a similar amount of fresh thyme. I rummaged through our dry spice jars and tossed other things in - I think some bay leaves, oregano, sage and basil made their way to the pan, along with salt and a generous grinding of pepper.

Let me tell you, meat, garlic, celery and herbs sauteing in olive oil makes wonderful kitchen perfume.

After the vegetables had started to soften, I added a bottle of red wine. Not great red wine, but not "cooking wine", either. I used a cab/merlot blend, but a great dry Italian red would have been more authentic. I simmered that for about an hour, then added two 28 ounce cans of crushed Italian tomatoes, covered it, and put it in an oven at 275 for most of the afternoon.

Most recipes call for shredding the meat with a fork after letting it cool. My sauce was thick enough that I just went after it with a potato masher.

I wound up using the sauce in a rich lasagna, but it tastes great over plain pasta, too. It freezes well, which makes future meals almost as convenient as its jarred namesake.

Beer World - Good News and Bad News from Waldo Pizza

Waldo Pizza makes one of the best pies in the city, and I would go there if their best beer was Diet Coke. What makes the place incredible, though, is their beer selection. From the beginning, they have always had an intelligent and varied beer list, light-years ahead of most restaurants.

First, the good news - they are now offering beer flights. For the ridiculously low price of $5, you can get 4 pours of 5 ounces each from their taps. When you consider that their taps include treasures like the fabled Bell's Hopslam, Schlafly's Barrel Aged Imperial Stout, Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout and Unibroue's Trois Pistoles, that amounts to a tour of some of the world's most amazing beers for $5. That's an insanely wonderful bargain. The 5 ounce pours are enough to give you a legitimate taste of the beers, and you might still have room for a pint after tasting the 4. (I opted for a bottle of Founder's Double Trouble IPA, which compares nicely with Hopslam.)

Now, the bad news.

Elliott Beier, Waldo's Cicerone (think beer sommelier), my favorite beer adviser and all-around nice guy, is leaving our town for Chicago at the end of the month. He'll be at the restaurant till the end of the month - I recommend swinging by and bidding your farewell, and if you haven't met him yet, taking the time to ask his advice about the beers on his fabulous list.

(Those who may worry about Waldo sinking into beer mediocrity after his departure may rest assured that they had a great beer list before Elliott's arrival, and I expect they will continue the tradition. But Elliott's excellent taste will be missed, I am sure.)

Soup Dumplings

Imagine a fat, round, pale dumpling, glistening on a bamboo steamer amidst wilted greenery. You pick one up, bite it, and there is a meatball surrounded by lovely, salty broth. In one morsel, you have dough, meatballs, and soup. You've just had a soup dumpling.

My son introduced us to soup dumplings at a place called Joe's Shanghai on a narrow street in New York's Chinatown. They've become a key feature of any trip to New York now; I've never seen them anywhere else.

The trick to making them without having the broth melt out is gelatin. When chilled, the broth is gelatinized, only to become a rich, silky broth when gently steamed. That bit of ingenuity makes for a tricky-to-eat burst of oxymoronic exotic comfort food.

If you're ever in New York, visit Joe's Shanghai. Elsewhere, they may appear as "Xiao Long Bao", though their quality may vary.

My Dinner at Per Se

In writing, as in many other aspects of life, it is unwise to leapfrog over your own abilities, even when offered the opportunity to do so. The hotshot high school quarterback dreams of a shot at the NFL, but would be crushed and demoralized if thrust into the situation. The funniest guy at the office bombs at an open-mike comedy show. The NASCAR fan winds up in a ditch when the speedometer hits triple digits.

Here I go, doing the same thing. An amateur foodwriter visits Per Se, and gets the VIP treatment, and tries to write about it.

Per Se is one of the world's best restaurants. Those who decide such things have declared it to be the best restaurant in the United States (or anywhere in the Americas, for that matter), and the 6th best in the world. Personally, I've not been to any other the other top 100, so I can neither confirm nor deny that it deserves #6. I'll let the experts defend their own rankings to those of who you swear by the French Laundry in Yountville, California (#12), Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York (#31) or even the obviously crappy #97, Bo Innovation in Hong Kong.

Suffice it to say, the restaurant is well-regarded. I wore a suit to dinner on vacation.

First, even before the decor, you are struck by the people. Help is everywhere, from the team of people who greet you at the door and take your coat to the servers walking quickly but without seeming rushed. The staff is urgent in a manner that does not quicken your pulse; they are urgently working to help you feel relaxed and comfortable. It's a nifty trick, and they pull it off.

Then, the view. A table next to the fireplace, with a view of Columbus Circle and a snowy Central Park. The space is elegant, but graceful instead of "fancy".

But we were there for the dining. First, a flinty champagne with gruyere puffs and salmon cornets. The puffs (gougeres, actually) were at a perfect temperature, with the gruyere just warm enough to be sensous and flavorful. The cornets (Salmon tartare and Red onion Creme Fraiche in a Savory Cornet) were like tasty little cones of salty tart flavor to wake your palate from the cozy slumber brought on by the gougeres.

Hold it.

I could continue on like this, but I won't. The reason is I haven't even hit the menu yet. These were "amuse bouche" - little extras that just happen. Not that the term "menu" means what you think it means here, anyhow. You don't really order at Per Se - you decide. And all you decide is whether you're going to be a vegetarian for the evening or if you will have the chef's menu. Either way, the chef is in control, not you. Which is okay, since either way, you're down for $275 dollars, and I know my personal imagination cannot conjure a meal worth that much money, so it's just as well an expert is there to do it for me.

(The $275 does not include the fabulous wines and one ethereal beer, by the way. And there were 4 of us. And we got the VIP treatment, which means that we got much more than the normal $275 meal. Incredible. My son underwrote the entire experience.)

Instead of going through each course, I'll mention a few of my favorite moments out of the five and a half hour feast. There were 18 courses listed on the menu they gave us at the end of the evening, but it didn't list a few of the various extras delivered.

"Surf and Turf" was a lobster mitten (just the most tender portion of the lobster's claw), served with Boudin Noir, a luscious pork blood sausage, and heightened with a vigorous shaving of black truffle at the table.

The black truffles came out again with the "Salad of Young Beets". I had not ever been a beet fan, but this was out of this world. But the highlight of the dish for me was the "pastrami", which was shaved and dehydrated crispy foie gras, enhanced with pastrami spices. I never thought I would eat crispy foie gras and black truffles in one bite.

There were four items with foie gras. Three had black truffles. Can you believe that?

One of the most spectacular presentations was "Quail in a Jar". While I haven't seen the recipe, my son tells me that the first direction is "Debone a quail" - a ridiculous assignment for your average home cook! Anyhow, they brought a canning jar to the table, with a quail suspended in aspic. The brought it back to the kitchen for plating, and it returned as an amazingly rich quail stuffed with foie gras, and garnished with tiny lettuces and 100 year-old balsamic vinegar.

There were 6 salts at our table, ranging from a volcanic black salt to a pink salt from France.

Probably my favorite dish was the "Salvatore Brooklyn Ricotta 'Agnolotti'", which was like tiny ravioli filled with ricotta unlike any I have tasted before, and the whole dish was covered with white truffle shaved over it tableside. I've never seen white truffle before, much less tasted it, but it is pungent and earthy and mind-altering. The dish was heaven.

At one point during the meal, we were welcomed back into the kitchen. Everything sparkled, even a copper tube leading to a drain. There is no walk-in refrigerator; instead, refrigerators opened to reveal shelves of carefully organized ingredients in clearly-labeled tubs. The pace was urgent, but not frenetic. The person preparing desserts was a friendly young man from Barstow, here in Kansas City.

During the meal I learned that "Cervelle de Veau" is calf brain, and that I love calf brain. My daughter thought for a moment the server said it was "cat brain" . . .

I love food, but I never, ever, expected to have such a meal. I'm glad I did; it was the culinary equivalent of standing on Mount Everest. The fact that I have been there does not diminish my love of Pancho's or Blue Stem. But, man, it was amazing.

The meal happened two weeks ago tonight, and this is the first time I've wanted to write about it. I want to remember it, and I can't help but share the experience as best I can. I won't tell you to rush out and visit the place; the tab was more than several cars I've purchased in my lifetime.

Chef Thomas Keller, the founder of Per Se, wrote, "When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about." Lots of meals make me happy, but this one was special. Just like your happiest moment does not diminish the joy of other happy moments, my dinner at Per Se was a pinnacle of food appreciation, but it leaves room for plenty more.

Around the BLOCK Puts Food Review in Context

Not long ago, I stumbled upon Around the BLOCK, a nicely done local food blog. The author presents thoughtful reviews of well-chosen restaurants, and excels at providing vivid descriptions without lapsing into strident superlatives of praise or denunciation. Intelligence and grace abound.

In the temptingly positive review she posted yesterday about 1924 Main, one paragraph stands out as a must-read for those of us who believe that a thriving restaurant culture is an important and reliable sign of a city's vibrancy:

At 2 courses for $20 or 3 for $25 (all dishes are also offered a la carte), it’s hard to beat the price for an upscale, quality experience. All restaurants are struggling to survive in the sluggish economy, and owner Rob Dalzell has responded by making dinner more affordable without taking away the glamour of dining out. And, he is one of Kansas City’s independent restaurateurs, all of whom should be supported. If we don’t patronize these local treasures, they will not survive and we will be forced to spend our money in chain operations, which typically are less creative, more cookie-cutter, and don’t utilize local farmers. And what fun would that be?

