There's a quote attributed to Buddha: "To live a pure, unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."
But sometimes, the temptation to be selfish is too great, despite one's best intentions. There's a very big Buddha — and an abundance of culinary offerings — to be found in the stylish dining room of Fo Thai restaurant in Leawood's One Nineteen Shopping Center. The place is actually an overload for the senses, unless you're seated at one of the darker corners of the room, where the lighting is so dim, you practically need to hold up a flashlight to see the faces of the servers bringing out the food. And you'll want to see their faces: The restaurant must have hired the front-of-the-house staff from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
Today, the three-week-old restaurant began serving lunch; Fo Thai has offered its eclectic dinner menu — it's not traditional Thai cuisine, but executive chef Chee Meng So's "fusion" of Asian influences — since it opened in November. The lunch dishes, priced between $9 and $16, are smaller portions of the dinner choices but include a "complimentary featured appetizer and beverage" as part of the package.
The dinner menu is much more costly. A glass of vanilla-scented Thai red leaf iced tea — a lovely amber brew served with cream and a flask of simple syrup — is $4, and many of the entrees are priced at $20 or more. For diners accustomed to the Thai Place or Bangkok Pavilion, there might be a little shock when the bill arrives. But it's unfair to compare Fo Thai with any other local dining venue; it's like the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts of local Thai restaurants.
The dining room is wildly theatrical: There's a second-floor mezzanine that looks down on the main dining room's focal point: a giant Buddha constantly swathed in different colors — orchid! sapphire blue! — from a cleverly concealed light source. Under Buddha's big feet, a waterfall splashes into a big koi pond (it needs a few more fish) and parts of this meandering pond — an illuminated chamber — can be seen under a panel of plexiglass in the bathrooms, right below the sink. It will be a more attractive feature, I think, when a golden koi or two swim into the chamber for a little aquatic action to watch while one is sitting there bored, perched on the potty. But as I said, there's a spartan koi population at the moment. "We just incorporated the fish into the pond on Friday," says marketing manager Angela Cunningham. "They're young fish right now, so they seem kind of incognito."The servers are polished and attractive but are cagey about revealing too many details about the restaurant's owners.
"They're from New York and they prefer to remain anonymous," said one waiter.
That's pretty much the party line here. "Our owners were originally from New York, which is where they created the concept for Fo Thai after traveling all over the country, for over two years, doing research," Cunningham says. "The owners live here in Kansas City now and they do prefer to remain anonymous."
I was convinced, with so much secrecy and all, that Leawood's Fo Thai — currently the first and only restaurant operating under that name — was created as a prototype restaurant for a future chain.
"No," Cunningham says. "We'll possibly open one or two others, but there's no intention of going corporate."
There's another detail that sets Fo Thai apart from its local competition.
"Our dinners are served family-style,"our server Justin informed us on Sunday night. "That doesn't mean a lot of food that's passed around. We encourage our patrons to order all their food at once because we bring out each dish, one at a time, so everything can be shared."It's a great concept if you have time for a long leisurely dinner. A three-course dinner with a starter and a salad took over two hours to eat. It was a very pleasant experience, although it involved a lot of plates and silverware (the place settings are changed for each new course, which must be hell on the dishwasher on a busy weekend night).
How do customers react to this style of service, I asked Cunningham.
"We've had mixed reactions," she said. "But chef Meng and the owners want to bring the traditional Thai style of eating to this area. Some people aren't used to the idea of eating continuously through the meal, although other cultures do it. You know, like the Italians." (That's news to me, but since my Sicilian-American family fought over every scrap at the table, maybe we should have eaten one dish at a time.)
The soundtrack in the dining room, on a mellow Sunday night anyway, was bouncy light jazz. Nothing too Oriental, you know, because Fo Thai isn't your little neighborhood Thai restaurant but something much snazzier and sleek. You don't just dine at this restaurant; you experience it. And there's a price to pay for the attractive details, the theatrical setting and the Leawood location: A charred chili-rubbed Kobe beef sirloin, for example, is priced at $59. I'd like to taste it someday, but I'm selfish that way.
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Correction to my last comment. Our food was NOT prepared special. We ordered our food straight out of the menu with NO exceptions and after they confirmed that the food we wanted to order had no allergic ingredients.
So we did NOT inconvenience anyone or asked for special requests.
Thank you for your comments.
