The first thing restaurateur Ray "Pete" Peterman told me after signing the lease on the former Amor Picante space at 900 West 39th Street was that the canary-yellow interior of the dining room had to go. Nearly two months later, the yellow is gone.
The walls in the dining room are now a sleek battleship gray with a bold burgundy stripe running around the center of the room. The formerly blond-wood bar is now ebony black. Peterman and his wife, Heatherrose, have been working nonstop on the space as they wait for approval of their liquor license. Peterman is considering opening the restaurant softly, very softly, with a reservation-only policy and a corkage fee until he's ready to pull out all the stops. That might not include lunch. "I'm not convinced that there's a solid lunch business this far east on 39th Street," he says.
Peterman named the restaurant after the word his late mother used for peaches. "She called them peanches," he says. "This is my way of honoring her memory."
The new restaurant - Peterman's third and the first in Kansas City's midtown - will serve dishes made from regional Missouri meats and produce. He's not so sold on Missouri wines, however. "I'm still thinking over that decision," he says. One decision is firm, however: "There will be smoking on our outdoor patio."
Not very far away, the restaurant space at 3535 Broadway, last occupied by the short-lived Nobie's Chicken & Waffles (and before that NuNu's Cafe, the Graffiti Grill, the first location of Cafe Trio and, nearly 20 years ago, the legendary Athena on Broadway restaurant where I was an insufferable waiter for many years) is reportedly on the market for a new tenant. Maybe it will become a hookah bar, because this stretch of Broadway has seemingly become the metro's hookah central over the past couple of years.
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