Where will you spend your restaurant dollars in 2010?

Where Have All the Pretzels Gone?

We live in a golden age of beer, with hundreds of brands and varieties easily available at local stores at reasonable prices. No human population has ever, in the history of mankind, had a richer beer experience than American beer lovers today. It is a joyful time to be alive.

But where have all the pretzels gone?

What a painful irony it is that now that I am of age to match pretzels with their proper beverage, the honest pretzel is nearly extinct, preserved only in far-away gourmet sanctuaries beyond the reach of ordinary folk.

Today's pretzels are a shadow of what pretzels should be. Pretzels should be twisted, but now they are pooped preformed from machined tools and baked to bland uniformity. When I was a child, even the mass market brands were twisted, with little extra-browned pretzel nipples to be snapped off the top arch, and a corrugated center where strands of dough did a joyful dance of crispness. Now, mass-market pretzels are flat and uniform, tanned and smooth.


And the snap! Back in the day, when you bit a pretzel, it snapped like a dried branch. The place where it broke would be jagged with striations and spikes. Crumbs were flakes or like tiny twigs of dough. Now, pretzels are like compressed powder. The texture when you break one is like crumbling a clump of laundry detergent.

Don't get me wrong - I'll eat a bag of the current version of mass-market pretzels without a shred of self-control. Even a bad pretzel is, after all, a pretzel, and proof that crispy and salty are two keys to the good life.

But every now and then, I'll recall the pretzels of an earlier time. "Nibble with Gibble's" brand came in plastic bags and a twist-tie, and brightened winters in Schenectady, New York. When my mother passed away a couple years ago, the only item my wise brother sought from the home was a large round Tupperware container that she used to store pretzels in the cabinet when we were kids, but, alas, it was gone like Rosebud.

Snyder's sourdough pretzels are the closest you'll find in our grocery stores to the great pretzels of my childhood, though they are expensive and taste of cardboard. I've heard rumors that there are still great pretzels being made out there, and I may someday resort to mail ordering some. I've even tried baking my own, but they came out stone-hard, and looked more scatological than appetizing.

Even if I mail-order or bake my own, though, it won't be the same. Great pretzels are like a mother's love. You shouldn't need to seek it out, and scarcity reduces, rather than enhances, its value. They're both at their best when they are a comfortable part of everyday life. This holiday season, I miss them both.

Easy Great Bread at Home in 5 Minutes

I've written about my sourdough baking, and I got comments and emails about people's love of home-made fresh bread. But it's an hours-long process, requiring attentive measuring and careful timing, with uncertain results, particularly for newbie bakers. With Farm-to-Market's wonderful bread on supermarket shelves, and Fervere producing some of the best breads in the world, you can avoid the whole hassle for 4 or 5 bucks.

But you can make your whole house smell like baking bread for cents a loaf, and be rewarded with a truly top-notch bread, way up there with Farm-to-Market, without worry and without scheduling your day around it. I don't mean to sound like a street corner evangelist, or a side-show barker, but, seriously, I mean YOU, you should have fresh bread this week.

The secret is cold, wet dough. You spend a few minutes mixing together 3 cups of water, a table spoon and a half of yeast, two teaspoons of salt (more or less, depending on your taste), and six and a half cups of flour in a bowl with a spoon (no kneading), let it sit, covered loosely, for a couple hours, then put it in your refrigerator. Over the next couple weeks (if it lasts that long), you put flour on your hands, grab a grapefruit sized chunk of it, shape it into a sticky ball, let it rest for 40 minutes, and then bake it in a 450 degree oven for half an hour or so. Your hands are dirty for under 5 minutes, and you'll be pulling an awesome loaf of bread out of the oven in less time than it takes for 3 episodes of "Scrubs".

I meant to post a picture of one of the loaves I made this week, but it fell victim to breakfast toast.

If you want to learn more, and make the bread even better, this article is what turned me on to this miracle method, and it has a few tips that are absolutely worth it, like using a pizza stone and putting a pan of water in when you bake the bread. The authors of the article also have a blog and a couple books (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients). I haven't even read the books yet - the Kansas City Public Library (yea, Waldo Branch!) is working on it for me - but I've been wildly impressed with the breads I've made over the past couple weeks.

The Time When Tips Die

The time that passes from when I finish my meal to when I receive my tab is the time that good tips die. It's a time when good waiters show their attentiveness and earn rewards, and bad waiters cost themselves money I would have been happy to give.

I'm a patient diner and a generous tipper. Where else in your economic life can an adjustment of a couple dollars either way have a direct impact on the happiness level of a hard-working person? On a $15 bill, I can be an ass for $2, a decent human being for $3, a good guy for $4 and a working class hero if I don't insist on getting a measly buck back from my $20. Most days, I'll invest in some good karma.

I don't blame waiters for mediocre food, I don't blame them for long preparation times, and I'm not fussy about whether my water glass is refilled every time I take a sip. I get annoyed with them for not having a clue about their beer list, but the problem is so widespread I assume there must be some union rule forbidding them from knowing what malted beverages are available, so I grudgingly forgive even that incompetence. Unless I see them hanging around chatting with coworkers, I assume they're working hard and doing their best.

But my patience lasts only until my plate is empty, or moved to the side. At that time, I expect the waiter to notice, ask whether I want dessert or another beverage, and begin preparing the tab. That is the time period that most impacts the size of my tip.

A couple weekends ago, we had pizza for Saturday lunch at an "upscale" pizzeria in Brookside. The food was better than I had been led to expect (including some inventive salads), and their beer list included Magic Hat #9, so the stage was set for a generous tip. But we became invisible to the waitress when the pizza was shoved to the side. With laser-like focus, she swooped in to seat take orders from tables near us, without even a sideways glance at the table she had already served.

To me, that is like serving a dessert with a roach in it after a fine meal. It ruins what has come before. A pleasant 35-40 minute lunch has been capped off with a 10 minute annoyance of trying to pay for it. Her tip reflected my annoyance, and she probably figured she had gotten stuck with a lousy tipper. 10 minutes earlier, she would have been pleasantly surprised.

Missing Meals - What Kansas City has Lost

Kansas City is a great restaurant town, and I think it's even getting better. We are blessed with more creative chefs than I can count, and they keep moving us forward. But, every now and then, my thoughts will trip back to restaurants that have disappeared, and I'd like to step back in time for a couple hours. Here are a few places I would visit, in no particular order:

1. Leonard's, for biscuits and gravy. Leonard's was a previous occupant of what is now Governor Stumpy's, and they put out the best biscuits and gravy I've ever had. The gravy was peppery, with lots of tasty sausage, and the biscuits were soft with a crisp crust.

2. La Mediterranee for lunch. On the east side of the Plaza, a quiet, elegant French restaurant used to serve top-notch fare on fine china with white tablecloths for around $5.

3. Al Roubaie's (sp?) for lobster. Up the hill on Main from the Plaza, back when Main went straight over the creek, was a spotty little restaurant with a great lobster special. If I recall correctly, you got lobster and sides for $15, and it was a feast.

4. Thirsty's Cantina for lunch. I don't know how they packed so much flavor into a simple chicken sandwich, but it was wonderful. There used to be a great bar in the space now occupied by Panerra in Westport. They also served a burrito thing I can't remember the name of (chicken cantina?), but it was filled with chicken in a creamy, cheesy sauce with just enough jalapeno to make it shine. All that, plus chips and salsa.

5. TJ Cinnamon's. I know that the name lives on as a corporate asset of the Arby's chain, but, if you weren't around to experience it, you have no idea how mouth-watering a walk through Ward Parkway mall could be back in the mid-80s. The aromas of butter and cinnamon wafted through the then-active halls of commerce. The rolls were warm and soft - the size of softballs - and they were individual treasures, not boxed products.
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This trip down memory lane has not truly been a lament. I think we have more, better restaurants today than we did 20 years ago. I wouldn't even trade the dependable neighborhood friendliness of Governor Stumpy's for the breakfast of Leonard's. Things change and they sometimes get better. But these are some fond food memories I have of Kansas City . . .

Where is the Best Mole in Kansas City?

I've never made a great, or even a very good, mole. In fact, I'm not sure I've even really tasted a great mole. I feel like a whole world of culinary awesomeness awaits.

Mole is a broad word that includes thick Mexican sauce. Guacamole is a form of mole, though that's not what I'm talking about when I express my desire to taste a great mole. I want rich, peppery, complex sauce that steals the show from the sweetest pork, the juiciest chicken, the freshest fish, or whatever is served with it.

I know that I'm still not being specific enough. There are moles that range from green to nearly black, and flavors that range from fire to peanutty. I've read Rick Bayless' cookbooks and even spent a day trying to make an ambitious green mole from one of them, but it was merely okay.

Where in Kansas City can I find good versions of this labor-intensive sauce? Are the jarred varieties any good? Any advice for an open-minded, eager-to-learn gringo?