Zeemanb and TheDLC: Our food was prepared special. We ordered our food straight out of the menu with no exceptions after they confirmed that the food we wanted to order had no allergic ingredients.
So we did no inconvenience anyone or asked for special requests.
Thank you for your comments.
KCMeesha: You are absolutely correct about avoiding restaurants that do serve or cook their foods with ingredients that can cause an allergic reaction. But when you call a restaurant and ask if they serve an item that you wish to order from their menu includes peanuts, sunflower or shellfish and they respond, “No”; then you are doing all you can to ask the proper questions. They also expressed that they do not cook their foods with Peanut oil.
Not only that, when the meals were brought out, they confirmed that our food did not have any of the allergic ingredients nor did our order consist of special preparations.
When they brought out their dessert, again we asked if it contained peanuts and once again, they confirmed that the dessert did not have peanuts. Only after our daughter has finished her dessert and started having an allergic reaction, the waiter came out and said there were peanuts in the dessert.
Thank you for your insult. I’m glad to know that we all have the right to express ourselves in the manner and class we choose to define ourselves.
Savvy Dave: Thank you for your opinion. We are not attempting to fight discrimination rights just clearing clarifying that we’re all humans. That’s it. You may or may not be aware that with every exposure to an allergic reaction, it becomes more severe with each episode and can be fatal. So measures have to be taken to rebuild your immune system because of the chemical unbalance your body has sustained due to the reaction.
They wanted to settle out of court and agreed to a settlement of $800. They are choosing to be un-responsive and give us the run around.
Notifying everyone from customers to sponsors is our right and choice to make them aware of the kind of people they associate with at Fo Thai.
I think the main lesson for restaurants here is- never try to accomodate anyone with allergies in the first place. If they had just told Mr. and Mrs. Entitlement to f-off at the onset, then it all would have stopped at one angry Yelp review about a Thai restaurant that wasn't willing to create a peanut free plastic bubble.
I know many, many chefs who will bend over backwards to accomodate a guest's dietary restrictions, and I think it is important not to forget about examples like this one whenever you hear about "the asshole who wouldn't do what we requested".
Most people with food allergies that I've encountered are extremely knowledgeable about food products, restaurant practices and potentially problematic ingredients. Why someone allergic to peanuts would risk eating Thai Food is beyond me. Why Fo Thai thought they could pull it off is almost equally as amazing.
My kid is allergic to peanuts, peas, beans, etc. There are restaurants I avoid like Thai, Five Guys, maybe few others. Thai food relies heavily on peanut products, going there and demanding they change recipes to accomodate your allergies cannot be more idiotic. It's like you show up at a Russian restaurant and announce that you are allergic to beets. Do not equate yourselves with civil rights movement or people with disabilities. Your only handicap is being an asshole.
Ban Fo Thai- I read the entire saga on your site. I have family members with similar severe allergies and understand the severity of the situation. At the same time, the restaurant has gone much further already to accomodate you than I would have recommended based on your approach.
The offer of $300 to compensate you for actual loss seems to be very generous unless you can prove you have incurred greater actual financial loss. When you demanded more than five times that for "pain and suffering", all negotiations should have ended immediately. You took a legal possition at which case they should have immediately handed you over to a lawyer and stopped all communication.
The fact you have posted here about this, linked to a website you built for this, tagged the website with a bunch of keywords unrelated to the incident in a misguided attempt at SEO, and published the manager's name while remaining annonomous make it clear that this is intended to be punitive. There is nothing wrong with this, except you are shooting yourself in the foot if it goes to court. At this point, the restaurant should not be dealing with you in any way. If you intend to seek a legal remedy, then expect all of these public relations efforts to lessen the punitive damages you hope to recieve. If you do not intend to seek legal remedy, then you have chosen an avenue that guarantees the restaurant will not work with you.
Finally, in regards to the descrimination argument, disabled people did not win their legal protection by demanding four figure settlements from those who did not accomodate them. Your demands were not that the restaurant better train their staff. Your website is not about building consensus for legislation requiring restaurants to inform guests of potential allergic interactions. You seek to get paid. Which is your right, but don't wrap yourself in the flag of discrimination because your not fighting for the rights of people with allergies, you are fighting for a check.
To Jack: So you are basically discriminating against people with a handicap? Whether it is food allergies, lactose intolerant, paraplegic, scoliosis, deaf or blindness, based on your statement, we should not be able to enjoy life just because we are "handicap" as people choose to address us.
