The American Restaurant
At the recommendation of a friend whose culinary adventures recently took him to Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry for this 60th birthday, I took the opportunity to have dinner at The American Restaurant in downtown Kansas City last week. The timing of the visit was opportune, as the restaurant had just re-opened the day before after a five week remodeling of its kitchen. Rooted in the frustration of seeing a once proud city suffering from the aftermath of the assault of suburbia, in the late 60’s the founder of Hallmark Cards, J.C. Hall, determined to build a shopping center that would feature a fine dining establishment that would exemplify American cuisine. The result of this was The American, a restaurant that has been blessed by a number of talented chefs, the most recent of which is Celina Tio, Chef Magazine’s 2005 Chef of the Year and the James Beard 2007 Midwest Best Chef award recipient.
The restaurant itself is aesthetically very much dated although it would be unfair to call it well-worn. The scalloped wood ceiling details utilize the overly-rounded ribs which seem to be in vogue in late 60’s architecture. The tables and chairs suffer somewhat from similarly aged visual affect. The restaurant’s multi-level structure provides a lovely tiered flow from the cozy bar scene to the main dining floor, a flight of stairs down. Both look out onto the Kansas City skyline (the garish nightly display of lights from the downtown Marriott notwithstanding); perhaps the remodeling of the kitchen is a premonition of additional remodeling in the restaurant’s near future.
Prior to beginning, I ordered a Pascal Jolivet Sancerre (2004). This wine was a beautiful accompaniment to the entire dinner, the one exception being the lamb although even that benefited from the wine as it complimented the tomatoes and olives the lamb was paired with. A heavier treatment of the lamb would have found this wine without the necessary strength on the palate. Service began with a very nice amuse bouche of spicy tomato gazpacho with chilled lobster. The combination of chilled soup and protein with the spicy heat of the soup was wonderful; my one complaint was that a fairly large piece of lobster shell found its way into the meat.
The ebb and flow of the meal featured seasonal produce but also intelligently avoided foods which were poorly matched to the oppressive heat and humidity Kansas City has been experiencing this summer. Next on the menu was an appetizer of two perfectly cooked scallops (crusty exteriors but milky sweet interiors) with an interesting corn puree and tiny lardons of house-smoked bacon. For me this was the most successful dish of the evening not only because of its taste, but in its ability to transition between the lobster amuse and the following course, a crispy Loup de Mer with vegetable bayaldi. Loup de Mer is a Mediterranean bass and was pan fried with only the most delicate of coatings so as to allow the delicate flavor of the fish to come through. The final main course was selected from what Chef Tio calls her “Land & Sky” portion of the menu: roasted lam rack with fresh cannellini beans, tomato preserve and Nicoise olives.
The lamb was butchered beautifully, perhaps the nicest presentation of a lamb rack I have ever seen, and the combination of the rare lamb with the briny olives and acidic tomato preserve was wonderfully muted by the introduction of cannellini beans. Decadence was on order this particular evening, so a selection of farmhouse and artisinal cheeses was presented: Kilchurn Estate Farmhouse Traditional Cheddar with a sautéed onion chutney (yum!), Vieille Grotte Roquefort paired with a fruit marmalade, and Brushed Ash Goat Cheese with a fruit compote (the server did not know what the fruit was and I could not tell, although the back end of the taste suggested ginger had also been used).
Chef Tio provided also provided an amuse for dessert, a buttermilk panna cotta with huckleberry jam (best desert I have had in memory), but followed this up with the “actual” desert of Key Lime Pie Case with graham cracker ice cream. It was good, but after the desert amuse my sweet tooth was more than satisfied; consequently, I fear I did not appreciate this quite as I should have. Before leaving, the server selected a Cordon Bleu Cognac which was a majestic end to a lovely evening.
The American Restaurant is certainly among the top choices in Kansas City, with the understanding that architecturally it is disappointing when compared to a number of other restaurants in the area populated by equally talented chefs.
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