Reality Bites

Inever watched the NBC reality show The Restaurant, starring celebrity chef Rocco DeSpirito, for the same reason I won't watch any reality TV series: My own personal reality is complicated enough. If I even turn on the television, I want to see something featuring not real people but idiotic caricatures of them — say, The O'Reilly Factor.

But sometimes life takes a funny turn and becomes more like a reality TV show than actual reality. Take, for example, my second dinner at the cozy little bistro called SORedux. I was dining with my friends Bob and Lou Jane, waiting for the fourth course of our eight-course prix fixe dinner to arrive, when we all happened to look out the window at the same time. Our jaws dropped in unison. "Am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing?" asked Lou Jane.

Right there outside the restaurant, chef and co-owner Ray "Pete" Peterman stood in front of an occupied van, demanding that the driver stop. Flailing his arms behind Pete was, I think, the dishwasher. Suddenly Peterman's wife, Heather, ran out the front door of the restaurant, and there was a brief flurry of yelling before the van drove off — mercifully, not with Peterman under its wheels.

A few minutes later, the incredibly tall co-owner of the restaurant, former pro basketball player Todd Jadlow, sheepishly stooped over our table and whispered, "Sorry about that. We had a table walk out on a $900 bill." Gulp! Bob, Lou Jane and I all worked in restaurants in our past lives, where each of us experienced at least one horrible dine-and-dash. I suffered several, and they were particularly brutal because the restaurants demanded that I cover the unpaid check out of my own pocket. Years later, I'm still fuming about the injustice of it.

"What should I do?" asked Jadlow.

Call the fucking police, I insisted. And he did, because at some point between the salad course and the cheese plate, two broad-shouldered Kansas City Police Department officers walked in. If only there had been a camera crew following them, taping the incident for a segment of the trashy Fox series Cops. But I'm getting ahead of my story, and the beginning was almost as colorful as the climax.

Let's rewind the imaginary videotape back to 7:08 p.m. on a Saturday. Bob, Lou Jane and I arrived a few minutes late for our 7 p.m. reservation — reservations are mandatory here, by the way. We were seated fortuitously next to one of the big picture windows in this storefront building. The building that now houses SORedux was, for decades, a neighborhood pharmacy; in more recent years, it was a sort of catch-all shop that sold, according to former Columbus Park resident Lou Jane, "booze, cigarettes and sundries." This yet ungentrified corner of the historic "North End" seems poised for a renaissance. But will SORedux lead the way?

Bob and I had eaten at SORedux when it first opened last October, back when Peterman was ambitiously — and perhaps foolishly — attempting to offer four different prix fixe menus. "I used to offer a three-course, a five-course, a seven and a 10," Peterman told me later. "Talk about a nightmare in the kitchen."

What I remember about that autumn dinner was that the food was creative and delicious but the kitchen's pacing was glacially slow. I think I nearly fell asleep before the dessert course. But Peterman recently streamlined his prix fixe to an eight-course affair that's priced quite reasonably at $38. The menu changes every day, but typically there are a couple of "supplemental" courses that bump up the price and the dining experience.

"I don't remember the dining room being so noisy," Bob said, unfurling his napkin. Well, there are many hard surfaces in the narrow, 45-seat room. But this particular evening's acoustic level was intensified by the ear-piercing screech of a beautiful, expensively dressed blonde at an adjoining table. She was having a wonderful time with her entourage and expressed her glee in much the same manner that a black-capped chickadee sends out a mating call. By the time I finished my first course, a delicate portion of pan-roasted veal sweetbreads with yams, I didn't know whether to scold her or call the Audubon Society.

Sweetbreads are an eccentric delicacy, in this case the thymus glands of baby calves. I would never have actually ordered the dish — not for any politically correct reason but because the only sweet breads I really crave are made with dough, yeast and sugar. Still, ordering isn't an option here, and I didn't want to insult the chef, so I reluctantly nibbled at the smooth-textured meat, which Peterman roasts with shallots and wine. It was actually better than I expected.