First of all, no one is handicap. We are challenged in a way that forces us to live a different life-style than others. Not a better life because life is what we make of it.
When you go somewhere and ask if a request can be made and you are told that your request can be accommodated, that is what you should expect.
Thank you for your opinion and keep your family safe because life can toss you a curve ball and all we can ask for is the strength to deal with obstacles and move forward.
And remember, “You guys” is everyone. Black, White, Tall or Short; Learn not to segregate.
To Ban Fo Thai: So your wife and daughter are very allergic to nuts and shellfish, and you decide to make a reservation at a Thai restaurant???!!! I am so sick of all you guys with allergies expecting restaurants to jump through hoops for your very special needs. And then you want to hold up the restaurant for $1500. Give me a break.
Our experience with Fo Thai Restaurant in Leawood, KS was a nightmare. My wife and children especially our oldest daughter suffered a severe allergic reaction in spite of the fact that we cautioned them numerous times of our allergies and repeatedly asked them to make sure there were no peanuts in our food. They chose to ignore us which resulted in a potentially fatal reaction.
The General Manager, Alexis Booth-McDaniel told us that Fo Thai Restaurant would compensate us for this incident but has continued to ignore us by not responding to our phone calls and emails.
To read the correspondence between our family and Fo Thai Restaurant, please click on the link below.
You can read more at http://fothaikc.wordpress.com/
Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/BanFoThaiKC
Ate lunch today with a friend. Loud rock music in the unbearably DARK restrooms!
My complaint? Asked for a go box for a large piece of yummy salmon; opened it tonight and it was someone else's partly eaten mystery meal. Disgusting! Called and talked to Alexis the manager who said she would call me right back. Four hours later. Called again, she is not available! They will not give out the owners. HOW DID THE OBTAIN a license without disclosing that? Don't bother with this restuarant!
i dont see why people are complaining about the price. THe steak for $59, that isnt that much knowing that they serve kobe beef. If you did your research you would know that, it already cost like $50 a pound. Also it is a fancy restaurant, you guy should know they serve less porportions, and usually cost more. The people that complain probally never been to a fancy restaurant, and are just saying shit.
Chileheadmike: This isn't a restaurant review of Fo Thai -- that will come in a few weeks -- but an impression of the newly-opened dining spot for Fat City readers.
I have dined there now numerous times and have enjoyed each experience! I'm orginally from Las Vegas, now living in Leawood and was very excited to learn about this place! Thank you for bringing this to Kansas!
Still trying to figure out what Charles had to eat and if it was good. Maybe the food is anonymous too.
Also, I cannot stand the idea that just because the owners are anonymous and supposedly from New York, we should just accept that they are experts in culture and food and dining management. Um, no. I'm just not impressed by that, and I can't imagine that many others are, either.
Also, if you're a vegetarian in a group of five or six, or you aren't really interested in everyone else's choices, are you just basically screwed for the other ninety minutes of the meal?
And when it comes time for the bill after the grazing-only format, it sounds like this essentially forces a situation where you'd have to divide it up equally between everyone and talk behind the back of the bastard who ordered the $59 steak.
I love Thai food, and I don't mind paying more for a good meal. But this place sounds unbearably pretentious.
Charles, I've tried Thai food on a few occasions, and just cant quite convince myself that I enjoy it.
I cant seem to find anything enticing about the smell, and then the visual of not recognizing a single thing being served only strengthened my reluctance.
The fact that this place strays from the traditional ingredients MIGHT give me the courage to try one more time, but the price range just shot a big hole in my curiosity.
As usual though, this a very well written review.
Dunno...sounds like a mish-mash of concepts put together after two years of research by people who have an f-you amount of money. Kind of like Buddakan in NYC meets Casa Bonita and they hired many of the people who were last seen serving Carrie Bradshaw a Cosmo.
Just seems like that location, at that price point, and that type of a "traditional Thai" family-style format with non-traditional Thai food may be a little too far outside the box. KC has enough Thai restaurants to prove it is a pretty well established cuisine here, but I don't know if the appeal is broad enough to open a place that takes it and just goes "WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" and expect enough repeat business to keep it rolling.
Granted, I'm talking out of my ass, out-pretentioning the perceived pretentiousness, haven't been there and will probably never visit, but maybe a concept like the Strip House would be better suited for KC if you're shooting for NYC ten years ago.
They should have done more research and opened it up in a more materialistic place like Scottsdale, Arizona or South Florida.
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