Chef Eric Carter flees OP1906 before its Applebee’s-style makeover and heads to Blue Bird Bistro

Last Thursday, talented young sous chef Eric Carter left the kitchen at OP1906 Bar & Grill in the Sheraton Overland Park Hotel at the Convention Center. After nearly three years at the surprisingly sophisticated hotel restaurant ("Class of '06," December 14, 2006), Carter decided to take a new job at the Blue Bird Bistro in downtown Kansas City.

The main reason for Carter's flight from the suburbs is that the owners of the hotel, including the city of Overland Park, decided that the restaurant needed a serious overhaul. By next month, the newly revamped 1906 Bar & Grill will have a much enlarged bar (which will also serve food) and a smaller dining room, reduced from 130 seats to 80. Space has also been carved out for the Link Café, a small area with Internet access and Starbucks coffee. The hotel's main-level makeover is part of the plan by Sheraton Hotels & Resorts to upgrade all of its lodging properties.

OP1906 Bar & Grill had not been doing the numbers that its owners wanted, Carter says, so an executive decision was made last February to make it more of a traditional hotel dining room. "I was told they wanted more simple fare, like hamburgers and steaks," Carter explains. "They want to appeal to a larger demographic."

That's true, agrees Rod Kopischke, the hotel's sales and marketing director. "It will still be an upscale restaurant, but our chef, Scott Skomal, is going to focus on a more Midwestern-style menu. Even our local customers wanted a good, juicy rib-eye."

"What they want," Carter says, "is more like Applebee's."

What the hotel wants, Kopischke argues, is to retain the restaurant's good reputation (and Skomal's, for that matter) but offer more familiar Midwestern cuisine at a more attractive price.

"That was a different plan than the job I had been hired for," Carter says.

Carter would like to open his own restaurant someday, but not in Kansas City: "There are just too many restaurants here."