Animal Attractions
Sometimes I eat out strictly for pleasure. That means I don’t have to force myself to be keenly observant, completely cognizant and acutely aware of all the little details that go into writing a restaurant review. In other words, I stop thinking. And when that happens, the strangest things sometimes pop into my mind.
Like song lyrics. I was eating an especially crispy chicken leg from the all-you-can-eat fried-chicken Sunday buffet at Opal’s Kitchen (423 Southwest Boulevard) when I suddenly remembered a nasty song by the late comedienne Gilda Radner. Called “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals,” the song has tasteful lyrics: Go tell a chicken, ‘Suck my dick’/An’ give him chicken pox.
“What on Earth made you think of that?” asked my friend Ned, who hates the décor at Opal’s (“It’s a bad community theater set”) but loves all the stuff on the inexpensive — $10.95 a person — buffet, including heaps of freshly pan-fried bird, mountains of mashed potatoes and buckets of cream gravy, along with biscuits, roasted potatoes, sausage and bacon, French toast, and green beans. Sunday diners are also entitled to a little plate of scrambled eggs or an omelet, which the server brings out from the kitchen.
I felt myself blushing. But then I realized that it all could be very Freudian, since Opal’s Kitchen is right around the corner from a gay bar called the Back Door, which caters to a hairy, burly breed of homosexuals known as “bears.” Shades of talking dirty to the animals!
“And I’ll bet a few chickens and pigs get in there, too,” Ned said slyly. “A regular barnyard.”
Animals and restaurants might seem to be strange bedfellows, as it were, but after I wrote about the dog-friendly bistro Lillies on 17th (815 West 17th Street) last week, a reader e-mailed me to note that, although Kansas City might not be the greatest town for finding animals in restaurants (the bars are a different story), it ranks up there for eating joints with animal names.
In fact, there’s a culinary zoo out there, including the Falcon Diner, Le Fou Frog, the Fox and Hound English Pub & Grille, the Golden Ox, Crabs on Broadway, the Dragon Inn (not to be confused with Golden Dragon, North Dragon, Twin Dragon or the Red Dragon House), Red Lobster, the Salty Iguana and Panda Express.
And Hooters, which is only another name for owls, right?