Pasta Carbonara in Minutes - and the Fiction of Recipes

For most dishes, recipes are an inspiration, not a road map. There's no point in stressing over exact measurements for most recipes - differences in technique and ingredients are going to make your dish an individual creation anyhow. Relax, be yourself, and make it the way you like it.

Pasta carbonara is a great example of this approach. In essence, it's bacon and eggs with pasta - breakfast bolstered for dinner. Calvin Trillin argues that it ought to replace turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, though I don't go quite that far. Turkey deserves its place as a once-a-year struggle, while pasta carbonara ought to be in the regular rotation of weeknight dinners.

Here's how I made it last night. I am completely capable of writing this in the traditional format of recipes, with a list of ingredients followed by cooking instructions, but I'd prefer to break out of that mold. This is not a scientific formula to be slavishly recreated. I started a pound of pasta boiling, and fried up a third of a pound of pancetta, adding a a few cloves of minced garlic when it was almost crisp. When the garlic was softened and the pasta cooked to my liking, I tossed the drained pasta in with the pancetta along with a little bit of the pasta water, removed it from the heat, tossed in 4 eggs I had whipped with salt and pepper, stirred that vigorously together, and then stirred in about a cup of parmesan and some parsley.

That's all, folks. In the time it would have taken to heat up two microwave dinners, I made enough pasta carbonara to make dinner and a couple hearty lunches.

At almost every point in that brief recipe, though, there was room to add your own preferences. I used pancetta this time, but bacon works great, and so does prosciutto. Go with your preference. I used a pretty heavy hand with the garlic - use as much or as little as you like, and add it early if you want its flavor to mellow and meld, or add it late if you want it to be sharp. Use as much or as little pasta water as you like to get the consistency you prefer, or toss in a little white wine to give it a touch of acid. Use as many eggs as you see fit, and substitute different cheeses for the parmesan - or simply use a different grade of parmesan. (I was lazy last night, and used the parmesan that had been grated at the store - I could have easily upgraded by buying a chunk of real parmesan and firing up the food processor.) If you want, you can add capers or olives, and you can toss in herbs.

Even if I had set out to accurately recreate someone else's recipe, it's doubtful that I could recreate exactly what the recipe writer makes. How crisp is crisp pancetta? What brand of pancetta are we each using? They're not all the same. Even the pasta and eggs have subtle differences and vary in freshness - not to even mention the possibility of home-made pasta. The cheese is a wild card - even IF we both chose parmesan, it's unlikely that they're going to taste very much the same.

Most recipes are springboards to get you started creating. Don't fear the recipe police. Go with your preferences.

Osceola Cheese - Disappointment on Highway 13

When traveling through Missouri, there are lots of fascinating spots to visit for a quick break. Those brown Missouri Department of Conservation signs point to dozens of small parks, and the flea markets and antique shops hold treasures.

But the Osceola Cheese Shop is not one of them.

Always crowded with slow-moving sample-takers, the store is harshly lit, poorly laid out and filled with cheese that mostly tastes like American with artificial flavorings. On top of that, you get "gifts" offered by an attached Christian bookstore and Precious Moments figurines next to dew rags festooned with the flag of the Confederate Losers.

It manages the difficult feat of being completely tacky without even offering visitors an opportunity to be ironically amused by kitsch. It's a cheese shop that can't even be engagingly cheesy.

Italian Meatballs

I love meatballs. I've had fancy, lowbrow, Swedish, baseball-sized, Himalayan, frozen, crockpotted, sandwiched, fried, marble-sized and other varieties I can't even remember. If there's a meatball on a menu, I'm a sucker for it.

So, yesterday when I decided to add a carnivorous twist to my vegetarian spaghetti sauce, meatballs were the obvious choice. But not just rolled up pieces of ground beef - I wanted something that would stand up to the long-simmered tomato sauce.

2 pounds of lean ground beef, a half pound of ground pork, a little less than a half pound each of pancetta and prosciutto cut into tiny pieces, 3 eggs, some bread crumbs, some red wine, spices and Italian parsley, tossed in a bowl and mixed. I browned them in olive oil, then put them in a dutch oven for an hour at 350, covered in the spaghetti sauce. The recipe makes too darned many meatballs - a crowd of 10 barely put a dent in them.

Few things are better than meatballs on an autumn afternoon, but two things that come close are the aroma of spaghetti sauce and meatballs filling the house, and leftovers.

Not A Restaurant Review - Mezzaluna on Gregory

I had lunch at the freshly opened Mezzaluna now occupying the former Papa Keno's space at Gregory and Rockhill (formerly Waldeaux Wines and Liquors, and Circle K when we moved into the neighborhood 20+ years ago). Before I get started describing the experience, I want to make a quick acknowledgment that I am not a real restaurant reviewer. I fear that sometimes we bloggers get a little full of ourselves, and think we're the equivalent of a legitimate restaurant reviewer, because we go to restaurants and write about our experiences.

That's kind of like claiming you're a football player after tossing the ball around on the lawn, or claiming you're a golfer after a round at Cool Crest. Just because you go through some of the motions doesn't mean you've played the whole game. Tiger Woods does more than putt on felt, and there are a lot of Xs and Os in a real football game.

Real reviewers know a lot more than I do, and work a lot harder. I'm about to spout off on a restaurant I have visited once, by myself, for lunch, during their "soft" opening. I have no experience in opening a restaurant, and I don't have any advanced culinary training. I haven't written a ton of reviews, and I haven't studied the work of the great restaurant reviewers.

A proper restaurant reviewer would approach his or her task with a wealth of experience in the restaurant and journalism businesses, and would visit several times with multiple friends to get a sense of the breadth of the menu and the skill of the service. It's easy to laud or lambast a restaurant for one meal, but it's not a fair assessment, nor is it particularly helpful to the reader. Your praise of a lamb chop doesn't give a vegetarian much of a guess about what to expect.

I write all this not to belittle those of us who happen to publish on a blog - there are some top-notch true restaurant reviewers on blogs who have the skills and put in the effort to do first-rate reviews. I write all this simply to pay proper homage to those who work while I play, and to heighten the readers' awareness of the rigor required of real restaurant reviewers.

Now that all that is out of the way, I'm happy to be welcoming Mezzaluna to the neighborhood. It's a small Italian restaurant with a menu full of the basics, a good wine list and a nicely-done beer list, enhanced by a few craft brews on tap. The downstairs space is nice but a little utilitarian, with floor-to-ceiling retail coolers covering one entire wall, left over from the space's days as a liquor store. The upstairs space is surprisingly elegant, though, with cloth-covered chairs, white tablecloths and a pleasant breeze when the garage-door walls are opened. The guys at the table next to me ordered a bottle of wine (well-served by the waiter who swore it was the first time he had ever, in his life, opened a bottle of wine), and I envied the prospect of staying there for the afternoon, sipping wine with friends at tree-level.

The menu included several tempting options, all within the $8-12 range, including all the classics like ravioli, chicken parmesan, caesar salads, etc. I sought and accepted the waiter's advice in choosing between the Pizza Mezzaluna (a carnivore's concoction with garlic) and the lasagna. He recommended the lasagna, and it was a generous serving of well-prepared meat, cheese and pasta. It stood out for its restraint - some lasagna beats you over the head with dark red marinara sauce and spicy sausage, but this one was more elegant. The meat featured ground veal and a delicate hand with the spices, and the sauce was tamed with cream. I'd recommend it highly.

I visited the restaurant on its third day, and there were the expected kinks in service. The credit card machine was not working, and the waiter was stretched too thin serving both upstairs and downstairs. Given his apparent lack of experience (never having opened a bottle of wine), he did a fantastic job, with a friendly, relaxed style while running up and down the stairs.

I look forward to returning sometime soon for dinner, and sharing wine with friends in the upstairs space. Mezzaluna should thrive as an elegant addition to the neighborhood.

Pasta with Chicken and Olives - Simple Sophistication, Quick and Easy

Elaborate recipes are great fun, but some days I just want something quick and easy. Those are the days for Pasta with Chicken and Olives. Thanks to the development of olive bars and rotisserie chicken in grocery stores, I can have this on the table in thirty minutes or less.

The olive cart at my local grocer is small but wonderful. For this recipe, I have a bias toward green olives - they tend to be a bit firmer, and their flavor goes well with chicken. But the key is to pick out a blend. I pick out a mix of 2 cups or so of olives, black and green, mostly pitted, along with a few bright red Peppadew peppers (read their odd story here)
and some caper berries. (If you've never used caper berries, just cut off their stem and prepare yourself for a briny, grainy treat.)

Don't use the slotted spoons when scooping out your olives. That juice is key to infusing the dish with flavor. I usually wind up with juice covering about half the olives.

When you get home, start a pot of water boiling for the pasta (use your favorite variety, though I prefer good old fettucini). Take about half of the meat off the chicken, in bite-sized chunks. Set it aside, and chop the olives, peppers and capers into smaller pieces. No mincing, just breaking them up a little. Dump them with the juice into a pan big enough to hold the pasta when it's ready, and heat them up.

Then go to your refrigerator and see what enhancements you want to toss in. A little Siracha sauce is great. Pepperoncini add a spicy bite. A little garlic flavor from a splash of bottled Garozzo's Amogio sauce is great. A squeeze of lemon or a little white wine works, too.

