The Antler Room
The cauliflower with miso and sunflower seed hummus solely lasted three days earlier than chef Nick Goellner took it off. It was good, however Goellner didn’t just like the look of it — and so it needed to go.
That’s how Goellner runs the kitchen inside The Antler Room, his small, mid-century stylish Midtown restaurant. Goellner is ruled solely by his personal whims and obsessions, a trademark he might need picked up from the big-name eating places he’s labored at, together with Allegretti in New York, the Michelin-starred Boulevard in San Francisco and the famend Noma in Copenhagen.
Goellner is tall and bespectacled, carrying himself with the air of a bookish grad pupil. His menu shifts with moods as a lot as seasons. For a big portion of 2019, Goellner drew inspiration from Japanese delicacies. A latest pilgrimage again to Japan resulted in Antler Room’s widespread Izakaya pop-up dinners, the place the restaurant remodeled right into a late-night eatery dishing up hen gyoza, shishito peppers with umeboshi mayo and fried duck wings with garlic honey. This winter, Antler Room’s menu shifts to South African influences: Goellner and his group have been impressed to discover spicy curries and stews that mixed piri piri and heat spices like nutmeg and cloves after a dinner that includes Stellenbosch Vineyards.
Goellner’s globetrotting menu is delivered in small plate format — there aren’t any entrees — through his heat and refreshingly informal clubhouse. As a substitute of white tablecloths and candles, the restaurant has a protracted bar, pale wooden accents and as a lot pure lighting as potential.
Leslie Newsam Goellner, Antler Room’s front-of-house supervisor and wine director, will generally relay an anecdote concerning the restaurant’s namesake: It’s a nod to The Antlers Membership, a rowdy Prohibition-era West Bottoms saloon the place something went. How becoming, then, that Kansas Metropolis’s finest restaurant is one the place the chef makes no matter he needs.
Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room
A two-for-one restaurant may sound gimmicky, however on the occurring Corvino Supper Membership & Tasting Room within the Crossroads, you actually can select your individual journey and be absolutely assured that the end result won’t simply fulfill you however provide you with one thing to speak about for months to come back. There are simply eighteen seats within the slender Tasting Room, and with the charcoal partitions, black tables and dramatic spotlighting, eating right here looks like an occasion. On the opposite facet of the wall is the seventy-seat Supper Membership, the place friends order a la carte and reside native music goes late.
For a new-school tasting menu, the ten-plus course expertise within the Tasting Room unfolds with pleasure and pops with creativity. Chef and co-owner Michael Corvino takes diners on a sluggish journey by way of textures and flavors you’d by no means count on. I marveled at a barely candy ricotta soft-serve with peeled heirloom tomatoes and purple basil buds, a dish of buckwheat dumplings with imperial gold caviar, an intoxicating paw-paw puree over luscious goat milk sherbet and wine pairings that play to the palate because of sommelier, front-of-house supervisor and co-owner Christina Corvino
Fox and Pearl
Vaughn Good has been composing a meaty love letter to the decrease Midwest for a while. It began with Hank Charcuterie in Lawrence, the butcher shop-turned-restaurant that saved bringing Kansas Citians throughout the border for a style of his foie gras pork sausage. Good bought the sensation he’d fare higher if he relocated, and this summer season, Fox and Pearl (his daughters’ center names) opened in a historic constructing within the Westside neighborhood. The centerpiece of this trendy restaurant is the wood-fired fireside within the eating room from which heavy plates of smoked goat chorizo, entire grilled trout and braised quick rib movement like Shakespearean sonnets.
If you wish to know what fashionable Kansas Metropolis eating appears like, that is it — which is why it’s our 2019 Restaurant of the Year.
The Restaurant at 1900
You go to The Restaurant at 1900 as a result of the meals is nice. All of it, each dish, each time. It’s on a stage of additional that you would be able to’t respect except you already know the labor that goes into it — and each ingredient will get reverential remedy. Take, for instance, the lobster pop tart, one of many few menu gadgets that has stayed on since 1900 opened in April 2018. Chef Linda Duerr receives reside lobsters, steams them and breaks them down earlier than portioning them into buttery quick pastry, an ideal envelope for the clear lobster and braised leek, all of which is offset by vibrant tomatoes, contemporary dill and a cloud-like VSOP whipped cream. It’s this sure-footed confidence that makes 1900 a staple. Though the restaurant is ready in a mixed-use constructing that was as soon as H.D. Lee Denims headquarters (right this moment, there are workplaces and company assembly areas) the eating room is luxurious and cozy.
Freshwater
If there’s an award for finest comeback story, it goes to chef Calvin Davis. His promising first restaurant, Freshwater, was open for 3 months in 2017 earlier than a deadly drunk driving accident destroyed the eating room. A yr later, Davis was again in his unique Midtown location with its small, sunny eating room and wealthy nine-seat wooden bar, his imaginative and prescient clearer than ever. Freshwater has at all times been hyper-local, with as many parts made in-house as potential, however with the restaurant’s rise from the ashes, Davis is taking the chance to problem himself. (Lately, he’s been delving into cheese-making; the Freshwater ricotta, delicately swaddled in scarpinocc pasta, is chef’s kiss-worthy). When you can spherical up no less than three mates, reserve the chef’s desk inside Freshwater’s kitchen, the place 100 and fifty {dollars} per particular person will get you twelve programs with wine pairings. Freshwater’s menu modifications incessantly — there are one or two new dishes each week — however the chef’s desk dinners are totally different each night time.
