Blue Heaven
Early in her career, Lily Tomlin performed a hilarious monologue about waiting tables at the Howard Johnson’s in New York’s Times Square. Her real ambition, Tomlin said, was to be a famous waitress — she took jobs as a comedienne only as a way to make some extra money while she waited for her big break as the head waitress at HoJo’s.
I was a fledgling server myself when I first heard Tomlin do that monologue, and I thought it was a perfect parody, because all the people I knew working in food service were either putting themselves through college or supplementing low-paying “careers” in order to move up in the world and get the hell out of the restaurant business.
It takes a certain kind of determination — and a touch of madness — to throw caution to the wind and open one’s very own little restaurant today. It might be easier to do stand-up comedy.
No one was laughing when 29-year-old Anthony Fries decided to open Azul American Bistro on a stretch of Grand that hadn’t been a dining destination since the original Forum Cafeteria, just up the street, was serving up roast beef and Boston cream pie. In the last decade, the neighborhood has been somewhat bereft of restaurant life: Does anyone even remember Trago or the Vineyard, which preceded Azul on the first floor of the Borel Building at 1108 Grand? I don’t.
I got turned on to Azul by my friend Bonnie, a woman who isn’t prone to outbursts of enthusiasm but couldn’t stop raving about the place. “The food was wonderful, and it’s a great-looking space,” she said. “But no one was in there. I’m worried that he’s not going to make it.”
I found out later that Fries was pretty worried, too — so were his parents, Vincent and Regina, who have been coming in to help out. Fries, who named the restaurant after the Spanish word for blue, was getting a little azul himself when customers still hadn’t discovered his dinner-only restaurant after two months.
I was one of those foot draggers, I’m embarrassed to say. I drove by the joint a couple of times, and it didn’t look like much. That snap judgment was my first mistake. Luckily, Bonnie insisted that Bob and I join her there on a Saturday night.
When we walked through the front door and entered the illuminated jewel box of a dining room, I was stunned. Fries designed the space and did a lot of the construction himself; the result is a tribute to his good taste. He has painted the 1960s-era drop ceiling black and outfitted it with two circular “dome” insets with peridot paint and dramatic lighting. The northern wall of the long, narrow dining room has been paneled with mirrors and acrylic sheets backlit by azure lights. Fries has also installed sleek blond-wood flooring and draped his tables with white vinyl and sheaths of white paper.
It would be a dazzling place even if Fries hadn’t hired top-notch waitstaff and bartenders. But his people know how to shake up an icy, potent mojito or a caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil. And the food also is remarkably good, considering that Fries — a Rockhurst High School grad who dropped out of Rockhurst College — is a self-taught cook.
Before opening Azul, Fries had never worked in a restaurant kitchen. He had bartending and serving experience, but he didn’t work his way up through the kitchen ranks, as most chefs do. So far, the 64-seat dining room hasn’t been packed, but Fries insists that he’s ready for the challenge. I hope he’s laughing when that trial-by-fire night is over.
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Fries now oversees two kitchens: a tiny space near the front door, where he and his staff prepare the hot foods, and a slightly bigger one at the back, where salads and desserts are prepared. “It’s complicated,” Fries says, “but it’s better than it was in the old days, when the kitchen for this space was in the basement.”
If the good news is that the kitchens are now on the ground floor, the bad news is that the restrooms remain one flight up. But I wasn’t overindulging in mojitos like the bar patron who dashed for the stairs about the time that Bob, Bonnie and I were overindulging in memorable starters that included thick triangles of grilled quesadillas stuffed with sweet potato, mildly seasoned chorizo and salty goat cheese served on a splash of jade-green chive oil.
Bonnie had been so taken with the pan-seared tuna tacos on her earlier visit that she convinced us to share the entrée as an appetizer. It was a winning choice: a simple affair of tortilla triangles sprinkled with bits of deep-ruby seared tuna, splashed with a sweet pomegranate reduction and sprinkled with sesame seeds. It was deliciously easy to fold one up and devour it in a bite, followed by some cool, crunchy jicama slaw.
Bonnie was less entranced by the braised short ribs — they just didn’t look like short ribs to her — but I adored them. They were lusciously meaty, glazed with a punchy ancho chile sauce and sided with a puffy poblano risotto cake.
Fries learned more than a few cooking tricks from his Mexican-American grandmother (the best-selling dish here is chile relleno stuffed with seafood and Gouda), but his own innovations are impressive. These include the grilled flank steak, which Bob loved, and my own dinner, a plump grilled chicken smothered in a delectable sweet chipotle glaze and served with a jumble of hot yucca fries and soothing radish salsa.
That was the night we shared an airy fresh coconut mousse and a big slab of margarita cheesecake. Fries tarts up the latter, a dense, bakery-made confection, with two layers of whipped cream, tequila and fresh lime, which he serves with a shot glass of even more tequila cream. After downing all that, I did a slow samba out of the joint.
I was so crazy about Azul’s head waitress — a dainty, witty Croatian native named Danielle, who would make a pretty good comedienne, actually — that I insisted on being seated in her station when I returned a week later. I brought along beef-loving Bob, who’d demanded a second dinner at Azul so he could try the cilantro-pesto steak.
Before ordering entrées, though, we shared Anthony’s “terrine,” a tower, really, of lump crab, chopped avocado and discreet bits of cilantro and savory serrano chiles: “Not enough to overpower the crab,” Fries says. It’s a light, delicate dish, but it can’t hold a candle to the sweet-potato quesadillas or the tuna tacos.
The juicy beef tenderloin topped with a dollop of cilantro pesto, on the other hand, was first-rate. Again, Fries went light on the cilantro; instead of overpowering the steak, his subtle pesto enhanced the meat. I was equally pleased by my choice, a hunk of pan-roasted salmon with a slightly crunchy exterior and a lovely hot-pink center. It was dappled with goat cheese and roasted-tomato vinaigrette, and it arrived floating on a puddle of silky black-bean purée.
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We were too full even to contemplate the dessert Danielle suggested, Kahlua Chocolate Fantasy. I’m all for fantasy, but if Azul can hold out until the nearby Sprint Center brings big restaurant business downtown, everyone’s dreams might come true.
