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The 54-year-old Golden Ox, down in the West Bottoms, has the bravado of a broad-shouldered, rugged cowboy with simple but refined tastes -- expensive whisky, well-marbled steaks, a big slab of apple pie. For many visitors to Kansas City, there's no steak house that better evokes this city's rowdy pioneer spirit than the Golden Ox, which has outlasted almost every other business in what was once the bustling, raucous West Bottom stockyards.
The stockyards (and the stores, pool halls, hotels and saloons that once surrounded them) are long gone, but the original Golden Ox goes on as if the neighborhood hasn't changed a bit since 1951, when the area was flooded and the restaurant underwent its last major redecorating. In true Eisenhower-era fashion, salads are still served with a basket of cellophane-wrapped crackers and cubes of real butter. Even more shocking: The cost of the dinner still includes a salad and a vegetable.
You can say what you want about the dated décor, the lackadaisical service and lack of culinary inventiveness at the old Golden Ox, but it became a classic by not changing its style with every new dining trend that came along. The Golden Ox has the same virile appeal as the late John Wayne -- a movie star for fifty years thanks to a solid, all-American persona -- and it's just as timeless.
The new Golden Ox, however, is a horseman of a different color. The restaurant's owner, Jerry Rauschelbach, had a bright idea in taking over the vacant Houston's space at 95th and Metcalf in Overland Park and turning it -- with very little interior redecorating -- into a satellite operation of the downtown Golden Ox. Newly installed golden plaques bearing the likeness of a noble steer may glitter, but all is not gold here. Still, there's a lot of potential for success, once a few serious kinks get worked out.
Let's start with the most basic facet of good service: cleanliness. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't want my dinner served by a waiter whose hands look as if he just finished changing the oil in his Ford Bronco.
"Look at those dirty knuckles," gasped my friend Bob as the waiter (who was perfectly friendly and attentive) walked away from the table. "And his fingernails!"
Perhaps because the servers here dress casually -- T-shirts and black pants -- and their serving style is completely informal, it's acceptable to push the envelope of service traditions. My own waiter training was rigid in the enforcement of seemingly small details (spotless hands, no jewelry, starched shirt, pressed pants), so I cast a critical eye at this kid's ensemble, which included more rings than Zsa Zsa Gabor ever wore at one time.
"I think the combination of grime and jewelry is very Freudian," said my friend Martha, who immediately noticed that the dining room was still carpeted with the old floor covering from Houston's. The signature Golden Ox carpet, woven with cattle brand marks, is "going to be installed soon," we were told. The brick walls could use a few more of the original restaurant's vintage stockyard photographs, too; the place still looks just like Houston's, even with all those shiny new cow heads poking out here and there.
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