If you think there’s no fine dining inside the geographic diamond defined by the cardinal points of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans, you’ve obviously never been to Kansas City.
It’s a burgeoning foodie mecca right smack in the middle of America. Who knew? With a growing population and an economic engine that’s revving, according to local pundits, at three times the national average, the Kansas City metropolitan area is starting to enjoy a latter-day version of the culinary boom that the San Francisco Bay area saw in the 1970s and ’80s. You can still get the best gosh-darned barbecue on earth in Kansas City, but foodies don’t live by baby-back ribs alone. These days, savvy Kansas Cityans are as likely to destination dine as to fire up their backyard Webers.
No restaurant holds the torch of fine dining higher in America’s heartland than 40 Sardines. Since it opened in June 2002 in suburban Overland Park — a quick freeway drive by Mini Cooper or lazy drift by Huck Finn’s raft down the Mississippi River from central Kansas City — Debbie Gold’s and Michael Smith’s freewheeling restaurant has drawn people from near and far who are bent on discovering what all the buzz is about. "There’s definitely great support here for what we’re doing,” says the upbeat Smith.
Gold and Smith met in the kitchen at Charlie Trotter’s high-profile, high-pressure restaurant in Chicago. After realizing that they were destined to be a lifelong culinary team as well as a couple (yes, they’re married), they moved to the French Riviera and spent two years as chefs at L’Albion in Nice, where they perfected their French technique and fell in love with the regional cuisine. "Michael has a large appetite,” says Gold, "so one day at a local bistro, he downed five plates of grilled fresh sardines. Like all chefs, we had ideas for our own restaurant kicking around in the back of our head, and now we had the name!”
Send It Back!
Heed these rules for returning orders to the kitchen.
If the food is not prepared as ordered, inform the waiter. A good restaurant will correct the error.
Even if the wine you’re returning as bad isn’t actually corked, the
restaurant will eat the cost provided you point it out after your first
sip. Try not to make a habit of it.
Don’t take it out on your waiter if your steak is not the way you ordered it. He didn’t cook it.
If you find something quantifiably wrong with it—fish smells strong,
way too salty—tell your waiter you don’t like it and why. Usually there
will be no charge for the returned meal.
You should send the wine back
The waiter failed to provide the screw top for you to ceremoniously tongue.
Pinot Grigio does not go with Cheez Whiz!
I asked for your finest red flavor. Good day, sir!
Is wine supposed to taste like fingernails?
Because you can. Now shake that fanny back to the wine cellar, squeeze kittens.
—John Devore
Back in the States, they heard that Kansas City’s renowned Hallmark-backed establishment, The American Restaurant, was looking for a chef, they applied as a team and got the job. After revamping the menu and reviving the reputation of this landmark, Gold and Smith jointly won a coveted James Beard Award for Best Chefs in the Midwest in 1999, a first for Kansas City. Finally, last summer, the couple opened their own place and made good on their previous choice of name.
The raw materials at 40 Sardines are usually American-sourced, and the chefs use local products as much as possible. "I do fly fish in from Florida or morels from Oregon on occasion,” says Smith, "and our fans appreciate the extra effort we go to.”
Dishes such as mascarpone and wild mushroom ravioli, or pan-roasted gulf yellowtail snapper with fennel-olive-oil emulsion, are inspired by the cooking of the Mediterranean region and informed by the couple’s strong French training. "If we have a Latin or Asian influence, it has to have integrity in the context of the menu,” says Gold. "We don’t do fusion,” Smith adds, "I try to keep all the elements on the plate from one region.” The unpretentious wine list is geared to the food, with wines classed conveniently by style and body, rather than strictly by varietal.
Next time you’re high over Kansas, look down and smile. Somebody down there is probably chowing down on a plate of Gold’s and Smith’s lemon-and-olive-oil-marinated sardines.
Anthony Dias Blue. Eating And Drinking With Debbie Gold And Michael Smith. American Way Magazine. September 1, 2003.
