Chef Peter Castillo tells Kansas City: Eat Me
When chef Peter Castillo (Tenerife Cafe, Great Plains Catering) decided to call his new restaurant Eat Me, he got some flack immediately.
“This one lady told me that the name was crass,” Castillo says. “But I asked her, ‘Doesn’t food – delicious-looking food in particular – talk to you? I think it does. When food looks really enticing, it’s saying, ‘Eat me.'”
Eat Me customers will line up outside the old Torre’s Pizza window, in the alley off Pennsylvania in Westport. The carryout menu is heavy on sandwiches (including a chicken-and-waffles sandwich). Castillo’s kitchen is also providing the food for the Westport Saloon, in the former Dark Horse Tavern at 4112 Pennsylvania.
Castillo says he expects Eat Me to open its carryout window Friday.
“Or Monday,’ he says.
Whenever that window does open, it’ll stay open from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day, according to Castillo, who has completely rehabbed the old Torre’s kitchen. He has even resurrected the old Torre’s oven, which Westport Saloon owner Bill Nigro had, at some point, walled off from view.
“We’ll be serving flatbreads, not pizza,” Castillo says.
He also expects to start serving Sunday brunch inside the Westport Saloon on November 17, and to offer a daily soup. (On his short list of early soups: menudo and pho.) The other items on the Eat Me menu so far are barbecue shrimp with macaroni and cheese, a crispy pork-belly banh mi, and cinnamon rolls.
