Home Cooking
You can travel all over the planet to find world-class cooking. But if you live in Kansas City, it's a short trip, thanks to a rich history of innovators and skilled chefs.
To the rest of the world, Kansas City is known today as a barbecue town, or as a steak town. You have to spend some serious time here to appreciate the full range of gustatory offerings available to the region’s 2 million residents, some of which seem counter-intuitive, given our location.
Take, for example, seafood: You could study a map of the United States until your eyes bleed to find cities of comparable size that are nearly equidistant from so many major fishing centers. Yet, thanks to the miracle of modern aviation and same-day air service, that works to the advantage of seafood customers here. Why? Because we’re closer to the source of Alaskan king crab legs than the major cities of the east. And we’re far closer to the source of fresh Maine lobster than eateries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland or Seattle. It’s nearly the same with Gulf shrimp.
Now, combine that with our proximity to the immense value chains for grain and row crops, and for beef, pork and poultry production. The freshest is right at the fingertips for award-winning chefs, and the Kansas City area boasts a number of those, as well.
“I think we’ve got a lot of great restaurants,” says Paul Khoury, a man who should know. He came up through the storied Gilbert Robinson restaurant group, and went on to become co-founder of the legendary PB&J Restaurants based here. Over the course of its 27 years, PB&J has given the region notable eating venues like Paradise Diner, Coyote Grill, Burnt End BBQ, YaYa’s Euro Bistro, Newport Grill and other signature establishments.
“We have James Beard-award-winning chefs, and The American Restaurant has always been one of the best in the U.S.,” Khoury said. “And in the Midwest, we get the best of both coasts, fresh seafood, the best tomatoes, the best corn, the best produce and beef.”
Those elements are the raw ingredients of the restaurant trade, but over the course of the metro area’s long history, a lot of memorable names and iconic figures have helped set the table we dine on today. And one other dynamic, restaurateurs here say, has contributed to the high level of dining options: Each time an innovator raises the bar on quality, service and execution, others are compelled to up their game, or risk joining that roll call of restaurants that were considered top-tier in their day, but are nonetheless now consigned to history.
Barriers to Success
The statistics are colder than a Siberian sushi bar: By some studies, 90 percent of independent restaurants in America close during their first year of operation. And of those that do make past Year One, 70 percent don’t survive to mark a fifth anniversary.
Run that math on that, and you’re looking at a 97 percent failure rate at that point. But for those who reach that milestone, some real stars emerge: An estimated 90 percent of those survivors can expect to celebrate 10 years in business.
So if you’re going to last, you need to be good. And if you’re going to last in Kansas City, you need to be really good. How competitive is the current Kansas City environment? Chew on this: Earlier this year, the venerable Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a porterhouse powerhouse with nearly 120 locations in the U.S. and 18 more overseas, gave up on the Kansas City market after expiration of its lease on the Country Club Plaza. And just a few years ago, the market took down Houston-based Morton’s, a longtime fixture in Crown Center.
That tells you a lot about two of their most entrenched local competitors, Plaza III–The Steakhouse and The American Restaurant.
The quality factor is one reason why Kansas City has been cited for the durability of its independent eateries, and there’s some anecdotal evidence that suggests restaurants done right do indeed have healthy long-term prospects. In 1989, for example, when Ingram’s launched its Golden Spoon Awards [the forerunner to today’s Best of Business Kansas City Awards], the recognition was limited to restaurants. Overall honors went to the Top 10, and the top three in each of eight categories were recognized. The number of restaurants that endures from that Top 10 list defies industry averages: Seven are still in business today, although not all under the same ownership or in the same location, and some of those opened their doors well before 1989.
And of the separate 22 restaurants recognized by specialty that year, 16 of them—better than 72 percent—are still serving up everything from steaks to seafood and burgers to barbecue.
But how, exactly, did a city long known as a cow town, born amid the expansion into the Wild West and famed for its bawdiness and occasional departures from conventional statutory guidance, come to establish itself as a Midwestern mecca for fine dining? That’s where you find some answers in the history books.
Early Influences
Does Kansas City owe its reputation as a steak town to Boophilus microplus? No, that wasn’t the name of some 19th-century Balkan immigrant: It’s a cattle tick that carries something called Spanish Fever. In the years between Kansas City’s incorporation in 1850 and construction of the first Missouri River bridge in 1869, central Kansas was becoming a hotbed of cattle production. Longhorns from Texas—which could be had for as little as $3 a head, while going prices for beef in Chicago were $50—represented a huge profit potential for those willing to brave the dangers of the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kan. That’s as far as the cattle would go, though, because lawmakers had acceded to cattle constituencies in Kansas, who had seen losses of entire domestic herds because of tick fever.
