City Lites

Acouple of months ago, I received a clever e-mail from a reader named Sarah Beasley, who told me that she had seen an advertisement for a new restaurant called Trolley’s Downtown Bar & Grille and made the assumption that a “downtown grill” might be located, you know, in an urban setting. Her first thought was that this new joint must be in the Power & Light District, so she went to the restaurant’s Web site to find out exactly where. And that’s how she learned it’s in a shopping development way out at 135th Street and Antioch.

So Sarah e-mailed the restaurant’s owners to ask why the place was called “Downtown” when it wasn’t even near downtown Overland Park. She got a nice response from one of the operating partners, Ryan MacDonald, who explained that the first Trolley’s really was in an urban setting, on the first floor of a 19th-century building in downtown Springfield, Missouri.

“We put in our second location in Overland Park, simulating the 1920s and ’30s of downtown Kansas City,” MacDonald wrote. “Our concept has to do with feeling like you’re downtown even though you may be in the suburbs. We want to not only focus in downtowns but also in the suburbs so everyone appreciates the historical significance of downtown cities.”

Well, damn it, I want to appreciate the historical significance of downtown cities, too! But I’d prefer them closer to locations with a little actual history, not near a gigantic Hy-Vee halfway to Topeka. That said, the architecture of the new Power & Light District — that real historical location — reminds me a lot more of Overland Park than vintage Kansas City. So it all balances out in the end.

To create that “downtown feeling” on 135th Street, MacDonald and his three partners gutted the freestanding building that formerly housed a restaurant called Everett’s. They proceeded to turn the dining room into a faux-brick courtyard with pretend façades of pint-sized buildings, including a bank, a movie theater (the neon marquee spells out “Gem” — a rather ironic touch in this predominantly Caucasian suburb) and a garage. Enlarged reproductions of vintage photographs show Kansas City’s downtown in its glory days, when all the big department stores and movie palaces were still standing. And in one corner of the room, there’s a good-sized screen showing old films such as Bogart’s The Big Sleep, but without sound.

The interior looks more like a stage set — or a Vegas casino lobby — than any urban location, but that’s why this make-believe downtown has genuine appeal in south Johnson County. (It would seem contrived and idiotic at 14th Street and Grand.) I was actually charmed by the concept of Trolley’s Downtown Bar & Grill, despite the underwhelming experience I had there one afternoon, when lunch included shepherd’s pie that was stingy on the pot roast and heavy on sleek Yukon-gold mashed potatoes that the waiter confirmed were not made in this joint’s kitchen.

Things improved dramatically when I went back for dinner, towing along some real urban dwellers: Ned, Bob and Carol Ann. Walking into the restaurant, they immediately jumped to the conclusion that it would be a corporate cookie-cutter operation. But once we settled into our upholstered booth — a cozy cubicle constructed of pretend bricks — we decided that the place was too eccentric to dislike. The lighting was soft (Carol Ann noticed that the “streetlights” had mismatched bulbs), and despite all the hard surfaces, it wasn’t terribly noisy. A 1930s Technicolor short, set in Los Angeles’ old Cocoanut Grove nightclub, played silently on the movie screen while, across the room, a lively party of diners was celebrating a birthday party under the Gem marquee. Meanwhile, disco hits by Donna Summer and Michael Jackson played on the sound system.

[page]

Amid all of this, Ned pronounced the menu to be more sophisticated than he’d expected. “There’s the usual bar fare, like buffalo wings and spinach dip,” he noted, “but there’s also beef carpaccio and flash-fried spinach.”

Our group didn’t go for sophisticated. We fully embraced the eccentricity and ordered fried green beans as a starter. They arrived in a paper cone tucked into a metal spiral, sided with a ramekin of spicy Southwest ranch dressing.

The restaurant’s general manager, Steve Pemberton, is a chef, and he told me later that he had given the menu “richness and depth,” whatever that means. The menu lists burgers and salads, of course, and a quartet of homestyle “American Classics” (including meatloaf and chicken-fried steak), but Ned and Carol Ann went for a couple of the more creative concoctions. I rolled my eyes when Ned ordered the fusion rib-eye, described on the menu as served in a “sweet soy fusion glaze.” In another era, I told him, this would have been called Hawaiian steak, and it would have come with a hunk of pineapple. The 10-ounce rib-eye arrived with mashers — and a slab of grilled fresh pineapple. The beef wasn’t too sweet (as it would have been in the Hawaiian steak days), and the soy glaze, with its splash of pineapple juice, was delicate, not sugary. I’m still not sure what was “fused” to create the dish.

Carol ordered one of the best things on the menu — a flaky filet of tilapia, lightly pan-blackened and smothered in a deftly seasoned roasted-red-pepper cream sauce. She insisted that we all take a taste, and I liked it a lot better than my fire-roasted tenderloin salad, a heap of greens scattered with artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers and half a dozen small slices of cold beef tenderloin. Once I ate the beef and the artichokes, the salad was all over.

Bob, unfortunately, was terribly disappointed in his big bowl of “Mom’s Mac & Cheese.” “I wish they would explain on the menu that it’s a creative version of macaroni and cheese and not the real thing made with cheddar cheese,” he said through a scowl. “This is a bunch of rotini with Alfredo sauce.” He was right. It was a nice, rich Alfredo pasta, not good ol’ American mac and cheese.

Before too long, our waiter was pushing s’mores, one of five dessert choices. “You build them yourself,” he said. “We bring out graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows, and a little grill.” I told him I would no longer experiment with do-it-yourself desserts, after a s’mores disaster at a Kansas restaurant required that I take the ingredients from my table and carry them outside to a decorative patio fire.

“We also have flameless bananas Foster,” the server said. “We cook the bananas in rum back in the kitchen and bring them out on pound cake.” That sounded worse than the s’mores. We finally settled on the “Brownie Explosion,” which turned out to be a vaguely sexual title for a tasty but not particularly sensual plate of two brownie wedges with whipped cream and ice cream.

“Back when Kansas City’s downtown was still alive, the Forum Cafeteria had the best desserts,” Ned mused between bites of brownie.

Carol Ann nodded, recalling a couple of other restaurants that have vanished over the past few decades.

But let’s face it. Downtown just isn’t what it used to be — no matter where it is.