at the 75th Street Brewery in 1994, before Habiger moved to New York City to hone his culinary skills (having already worked as executive chef at the iconic Café Allegro). Habiger says he and Sloan have very different culinary styles, but the Room 39 menus served at both locations reflect their unique collaboration, which focuses on delicious, imaginative dishes prepared with regionally produced products (Green Dirt Farm cheeses, Thane Palmberg swiss chard, nettles, potatoes). The vegetarian dishes, like this summer’s stuffed squash filled with a cheesy bread pudding, are as extraordinary as the meaty innovations, including a Honey Del Farm duck breast on a potato-and-leek cake drizzled with a supple fresh-blackberry gastrique. Habiger tells it true: “The ideas still flow.”
BEST PAIN-IN-THE-ASS RESTAURANT
Peanches 900 West 39th Street • 816-709-1032 • peanches.com
ANGELA C. BOND
FOOD
Accurso’s still makes family cheesecake. sweet lemon bars, beautifully iced cakes, caramel-pecan rolls and chocolate-chunk cookies. Of course, the bigger dining room is also great news for those who simply can’t wait to drive home before biting into a thick, yeasty cinnamon roll or a flaky croissant.
BEST CHEESECAKE
If the food is good enough, a restaurant patron is often willing to overlook a bad location, unattractive décor, even mediocre service. Iconoclastic chef Pete Peterman’s Peanches restaurant isn’t in a bad location, is appealingly decorated, and has a perfectly charming staff. It’s Peterman — notoriously brusque when he wants to be and downright rude when he’s feeling cranky — who drives some patrons away. That said, he’s a gifted chef, and his Peanches menu, with its regional meats and produce, boasts truly outstanding dishes. (And the prix fixe collection here is one of the best deals in town.) The menu changes frequently, but when he’s offering his rack of lamb, pork loin with sweet-potato-maple puree, or warm applecornmeal crisp, you’re in for a hell of a meal. And as long as you aren’t the object of his scorn, dinner here can be a hell of a show, too.
Not long after young restaurateur Anthony Accurso purchased his cousin Joe’s trattoria on the south side of the Country Club Plaza, he enlisted his grandmother Mimi to start baking her distinctive cheesecake — a light, exquisitely fluffy creation — for his restaurant. Not realizing how popular the dessert would become, Anthony and Mimi agreed that she would make two cakes a week. Anthony was soon selling out of the made-from-scratch dolce faster than his grandmother could keep up with the demand, so she trained his kitchen staff. “It’s a secret family recipe,” Accurso says, “but if my customers want it, I make sure we have it, whether my grandmother makes it or not.”
BEST CLASSIC BAKERY
BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT
Dolce Bakery
Seva Cuisine of India
3930 West 69th Terrace, Prairie Village
8674 Northeast Flintlock Road • 816-407-9700
Accurso’s Italian Restaurant 4980 Main • 816-753-0810 • accursos.com
913-236-4411 • dolcebakingcompany.com
sevacuisineofindia.com
By the time you read this, Dolce diva Erin Brown, who opened her suburban pastry shop six years ago, will be operating her new bakery — note the new name — in a new location. It’s still in the Prairie Village Shopping Center but in a storefront twice the size of the old place, enabling Brown to add Christopher Elbow ice creams, savory soups, and Oddly Correct coffee to her fresh scones, tart and
Seva Cuisine of India owner Gurdev Deol was once a restaurant health inspector for Kansas City, and it shows. He’s so exacting that he doesn’t serve samosas because he can’t find a product that meets his rigid food-safety requirements. What Deol does offer, in addition to many shiny, spotless surfaces, is an array of outstanding vegetable, chicken and lamb dishes, including excel-
lent representations of the greatest hits of the conventional Indian culinary repertoire: curries, kormas, butter chicken, a kick-ass vindaloo or two. The spicy dishes call for more than iced tea or soda, so Deol offers wine and beer, including a German riesling that works nicely with tandoori chicken.
BEST PHO
Pho KC 315 Cherry • 816-471-2224
The bland name of this River Market restaurant heightens the feeling that it’s almost purposely camouflaged. At Third Street and Cherry, almost under the Heart of America Bridge, far enough east in the River Market that the neighborhood’s industrial roots show, it’s a windowless, not especially inviting façade. Go inside, and mere straightforwardness becomes something else. Pho is a simple dish, but Pho KC’s ample menu and plenitude of sauces, spices and other add-ons make this place an exceptionally fine (and always inexpensive) Asian-food destination.
BEST SEE-AND-BE-SEEN BRUNCH
Port Fonda 4141 Pennsylvania • 816-216-6462 • portfondakc.com
Not everyone is going to be perky and cleareyed enough for the intense noise level at Port Fonda at 10 a.m. on a Saturday or a Sunday, especially after a night of heavy drinking. But chef Patrick Ryan’s hot, spicy menudo is a known cure for even the most head-pounding hangover (especially alongside something from the restaurant’s bloody-mary bar), and as your head clears, you notice again just how sexy this room is. The place has been a magnet for musicians and artists from its first day, but those types tend to sleep in (knowing that this brunch is
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FORMERLY KNOWN AS LASALA’S DELI
$3 WELLS | $5 CALLS $10 BUCKET SPECIALS HOURS: MON-THURS 10A-4P FRI & SAT 10A-10P
ALSO SERVING BREAKFAST ON SAT AT 7AM!
BEST ITALIAN STEAKS IN KC!
910 E. 5TH ST
KANSAS CITY, MO 64106
816.421.2189
best of kansas city 2013
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