“Had it not been for the tick, Kansas City might not be on the map today,” says John Dillingham, whose father, Jay, was the longtime president of the Kansas City Stockyards in the mid-20th century. “Osceola, Mo., was the same size before the Civil War, and women in town there got the finest things from New York via the Osage River and riverboats, just as we did in Kansas City.”
But by working out an agreement to allow cattle shipments by rail from Abilene, he said, beef interests were able to establish the stockyards in Kansas City. With the rail hub here, and the spanning of the Missouri River in 1869, the city’s growth potential was assured.
Against that backdrop was the emergence of the Wild West, a name often validated on multiple levels: You literally took your life into your hands simply engaging in experiences that we would consider commonplace occurrences today. Those included eating at a restaurant—if you could call those early establishments “restaurants.” Recall that commercial applications of refrigeration systems didn’t take place until the late 1800s. Before that, if it wasn’t chilled with ice harvested during the winter, it ran a good chance of going rancid before even hitting a diner’s plate. And in many cases, even that was no barrier to serving.
Marginal meats, wilting produce, stale coffee and bread—served with a fine weevil-reduction sauce, perhaps—were routine gastronomic experiences. So bad was the fare along the railroads, before the advent of the dining car, that many Americans foreswore that new form of intercontinental transit. Until an entrepreneurial native of Britain, by the name of Fred Harvey, spotted an opportunity. In January 1876, he opened a so-called eating house near the depot in Topeka, along the lines of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. High-quality food, in ample portions, commanded a price premium, but was sufficiently affordable to launch an empire.
By the time he died in Leavenworth in 1901, Harvey had become known as “Civilizer of the West,” with a 47 Harvey Houses, 15 hotels and 30 railroad dining cars. More important, though, he helped established the concept that dining—if not rising to the levels of a Delmonico’s in New York—could still be a pleasurable and profitable, for both the vendor and the consumer.
Others in the region took note. Kansas City was becoming known as the nation’s meat counter with the emergence of stockyards that shipped rail cars of refrigerated beef to the nation’s eastern population centers. So no other city in the country was as well-positioned to capitalize on the freshest protein source in the nation, one that was rapidly growing in popularity.
The notion of Kansas City steakhouses, though, didn’t really take off until nearly half a century after Fred Harvey’s last train ride. In 1947, Jay Dillingham marshaled the support and resources needed to launch the Golden Ox, which would become an iconic figure in a city that would be known as much for steaks as for barbecue, and a restaurant still in operation today.
Dillingham recalls that his father once noted that 80 percent of the work force in early 20th-century Kansas City was employed in what is now Downtown and the West Bottoms area—there were no suburbs to speak of, at that point—and the economic muscle exerted by that area was immense. J.C Nichols, who founded the Country Club Plaza in 1922, once said that without the stockyards, the Plaza itself would not have come into existence, providing a setting for many of the finest restaurants operating in the marketplace today.
Setting Standards
“Any man who enters an industry, and takes for his own all the benefits which it offers him, owes that industry something pretty definite in return.”
That’s a quote from Al Carder. If you’re a student of Windy City history, you may know him as the owner of Carder’s of Chi-
cago, a popular restaurant in the 1930s. But before he headed that way, Carder cut his teeth in the business in here. In 1916, he teamed with a couple of competitors, one Guy Taylor and cafeteria owner Myron Green, to form something called the Kansas City Business Men’s Association, hoping to address issues of common concern.
That collaborative effort—not an unusual aspect of doing business in Kansas City these days—was out of the norm within that setting, at that time, said Carl DiCapo, the longtime owner and operator of the Italian Gardens restaurant Downtown. “Those three never even sat together at meetings they would show up at,” DiCapo said. “You were very cautious about who you talked to in this business in 1916.”
But the fledging association would prove fruitful in its first year, after egg brokers working together pushed the asking price of a dozen eggs to a then-astronomical 65 cents. The BMA organized a boycott, eventually driving the prices back to 32 cents. Because of that success, the association began attracting interest from around the region, initially, but soon from around the nation.
