Food Reviews: Kansas City’s Best Dishes for Early Fall | KCUR 89.3

We’re no longer looking for light summer meals, but neither are we ready for winter comfort foods.

This late summer and early fall season can be tricky for restaurateurs. “If you look at the seasonal menus across Kansas City from different chefs, no one has really made the full transition to fall yet,” says Jenny Vergara. “We’re still trying to end the summer.”

While waiting for the arrival of seasonal root vegetables like Brussels sprouts, beets and sweet potatoes, Mary Bloch is ready to accompany it.

“I’ll go with spices any season … but it’s always nice to add a little more in the fall,” says Bloch.

Vergara and Bloch came up with their picks for Kansas City dishes that will help you go from summer to fall.

Marie bloch, food critic from KCUR:

• Tailor – Grilled duck breast with lentils and sweet potato, pork knuckle with polenta, and scallop and lobster risotto. I made my first visit there earlier this week. What a beautiful oasis. The menu sings to die for right now. Having mentioned all of these worthy dishes, I’m going to have a hard time ordering anything other than the bistro burger with crispy French fries.
• Night goat barbecue – barbecue tacos, apple pie. If you can possibly save room for dessert after the tacos, order the handmade pie with a bourbon caramel sauce. Doesn’t that look exactly like fall is?
• Happy Gilles – Carrot, Carrot, Carrot. Currently only serving brunch from Friday to Sunday, the menu focuses on the season we are in. Right now they’re offering a fun dish with roasted carrots, carrot hummus, pickled carrots, roasted peanuts, and greens on hot pita bread.
• Extra virgin – mussakhan chicken, Moroccan lamb tagine. The menu has recently been redesigned to highlight Mediterranean specialties. The Palestinian dish features sumac roasted chicken thighs, onions, pine nuts and flatbread. Lamb is one of my favorite fall and winter dishes. It’s all about comfort – the result of hours of braising lamb, olives, almonds, apricots in the oven. As is usually the case, it is served here over couscous, with herbs and lemon.
• Port Fonda – pozole verde. Back in business and under a new owner. Fortunately, they still serve some of my old favorites. I tend to inhale the pieces of green chili marinated pork shoulder and the hominy in a spicy tomatillo broth. Nice to have these wonderful fries nearby for dipping.
• Novel – ramen noodles. Not your typical ramen, Chef Ryan created a noodle soup filled with shrimp, jowl, miso butter, yuzu, and shiitake. Silky, warming and comforting.
• Sura eats – stir-fried rice cake, kimchi fried rice. Located in the Parlor Dining Room at Crossroads, this Korean hotspot features two of my favorite bowls in town. The rice cake is basically made with mochi rice noodles that look like gnocchi, with beef in a sweet spicy sauce. Definitely a stick to your rib meal. I also love the large kimchi fried rice, served with your choice of beef, spicy pork, or tofu with a fried egg. I have a thing for spicy pork, but I’m all about the heat.
• Kobi Q – rice cake. Found at Crossroads and Westport, they have menus similar to Sura Eats, but they serve the rice cake dish with spicy pork or squid.
• Rye – Shrimps and Grits. I usually don’t order this dish until the days start to get colder, and when that happens, I turn to Rye for my fix. I love the smoked pork accent, and of course the hot sauce topping it off.
• Cocoa – Mole. I love this chili sauce with dozens of ingredients including nuts and seeds, raisins, myriad chili peppers and chocolate. It’s quite laborious, so I’m just making one jackpot a year, which requires me to find another source to satisfy my addiction. Cocoa makes a wonderful version and serves it over chicken with rice or as a cover for enchiladas.
• India Palace – biryani, lamb vindaloo, chicken Rogan Josh. I think Indian cuisine is too rich for the hottest months of the year, but in the fall my craving for these dishes increases too. I love the creamy goodness of the sauces.

Jenny vergara, Party magazine:

• King G’s charcuterie – classic deli sandwiches. This new East Crossroads delicatessen offers a menu highlighting the bread and toppings specialties found in the US region. Some you may be familiar with (like tuna, turkey and swiss, and pastrami on rye) and others you may not know (like tamago sando and the classic New Jersey Taylor sandwich. made with spam-type pork roll, American cheese and fried egg on a bun butter). A popular favorite is the Italian muffuletta which comes with Sicilian-style sesame bread filled with sliced ​​mortadella, sopressata, capicola, provolone, olive salad, giardiniera, and mozzarella.
• BLUE ROAD – Lobster rolls, salad of roasted baby beets, barbecue octopus, burger and fries. BLU HWY is a new restaurant, bar and patio that opened this week in the former Black Dirt space on South Main Street in Kansas City. This is an experience meant to evoke the collective love and nostalgia for the food and freedom found on an American road trip. The culinary team has created a menu full of twists, like this beet salad topped with cilantro microgreens, spicy Fresno red peppers, roasted peanuts and dressed in a coconut lime sauce.
• Magic noodles – noodles six ways: chain, classic, half-round, half-flat, flat and shaved. Owner Elvin Liu grew up in China with noodle shops on every corner, so when he moved to Kansas in 2010, he went looking for a place to buy noodles and soup in his hand, and when he didn’t find it, he built his own. place. The noodles are made to order behind a plexiglass wall where customers can watch. Order the Triple B Soup Bowl and get your choice of hand-pulled noodles in beef broth, braised beef brisket, pickled radishes, cilantro and green onions. And meet BellaBot, a cat-like delivery robot that’s programmed to deliver food from the kitchen to the table.
• Small Butter Bakery – the menu changes every week. Kelsey Earl started an artisan bakery business from her home during the pandemic. Now, she’s expanded her baking business to include weekly pastry boxes advertised on her Instagram page on Friday, for Sunday pickup. A recent Game Day box included four spinach and artichoke pies, four BBQ Buc Tui pulled pork stuffed buns, and six salted chocolate chip cookies for $ 45. Most of his weekly boxes offer sweet and savory items for around $ 24. Her dishes are all perfectly seasoned and exceptionally cooked using local ingredients where she can. Watch Instagram @littlebutterbakery for weekly menus.
• Red Kitchen – breakfast burritos, birria tacos, tostadas, pozole soup, tortas, mollettes, tamales. Now officially relocated to her new anchor point inside the Lenexa Public Market, Alejandra de la Fuente has expanded Red Kitchen’s popular Mexican breakfast and lunch offerings with access to a much larger kitchen for cooking. Customers flock to sit at his counter for breakfast. His signature tamales which are also available to take home.
• Jarocho KC – Seafood. Seafood, depending on how it’s prepared, may well bridge the gap between summer and fall. Raw oysters on the half-shell can turn into a hot dish when you grill them with garlic chili butter or stuff them with cheese, onions, jalapeños, cilantro, shrimp, octopus. and blue crab meat. The catch of the day is a great way to get acquainted with new fish, grilled and served with sides like coleslaw and beans. Nonetheless, the best way to go is to book the omakase experience with owner Carlos Falcon, who will guide you through as many seafood courses as you want. He and his wife and managing partner, Sayaka Gushi Falcon, eventually reopened the doors to two Jarocho sites, the original in Kansas City, Kansas, and the one south on State Line Road.