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Even if they don't change the concept completely, most second owners opt to divorce themselves from the original name. Thus the Bluebird Café became the Bluebird Bistro, Mother India was reincarnated as Udipi, and the Boulevard Café morphed into La Bodega (no connection to an earlier La Bodega at 651 East 59th Street that turned into Sarah's).
When Jim Marks, the mustachioed 14-year veteran of the Kansas City-based PB&J restaurant chain, decided to purchase Paulo & Bill from founders -- and namesakes -- Paul Khoury and Bill Crooks last year, he insisted on keeping the name as well as the wood-burning pizza oven and the secret recipe for red sauce. Most of the staff stayed, too, including Steven, a jovial Renaissance Fair veteran who has been a server at the Shawnee restaurant since the heavy wood-and-colored-glass doors first opened in 1996.
The restaurant was always popular, which is why there was a considerable ripple of surprise in the local hospitality trade when Khoury and Crooks sold it last autumn.
"The offer was too good to pass up," Crooks says. "And we knew Jim wanted a shot at running his own restaurant. He really cares about the place and the employees."
In reality, Paulo & Bill always was the oddball in the PB&J family. Its location -- smack in the middle of suburban Shawnee -- had a lot of influence on the restaurant's appealing but unsophisticated Italian-American culinary style. Ditto for the generous portions, the easy-to-swallow prices and the nurturing service. I always considered it to be a dowdy country cousin to the more soigné Grand Street Café or Yia Yia's Eurobistro, though by Shawnee standards -- where low-priced chain restaurants vastly outnumber independently owned operations -- Paulo & Bill is practically fine dining. After all, it incorporates all of Hal Swanson's trademark decorative elements: Murano-influenced light fixtures; sleekly upholstered booths; colorful tilework; oversized, amphora-style pottery.
But on weekends, the place is still loaded with families (including noisy, squalling brats) who have piled into the booths to take advantage of deals such as a hearty heap of veal parmesan and fettuccine Alfredo -- enough to feed four -- for about $39.
That's great if you're feeding una famiglia di quattro, but the only thing less interesting to me than family-style dinners is actually sitting next to a family with a bunch of poorly behaved prepubescents. On the rare occasions when I make a foray into this neighborhood, it's usually to see a movie at the Westglen, across the parking lot, and I've always insisted on sitting in the kid-free bar. And in the past two years, I noted that the food was increasingly hit-or-miss, as if someone had been trimming corners in the food-quality department.
Happily, since Jim Marks took over eight months ago, he has spiffed up the dining room and bar and hired chef Dan Drake (another PB&J vet). Drake has retained the best stuff from the old Paulo & Bill menu and added a few new dishes that are mostly terrific.
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