Once the pasta is cooked just a bit shy of al dente, drain it and toss it in with the olives. Add the chicken meat and cook it for 5 or so minutes so that some of the juice flavor gets into the pasta, and the dish is heated through. Mix it all up and serve it.

If you have a loaf or crusty bread or a salad, all the better, but the meal is satisfying as is. It's a lot cheaper than getting a pizza delivered, and it's even better for lunch the following day.

Free Yeast for Baking

Few things on earth are as satisfying as a loaf of home-made bread of sourdough. First, the aroma spreads through the house, and then you get to saw through a rich dark crust and taste that still-warm bread. It has a tang that elevates it over blander loaves, and it's all yours for a bit of patience and less money than the cheapest supermarket fluff.

Sourdough yeast is wild yeast - not from a packet or a jar, but from the air and surfaces surrounding us. Yeast is everywhere, hoping to find the right opportunity to start converting sugars and starches into carbon dioxide and alcohol. If you give yeast that opportunity and capture its carbon dioxide in a glue of flour and fluid, you have bread dough.

Thousands of varieties of yeast exist around us. Over time, civilization has cultured the "best" varieties, and these are the ones you find in foil packets in the grocery store. They are wonderful at what they do - produce consistent loaves with dependable rise and a neutral flavor. Now, they even have rapid-rise versions that do all those things in about half the time the prior generations had to invest in their bread.

Sourdough yeast is different. It has a tangy, distinctive, sour taste. It rises on a slower schedule, and can be finicky about whether it will rise at all. Sourdough yeast is typically kept in starters, some of which have been passed down for generations and originally gained fame when gold prospectors left their civilized yeast behind and started fresh cultures of wild yeast in the Wild West (you can get a free starter of a Carl Griffin's Oregon Trail strain from 1847 here, for the cost of a self-addressed stamped envelope).

It's easy to make your own starter, though. Saturday morning, I mixed a cup of flour and a cup of water, and put it in a loosely covered jar and let it sit. By Saturday evening, a layer of yellow-brownish fluid had formed on the surface, and I mixed it back in. Sunday morning, it looked kind of foamy. This morning, it had risen up the jar and fallen back down, and is ready to be "fed" with more water and flour.

The yellowish stripe in the second picture is "hooch" - a layer of fluid with alcohol in it, but nothing you would want to drink. You can either mix it back in or wait for it to rise to the surface and pour it off.

I have captured the wild yeast, and, as baking season returns, I'll be able to create my own unique versions of sourdough loaves, biscuits and even waffles.

Springfield Cashew Chicken

Batter-dipped, deep-fried chunks of chicken, topped with a sauce based on oyster sauce, served over rice with a sprinkling of crisp cashews and a garnish of green onions - that's what I'm talking about. One of Missouri's great contributions to the culinary world, Cashew Chicken is a soul-satisfying melding of Chinese tradition with the Midwestern insistence that everything is better when it's battered and fried.

Springfield residents are justifiably proud of the dish, which must be ordered as "Springfield Cashew Chicken" outside of the area, lest one be served a batter-deprived stir-fried version with vegetables serving as a major component, rather than a garnish. Some residents of the city will claim that Springfield has the most Chinese restaurants per capita of any city in the United States - an unverified, unsourced and unlikely assertion if ever there was one, but it's nice to see Southern Missourians taking pride in something that doesn't involve large tires, guns, or strange interpretations of the Bible, so let's let that one slide, okay?

The important thing is that the dish is really good. Well-prepared, the sauce is a tiny bit sweet and a little more salty, the chicken pieces are crisp and light, the green onions add just enough bite, and the cashews add elements of crispness and richness. It's not pretentious in the slightest - this is food aimed to please, not impress.

According to most histories, the dish was invented by a man named David Leong, whose first restaurant was welcomed to the neighborhood with ten sticks of dynamite. (Asian-Americans weren't appreciated in southern Missouri in 1963, even if they had stormed the beach at Omaha.) No wonder he chose to please the local palate rather than challenge it.

On my recent vacation in Colorado, Ancillary Adams and his wonderful "lady friend" prepared a home-made version of the dish, and it may have been the best meal served in Breckenridge that evening.

Are there any good versions of this regional treat served at restaurants here in Kansas City?

Hamburger Helper

I want your advice.

What kind of burger should be the special at Blanc Burgers + Bottles? In the relatively near future, I get to meet with Chef Josh Eans to design a new burger which will then be put on special for the weekend.

The pressure is on to come up with something amazing. After all, the Inside Out Burger (bleu cheese stuffed burger, applewood smoked bacon, onion ring, home-made catsup, mustard, butter lettuce on an onion brioche bun) is thought by many to be the best burger in the world. My personal favorite is the Au Poivre (pepper-crusted burger, creamy green peppercorn sauce, grilled onions, watercress, salt and pepper brioche bun).

If my name is going to be attached to something that I want people to choose over those two platters of heaven, I need to come up with something world-changing.

Right now, I'm thinking maybe a variation on the Aspen Burger, a regional favorite from upstate New York featuring sour cream and sauteed mushrooms. Perhaps if we jazzed it up a little by using creme fraiche and some gourmet mushrooms, we could bring a bit of Schenectady to Kansas City.

Or we could go to the opposite corner of the United States for some inspiration. How about a green chile and sharp cheddar burger? Maybe serve it with some sort of mole sauce?

I LOVE Blanc Burgers + Bottles. The first time I went there, I returned 5 times over the next two weeks. Their Au Poivre burger may be tied for "Best Sandwich in Kansas City" with "#1 (spicy)" ordered at the counter from Bella Napoli.

I need to bring my "A game" to this assignment. Any advice?

Princess Garden: BEST Chinese Restaurant in Kansas City

The presumption encompassed in that title is staggering. Here I am, a middle-aged guy who's lived most of his life in Kansas City, has never set foot in Asia, much less China, and never studied Chinese cuisine.

The absurdity is heightened by the very title I want to award. Best Chinese Restaurant?? Is there a best American restaurant? Is it a cajun seafood steakhouse with Philly cheese-steaks and funnel cakes? We can't even agree on a best Kansas City-style barbecue restaurant, but I'm blithely going to choose one restaurant to represent the cuisine of a billion-plus people in 8 Great Traditions?

You betcha! The significance of a writer's proclamations lies in the eyes of the beholder. It's not whether you agree or disagree with me - it's whether you read it and give it a second thought.

All that philosophizing aside, the indisputable winner (even though I've only visited probably a dozen or so of the options here in KC) is Princess Garden on Wornall.

Princess Garden is a classic of the genre. Carved Chinese marble lions greet you from the parking lot at 8906 Wornall, and the decor of red and gold looks exactly like a typical restaurant in Beijing, Shanghai or Xi'an - at least to me it does. The carpet, the paintings, even the darkened, empty bar off to the right of the pay stand all scream real China, at least as imagined by Kansas Citians.


The drink menu is a hoot. Fresh from the early 70s, it features My Tais, Fog Cutters and a wide range of elaborate concoctions, with a page titled "Strong, for those who enjoy drinking." The alcoholic fantasyland is heightened by descriptions like "Shark's Tooth - the bite of this drink is so sharp and quick that you won't feel a thing" and "Princess Garden Express - You will feel the hit by this extraordinary drink - try it and experience yourself." Alas, I'm a beer drinker, so I haven't experienced myself yet.

But the food is the attraction, and the food is great. In our most recent trip (when the kids were in town - this is a nostalgic favorite for them, even though Sam gets to eat in NYC's Chinatown), we had the crab rangoon and the steamed dumplings. Both are exactly what you would expect from a good Chinese restaurant - nothing super fancy, nothing to elevate the genre to a whole new level with challenging and intriguing tastes and textures - simply solid, competent examples of what you would expect.

As always, we got the Crunchy Beef as an entree. I haven't seen this on other menus, but it is pieces of beef the size of shoe-string potatoes, fried to a crispy exterior and served with mu shu pancakes in a sticky sauce. Rich, decadent and wonderful.

We also had a dish with an impossibly long title, including words such as "sizzling", "yellow noodles" and "double faced" - it was spectacular. The noodles are both tender and crispy, depending on how soaked they are in the light sauce, and covered with chicken, shrimp and vegetables.

As I hope I made clear in the first paragraphs, I have no business offering superlatives about Chinese restaurants. And I can say with legitimacy and integrity is that Princess Garden is a family favorite, with food that satisfies and always meets or exceeds our midwestern expectations. The staff is friendly, and the service is good. I don't know if it is authentic or not. I just know that our family has had many, many happy meals there, and I recommend it to anyone who is wants food that is as far from chic as it is from Beijing.

Beer, Dinner and a Documentary - Guess What the Highlight of My Evening Was . . .

Yesterday, my lovely spouse and I departed work a bit early, so as to make the 5:00 showing of "Food, Inc." at the Tivoli, and to follow it with cashing in a gift certificate dinner at McCoy's Public House.

