café Mixed Up AARÓN SÁNCHEZ EXPORTS HIS VERSION OF MEXICAN TO LEAWOOD. Mestizo 5270 West 116th Place, Leawood, 913-752-9025. Hours: 11 a.m.–midnight Monday–Thursday, 11 a.m.–1 a.m. Friday– Saturday, noon–midnight Sunday. Price: $$–$$$
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n a different time, when someone famous lent his or her name to a restaurant, the celebrity was almost always a TV or movie star or a big sports figure. It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1930s, when cinema beauty (and future murder victim) Thelma Todd opened Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café in Pacific Palisades. Later examples include Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips, Roy Rogers’ restaurants, and Thunder Roadhouse (owned by Peter Fonda). There also are the Eccentric (Oprah Winfrey), Schatzi on BY Main (Arnold SwarzenegCHARLES ger), and Nobu (co-owned by Robert De Niro). Former tongue, crisp pork belly and grilled mahi-mahi. F E R R U Z Z A Royals star George Brett had An early press release explains: “The focus is a namesake restaurant on the on authentic Mexican classics that have been Plaza for a couple of innings, and a former Chiefs re-invented and re-imagined by Sánchez.” That’s a pretty accurate description of the defensive end Neil Smith owned the short-lived Copeland’s Famous New Orleans Restaurant in food served at Mestizo, which is solid and satisfying. And for diners eager to experience a more Overland Park. Thanks to reality TV, chefs are now just as exciting array of flavors than the goo typically famous as sitcom stars — and only slightly less served up as “Mexican” in this town, it’s almost recognizable than the Kardashians. A few have revolutionary. The word mestizo, the servers parlayed their name recognition into new res- happily explain, means mixed. (A more accutaurants. That’s the story behind Mestizo, the rate translation is a person of mixed ancestry, Mexican bistro that recently opened in Leawood. particularly Native American and European.) So Sánchez follows through It’s a slickly mounted propwith something like a preerty created by Food Network Mestizo Colonial New World menu, star Aarón Sánchez (Chopped, Quesadilla .................... $10 as prepared for 21st-century Heat Seekers) in collaboration Pozole soup .....................$9 suburbanites. with California-based Trifecta Pepita-crusted Which makes Mestizo Management Group. scallops ...................... $12 perhaps the most interestEvery menu is like a little Braised tongue ing destination in the Park press release for Sánchez, tacos .......................... $10 Place complex. The restauwhose name is in prominent Braised short ribs ........ $22 Grilled adobe rant does, however, have type under the Mestizo logo. sirloin steak ............... $24 some issues to iron out. The The famous chef may make Coconut flan....................$6 noise level is deafening. The only occasional cameo apupstairs dining area, a plaspearances in the kitchen of tic-tented patio (open only his signature restaurant, but that’s still often enough to give Mestizo a cachet on weekends), turns into such a cacophony of far beyond that of Kenny Rogers Roasters. (Did tequila-lubricated caterwauling that you may anyone ever really expect to walk into one of have to read your server’s lips. And even though the servers are as perky those fast-food operations and see the bearded crooner of “Coward of the County” filling a pa- as Disney World tour guides, the service isn’t per sack with a Round-up Platter and a muffin?) exactly snappy. Several dishes I ordered on my The Leawood Mestizo is the first of what second visit to the restaurant came out of the is presumably a franchise operation (“Casual, kitchen barely lukewarm. The pork-belly tacos hip, upbeat … with deliciously affordable fare,” (with a fine pineapple-mint salsa) that I tried chants the promotional materials), one that of- were very good. They might have been extraorfers exactly zero cheesy Tex-Mex dishes. Want dinary if the pork had been served hot. Hot is relative at Mestizo, in terms of both a burrito spread? Go to Don Chilito’s. Mestizo offers four taco options: skirt steak, braised beef temperature and ingredients. The house salsa,
Sánchez re-creates classic Mexican dishes to his — and modern — tastes.
a thick, velvety creation with a smoky undertone, is mellow, not fiery. “Aarón Sánchez really doesn’t care for spicy, spicy foods,” our server announced to our table after we asked for something a little punchier for our chips. “Why is he on Heat Seekers?” I wondered aloud (too quietly to be heard above the rest of the room). Another staffer later brought over a little dish of a condiment known at the restaurant as tomalata: a maize-colored sauce made from charred habanero peppers, Dijon mustard, Spanish onions and lime juice. The grainy mustard dominates the first taste, but what follows is a jolting burn. It would have gone well with the remarkably light vegetable quesadilla that my table sampled as a starter. There are other sauces here, but none as asskicking as the tomalata. The slightly greasy, delicately thin bacaladitos — fried pancakes made with salt cod — come with a pretty pink (and, again, mild) habanero mayonnaise. The puffy platanos rellenos, made of sweet fried plantains stuffed with black beans, are meant to be dipped in crema fresca. It’s all very nice and very safe. The most satisfying surprise among these often superb small plates is a dish of “pepita-crusted scallops,” which dresses two plump scallops, coated in crushed pumpkin seeds, in a creamy corn picadillo that’s sweet and searing at once. The rest of Sánchez’s botanas arrange the familiar (sautéed shrimp) with the offbeat (soft veal sweetbreads encased in a crunchy fried crust but left to languish in a tamarind sauce dappled with smoked bacon). I fell in love with a bowl of full-bodied pozole soup, generously laden with big chunks of tender braised pork and airy little hominy balls. It’s served with accessories — lime, cilantro, slivers of radish and dried oregano — but requires none of them. The six entrées now on the menu include
outstanding braised short ribs — some of the best I’ve tasted — in an ancho chile broth. I liked the grilled sirloin (a little chewy but, you know, it’s sirloin) smothered in a brassy adobe sauce with peppers, onion and ribbons of soggy cactus. Carnivores really score here. The beef-tongue tacos are extremely tender — and really rich. There’s very little for vegetarians to get hot and bothered about at Mestizo, unless one cobbles together a reluctant meal from the veggie quesadilla and the wax bean salad. I wave two thumbs down on the gloppy “Mexican-style pasta,” a side dish of tepid orzo in a glum roastedtomato sauce. I pushed my bowl away after a couple of bites. (The combination of shaved Brussels sprouts, cranberries and manchego cheese might work, if it weren’t dotted with meaty chicharrones.) The savory side of the menu offers nothing with mole, but a neat cacao fix awaits in the pretty little “molten chocolate cake.” It isn’t novel — every restaurant except Denny’s seems to offer it these days — but the eggy coconut flan, topped with a spoonful of mango-andmint relish, is delicious. You can build a flight of good tequilas, if you’re so inclined (a friend scoffed at some of the offerings on the “super premium” and “ultra premium” lists), and one of my tablemates was all but knocked off her feet by the unexpected potency of the strawberry caipirinha cocktail. It’s the same shade of red as the walls at Mestizo and it has the same effect as the restaurant as a whole: If you take it in too quickly, you’ll miss the nuances. Mestizo, with or without chef Sánchez in the house, has star quality. Have a suggestion for a restaurant The Pitch should review? E-mail charles.ferruzza@pitch.com
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