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CHECKING IN
MetropolitanKC restores the downtown Marriott’s culinary bona fides.
BY
CHARLES FERRUZZA
MetropolitanKC • 200 West 12th Street, 816-421-6800 • Hours: breakfast 6:30–10 a.m. Monday–Friday, 6:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. daily; dinner 5–11 p.m. daily • Price: $$–$$$
n 1985, the impressive new Vista International Hotel opened on 12th Street, the first new downtown Kansas City hotel in more than a decade. It sat on a notorious piece of property: a block-long stretch of trashy saloons and strip joints. The bars and clubs had been popular with convention visitors to the city (particularly during the 1976 Republican National Convention), but the locals saw the raucous neighborhood as seriously blighted, and it was bulldozed in 1982 to make way for the Vista. Sadly, the Vista didn’t last even as long as Mike’s Pink Door, one of those old 12th Street favorites. By 1987, the name and management of the mammoth brick hotel had been replaced. The Pistilli family, former operators of the Alameda Plaza Hotel (and, until 2005, the Raphael Hotel), began overseeing the property. When the Pistillis’ Raphael Restaurant Group, known for its excellent food service, took over the running of the hotel, it immediately closed the Vista’s E upscale dining venue, R MO the Harvest Room: “It was doing, maybe, six AT covers a night,” Kevin E N I ONL .COM Pistilli tells me. “We PITCH couldn’t afford to keep it open.” Pistilli and his sister, Cynthia Pistilli Savage, remain in charge of the hotel, which has been a Marriott (owned by a local business group) for 25 years. Over that quarter century, the hotel has done without a good restaurant. There was a coffee shop, Lilly’s, on the lobby level, but for years it was one of the worst hotel dining rooms in town, plagued by sullen service and unexceptional food — a head-scratcher given that the cuisine at both the Alameda Plaza and the Raphael Hotel was always extraordinary. In fact, the Alameda Plaza’s Pam Pam Room pretty much set the local hotel standard for decades. What happened? “During that period of time,” Pistilli says, “people’s expectations of dining in a hotel really changed. There was a time when a firstclass hotel, like the Muehlebach in its heyday, had three different dining rooms. But hotel customers no longer stayed in to eat. The dining experience was outsourced to the community, even when Kansas City lacked a variety of good restaurants downtown. Guests would travel to Crown Center or the Plaza to eat instead of dining in the hotel. “We’re a convention hotel,” Pistilli adds. “Our hotel-dining business is primarily breakfast and lunch. Dinner business is a bit more quiet.” He pauses. “No, a lot more quiet.” A sad-sack space like Lilly’s was for a long time good enough for those conventioneers. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t. The Raphael Restaurant Group spent a lot of dough overhauling the hotel’s lobby a couple of years ago, then turned its attention to Lilly’s. “The
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restaurant was dated-looking,” Pistilli says. Diners can get lost in a Bermuda Triangle “And the food was good. But we wanted to cake, hook into barbecue salmon and find take it up a notch, to make it more accessible ’shroom service at the downtown Marriott. to our younger hotel guests, more contempoing, for instance, the corn-f lake-crusted rary. It’s not a fine-dining restaurant. We’re “crunchy French toast.” (Sliced bananas and not Bluestem.” strawberries saved the dish from banality.) Last October, after a major renovation, the Much better is a hash made with chunks of former Lilly’s reopened as MetropolitanKC. And no, it isn’t Bluestem, but it’s the best barbecue brisket, chopped spuds, peppers thing to happen to this Marriott in 20 years. and runny poached eggs. It’s an excellent The room is classy and comfortable, the ser- dish, so rich that the hollandaise sauce is almost unnecessary. The vice friendly and attentive. three-egg omelet I tried Best of all, though, is the MetropolitanKC was nearly as big as a footsmart young chef named Crunchy French toast ........$10 ball and tasted good, but I Vincent Paredes, who has House-made barbecue prefer Paredes’ eggs Beneelevated the food a great brisket hash ......................$12 dict, a top-notch version. deal. MetropolitanKC is a Eggs Benedict ......................$11 One afternoon in the dinrestaurant worth dining in Classic Reuben ....................$11 ing room, I ran into a fussy frequently if you spend your Barbecue salmon, lunch portion.....................$13 downtown restaurateur, days downtown or near it. Kansas City strip .............. $30 who insisted that I order The menu and the décor the Reuben sandwich. It was at the sunny, pretty Metoutstanding, but I haven’t ropolitanKC aren’t as sophisticated as what you’ll find a few blocks craved it the way I’ve wished for more of the $15 lunch special that Paredes created for Resaway at the Reserve, in the new Ambassador Hotel, or as inspired as Providence, over in taurant Week: a gorgeous cup of parsnip-andpear soup, perfectly complemented by a fluffy the nearby Hilton President. The prices are croque monsieur sandwich. in line with that competition. A friend of The kitchen’s subtle sense of invention mine was scandalized at having to fork over is evident in the barbecue salmon. The fish $10 for a plate of buttermilk pancakes, then remembered he was eating at a hotel. The I tasted had a lightly crispy exterior and a place holds its own, and there are signs that moist, pink center, and the avocado relish blanketing it was just right. It came perched it’s going to continue improving. For now, some of Paredes’ concepts on a tasty mash of soothing caulif lower, which had none of the graininess that somesound better than they taste. I’m recall-
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times hinders the vegetable. It’s a dish that’s modern without being pushy about it. There are, of course, steaks — tourists want Kansas City’s signature dish. Paredes serves up a fine 12-ounce, wet-aged KC strip. (Vegetarians don’t fare as well here and must cobble together a meal of side dishes or request that the rigatoni marinara be served without its veal meatballs.) Like all modern hotel restaurants, MetropolitanKC has been designed for the building’s paying guests. But for the first time, this room is a worthy destination for diners venturing downtown for a Sprint Center concert or a show at Quality Hill Playhouse or the Kauffman Center. It also serves late, by downtown standards, running till 11 p.m. I predict an alteration there, though, if too few locals are persuaded to give this dining room a chance. After all, to be a truly metropolitan venue, MetropolitanKC needs patrons from all over the metro.
Have a suggestion for a restaurant The Pitch should review? E-mail charles.ferruzza@pitch.com
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