It grew to 43,000 members nationwide in just three years, then moved its headquarters to Chicago in 1927. It eventually moved on to Washington—don’t all interest groups?—where today, it’s the world’s largest food-service trade association, with more than half a million members.
In many ways, DiCapo said, that history and Kansas City’s role in it helped spread the word that this was a food town, with quality establishments. His own was one of them: from the time he started there as a youth—his uncles, John Bondon and Frank Lipardi opened it in 1925—until he left nearly 65 years later, DiCapo would serve Hollywood stars, baseball legends, college basketball hall of fame coaches—even stunt cyclist Evel Knievel had a regular spot there.
The secret to that long-running establishment, known to others who have beaten the odds, DiCapo said, was always “good food, at a moderate price, and a staff that treated the customers with respect.”
Family Ties
Myron Green died in 1953, before most people in Kansas City were born, and his chain of cafeterias has been gone for 40 years. But his name lives on as a business entity: Myron Green Corp., doing business as Treat America. Ed Holland has been with the organization for 39 years, and serves as its president. He’s a fourth-generation family member, having married Green’s great-granddaughter. So he’s steeped in the lore of the Green family business.
Green was a dentist by training, said Holland, but quickly developed a distaste for putting his hands in other people’s mouths—no doubt a hygienically sound decision at the time. Inspired by cafeteria-style offerings he had seen in New York, Green opened his first unit in 1909, and eventually had 44 of them across the region.
Holland is also steeped in the trade in Kansas City—at just 26, he was made general manager of the new EBT Restaurant when it opened in 1979.
The inception of the restaurant, in some ways, was reflective of the choices made during that decade, choices that civic leaders have come to regret. Because Crosby Kemper Jr. was unable to salvage the structurally unsound Emery Bird Thayer building Downtown, he built new offices for UMB at I-435 and State Line, and it still houses EBT.
For a while, bank leadership was located there, Holland said, and Kemper would frequently come in for lunch at his designated table. But the need to be Downtown, and to be perceived as a key part of the region’s commercial center, compelled a move back there when the new bank building rose on the original EBT site.
After 14 years of running that restaurant, Holland returned to the company’s core business functions of commercial food preparation for corporate clients, vending services, coffee services and catering. The tables at EBT, though, still bear his mark: They’re adorned with fresh-cut roses he brings in every day, culled from his back-yard collection during the summer growing season.
His favorite Kansas City dining locations—“Besides EBT, you mean?” he quickly cracks—are venues like the former Café Allegro, and the current Jalapeno’s in southern Johnson County.
A National Profile
Back up, if you will, to the Business Men’s Association formation nearly a century ago. One of the early active members of that group was Joe Gilbert, who created a restaurant called the Four Winds, back when flights arrived in Kansas City at the Downtown airport. In 1961, Gilbert made the acquaintance of Paul Robinson, a manager at Dillingham’s Golden Ox. It wasn’t long until the Gilbert Robinson restaurant group was formed, and dining was about to change, not just in the Kansas City area, but nationally.
“I think the early development of quality restaurants here sprang from Gilbert Robinson,” said Steve Cole, who founded Café Allegro in 1984 and sold it in 2002. Now the managing director of the River Club, Cole said the expertise that managers developed in the GR world translated into many other successes “and a lot of that has been a positive thing for Kansas City.”
After teeing things up with the still-running Plaza III steakhouse, they opened the first Houlihan’s, on the Plaza, in 1972. The concept—casual dining—was built on great food and top-notch service in a relaxed atmosphere. Gilbert Robinson would spawn other concepts that had extended lives on the Plaza, places like Annie’s Santa Fe, Fedora Cafe & Bar, and Fred P. Ott’s, but also venues that live on, including Bristol Cafe & Bar and Plaza III.
“I also think that Gilbert Robinson used the Kansas City market in general as a kind of proving ground for their concepts to be developed across he country,” Cole said. “The first Houlihan’s on the Plaza, they developed the quiche, the onion soup, that sort of thing.”
Gilbert Robinson went public in 1976 and was acquired by W.R. Grace, a huge conglomerate, in 1978. And that’s when the talent tree really began branching out, to the benefit of diners throughout the region.
Khoury and PB&J’s co-founder, Bill Crooks, were part of that trend, and Khoury recites a litany of those who went on to success in their own restaurants.
“Mike Eastwood, Carl Brandt, Forbes Cross, Mike McCarthy—we all had an opportunity to take the money and go after that leveraged buyout,” Khoury said.
