Urban Legend

When it comes to Kansas City's restaurant scene, 2002 is the year of the hype.

That's partly because more and more local restaurants are hiring publicists to bang their drums -- Pat O'Neill for the ill-fated Lemongrass at Oldham and Platters at the Phillips Hotel; Parris Communications for the American Restaurant; Chicago-based Wagstaff Worldwide for 40 Sardines, to name a few.

But Dan Clothier and his partners didn't bother hiring a PR firm to announce that they'd be opening their City Tavern. Five months before the place opened, they sent out their very own press kit in a gold-embossed red folder, describing the history of the 115-year-old Freight House building as well as previewing plans for the restaurant's décor and hinting at its menu. Then came the billboards, a splashy gush in The Kansas City Star (after the restaurant had been open four days) and a rush to judgment by food snobs like my friend John, who turned up his haughty nose. "So overpriced! We had Conundrum Chardonnay, and it was $12 a glass! And a light pour, I might add. My friend had a tuna sandwich that looked like it came from the lunch counter of a Woolworth's luncheonette. And we spent $150. If we go again, I'm sneaking in my own food in a brown bag." But John is the Cassandra of the restaurant scene -- he venomously predicts the worst about every restaurant he visits.

The real buzz on City Tavern -- what people are saying, as opposed to the manufactured hype -- is just what you might expect in a faltering economy. "It's a beautiful dining room," reported my friends who got there early. "But it costs so much. They charge extra for sauces."

After three meals in the place, I have a slightly different take. Yes, the high-ceilinged brick dining room, with its reclaimed dark woodwork and antique mirrors, is stunning in its simplicity and elegance. Yes, it's easy to put together a costly meal by ordering an appetizer, a salad, an entrée and a dessert, though the prices of à la carte items aren't especially princely.

And chef Dennis Kaniger's cuisine rises to the occasion -- for the most part.

Kaniger is still tinkering with the menu. For the restaurant's first month, all the steaks and chops were à la carte, and the seven "accompaniments" (including Madeira sauce, shallot butter and tomato relish) were $1.50 extra. But "people just weren't getting it," Kaniger says, and on October 11, he revamped the menu.

"We raised the prices a couple of bucks on the steaks and chops," Kaniger says, "and threw in a side dish, like a potato or vegetable, and one of the accompaniments."

He's still tweaking some of the main courses: A tender Tri Tip of Beef one night became a Beef Bourguignonne the next. A deep-fried jerk shrimp in coconut batter on Monday night's menu was fried shrimp in tomato sauce on Tuesday.

Neither shrimp creation was a work of culinary art. The jerk shrimp might have undergone the traditional Jamaican splashing in garlic and peppers, but who could tell? Each little crustacean was encased in a puffy fried shell that tasted more like cooking oil than coconut, and the accompanying sauce was so sweet with honey that I would rather have eaten it over ice cream. Cornmeal-dusted fried shrimp weren't any livelier, but my friends liked them better than an appetizer of cornmeal-dredged fried oysters lolling atop gray shells and a stingy dollop of bland "salsa."

"All I taste is cornmeal," sniffed my friend Richard.

The oysters tasted fine to me, but I'm hardly a shellfish aficionado. I'd already voted down one friend's suggestion to order the $60 "small" Seafood Tower, a tiered assortment of fresh oysters, shrimp, seaweed salad and varying in-season "treats" (chilled sea urchin, anyone?). There's a difference between luxury and insanity.

Still, I thought I'd lost my mind when I let our server, Amy, talk me into ordering a bowl of that night's potage du jour, a steaming brew of lettuce soup. I imagined a mound of soggy iceberg leaves reeking like cabbage. Amy, however, insisted that the soup was "delicious" -- and I trusted her judgment because I'd known her from other restaurants. The soup turned out to be a dark, rich jade concoction flavored with a hearty chicken stock and lots of smoky bacon.

Iceberg lettuce -- the crispy, nonsoup variety -- also makes up the best salad on the menu. It's a wedge cut straight from the heart of a Titanic-sized head, sided by tender asparagus, hard-boiled egg and purple beets, all doused with a creamy buttermilk dressing. This great interpretation of a classic recipe is far superior to the common Caesar. For another starter, Kaniger has resurrected spinach gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce, an old favorite from his former restaurant, Venue. The puffy little potato-flour dumplings are as wonderful as ever, but the sauce is just as tasty if you soak it up with one of the fat rolls Kaniger imports from Farm to Market bakery.

Another dish I happily remembered from Venue was a "flattened" chicken roasted with lemon, garlic and fresh rosemary. My grandmother used to make a similar dish by frying a butterflied bird under a plate weighed down with a brick, but Kaniger says he just smashes the chicken with a mallet.