Tannahs moves to
sweeten Leawood

Paradise has a new name — in Leawood, anyway. A few months ago, husband-and-wife restaurateurs Nathan and Mendy Tannahill took over the venue abandoned by Cheeseburger in Paradise, the Jimmy Buffet-inspired restaurant chain, and moved — lock, stock and upholstered booths — their "Asian fusion" restaurant, Tannahs, from its original location in Olathe.

The Leawood spot is much bigger and distinctly more glamorous. There's no longer a shiny-steel exhibition kitchen behind a big glass window. The dining room is now a stylish curve, wrapped around a central bar that fronts a great span of sunny windows. It's a pretty space with a layout that diffuses sound, an improvement on the noisy original (“More Than Sum,” May 29, 2008).

I dined solo on my first visit to the new Tannahs, enjoying a generous bowl of delicately seasoned curry rice while watching the well-trained staff fuss over the clientele. According to one server, the new customers are "very different from our customers in Olathe." She wouldn't elaborate on what that meant.

Maybe the restaurant's newly abbreviated name has something to do with it. A year ago, the Olathe location was called Tannahs Asian Fusion. Now it's simply Tannahs, and curious walk-ins must read the business cards on the hostess stand for an explanation: "Asian Gourmet with an American Twist."

That American touch can be twisted, all right, but the Tannahills mostly do right by their idiosyncratic spin on the culinary traditions of China, Thailand, Hawaii and Italy. Italy? Well, there is an "Asian Alfredo noodles" dish on the Tannahs menu that would probably have Alfredo di Lelio — the Italian restaurateur credited with "inventing" the dish of pasta, Parmesan cheese and butter — rolling in his grave. If I had been forced to eat more than a few bites of this wildly eccentric dish, I think I would have been rolling in mine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just say Tannahs puts its own imaginative imprint on a familiar ethnic repertoire, not unlike the P.F. Chang's chain, which successfully turns out modern variations on the old Chinese-American dishes. Tannahs, with chef Travis Fell in the kitchen, is a lot more creative, and most of what he turns out succeeds.

Take, for example, the classic American snack, the Buffalo chicken wing. First created at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, in 1964, it's a deceptively simple dish: deep-fried chicken wings slathered in cayenne hot sauce. At Tannahs, the invention of Anchor co-owner Teressa Bellissimo gets the "Asian Gourmet" treatment, which means the wings come with a choice of six house-made sauces, including teriyaki and "atomic."

On the night I dined with Peter and wings-loving Rachel, we argued over how fiery we wanted our wings. Atomic was definitely out, but the version made with potent Sriracha sauce sounded intriguing. Rachel finally decided on "spicy Hawaiian," which I assume must have had some pineapple juice in it. The wings, which were wonderful, tasted considerably more sweet than spicy (though they weren't the meatiest, I'm sad to report). That's one of the little quirks of the fare at Tannahs: A lot of the dishes lean toward the sweet.

That certainly goes for "candy shrimp," which arrive glistening in a thick, sugary glaze alongside candied walnuts and pieces of honeydew melon. When I tasted it a year ago, at the old location, I nearly fell into an insulin coma. But there are other, more deceptively sweet offerings, such as the egg drop fusion soup. For the record, I detest egg drop soup in almost any incarnation — it's usually gloppy, visually unappealing and bland. The version at Tannahs looks terrific, dappled with creamed corn, peas and bits of chopped carrot. And it wasn't bland — after the first sip, I cringed at its jarring sweetness. "It's the creamed corn," our server confessed. "People love it or hate it."

Count me among the latter. The waiter graciously exchanged it for a cup of the hot and sour soup (a mild, peppery broth laden with bits of chicken) and, for Peter, a cup of first-rate tomato basil soup. The cilantro garnish was a little overpowering — and unnecessary — with the creamy tomato basil concoction, but it was so soothing and comforting that Rachel wished that we could have had a grilled cheese sandwich with it. (As it turned out, we could have. Grilled cheese is on the children's menu, and, apparently, a childless adult who asks nicely can get one.)

And you can still get a cheeseburger where Cheeseburger in Paradise used to be. Tannahs serves a Kobe beef patty on a ciabbata bun with "Szechuan aioli." There are more cultural influences mixed up in that sandwich than the gift shop at Epcot. Even the Kansas City strip steak, a big seller here, is served sliced on a puddle of mushroom-and-teriyaki-based "Mongolian steak sauce." Yes, history notes that the great Genghis Khan and his ferocious Mongol warriors ate plenty of meat, but even the most encyclopedic accounts generally fail to mention steak sauce.

The steak, which is inexpensive, is also very, very good: tender, beautifully cooked, juicy. But why is chef Fell serving it with a pile of overcooked, tasteless cubes of deep-fried breakfast potatoes? These are the kinds of spuds found in a third-rate diner, not sided with some beautifully grilled asparagus and a decent steak. Peter thought the horrible, chewy little cubes ruined an otherwise perfect meal.