| Heirloom tomatoes, balsamic reduction and freshly-made mozzarella |
To whet your appetite for The Pitch's annual Best of Kansas City issue in October, we're celebrating our favorite 50 dishes from restaurants, bakeries, coffeehouses, bars, drugstores, saloons, and other metro joints. Until October 7, we'll feature one outstanding dish or beverage each weekday. Agree with us or make your own suggestions -- just don't come between us and these fantastic things to eat or drink.
When Jasper's Restaurant was in its original location -- on the southwest corner of 75th Street and Wornall Road -- the servers wore tuxedos, the tables were cloaked in heavy linens and the venue was famous for its many dishes prepared tableside: Caesar salads, steak Diane, bananas Foster and cherries jubilee. Today, in the more casual dining environment at 103rd Street and State Line Road, only one dish is prepared tableside. But Jasper's may be the only restaurant in the region doing it.
Chef Jasper Mirabile Jr. prepares fresh mozzarella tableside (on particularly busy nights, Mirabile's nephew Jasper Mirabile III also prepares the dish). It's a visually exciting display: a cart, laden with a heap of fresh heirloom tomatoes, a metal bowl of Wisconsin cheese curds, and a pitcher of steaming hot water is wheeled out to the tables ordering the dish. One of the Mirabile chefs -- Jasper Mirabile III is now putting his own imprint in the restaurant's kitchen -- sprinkles Sicilian sea salt on the cheese curds, then pours the hot water over it all. The hot, salty water begins forcing the butterfat in the curds to rise to the top of the bowl, coloring the water a faint yellow.
"This is why mozzarella is so low in fat," says Jasper III, who finally pulls the pale hunk of cheese out of the brine and begins pulling it and stretching it -- like saltwater taffy -- until the cheese is satiny and shiny. He folds it over into a ball, slices the cheese into thick servings and lays these on top of aromatic fresh basil and sliced heirloom tomatoes (most recently Brandywine and Cherokee) that have been dappled with a syrupy reduction of good balsamic vinegar cooked down with a little brown sugar. The cheese can be eaten with ciabatta rolls (baked for the restaurant by the Roma Bakery) or as a light summer salad, simply with the basil and tomatoes.
Our list so far:
No. 50: Chocolate Malt from Fox's Drug Store
No. 49: Il Parma from Bella Napoli
No. 48: Italian sausage and eggs from Cascone's Grill
No. 47: Orange Roll from Clock Tower Bakery
No. 46: Tacos de cochinita from Frida's Contemporary Mexican Cuisine
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