Farina
For over 20 years, Michael Smith has been one among Kansas Metropolis’s high cooks. As a substitute of retiring into cookbook-writing, Smith has launched into a brand new enterprise. Earlier this yr, he shuttered his long-running namesake restaurant within the Crossroads and opened Farina subsequent door, a contemporary Italian advantageous eating idea with a smooth and polished inside — compliments of native agency Helix Structure and Design — set in good-looking slate and grey tones. There are many house-cured meats and generously portioned entrees to select from, and the small uncooked bar highlights delicate Mediterranean flavors. If it’s a purple sauce expertise you’re after, know that Farina is the polar reverse. Noodles listed below are elegant. The often humble cacio e pepe is elevated with a wealthy mixture of pecorino, Parmesan and crescenza cheeses, and I swooned over the sweet wrapper-shaped caramelle pasta. Order extra pasta than you suppose you want — you’ll haven’t any bother ending.
Port Fonda
Excessive-end Mexican delicacies is a troublesome promote in a city the place superb salsas come free for the squeezing and greenback tacos can rock your world. How does a restaurateur justify a seventeen greenback sampler of guac and salsas? Nicely, chef Patrick Ryan’s full of life Westport spot pulls it off. The night temper at Port Fonda is ready with thumping bass and membership lighting, and the flavors are loud sufficient to roll alongside. Among the many musts are the Mayan pumpkin seed dip sikil pak, the assortment of snacks made with contemporary masa and the pozole verde made with plump hominy and pork shoulder marinated in earthy inexperienced chiles. Additionally dig into the assortment of Oaxacan dishes, together with a tlayuda constructed on a crust of blue corn masa and hen roasted over wooden then bathed in a yellow mole constructed from guajillo, ancho and morita. The margs are at all times on level, and the spectacular mezcal choice is a draw by itself.
Vietnam Cafe
Nice pho is all concerning the broth, and the most effective broth on the town takes a full day to make. Employees at Columbus Park’s Vietnam Cafe (the placement by KU Med has totally different possession and recipes) spend twenty-four hours boiling down each beef and hen bones to layer up flavors of their healing noodle soup. Tear up some cilantro and basil, squirt in a little bit Sriracha, and spoon into world-class pho. Vietnam Cafe’s signature soup is a few of the finest I’ve had, and I’ve been to some of this nation’s best-loved Vietnamese eating places. Vietnam Cafe’s broth is made by the proprietor from a recipe that’s been handed down over the twenty-odd years this bustling Columbus Park bowl-ing alley has been in biz. There are different gadgets on the menu, too, and it’s best to discover them — as sides to your pho. The fried candy potato is a favourite, and the wealthy curries are nice on chilly days.
Stock Hill
We’re not wanting for good steaks on this city, however it’s exhausting to discover a choice equal to that at Inventory Hill on the South Plaza. There are 9 cuts to select from: two thirty-day dry-aged and 5 forty-five-day wet-aged, all from Woodbury Farms in Quenemo, Kansas, plus two Wagyu choices — a KC strip and a ribeye from Durham Ranch in Pittsburg, Texas. The dry-aged steaks have a nutty profile, and we may wax poetic for pages about how sublimely tender the Akaushi ribeye is and the way you don’t actually need the porcini rub or the house-made chimichurri sauce however it’s best to add them anyway. Dine like Gatsby at Inventory Hill’s stately eating room, perch on the polished marble horseshoe bar, or sip a glass of Kansas Metropolis punch on one of many emerald inexperienced velvet couches. It is a restaurant designed to impress, whether or not you’re dropping in for a contented hour cocktail (and the triple-cooked fries) or sitting down for a decadent steak dinner.
Bob Wasabi Okitchen
Contemporary seafood” in landlocked Kansas Metropolis doesn’t should be an oxymoron — no less than, not for those who’re eating at Bob Wasabi Kitchen. South Korea-born Bob Shin started his profession as a New York Metropolis fishmonger within the eighties and labored in California eating places in the course of the bento field craze of the nineties earlier than settling in Kansas Metropolis and opening the sushi restaurant he’d at all times dreamed of along with his household in 2015. Shin leverages his appreciable experience in terms of sourcing and deciding on premium seafood, which he has delivered from Seattle Fish Co. (their Kansas Metropolis warehouse receives contemporary shipments twice each day). A mere forty-eight hours earlier, the fish within the case at Shin’s chef’s counter might need been Discovering Nemo. You’ll respect that as you feast on Shin’s deft and beneficiant sashimi or the show-stopping rainbow roll (with hamachi, maguro and salmon). If it’s out there, don’t skip the pearl-pink toro — tuna stomach that melts in your mouth like heat butter.