Food, Inc. tackles the food industry, and does a pretty effective job of it. We see dead chickens and nasty beef processing facilities and even legislators making laws, in an unacknowledged nod to the age-old claim that the legislative process is akin to making sausage. The movie is just okay; close-ups of farmers talking about soybeans and pigs are not the best way to convey factual information. Further, the information conveyed was not particularly groundbreaking - corporations control agriculture for profit, meat-making is a filthy business, and veggie libel laws are unAmerican. The best part of the movie came right before the credits, when they ran suggestions of what you can do to eat healthier and more sustainably. I suppose that if you somehow walked into the movie without any understanding of agricultural issues, the movie might be eye-opening, but I don't think anyone who doesn't already care is likely to fork over money to see a documentary about food.

McCoy's was a lot more enjoyable.

Service started with the waitress seeking our drink order literally before we sat down. I don't like waiting half an hour before getting served, but her haste was a bit extreme.

Fortunately, the beers were better than the service. I tried the milk stout, which was full-bodied and approachable, the way a milk stout ought to be, and a kolsch. I was particularly impressed with the kolsch, which is kind of like Germany's version of cream ale. The beer should be a light, dry, somewhat hoppy ale that leans toward a lager style. I thought the McCoy's version was one of the best I've ever tasted. While the beer was perfectly balanced, I fell in love with the hops. They were floral, almost perfumy, but had a bit of peppery spice to them as well. It packed a lot of subtle flavors into a beer that would be easy to overlook, because it doesn't have huge flavor components screaming for attention.

As for the food at McCoy's, we ignored the movie we had just seen and ordered lobster spring rolls. The chef must have taken the movie more seriously, though, because we found no evidence that any lobster had died to make our spring rolls. Instead, the filling presented a mushy, bland paste of cabbage, with same taste intensity as the bed of styrofoam noodles they were served on.

My wife's mac cheese looked great, and my bite was enjoyable, though she maintained that Cafe Trio's version is far better, and I defer to her expertise. It was a fine entree, if not superlative. Because we had to reach a spending minimum for the gift certificate to apply, I went ahead and ordered a rib-eye steak, which came in the thin-cut style favored by chain steakhouses, and dominated by a dollop of assertive cilantro butter that had not been mentioned on the menu.

Of the three elements of the evening, the beer stood out as the best. In keeping with the "think local" theme of the movie, it was also the element that originated where we drank it.

Best Meal I've Ever Had in Kansas City

Yesterday evening, to celebrate our 27th Anniversary, we went out to Bluestem. I had only been there for drinks before, so I knew that it was an upscale foodie spot, but I had no other expectations. I came prepared for a generic gourmet meal - probably a few new ingredients, and fancified favorites.

Bluestem blew me away. The service was gracious and prompt, the food was creative and amazing, and they even had an intelligent beer list. The whole experience was 3 hours of decadent pleasure.

Bluestem offers diners a selection of course - you can order 3, 5 or 7 courses, or even a chef's tasting menu of 12 courses. After the waitress assured us that the courses would not present an overwhelming amount of food, we each chose 5 items - two "appetizer" type dishes, two proteins, and one dessert pick.

The highlight of my appetizers was troffie pasta with crab, garlic, chili and prosciutto. Big chunks of sweet crab meat played well with the heat of the chili.

My bride's favorite appetizer was a gorgeous bowl of spring pea soup, with preserved lemon, creme fraiche and orange tuile. It tasted like the first warm day of spring distilled into a creamy soup.

From the protein side, my favorite was a few slices of piedmontese strip, served with light whipped potatoes lit up with horseradish. I hesitate to order steak in a restaurant, because I can usually grill up a better example at home. My faith in the Bluestem kitchen was rewarded with a perfectly textured, wonderfully presented sample of richly flavored beef.

The woman who met me at an altar 3-cubed years ago wrought her revenge on the creatures who have destroyed her hostas by ordering rabbit. It was the best item to show up on either plate - tender like pounded chicken, sweet like pork, and complex like duck. It was served atop a bed of sweet pea spaetzle, which were a wonder in their own right.

I ended my meal with a great selection of cheese and crostini, while she ended hers with bright cherries and milk chocolate cream puffs.

Bluestem delivered the best meal I've ever had in a Kansas City restaurant - even better than the memorable and impressive Justus Drug Store. Speaking of which, I appreciated the waitress' vocal admiration of other great local restaurants - she gushed about Room 39 and said that she can't wait for her first trip to Justus Drug Store. It was a touch of class in an evening that was suffused with class.

Shake Up at Pitch's Fat City??

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but my BS meter is on high alert. Last week, CJ Janovy posted an item on Fat City claiming to be looking to hire "another" Fat City blogger. Now, I think the world of CJ, but methinks she's stretching the truth here. No way, in the newspaper business, in this economy, is the paid staff expanding at Fat City.

I think either Charles Ferruzza or Owen Morris is on the way out.

Owen Morris has brought us fresh stories about all kinds of topics from drinking blood to what it's like to go through culinary classes, while Charles Ferruzza has fallen back on photographs of icons and reworded press releases. While Morris is out exploring the world of Christopher Elbow's sweet-corn ice cream, Ferruzza is appearing with Walt Bodine and grumbling about how you just can't find a good meat loaf sandwich these days.

Fat City just isn't big enough for two such divergent voices.

So who's going to win?

I'm putting my money on the old guy. Surely, hanging around with Walt Bodine has to give some insight on endurance.

Pork Tenderloins, Ross' Grill, and Kitty's Cafe

My introduction to pork tenderloin sandwiches came at the long-gone Ross' Grill - a crowded little restaurant on the Baltimore side of the Muehlebach Hotel. They served platter-sized pork tenderloins there fried golden with a crisp grainy breading. The fried meat would overhang the sides of a typical hamburger bun by 2 or 3 inches on all sides, and was served with a paper cup of mayo flavored with a touch of horseradish.

I have no idea if Ross's served any sides; the sandwich itself was more than any reasonable person should have eaten. Anything more might have killed me. I don't know whether they had any other sandwiches on the menu, either; that would be like ordering something other than fried chicken at Stroud's, or not having chili at Dixon's. People probably did it, but I didn't.

The Ross' tenderloin has served as the Platonic form for tenderloins in my life. Greasy, huge, thick with breading, and not particularly spicy - a fried tenderloin in the Ross' tradition is an occasional craving, a masochistic challenge, or a masculine assertion that doctors aren't the boss of me. You can find similar (though inferior) versions in truck stops and greasy spoons throughout the Midwest.

But Kitty's Cafe, on East 31st Street, offers something different.


Rather than one massive tenderloin, Kitty's serves three smaller pieces, stacked on a bun. Rather than thick breading, Kitty's tenderloins are covered with a light batter reminiscent of tempura, and crispy as a potato chip. Rather than bland, Kitty's tenderloin sandwiches are bursting with chili sauce and raw onion (and we're not talking Vidalias here - Kitty's serves strong white onions in a coarse chop that make you and your office mates remember what onions were before they went acoustic).

While I didn't indulge yesterday, this is a sandwich with proportions that allow you to look at the side dishes. At Kitty's you have your choice of very good french fries or classical fried tater tots. Both come in generous portions, so splitting an order is the way to go. And, speaking of "to go", you should plan on eating your food elsewhere - a few stools offer waiting space for customers, not space for eating.

(Note/Confession: The photo is brazenly stolen from "The Making of a Foodie", who mentioned Kitty's in a nice write-up on “Sandwiches you need to get your hands on!” for Tastebud Magazine.)

Not As Interesting as it Sounds -

Yesterday morning, I met a friend for breakfast at the ungodly hour of 6:30 at Cascone's by the River Market. Examining the menu, I couldn't help but ask about what form of crazed fry-madness could produce a "double fried egg sandwich". The waitress looked at me like I was "special", and explained that a "double fried egg sandwich" is a sandwich with two fried eggs.

The food at Cascone's may not be breaking new culinary grounds, but a plate of ham, eggs and hash browns after 4 hours of sleep makes the day seem possible.

Best Tamales in Kansas City?

If you google - best tamales kansas city - this site shows up at the top of the page. Last week, 34 people conducted that search, and wound up visiting Gone Mild to research that vital topic. Unfortunately, I'm letting my visitors down, so I seek your help in updating my opinion. Where can you buy the best tamales in Kansas City?

The source of my traffic dates back a little more than two and a half years ago, when I brashly opined that the best tamales in the universe, not just Kansas City, were sold at Habanero's on Troost. Sadly, Habanero's on Troost is now long-closed, and my advice is no longer helpful.

Readers and gourmands, I seek your help. Where can one purchase the best tamales in Kansas City? (I realize that the BEST tamales are probably made by somebody's mother or aunt, but please don't frustrate me with tales of unattainable tamales . . .)

Milk-Braised Pork Roast

On Sunday, I had the time and inclination to try making something new. My wife suggested pork for dinner, and off I went to find something new and exciting in the pork world.

The answer came from Molly Stevens' soul-satisfying book, All About Braising. Her recipe for Pork Loin Braised in Milk is simple but unusual, and it came out fantastic.


