During my college years, I was so broke that an outing to a cheap chain steakhouse like Ponderosa or Bonanza (both of which took their names from the NBC series Bonanza, which ran from 1959 to 1973) was a big deal. It didn't matter that the top sirloin and rib-eyes served in these "Old West" dining rooms -- in the early days of the 40-year-old Ponderosa chain, servers even wore cowboy outfits -- were usually tougher than Lorne Greene's boots. The meat looked like a steak and, with enough A-1 sauce, tasted like one.
It's been decades since I've eaten at a Ponderosa, and apparently I'm not the only one. As recently as seven years ago, there were ten of these "family steakhouses" in the metro area, but now there are only three, including the badly aging venue at 9510 Quivira in Overland Park. That's where I went for a weird culinary flashback last week. The steaks were exactly as I remembered from 20 years ago and, weirdly enough, so was the music. Was that Peaches and Herb singing "Reunited" over the sound system?
The dining room was tidy, though the décor was strictly amateur stage-set, including the fake "skylights" on the stained ceiling, with poorly painted clouds on a sleek blue sky. The young woman at the front counter was practically a zombie, and the kitchen staff seemed to be everywhere but inside the kitchen. The steaks were still cheap -- I paid $10.19 for a sirloin and grilled shrimp dinner. But you get what you pay for -- the tiny sirloin only vaguely resembled beef and the shrimp were barely larger than Sea-Monkeys.
As for the all-you-can-eat buffet -- the drawing card for most diners -- it was an interesting combination of soul food (fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, chicken wings, fried corn nuggets, baked sweet potatoes) and ersatz ethnic (taco meat and shells, greasy pizza and a sticky mess called "strawberry-glazed banana slices").
A handful of diners were loving the chance to load up their plates, but it wasn't a posse of patrons. Not like the crowd packing the Outback Steakhouse right across the street. It may be pricier than Ponderosa, but the steaks are choice, and the dining room doesn't look like a relic from another century.
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