Archives: May 2014

Knockoff Patrol: Another not-quite-Cronut spotted

Ever since New York’s Dominique Ansel Bakery invented the Cronut – a hybrid that joined the croissant with the doughnut – variations have popped up all over the world, including in KC. The latest we’ve sampled comes from Hy-Vee (specifically, the one at 8501 West 95th Street, in Overland Park). Name: Dossant Price: 89 cents Shape: Hexagonal Flavor: Glazed is…

Wrestling Succotash’s 10-pound Sumo is a hefty task

When the Sumo arrived at my table on a sunny Sunday morning at Succotash, I felt like I’d just been sucker-punched. I’d seen the thing delivered to other tables (“All the Gravy,” Fat City, March 13), but even that failed to prepare me for how big it was. I’d been warned about the gut-busting size of this breakfast behemoth, which…

Abby Dimalanta of Bandwagon Merchandise and the Ryan Beye Foundation answers The Pitch‘s questionnaire

Name: Abby Dimalanta Occupation: Accounts representative at Bandwagon Merchandise and chief operating officer for the Ryan Beye Foundation Hometown: Springfield, Missouri Current neighborhood: Westport What I do (in 140 characters): I’m passionate about screen-printing, graphic design and helping Kansas City, so I work, go to school and volunteer with local charities. What’s your addiction? Craft beers with Beer Tasting KC…

Breach of lawn uniformity sends shock waves through Brookside community

The current scourge of Brookside. Grass is the stuff that goes in the area around your house, says the United States Department of That’s The Way It’s Always Been and That’s The Way It Will Always Be Here In America. Own a house? Well, then, sir or madam, you’ll need to purchase some sod, fertilizer, hoses, sprinklers, mowers, weed-eaters and…

June has 30 days. We have 30 favorite breakfast dishes

So much starts with cereal. It’s probably the first foodstuff you turned into a meal on your own. It’s likely the first grocery item you ever had a role in selecting, thanks to advertising. Look how colorful those marshmallows look on TV! They taste like the sky! So it was your first lesson in free-market lies: No matter what the…

Bummer’s recipe for success: Keep it simple, keep it short

“I just want to scare you, honestly,” Matt Perrin says between mouthfuls of food. “When I get up onstage, the whole point of what I want to do is scare people. I want people to look at me and get uncomfortable. I mean, look at me.” Perrin is wearing black, square-frame glasses; a T-shirt printed with grazing cows; and a…

The Big Iron clamps down to make its grandest album yet

Listening to the Big Iron’s newest album, We Will Fall, is kind of like a first kickboxing class: terrifying, violent and full of swift kicks to painful areas. If you can make it through the album, you’ll crawl away bruised, beaten and a little more pathetic than when you started 40 minutes before, even as the masochist in you burns…

Surveying the damage of Kansas’ 2014 legislative session

These days, there’s not much opportunity for Kansas liberals, moderates or even moderate Republicans to pass bills that might actually benefit their constituents. The legislative session has instead become a game of defense — against the agenda of a mad-scientist governor who views state policy as an experiment and against tea-party yokels with weird ideas about guns, God, education, women’s…

Twenty One Pilots is at the Uptown in September

Columbus, Ohio, duo Twenty One Pilots has just announced a fresh tour, bringing them to the Uptown Theater on Sunday, September 14. The “Quiet Is Violent” World Tour is in support of the band’s latest full-length, Vessel.  Vessel is a high-energy barrage of pop tunes that, at times, cheerfully recalls the mid-1990s wave of emo music, though thankfully it doesn’t…

There’s still an Ox in Johnson County, but it’s not Golden

A year ago, the co-owners of the iconic Golden Ox restaurant in the West Bottoms – Steve Greer and Bill Teel – told The Pitch that they were taking over the dining room (the setting for the short-lived and kind of disastrous Bistro La Scala in 2011) in the Clarion Hotel at 7000 West 108th Street. The “abbreviated” steakhouse in the suburban hotel was…

Trans AM is at RecordBar on Wednesday night

It’s always remarkable when a band manages to stay together over decades, despite never having shot into the stratosphere of arena rock, à la the Eagles or Styx or any number of platinum-selling acts rolling this way sometime this summer. One such act: Trans AM, a band that has been together since 1990 and released plenty of albums without noteworthy…

Charles Bruffy took Westport to new heights with Phoenix and KC Chorales last night

The Kansas City and Phoenix Chorales, Charles Bruffy conducting Our Lady of Perpetual Help Redemptorist Church, Kansas City Friday, May 23, 2014 A mostly older audience eagerly stormed into the pews of the beautiful Our Lady of Perpetual Help Redemptorist Church in Westport last night, cutting a wedding rehearsal’s reserved time in the powder blue and white nave and altar…

Chef Justin Voldan of Hotel Phillips wins Golden Fork Award

Justin Voldan, the 30-year-old executive chef at the Hotel Phillips Kansas City, won the 2014 Golden Fork competition at Thursday night’s “Taste of Kansas City” event, sponsored by The Pitch in the KC Live Block of the Power & Light District. Voldan competed against five other local chefs in preparing a meal from a collection of ingredients presented to them…