After three years, downtown Overland Park will be Taste-less.
"Our last night will be Friday," said the hostess who answered the phone. "We're very sad to be closing."
Taste, the three-year-old bistro in downtown Overland Park, was opened by chef Jonathan Dallen after he took over the venue from his previous employers, the operators of the restaurant and self-proclaimed "ultra-lounge" Tonic. Dallen created a very appealing menu for Taste: a combination of sophisticated small plates and dinner entrees. When I dined at Taste earlier this month, I discovered that Dallen had turned over executive chef duties at the restaurant to Bobby Stearns.
Dallen did not return calls for this story; Dallen's other culinary venture on this same street, a gelato store called Crave, was sold to different owners last summer and closed by the end of 2011.
3 Women and an Oven's cupcakes hit the road earlier this month.
Most places might use the comments cards to tweak the menu or evaluate their staff. But Jayne Torline and Stacey Webb, the owners of 3 Women and an Oven (14852 Metcalf), launched a major renovation because of what their customers had to say.
"We have a weekly marketing report where we take into account customer comments, and if we get enough requests, we make adjustments or changes," Torline says. "We were an old-fashioned bakery. You come in, pick it up and leave. But our customers wanted to be able to linger."
The expansion work began last month. 3 Women and an Oven will have seating for 12 customers, new office space, and a custom-cake area for consultations as part of their increased wedding cake and catering business.
The selection of vegan sweets changes every day in the pastry case at Mud Pie
Sharon Hughes, and Ashley and Mike Valverde
It was nearly a year ago that Fat City first reported that Michael and Ashley Valverde and Ashley's mother, Sharon, had taken over the old frame house at 1615 West 39th Street to open a vegan bakery and coffeehouse they called Mud Pie. Michael Valverde — musician and veteran barista — admitted that they had been warned about the location: "A lot of coffeehouses had been in here and didn't last," he says.
I can rattle off the names of the ones that I remember: Pi Cappuccino, Cantata Cafe, the Supreme Bean, Crave Cafe, Javanaut. Each of them, no matter how short-lived, had a distinctive personality. But Mud Pie was a completely new incarnation: a casual and utterly un-corporate coffee and snack shop (as different from the Starbucks right down the street as Rooney Mara is from, say, Callista Gingrich) that served both vegan and gluten-free pastries. It was a unique niche for any bakery in the city, but could it support Hughes and the Valverde family (daughter Ella was 18 months old when her parents and grandmother opened the business)?
KC/Lawrence missed Destroyer when they came through the Midwest last year on tour with the War on Drugs. Good news, today, though — Dan Bejar's outfit will hit the Granada this summer. Sunday, June 10, is the date. Video for "Kaputt" above.
The notion that Missouri is the methamphetamine epicenter of the world likely won't be helped by the latest statistics from the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The numbers are in, and Missouri once again led the nation in the number of meth laboratory incident seizures. The MSHP logged 2,096 incidents (an increase of 6 percent from 1,960 in 2010), nearly double the next closest state of Tennessee, which had 1,134 incidents last year. Kansas had 172 incidents in 2011.
The key word is "seizures," which are broken down into three categories when they're entered in the National Clandestine Laboratory Seizure System: laboratories, chemical or equipment seizures, and dump sites. Thus, each of those incidents doesn't necessarily correspond to an operational meth lab.
As of this Friday, you can go from merely commenting on Yelp to being part owner of the company. Yelp Inc.'s initial public offering comes to market, five months after Groupon began trading on Nasdaq.
Whether you invest in an online review site is to be determined in a different forum from this one, but let's play Lemonade Stand for a minute and pretend you're a fledgling virtual tycoon with the power to trade in any food-related company. I know some people lament that they spend their entire paycheck at Whole Foods (stock symbol: WFM) or feel like they've helped build the Chipotle (CMG) empire. What food company or restaurant — regardless of whether its publicly traded or owned — do you wish you could buy a piece of today?
Posted
by Abbie Stutzer
on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 8:17 AM
Expo ’70 always seems to be up to something. The experimental Kansas City band seems to always be on the verge of releasing LPs or EPs, or playing interesting gigs. And when Justin Wright, the main brain behind Expo ’70, isn’t busy with the prior-mentioned tasks, he’s working with other artists (Thee Water MoccaSins, Sounding the Deep).
We recently checked in with Wright and found out more about Expo ‘70’s recently sold-out Hovering Resonance LP, what the band’s been up to this year, and what the band is working toward.
Which will come first in people's minds? The cow or the Internet?
The BBC spent some time in our humble burg in an attempt to suss out the impact of Google Fiber on Kansas City. After dozens of interviews, one thing is clear: Nobody knows what's going to happen when we get super-fast Internet service.
There's another clear takeaway, and it's that Google Fiber is the latest remedy for Kansas Citians' obsession with the phrase, "cowtown." The stockyards in the West Bottoms have been shuttered for two decades, but the bovine moniker is proving harder to retire. It either makes for good copy or it's a verbal manifestation of a citywide inferiority complex.
Posted
by David Hudnall
on Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 11:03 AM
Another tour announcement: Aziz Ansari — of Parks and Rec, Human Giant and a bunch of funny movies — will be at the Midland Thursday, May 10, as part of his Buried Alive tour. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 2, at 10 a.m. Ansari talking about thread counts on Conan here.
KCPD will breathalyze patrons at Tanner's tonight
Parisi's Pete Licata is a World Barista Championship semifinalist
Don't mess with the Army, feds remind two local businesspeople
Soundgarden's sludgy sound, last night at the Midland (review)
Homer's Drive-In: the oldest drive-through in the metro
Yo La Tengo is at Grinders tonight
Voltaire - the saloon, not the philosopher - opens tonight
Story celebrates with a pig roast and other weekend possibilities