To prepare it, cut several cloves of garlic into slivers, and mix them with spices. I used sage and fennel seed, but you could substitute whatever you prefer. I poked holes all over a 2.5 pound pork loin roast, inserted the spiced garlic slivers, and then salted and peppered the roast. I let it sit for a few hours before browning it in cast iron pan a mixture of oil and butter. After it was browned, I removed the roast, and tossed in a little extra garlic, stirring it till it was toasty. Then I poured in a cup and a half of whole milk, brought it to a boil while stirring the brown bits up from the bottom. After it was boiling, I returned the roast and juices to the pan, and turned off the burner. I put the lid on and put the whole thing in the oven at 250 for around an hour and a half, turning it half-way through.

After taking it out of the oven, I put the roast on a carving board and covered it. The milk had transformed itself into soft, tan curdly sauce. I removed some (but not all) of the fat (pork is so lean these days there wasn't much) and boiled the sauce until it thickened a little, adding a little salt and pepper and just a few drops of lemon juice. When I served it, the meat was tender and moist, and the sauce complemented the sweetness of the pork.

Next time I try it, I might toss in a few halved new potatoes, but it was just fine served with steamed broccoli. I had never considered milk to be a braising liquid before Sunday . . .

Beef and Pickles

Sunday nights are the best for cooking in the Gone Mild household. Weekdays call out creativity in terms of meeting the twin challenges of tasty and nutritious, but time is a limiting factor. Sometimes, the extra challenge inspires, but nothing inspires quite like having an entire Sunday afternoon to shop, cook and serve.

Yesterday, I tackled a German challenge. Rouladen are a traditional German food consisting of beef rolled around onions, mustard, bacon and pickles, and then simmered in gravy for hours. I first had them years ago as prepared by my sister-in-law, and somehow they came up in an IM chat with Karl Timmerman (author of the Weekly Ramblings - a must read for solo and small firm lawyers) on Friday evening.

Yesterday, I bought a bunch of round steak, cut it into 4X6 inch pieces, and pounded it to tenderize and flatten it. (Yes, I know I just offered up a straight line, so have your Junior High fun . . .) Then spread it with mustard (I used dijon, but yellow is fine), chopped onion, chopped raw bacon, pepper, and dill pickle cut into chunks. Then roll it up and tie it with kitchen twine.

Brown the rolls a couple at a time in oil, removing them when browned. After the browning is done, mix in a quarter cup of flour, a little garlic, and a couple tables spoons of tomato paste. After that mix starts to brown, add two cups of water and stir like crazy until the chunks of flour break up. Toss in whatever chopped onion or bacon you have left, put the beef rolls back in the pot, cover, and simmer for a couple hours.

I served them with boiled new red potatoes tossed in butter and parsley, and with cauliflower. I love cooking cauliflower with all kinds of spices and flavors - they absorb flavor and show off color. In this instance, I used onion, Scimeca's Famous Chicken Spiedini Marinade, smoked paprika, a little cayenne, turmeric and chicken broth.

The rouladen had tremendous flavor. The pickles, when simmered for hours, blend with the bacon and mustard and onion to create a fantastic sweet/savory gravy with just a hint of sour. The meat, however, remained a little tough. I should have called ahead and asked the butcher to slice a few round steaks extra thin, or I should have . . . well, tenderized it more.

There are dozens of variations of rouladen - some don't even use pickles. If he reads my version, I'm confident Karl will, in fine Germanic fashion, point out where I have strayed from his orthodoxy in several specifics. The fun thing about cooking last night, though, was that I put together a meal based on a long-ago memory and a whole bunch of on-line recipes. I didn't have anyone to demonstrate the techniques or offer definitive opinions on how much mustard to use. I just read up on an unusual recipe, used my own judgment, and tried it.

I'm sure my version has room for improvement. It didn't come close to matching the rouladen of my memory. But it was a really good meal, and out of the ordinary. It provided a good background for a little beer, a little wine, and a lot of conversation with friends.

Sundays are my favorite day for cooking.

Eating All Over the Place

One of the many benefits of living in an information age in a moderately cosmopolitan city is the opportunity to eat something other than roast turkey for fancy meals. Over the past several days, we've served 3 meals of note - Christmas Eve, Christmas, and a dinner party on Saturday evening. It struck me how varied our food options are.

Christmas Eve is always tamales at our house, and we wound up purchasing them from the groceria place on Southwest Boulevard a couple doors west of La Fonda. I love those tamales, sold by the dozen, and we accompanied them with Rick Bayless' easy-and-quick-to-make fried beans and rice pudding. It wasn't wildly authentic and it wasn't all homemade, but it was a fantastic meal that tasted a whole lot more Mexican than you ought to expect in a house of pasty white Irish Poles.

The multinational flair continued on Christmas Day, when Sam fired up the stove and roasted ten pounds of Korean pork butt, served with kim chee, some kind of freaky soy paste I got at the Asian Supermarket just north of City Market, and home-made pickled peppers. The recipe has a name, but I've forgotten it, but I won't forget the crispy/tender texture of the pork wrapped in lettuce leaves with accompaniments. I've never been to Korea, but slow-cooked pork is always Seoul food for me (I am filled with remorse for that one). We finished it off with home-made key-lime pie - geographically inappropriate but a gastronomically perfect citrus ending to a meal that was all umami and spice.

Saturday we were hosting guests whose taste I don't know well, so a little restraint was demanded. I went with the Tandoori Chicken recipe adapted for those of us without tandoori ovens, featured in the most recent Cook's Illustrated. (Cook's Illustrated has a subscription-based online recipe database, but this recipe looks very similar.) The recipe was spectacular - spicy/flavorful more than spicy/hot, and just slightly charred but still moist and tender. I accompanied it with Indian Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes - golden with turmeric and cumin, and just spicy enough to be flavorful. Dessert was chai-spiced almond cookies - I'm glad I held off on a little of the cardamom, and the cookies were crumbly perfection.

Friends, I grew up in a pretty meat-and-potatoes household, and I've never been to Korea, Mexico, India, or even Key West. I count myself fortunate to be alive in an age where ingredients and good recipes make it possible to taste cuisines from all over the world. I love a good pot roast and making pierogies is a foodie connection to my own recently-lost ancestry, but, armed with a few good cookbooks, the internet and a few ethnic markets, I can take my kitchen around the world, and still drink the water.

A New Way With Pasta

Last night, I made a big pan of Manicotti - a simple meal of cheese-stuffed pasta tubes baked in sauce. When making a classic, you don't want to get too creative, but I used some pasta sauce I had made earlier, festooned with olives and capers, and doused with some marsala to add depth. I mixed in some garlic and herb cheese with the ricotta and mozzarella for the filling and the St. Louisan in me made me top it with a blend of provel and parmesan. Good, traditional pasta - a filling meal on a cold night.

The very traditionalism of the meal made me think about how rarely I eat pasta in what for me is the old way - pasta covered with sauce, accented by maybe a meatball or a bit of sausage. Instead, pasta has grown into an ingredient in my cooking - an element to be balanced instead of a delivery mechanism for something else.

For example, one of my favorite quick meals lately is to swing by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a roasted chicken and some mixed olives from a cart. At home, I pull the meat from the chicken, cut it into bite-size pieces chunks, and boil up some pasta (anything from fettucini to radiatore - whatever shape you have and enjoy). I chop up the olives, add some pepperoncini slices and capers, definitely some garlic, and heat that for just a few minutes in a covered skillet, tossing in the olive, caper and pepperoncini juice. When the pasta is almost but not quite done, I drain it and add it to the skillet, with a good dousing of white wine and the chunks of chicken. I let it steam in the flavor rather than swim in boiling water for its last few minutes.

No alfredo or tomato sauce - though, the last time I made it, I added a few dollops of my wife's awesome home-made pesto. As opposed to the way pasta got treated in my earlier ventures, the pasta plays a real role in the flavor of the dish, and not just something to dump sauce on.

But if someone wants to put a plate of good old manicotti or lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs in front of me, I'll show my respect for the old ways . . .

I Want Better Beer and Better Beer Service in Restaurants

It happens all the time. You go into a "foodie" type restaurant, wanting a great meal, and, as the waitress greets you, she hands you a wine list with dozens of choices. If you ask for a beer list, they don't have one. If you ask what beers they have, they struggle after rambling through Bud, Miller, Coors and their light variations, occasionally tossing in Heineken for a laughable attempt at serving a "premium" product.

The other night at the Delaware Cafe, when I asked about beers, my otherwise competent and savvy waitress told me they had the Boulevard products (but no Nutcracker) and pointed to a row of backlit beer bottles at the top of the bar shelves - undecipherable green and brown glass profiles. I didn't complain about the lapse in my review of the restaurant, because it would be unfair to knock one restaurant for an oversight that is near-universal.

It's time, though, that beer and beer drinkers get some respect. I want to see better beer in restaurants, and I expect professional waiters and waitresses to be able to present the options competently. I want to see beer lists offered like wine lists, ideally with descriptions of the beers so that diners can expand their beer horizons when out dining.

And no frosted mugs. Just don't.

If you are a restaurant owner and care about your beer-drinking customers, you owe it to step up your game. While I realize that the economics favor serving a $45 bottle of wine instead of an $8 bottle of beer, rising beer prices and ease of service can make great beer a more attractive economic proposition. If you're running a high-end restaurant, you can offer expensive bottles of beer with decent mark-ups, and grateful malt-lovers will appreciate the opportunity to pay the price. Boulevard's Saison Brett is flying off store shelves at $12 or more a bottle, and I would have been happy to spend $18 - $19 to enhance my meal with a bottle of that wonderful stuff.