It’s Saturday Night
You’ve scored an 8:30 reservation at the hottest restaurant in, say, L.A. — a 300-seat Asian-fusion palace that’s been in the papers twice a week since it opened. Two starlets have rather famously overdosed in the bathrooms already, the gossip columns tout its “Kobe beef sliders,” and, from where you stand, the place looks stunning. A gigantic reclining Buddha looms over the dining room; the serpentine bar is three deep with good-looking women who sip brightly colored concoctions from heavily garnished martini glasses. If only the hostess would notice you. You arrived on time and gave your name—at which point she looked at you as though you were teeming with anthrax spores. You are finally seated (by the bathrooms) before being hurried through an expensive meal by a waiter who holds you in contempt. The food sucks. You examine the check: You’ve spent more on water than you’d normally spend getting heroically drunk. Just the same, you overtip and slink out, feeling like you didn’t make the cut. What went wrong? How can you eat at the best restaurants in town and not feel victimized, intimidated, gouged, or foolish?
The rules don’t apply to sushi restaurants
They have their own code of conduct. Behave accordingly.
Don’t let your rice crumble into the sauce. In fact, don’t use the sauce unless the chef suggests it.
Don’t mix your wasabi into the soy sauce. Ever.
Engage with the sushi chef. Talk to him. Enquire about what it is
you’re having and where the fish comes from. Let him know if you like
it and why it’s good.
Don’t ask about California rolls or novelty rolls at serious old-school sushi establishments, tourist.
Never point your chopsticks at other people.
Pay very close attention to your food. The sushi chef is always
watching and making decisions about what to serve you next. He’ll
reward you.
Put Sex on the Menu
Don't Drink White Wine
We want our man to drink like Ernest Hemingway (minus the suicidal tendencies).
Eat Meat
When we watch you tear into a giant steak or a heaping pile of ribs, it reminds us of a cave man ripping relentlessly into a carcass. It screams of old-fashioned animalistic passion. Seeing you nibble tenderly on a Tofurkey leg? Not so much.
Shovel It In!
Don't you dare order a burrito, unroll it, pick out the beans, nibble on the chicken, and leave it on your plate all mutilated and gross. It's a total turnoff to see a guy leave food unfinished and untouched, because it makes us imagine you leaving us that way.
Pick Your Palace
In your case the humiliating outcome was a foregone conclusion. You chose badly. The “hottest restaurant in town” is not the place you want to be. Truth be told, a large sector of the moneyed dining public demands cavernous “pan-Asian” terror domes with $22 drinks. This ass-hat clientele doesn’t want authentic Asian anything or affordable drinks. They want the feeling of victory at making it past the host stand and the thrill of pissing in a rest room that looks like a German S&M club.
If famous people eat there—and you’re aware of it—it’s not worth going to. The restaurant is so insecure about its product, they pay a publicist to place items in the gossip columns every time some bold-faced crackhead comes in the door. A good restaurant, one that’s in it for the long haul, doesn’t want that kind of publicity. In fact, they’re sensibly wary of it. A high-quality restaurant believes in discretion. Word of mouth will keep them busy.
Timing Is Everything
Why eat out at 8:30 on a Saturday night anyway? Especially at a slaughterhouse of stylish folly where every other knucklehead, tourist, starfucker, gawker, and rube who’s in town for the frisson of proximity wants the same table? Even at good places, there’s a sneaky assumption that you’re not a regular at 8:30 on a Saturday night. You’re a one-time customer. What’s more, you risk being rushed if you eat too early (so they can turn the table for the 8:30 seating) or too late (when the chef has gone home and the second-stringers are looking to get the food out so they can go drink). Eat out on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Those are the home-team nights, and you’re more likely to be treated like a good friend.
Fully Committed
If there’s not a table when you want one, it’s not a conspiracy to keep you out. It’s because there isn’t one available. Even people with a lot of dough need to book well ahead of time. Making reservations 30 days in advance is good practice. A good restaurant will hold one table, maybe two, for friends of the house, but those people have spent a lot of money over a long time for the privilege. And if you don’t intend to use your reservation, give it up. You may not realize it, but restaurants actually keep your information when you book, and you will end up on a blacklist.
