Archives: February 2015
Update: Saigon 39 has closed
Update: The operators of Saigon 39, Linda Bruce and Victor Perkins, the children of restaurant founder Mimi Perkins, spoke with The Pitch, about closing the restaurant. See the update after the jump. The windows at Saigon 39, at 1806 West 39th Street, are covered with paper, and the news for fans of the popular Vietnamese restaurant isn’t good: The restaurant-row…
Wells Fargo and Kozeny & McCubbin just got spanked in court
What happens when you meet your end of a deal to stave off a foreclosure, and then the bank forecloses on your house anyway? Ask David and Crystal Holm. The Holt, Missouri, couple believed that they had met Wells Fargo’s terms to stop a foreclosure on their home. Then they spent six years in limbo. After the Holms’ house suffered…
Looking for General Tso’s chicken? It opens at the Screenland Armour today
There it is, in plain English, right there on the menu at the Plaza Bo Lings restaurant: “General Tso’s Chicken…Our #1 Seller.” Theresa Ng, who runs and co-owns the local Asian restaurant empire with her husband, Richard, says the six Bo Lings restaurants sell more of the sweet-hot (mostly sweet) chicken dish — breaded, fried, glazed in a glossy, sugary…
Nelson-Atkins to hold community meetings about its proposed cultural district this weekend
Last year, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art revealed the results of an ambitious master plan it had commissioned that would expand the museum’s presence in the neighborhood. It amounts to a new cultural district that would stretch from 39th Street to 55th Street, from Main Street to Paseo Boulevard. It would tie together the Nelson, UMKC, the Plaza, the Kemper…
Monster Jam Tickets at Sprint Center This Weekend Are Well Below Tour Average
It’ll be a monster party at the Sprint Center this weekend when the venue hosts the 2015 Monster Jam Tour. Slated for four shows from Friday to Sunday, Monster Jam will feature eight monster trucks battling it out in the highly anticipated racing and freestyle competitions. Fans still searching for tickets will find relative steals in Kansas City this weekend,…
Throwback Thursday: DJ Mahf, at Riot Room on Friday, with his award-winning 2010 Red Bull Thre3style Mix
St. Louis’ DJ Mahf has long been a Kansas City favorite. His collaborations with Steddy P and the rest of the Indyground crew are solid party movers, and the man knows how to work a set of decks like nobody’s business, mixing the hottest newness with classic soul and jazz breaks. This weekend, he’s back in town this weekend to…
Arris’ Pizza, serving pies and gyros, is open in Lenexa
Arris’ Pizza, founded by Greek-born Arris Pardalos in Jefferson City in 1961, has developed an almost cult following over the past half-century, particularly among former college students who attended schools in Jefferson City, Columbia and Springfield. The Pardalos family still owns and operates the original Arris’ Pizza in Jefferson City and has sold select franchises of the restaurant to friends…
Waldo Pizza taps Founders CBS, Prairie launches in Kansas, Martin City celebrates a year, and more beer events
Thursday, February 5Boulevard four-course beer dinner, featuring Tank 7, Imperial Stout, Bully Porter and Chocolate Ale, at the Griffith Ballroom inside the Oread (1200 Oread, Lawrence), 785-830-3921 for reservations, $55, 6 p.m. Bur Oak Dark Star black Kölsch tapping, at Flying Saucer (101 East 13th Street), 7 p.m. Bur Oak “Meet the Burrer” night, at Green Room Burgers & Beer…
Screenland Crossroads and Tapcade
Screenland Crossroads and Tapcade opens February 20. Read about it here.