I'm not asking every restaurant to become a tap house. Even those with small space can offer a popular and intriguing selections of beers to enhance the food. Here are five choices that I think ought to be offered in every fine restaurant - readers are welcomed to add their recommendations.

Fullers London Porter: A classic dark, rich sipping beer, this traditional english ale will enhance rich meals and red meats.

Anchor Steam Beer: Assertively hopped, with a relatively light body, Anchor Steam will stand up to spicy foods and cool the tongues of diners who appreciate hop bitterness and flavor.

Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier: An explosion of yeasty, clovey, banana flavors, hefeweizens are spritely and engaging. A perfect pre-dinner beer to wake up the taste buds, or a fine complement to the fresh and pure flavors of creative cuisine.

Odell's 90 Shilling Scottish Ale: Odell's beers are justly famous, and 90 Shilling does for malt what Anchor Steam does for hops. Rich with a rounded malty sweetness balanced by just enough hops. This is a lighter version of Scottish Ale, perfect for matching up to roasted poultry and or balancing spicy food.

Ommegang Abbey Ale: Seductively rich and warming, this belgian style ale from Cooperstown, NY, is burgundian in its complexity. Perfect for dessert, especially with anything chocolate.

Of course, you may want to offer a typical American light beer, for the beer drinking equivalent of someone ordering White Zin at a wine bar, but the above 5 beers ought to help restaurants dignify their barley selections. Just as they wouldn't serve their finest meals on paper plates, it's time for them to show more class and respect for beer drinkers.

Beer lovers - what 5 beers would you recommend to a restaurateur trying to upgrade the suds in a nice restaurant?

Delaware Cafe - Extra Touches

Last night, my wife and I trekked through a downtown crowded with Coldplay enthusiasts and went to the Delaware Cafe, a little west of River Market on a cozy one-way street. I didn't know what to expect - several foodies had told me the place is good, but that was about it. Owen Morris of Fat City had complimented the place, and Owen knows food, so I was enthusiastic but uninformed. Kind of typical for me.

When we arrived, we parked right out front - the best parking a non-disabled person could ask for. So much for downtown parking concerns on an event night - downtown is big enough that a crowd at the Sprint Center doesn't mean that you should avoid restaurants on the other side of downtown.

A sparse crowd clustered around the bar, and we took a place at a table near the bar. It's a pretty space - artwork by local artists on the wall (including our waitress' work), black tables and a good-sized bar. We didn't make it into the larger dining room. The large colorful paintings were a great extra touch - local but sophisticated.

From the Bar Snacks menu, I ordered a serving of the crispy-fired shatto cheese curds with maple, apple butter and chili flakes. I know that's not healthy eating, but when you see something like that on the menu, you have to give it a shot, and they were absolutely worth it. Lightly breaded oozy cheese curds were just as awesome as you might expect, and the sauce on the plate added another dimension to the pleasure.

For my entree, I chose the Red Eye Prime Ribeye. It's a bit unusual for me to order a steak in a good restaurant, because I make damned good steaks at home. This one was unusual enough on the menu, though, promising smoked pepper hash, and over-easy farm egg and a coffee jus, that I had to give it a try. It came out as large, thick slices (chunks) of tasty beef covered with the egg on top of the hash. I was expecting a ribeye steak, or a thick slab of prime rib, and the perfectly prepared medium-rare pieces of beef came as enough of a surprise that I asked if I had really gotten rib-eye - though making certain that she understood it was not a complaint, just a question. Our charming artist/waitress went back and asked, and returned to say that yes, indeed, it was ribeye, but trimmed into thick slices. I still have my doubts, in that the meat, while tender, had a "tighter" texture than I associate with any part of the ribeye, but the food was great, and the tradition of tossing a fried egg on top of things is one that ought to be spread more widely. Yum. The coffee jus was a tiny pitcher of strong coffee with perhaps some balsamic vinegar added. Excellent, and interesting!

My wife got the tawny port braised short ribs, with mac & cheese, rapini, brioche bread crumbs, and natural jus. Damn. Braised short ribs may be the best food ever invented - with just enough structural integrity to hold together until they melt under fork pressure into a web of beef string. These were superb examples, served atop a bed of fusilli mac cheese. The richness of the beef with the gourmeted (new word alert) comfort food of the mac cheese was just perfect.

The only mediocre note of the evening was dessert. We split a graham cracker crusted gooey chocolate cake, with Vietnamese cinnamon marshmallows, smoked vanilla ice cream, and chocolate nibs. The cake itself was a good but not great chocolate cake, the marshmallows were more rubbery than springy, and the ice cream tasted like homemade vanilla ice cream with a few drops of liquid smoke added. It was not bad, but it was a big let-down after a fantastic meal.

The bill, with drinks, came to $100, so this is a special occasion meal. We could have gotten off a lot lighter if we were scrimping, by sticking to the impressive bar food menu and appetizers. I got to taste the chicken wings, which were charred and sticky with a sweet/hot Asian-influenced sauce - tasty and fun. A server gave me the wing after bringing out an extra order for another table - yet another extra touch in a restaurant that makes its customers feel special.

With its cozy and friendly atmosphere, Delaware Cafe deserves to be ranked in the highest echelon of Kansas City restaurants.

Beating Owen Morris to the Punch - Top 10 Kansas City Foods to Eat Before You Die

Over at Fat City, Owen Morris is offering his take on the "Foods you must east before you die" meme, and he starts if off with a panegyric to the old-school Lamar's twist. I'm not ashamed of stealing a good idea and improving on it, so here's my top 10 list, all in one post, and all available today, not solely in the mists of memory. Mind you, this is my take on 10 foods that exemplify Kansas City's food culture - not necessarily my favorite foods in Kansas City, but foods that somehow have a Kansas City flair.

10. Povitica. You don't find this other places - yummy polish bread swirled with sweet fillings. Beautiful to look at, teeth-achingly sweet to sample, this is a treat from Kansas City's immigrant community. Back when immigrants were European, nobody complained when they kept their traditions and even published newspapers in their own language. Thank goodness that back when the Polish were coming to America, Bryan Pratt was not around to pass laws attacking them.

9. Winstead's Burger. Winstead's burgers are simply the Kansas City classic. Everything else there lives up to the classic diner standard - fries, onion rings, even malts. I've found better burgers, but this is the one that really screams Kansas City.

8. Chicken Spiedini. Sure, Mike Garozzo came to Kansas City from the Hill in St. Louis, but his signature dish, chicken spiedini, has earned a place in Kansas City's heart. Laden with garlic and toasted bread crumbs, nothing says old school Italian like chicken spiedini at the original location at 526 Harrison in the old Northeast.

7. Jess & Jim's Playboy Strip. Miles from the stockyard but on the railroad tracks, Jess and Jim's is an old-fashioned steak joint. Decades ago, they were written up in Playboy Magazine, and that faintly scandalous fame carries them to this day. It's really not the best steak in town, and the decor is anything but regal, but Jess & Jim's is the solid favorite in Kansas City's cholesterol-choked heart. You don't need to wear a tie or put up with waitstaff attitude to enjoy a great steak at Jess & Jim's.

6. Dog Day at Hooper's. For a buck and a quarter, you get a great hot dog covered with toppings. It's a Saturday classic, and even the irritable people who don't like kids in bars have to smile at the neighborhood atmosphere and kids in shin-guards fresh from a Brookside Soccer League game enjoying cokes with cherries and shuffleboard. The hot dogs are great - plump, juicy and just salty enough, but the feel of the place is what makes it a part of Kansas City.

5. Murray's Ice Cream. I know, all cities have great ice cream these days, but Murray's is something special. Maybe it's the quirky hours, maybe it's the location off the beaten path of Westport, or maybe it's some sort of drug they mix into their home-made ice cream, but Murray's Ice Cream is more "Kansas City" than any other ice cream place could ever hope to be. Go there for the ice cream, sit outside in the sun and eat it - wow, I can close my eyes and imagine a whole day spent wandering around Westport.

4. Manny's Chips and Salsa. Kansas City is blessed with a strong Mexican-American community, and, as a result, we have a fantastic assortment of great Mexican restaurants. Manny's is, in my opinion, emblematic of the group, though I agree that there are others that put out better, more authentic food. Manny's, though, serves all of Kansas City, with melted cheese and zesty but not spicy salsa. It's not real Mexican - it's Kansas City Mexican. Sitting there, chowing on the second basket of chips and dripping salsa onto your shirt - that's a piece of Kansas City.

3. Bread Pudding for Breakfast at the Classic Cup. Simple decadence. Breakfast at the Classic Cup is a place to see the powerful grabbing a bite before work, and sitting on the patio is both relaxing and exciting. Doing it with bread pudding with pecans and caramel sauce is beyond wonderful. Cares melt away.

2. Beef Sandwich at Bryant's. Don't even start with the arguments about Oklahoma Joe's or LC's or Gates or whatever. Say all you want about great barbecue places in Kansas City, Bryant's is the home of Kansas City barbecue. It simply is. There's really nothing left to say.