“Bill and I opened the diner (Paradise Diner), Mike McCarthy and Carl opened Tatlers. Forbes and Mike Eastwood opened Michael Forbes Grill,” Khoury remembers. His own ventures ran into conflicts with landlord interests—Paradise Diner closed after 12 years at Oak Park Mall when the owners brought in Nordstrom, raised the rent “and built the Rain Forest Café in front of us,” Khoury said. The next effort was Coyote Grill in Mission Mall, but despite the restaurant’s popularity, the mall itself was failing and was torn down in 2005. They went on to found the City Scene in the AT&T Town Pavilion, a magnet for business executives mesmerized by at-the-table phone access and fax service. Then came a series of big hits.
The key to that success, Khoury said, is common in other long-lasting establishments: “We thought if we focused on great food and great service, the profitability would just come,” he said. “If we had those, and took better care of our employees and guests we would be successful.”
And it was so. This year, in fact, will be the best in the company’s 27-year run. And “it’s amazing to me,” Khoury muses, “that we’ve been in business longer than Gilbert Robinson was.”
Steaks—or Ribs?
Quick quiz: Who was Arthur Pinkard? You get an A in KC BBQ if you know his connection to two of the legendary companies that helped distinguish this city for its distinctive style of barbecue.
In the early 20th century, after Memphis native Henry Perry came to town with his own ideas about how beef, pork and chicken should be sacrificed on an altar of hickory, he took Pinkard on as an apprentice. Perry, of course, went on to sell his barbecue establishment to Charlie Bryant and his brother, Arthur, and their name became synonymous with Kansas City barbecue.
At about the same time, Pinkard joined up with George and Arzelia Gates, who opened their own place in 1946 at 19th and Vine. Since then, it has passed on to Ollie Gates, who has grown it to six area establishments and some 1,500 employees.
Even before those two iconic establishments assumed their places in barbecue lore, Anthony Rieke was perfecting the art of the ideal rib from a small building on Southwest Boulevard in Kansas City, Kan. In 1935, a year after opening a small beer and hot-dog stand nearby, he and his wife, Alda, and brother-in-law, Tony Sieleman, started smoking meat and serving customers at a 9-seat counter.
In the same way today’s Cerner Corp. has seen executives move on to launch their own entrepreneurial tech ventures, a number of smoking gurus have come up from pitmaster at places like those to launch their own smokehouses, with their own distinctive additions to the art of smoking, the formulation of rubs and sauces, and the development of side dishes that complement a perfect main course.
Smoke House BBQ, Hayward’s Pit Bar-B-Que, Oklahoma Joe’s Bar-B-Que—the list is long and passion-inducing; this city will never speak with one voice when it comes to determining who plates the best ’cue.
Kansas City at the Center
In the postwar period, the challenges facing family-owned restaurants have become significant. Many of the institutions regarded as culinary icons here have faded away, only to be replaced by national restaurant chains. Not that there’s anything wrong with a national chain just because it’s national; heck, the most highly praised restaurant in the city over the past 25 years, according to Ingram’s readers, is The Capital Grille.
There are reasons, after all, why a dining concept can transcend regional differences in the consumer base—great food, great atmosphere and great service unite all of us. So in the end, it’s all about the quality of the experience.
“There have been a goodly number of people who were very successful here, going way back to the Wishbone Restaurant, where the Marriott is on Main Street now, back in the ’60s, I guess,” Cole said. “But I also think about Stroud’s and the other independent, individually run restaurants that have gone on to national recognition, whether because of an individual chef, or the popularity of all things culinary today.”
When you see a Michael Smith, a Colby Garrelts or a Celina Tio—all bearing the James Beard imprimatur—“that’s never happened in the past, restaurants’ becoming household names in magazines,” Cole said. “The idea of a chef, or the kind of food publicity you see today with 24/7 network coverage—that’s something we never had back then.”
The notoriety of Kansas City, he said, is now such that we are well-positioned in almost any national discussion about great food.
“We do have a lot of talent here,” Cole said, “And fortunately, it’s being recognized. The big cities have their share of well-known chefs, and rightly so; they’re very fine. But I worked with a driving force behind The American Restaurant who said Kansas City is a great city, but it’s like a prime rib: It takes a lot of heat to get to the center. Things start on the coasts, in New York or LA or Chicago, and slowly will move to the Midwest.
“But when they get here, they are very good.”
Return to Ingram's August 2014