A Polished Heirloom

I recently attended the estate sale of an anonymous octogenarian who had lived most of her middle-class life in the same Midtown home. It was filled with the oddball relics of a long and well-fed life. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about: candy tins from forgotten confectioneries, ashtrays from restaurants that had vanished like puffs of cigarette smoke, dozens of miniature liquor bottles lifted from hotel wet bars.

Pawing through a shoebox, I found a trove of vintage hotel amenities: little square soaps in yellowing paper wrappers, toothbrushes embossed with some long-razed motel’s name, shower caps tucked into gilded cardboard envelopes, dozens of ballpoint pens, tiny scratch pads, postcards, sewing kits in plastic boxes and even an old “sanitary” banner that had once been stretched across a Holiday Inn toilet seat.

I didn’t buy the stuff — I’m sure I have a box of my own hotel detritus stashed away on some closet shelf — but I did go into a hotel-and-motel reverie for the rest of the day. Did someone still make coin-operated vibrating beds, I wondered? (Yes, they’re manufactured by the Magic Fingers company in California.) Was it against the law to steal a Gideons Bible from a hotel room? (“No,” says a spokesperson for the Nashville-based Gideons International, “but you’re not supposed to take them either. We’ll gladly mail you one for $8.75.”) And what the hell happened to good hotel coffee shops? There hasn’t been one in this city since the original Pam Pam Room at the Alameda Plaza closed in 1989 — that Pam Pam, often the most happening dining spot in the city, had nothing in common with the lackluster venue of the same name now limping along at the Muehlebach Hotel.

Fortunately Kansas City still has a fair number of upscale hotel dining rooms: The Oak Room at the Fairmont; the Hyatt Regency’s Skies and Peppercorn Duck Club; and the Westin Crown Center’s Benton’s Chop House. Though it’s the most genteel of them all, The Raphael Restaurant may also be the least-remembered.

There are many reasons why. It’s hidden on the lower level of the Raphael Hotel, on the less-touristy side of the Plaza. It’s perceived as expensive and stuffy (it isn’t). It’s rumored to be a favorite of well-heeled geriatrics (it is). It’s carved out of a space that was designed, in 1926, to be a beauty salon, and its bustling kitchen is hardly bigger than a bathroom in one of the hotel suites (originally built as apartments) upstairs.

But if the restaurant lacks the vivacity and glamour of its competitors on the right bank of Brush Creek, it makes up for that in dozens of other ways. Chef Peter Hahn’s creative menu changes weekly, and the service is polished and friendly but not formal. The dark, cool dining room is perfect on a sweltering day, and it’s one of the few restaurants in this neighborhood where people can actually sit and talk. If stimulating conversation is as important as food and wine, then the Raphael may be the best place in town to play salon and eat profiteroles.

But be prepared: On some nights you’ll wish the people at adjoining tables weren’t quite so chatty. One night I was tempted to toss a baked potato at the loudmouthed, wrinkled Republican who hammered on a nearby tabletop with his fork and announced, “If it wasn’t for George W. Bush, this country would go totally Muslim!” I furiously buttered a slice of bread instead. My friend Bob didn’t hear a word of the tirade because he was concentrating on his appetizer, a satiny poached pear wrapped in a pink sheath of salty prosciutto, rising up from a pool of garnet-red port-wine sauce.

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One friend of mine quit his job as a waiter in this dining room because, he said, “the customers are too old and the tips were too stingy.” But our server that night was an unflappable twelve-year Raphael veteran named Kathy who denied the charge. “The customers come in all ages, sizes and hues and are all good tippers,” she said.

Kathy had just placed the day’s featured salad in front of the ravenous Bob, who had dispensed with the pear in record time. The beautifully appointed plate boasted a rustic construction of grilled asparagus stalks resting atop a mound of chopped tomato, goat cheese and toasted hazelnuts, splashed with an earthy tarragon vinaigrette.

That salad could have worked as a complete meal for Bob. “I’m full,” he said when the rest of his dinner arrived. “But maybe just a tiny, tiny bite,” he said, contemplating the thick “T-bone” of grilled pork. It turned out to be as tender and juicy as any traditional beef steak, blanketed with another strip of that paper-thin prosciutto and a shiny layer of melted fontina. He ate the whole thing.

In a moment of lightheadedness, I had waved off the roasted halibut with lobster-flecked basmati rice and ordered the day’s vegetarian special. (These dishes are almost always vegan-friendly, free of cheese or cream.) The bowl of thick, squat rigatoni noodles in a mahogany herbed broth was heaped with roasted tomatoes, chewy morels, crunchy pine nuts and fresh spinach.

I was weight-conscious at that dinner because a few nights earlier, I had indulged in an appetizer of plump, golden, pan-seared scallops doused with a gingery cream sauce scented with coconut and kaffir lime. Bob, my friend Lisa and I were sharing a private dining room (the better for intimate gossiping), and after the scallops, we moved on to chef Hahn’s red-pepper crêpes wrapped around delicately spiced pork, cool mango and chile-fired cream.

Lisa added a salad of pale green curls of endive, glistening slices of grapefruit, sprinklings of shaved onion and tendrils of artfully sliced spinach with toasted walnuts under a squeeze of citrus vinaigrette. But her main event was a fillet of juicy, expertly grilled salmon lolling atop a bed of soft polenta and bedecked with a clutter of green asparagus tips. I had chosen the one dish that never varies on the Raphael’s constantly changing menu: the rack of New Zealand lamb. Hahn and hotel manager Cynthia Savage retired the dish once for a six-month trial period and were met with violent opposition from its fans — and I understand why, having experienced these tiny, luscious chops. The lamb stays the same, but Hahn now changes the accompaniments: a white truffle barley risotto one week, a truffle Alfredo the next.

Bob was relieved to see that the beef-tenderloin fillet was a constant, too, though its mode of preparation may be haute cuisine one night (drizzled with a pungent porcini sauce and served with creamy layered dauphine potatoes baked with black truffles), more plebian (topped with a layer of melted gorgonzola) the next.

Like the entrees, the dessert selection is limited. I was happy to find that the ice-cold, slightly crunchy chocolate terrine is a regular offering, as is the pile of profiteroles — airy hollow balls of choux pastry stuffed with espresso ice cream. Alas, I was disappointed in a crème brûlée flavored with vanilla bean and lavender; it was startlingly rubbery under its glossy burnt-sugar crust.

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It was at that meal when I looked down and noticed that my silver dinner knife had been engraved with an unexpected hotel name: the Alameda Plaza. The touch was unexpected but not inappropriate: The Pistilli family, which owns the Raphael, had also owned the late Alameda.

“Steal the knife,” hissed Bob. “It’s a collector’s item!”

I shook my head. Postcards, sewing kits and shower caps are one thing, but I’m not walking out with the hotel silver.