1. McDonald's Happy Meal. It hurts me to do this, but many argue that Bob Bernstein, a local ad guy, came up with the Happy Meal. The claim is disputed, but Kansas City's love of corporate, mass-produced crap food is beyond any dispute. I can insist on local restaurants all I like, but the truth is that the drive-throughs of Our Town are clogged with Kansas Citians looking to buy a meal they saw on TV. If you want to have Kansas City's top ten foods to eat before you die, you really ought to eat the one that we have brought to the world.

"Taste of Olathe"?

It's unfair how much I enjoy making fun of JoCo. And I can't begin to list the wise-ass comments that came to mind when I saw a fundraiser entitled "Taste of Olathe" scheduled for next weekend. White bread and white zin, anyone?

But my sarcasm doesn't help out deaf children, and the Taste of Olathe does. So, if you're out in JoCo next weekend, you really ought to take advantage of an opportunity to try food from 20+ Olathe restaurants.

Local Options - Down South Grill on Main

I forgot to bring a lunch to work yesterday, and so I headed out at noon to find some carry-out to bring back to the office. Since I work nearby the best dine in/carry out cheap lunch spot in the city (possibly the universe), my car automatically headed toward Pancho's.

On the way there, though, I chided myself for predictability and decided to try something new. A few blocks south of Pancho's, near the intersection of 39th and Main, are two places that begged to be tried. Island Spice Caribbean promises something out of the ordinary, and I had recently noticed the Down South Grill in the space that used to be Antonio's next door to the space that used to be the Grand Emporium. (Yes, I just double-dated myself . . .)

I wound up choosing the Down South Grill for the simple reason that a Johnson County Beemer was tailgaiting me in the right lane of southbound Main, and there was a sweet, legal, unmetered parking spot right out front. Few responses to a tailgaiter are as satisfying as parking in front of him.

So, Down South Grill it was. Like its pizza place predecessor, it consists of a counter and a small bench for waiting. Nothing fancy here at all. The menu is posted on the wall, and consists of a few sandwiches (including a pork chop sandwich), a few "Cajun Po-Boys", wings, a chili dog, and a few basic sides. The combos include fries and a drink, so why not?

I chose the Cajun Chicken Po-Boy combo. For $6.49, I walked out with a styrofoam container jam packed with food, with a little hot sauce and catchup for the fries.

Normally, I tend to gush when I write about food found at a dive location. I would like to do so here, because the people working there were friendly, and only one other person visited during the time I was there. Every dollar that gets spent at a chain restaurant instead of a local operation is a slap in the face for diversity of choice and local flavor.

While I can't honestly gush about my Cajun Chicken Po-Boy sandwich, it was a huge portion of moderately-spicy chicken. The chicken wasn't breaded, which was a nice touch, and the roll was jammed with fresh lettuce, good tomatoes (the likes of which you will never find at a shareholder-owned food outlet), and a tasty mayo-based sauce. The fries were good, not great, and there were plenty of them. For $6.49, I got a reasonably good meal that I could not even finish - and I supported a restaurant owned by local people.

Next time you're thinking of driving through Wendy's, or stopping by Subway, think for a second about whether there isn't a local option. Kitty's burgers are better than Wendy's, and a "Number 1, Spicy" at Bella Napoli may be the best sandwich in Kansas City.

Anybody want to meet me at Island Spice Caribbean Restaurant next Tuesday? Here's the menu - it isn't cheap, but, come on, they have curried goat, and who wants cheap goat?! They might have cow's feet, if we're lucky. They even have a side dish they call "festival" - can you get a side of "festival" at Burger King? Or calaloo?

If we want interesting local options on Kansas City's food scene, we need to vote with our dollars.

Noodle Shop Closes

Sad news for local foodies - the Noodle Shop at 59th and Holmes has closed its doors. It was a small shop, with great service, and kind of a blogger favorite. The food was both comforting, as only noodles in broth can be, and also exotic, with strange pickles and even vegetal hedgehogs.

The only way to prevent even more losses is to remember that you cast your votes with every dollar you spend. Are you voting for chain food, or are you voting for local flavor? Good intentions and rare visits don't cut it.

Best Wings Ever?

I love great wings, and I want to make them at home.

My wife comes from the Buffalo area, so our standards for buffalo wings are pretty high. We've had great wings that make lips tingle and terrible wings with insipid goo spread over them. But we've had some seriously wonderful wings - the best in Kansas City come from the Peanut, where they serve up massive, crispy, peppery hot wings that make the perfect accompaniment for a pitcher of good beer.

Tonight, I finally made great wings.

There are a few hallmarks of great wings. They're hot, but edible. They're crisp, but not burnt. And they're cooked through but not dry - so the meat comes easily off the bone.

Those are the universal requirements - and, when we cook at home, we have a few more constraints. First, we're not frying - we don't have a ventilating hood, and I hate to waste that much oil. Second, I don't have access to the mutant huge wings they serve at the Peanut. Finally, we're trying to eat a little healthier, so anything that can cut down on the fat is appreciated.

Here's what I did. I got a few pounds of wings, already cut into segments, and lacking the meatless point of the wing. I brought a pot of aggressively-salted water to a boil, and dumped in the wings. When the pot started boiling again, I turned off the heat, covered it, and let it sit for around 10 or 15 minutes. In the meantime, I started up the propane grill (I know, charcoal is cooler, but I've come to love the convenience and reliability of the gas . . .).

After draining the wings and shaking them as dry as possible, I spread them out and sprinkled them with a Louisianna blackening spice mixture. To imitate the Peanut more closely, I would have stuck with salt and pepper, but my daughter's time at Tulane has enlivened our cajun appreciation, so that's how we rolled tonight.

Letting the wings absorb the spice a little, I started on the sauce. The base was Frank's Red Hot sauce - probably a cup and a half. I tossed in some white vinegar, and then added some horse radish and a couple cloves of pressed garlic. A hearty squeeze of Sriracha sauce added extra and different heat. A hint of Worcestershire sauce makes everything (other than breakfast cereal) better, and a touch of honey mellowed the heat and added a little depth. I heated it all up together in a small saucepan.

After the sauce was bubbling away, I put the spiced wings on the grill, over medium-low heat. The lack of flare-ups demonstrated that much of the fat had been boiled out of the wings, and I was able to grill them slowly to a golden crisp texture.

After removing them from the grill, I doused them with the sauce and served them with celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing.

And they were spectacular.

No, they weren't up there with the Peanut - fried, massive, peppery wings of eagle/chicken hybrids. But they were the best I can do, and they were the best ever served in this household.

And they were much better than anything you could find at Hooters.

Food Extremism

Thursday was a special day for eating. Lunch was spent with classic working man's food - Mexican tacos packed with organ meats. Dinner was at one of the best restaurants in the Kansas City region. The meals were both outstanding, though wildly different.

Lunch was at El Taco Nazo, on Kansas Avenue in KCK. While I enjoyed my huaraches (sandal-shaped fried masa topped with pork leg and with adobado - marinated pork), and Ali enjoyed her gordito and taco, Sam had the most memorable meal with 5 soft tacos. He had the adobado and pork leg, too, but he also had one with fried pork stomach, one with beef tongue, and one with head meat. He allowed his squeamish father to try a little of each, and they were, well, interesting. I'm not an organ meat connoisseur, but I enjoyed them. Not as much as I enjoy typical beef, chicken and pork, but I'm glad I tried something new. The restaurant also deserves credit for an excellent guacamole and an outstanding salsa with a smoky note sounded by roasted tomatoes. I look forward to returning.

Dinner was a venture way up north to Smithville, where we visited the Justus Drugstore. It's a long way literally and figuratively from $1.50 tacos in KCK to an appetizer of foie gras terrine with vanilla maple pecan, fig, ginger pear port syrup, and fresh pear served on cinnamon brioche french toast, but it's a journey I'm happy to make.

Everything at Justus Drugstore was wonderful. The service was attentive but non-intrusive, over a 2 hour plus leisurely meal. The wine list was a great selection, and many available by the half glass, allowing my promiscuous palate to have its way.

Allow me to just list a few of the items we tasted, as described on the menu.

Brandade - smoked walleye, potato, extra virgin olive oil, herbs and crostini. We all loved this appetizer. It was kind of like crab dip to the power of ten.

Freshwater Striper Bass - spinach foam, chestnut mushroom risotto, swiss chard. Delicate, but full of flavor.

Roast Half Chicken - maple ginger, caramelized fennel mashed potatoes, bok choy. I'm glad Ali got this instead of me, because I would not have shown her restraint. I'd have picked that bad boy up and gnawed it to the bone. It was that good.

Pork Two Ways - grilled berkshire pork ribeye, braised pork shoulder, blueberry ginger gastrique, soft polenta, lemon shallot green beans. The pork shoulder was delectable and the ribeye was the best pork I have ever had. Both had been brined by angels.

American Kobe Flat Iron Steak - caramelized shallot maytag blue cheese sauce, potato cauliflower gratin, braised brussel sprouts. I love good steaks, but I don't think it's possible for a restaurant steak to really blow me away. What did blow me away, though, were the sides. The brussel sprouts were astounding, and the cauliflower potato gratin was tasty without being overpowering.

Cap all that off with a little sorbet and ice cream, and you have a meal worth a forty minute ride to the great white north.