A Good First Impression
If a hostess treats you like whale shit, without care or concern, you should walk. It’s a sign of things to come. Good restaurants are democratic. If your table isn’t ready, a good restaurant will greet you warmly, apologize, and escort you to the bar, where they will often buy you a drink. Great restaurants know that the real shakers and movers are as likely to be the dumpy nerd in the Suit Barn threads (who, it turns out, owns half of Microsoft) as the well-groomed gentleman in the Brioni suit (who turns out to be Joey Buttafuoco’s not-so-distant cousin). And while slipping the host a twenty to secure a good table quickly may work in the short term, it also establishes you as a nouveau riche dickhead.
Love Thy Waiter
The golden rules of dining out: Don’t be an asshole, and be nice to your waiter. It really is that simple. Are you pleased to be at the restaurant? Tell him. Are you happy? Look happy. Acknowledge, in word and attitude, that your waiter works hard, that he knows what he’s doing, and that he knows what’s truly great on the menu. Your waiter is your trusted ally. It’s in his interest to be. He wants you and your guests to have fun, enjoy some of his suggestions, drop some money, tip well, and come back with your friends. Even if the chef is yelling at him to move last night’s stinky cod, he’s not going to foist it on you. But if you’re a rude, imperious fuckwit, you’ll see the shutters come down behind his eyes instantly. You’re no longer a “friendly,” you’re a problem to be hustled out of the restaurant ASAP. And for your sake, you had also better like cod.
The Meal Plan
If the place is famous for seafood, order seafood. Beyond that, get over your manly need to know everything and ask for help. In dining it’s a strength, not a weakness. Try saying to your waiter, “Let me ask you something: If I were planning on dying tomorrow and had only one crack at this menu, what should I absolutely not miss?” Have no fear of the chef’s special in a truly good restaurant, either. He’s probably putting his most creative foot forward with fresh, exciting, seasonal ingredients.
If you have special dietary requirements, speak freely. What will piss off the kitchen, however, is designing your own menu. Do not mix and match sauces or ask for aged beef or wild fish to be cooked into oblivion. Most good restaurants will tolerate you, but they won’t love you. Some places will throw you out. Better to take the full culinary ride as the chef intends once before your group decides to split 20 appetizers.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing food, but don’t ask the kitchen to split orders. Ask for extra plates and hack at it yourself. There’s nothing wrong with ordering four desserts for two people, taking a few bites of each and leaving the rest. Everyone will understand. What is not OK is half orders. They don’t do it at McDonald’s, do they? And nothing says “I live in a cat-hair-covered walk-up that smells like piss” like taking leftovers to go. If you wouldn’t do something in front of a first date, don’t do it.
Don’t Whine About Wine
Let me guess. You always order the second cheapest wine on the list? It’s time to grow up. Feel no shame in confessing near total ignorance to the sommelier. Tell him what you’re eating and ask for appropriate suggestions. If it’s a multicourse tasting menu, ask about pairing wines by the glass. This will let you try a few wines without committing to one you don’t like. If you’re looking for wine by the bottle, try saying the following: “Can you select something good for me?” Then add, “Please don’t kill me—too expensive would be wasted on me.” It’s a good way to order a well-selected wine without looking like a cheapskate.
One Last Tip
Thank your servers and the host warmly on the way out. There should be no hidden charges on your bill unless you’re British. Some places add 15 to 20 percent tips to the bills of Britons, who assume that waiters are on a decent salary. That or they’re just cheap fucks. If your meal was good, 20 percent is the minimum gratuity if you hope to return. That tip gets carved up between a lot of hardworking people. That’s why restaurant people are good tippers. If you’re looking to become a regular, making an impression with a 30 percent tip is not just nice, it’s wise. You are more likely to be remembered. Tip above 50 percent, however, and you look like a big-pimpin’ fool.
Anthony Bourdain. The Art of the Meal. . November 2007.