Looking for winter’s best French onion soups
French onion soup isn’t first-date food. For starters, there’s no dignified way to eat the stuff — there’s no way to avoid your eventual need to slurp the melted cheese or deal with the soggy hunk of crouton you’ve dropped into the bowl to soak up the broth. And that’s leaving aside the dish’s main ingredient: enough onions to curdle…
Marlan Ramell Roberts, pet outreach director at Spay & Neuter Kansas City, answers The Pitch questionnaire
Name: Marlan Ramell Roberts Occupation: Pet outreach director, Spay & Neuter Kansas City Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri Current neighborhood: Downtown, City Market area What I do: I work with pet owners in underserved communities to provide vital resources for their pets and promote responsible pet ownership. What’s your addiction? Traveling What’s your game? Baseball What’s your drink? Lemonade Where’s dinner?…
Music Forecast 2.5–2.11: Scott H. Biram, Jim Lauderdale, Ben Howard, and Kina Grannis
Scott H. Biram Anyone wont to romanticize the Wild West is likely to fall in mad love with Austin, Texas’ Scott H. Biram. This one-man band, with his grizzled whiskers and tough-guy tales, is the stuff of cowboy movies. He even has the voice of a railroad villain, gruff and sinister. His songs manage to find an unlikely common ground…
Jazz Beat: Eddie Moore hosts the Monday Jam, at the Blue Room
Mondays are different at the Blue Room. After a set by the night’s host, a jam session takes the stage. Then you might find multiple generations of KC jazz veterans mixing with new names that you realize you’ll see again. Monday, keyboardist Eddie Moore hosts. Whether he’s performing his own densely rich compositions or playing piano behind the vocal ensemble…
Til Willis’ recent trilogy speaks volumes
Last November, Lawrence’s Til Willis released three full-length albums simultaneously. There were two solo albums, Hackles and Tin Star, as well as Cars Etcetera, recorded with his full band, Erratic Cowboy. Together, they added up to a staggering 41 songs. “I tend to write a lot, and be writing all the time,” Willis says with a laugh. “The guys in…
Yes You Are banks on a series of ‘destiny moments’
Late on a Sunday morning, the five members of Yes You Are have arranged themselves in the basement of guitarist Jared White’s childhood home in Shawnee, cramming themselves and their instruments among the couches and the large indoor plants. It’s an impromptu-looking scene, but the band averages four or five rehearsals like this every week. And here, White’s mom always…
Jimmy Frantze’s new J.J.’s is just that — an original
History might repeat itself, but great restaurants seldom do. Sure, the Fairway Stroud’s is a passable replica of the original roadhouse, but the new Villa Capri in Overland Park can’t hold a candle to the shabbier but more lovable original on Metcalf Avenue. I don’t believe that the distinctive qualities — good and bad — of the House of Toy,…
Marion Cotillard is a raw nerve in Two Days, One Night
Belgium’s Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have built one of the most acclaimed bodies of work in modern cinema with their gritty, lived-in tales of marginalized figures caught at the edges of European capitalism — broken people, junkies, immigrants, criminals. So their latest, Two Days, One Night, feels at first like a departure, with its seemingly mundane, middle-class setup. Marion Cotillard…
The Living Room doesn’t quite find the right thread for its Eurydice
Sometimes the most beautiful scripts are the most dangerous. Such is the case with the Living Room’s lyrical but lethargic Eurydice, a romantic retelling of a Greek myth that misses the dramatist’s forest for the poet’s trees. Playwright Sarah Ruhl’s script is deceptively difficult, requiring a director with a razor-sharp vision to transmute her whimsical patter into dramatic scenes. The…
Sean Starowitz’s first Talk Shop night was a little quiet
The storefront space at 3936 Main has remained largely unchanged since Sean Starowitz took it over last fall. The windows and glass doors have been cleaned, the floor swept, a podium brought in. But it still signals itself a work in progress: A ladder rests against one wall, and tools litter a few worktables. The beautifying measures are limited to…
The Unicorn’s Lasso of Truth is a bit more teach-y than taut
The Unicorn Theatre’s latest production — a rolling world premiere of Lasso of Truth, by Carson Kreitzer — performs a feat worthy of Wonder Woman. Structurally, the play doesn’t quite work. But in theme and execution, it’s a home run. The bulk of the action takes place in the late-1930s home of William Moulton Marston, an academic psychologist who has…
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