Club Fed

Sure, this town has nightclubs that serve food. But a supper club — an idea that hearkens back to the elegant joints of the 1940s and ’50s, with maître d’s and cigarette girls — is something classier.

The concept behind Raoul’s Velvet Room obviously isn’t new. Some memorable upscale supper clubs lurk in Kansas City’s past (see Mouthing Off,). But Raoul’s, which former Kansas City bon vivant Loy Edge created in 1998, isn’t a supper club in every traditional sense. Yes, there’s a stage in the main dining room, but the entertainers — such as Disco Dick and the Mirror Balls (who do their cover of “Superfreak” on Friday nights) — usually don’t start performing until the kitchen shuts down for the night. And although the place is swanky by Johnson County standards, the service is free-form at best. On two visits, my companions and I hung around the dining room, hoping that someone might usher us to one of the white-draped tables.

With its stark white walls, haunting Mike Regnier paintings and dark velvet curtains, this dimly lit 21st-century version of a supper club at least needs a hostess to direct traffic, since the place is quite large. The lax ambience made me especially nervous on the first visit because I’d brought along my high-strung friend Bob, who hadn’t liked Raoul’s in any of its earlier incarnations. He was also suspicious of the new and reportedly improved club, under the direction of new owner Shawn McClenny and chef John Breitenstein, a veteran of Hallbrook Country Club.

When I finally asked if the club was still serving food, one of the bartenders just shrugged and said, “You can seat yourself.” It was 6:15 p.m., and not a soul was sitting in the dining room. There was, however, a man in a white T-shirt tinkering with some sound equipment on the bite-sized “stage.” Just as Bob and I sat down, a screech of head-splitting music erupted from one of the machines, ricocheting off the tile floors and the black-lacquered woodwork.

“That’s it,” said Bob, standing up. “We’re leaving! This place is too disorganized.”

But like a miracle, a willowy waitress dressed in black stepped out of the shadows and calmed him down. “Don’t worry,” she said in dulcet tones. “They’re just doing a sound check. They won’t be playing music for hours. You look like you need a drink. And an appetizer, maybe? Our calamari is wonderful!”

A few minutes later, we were dipping crunchy bits of golden fried squid into two excellent sauces, one a lemony cilantro pesto, the other a fiery chipotle aïoli.

“That’s a talented waitress,” sighed Bob, a former server himself. “She knew exactly how to save the day.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Raoul’s servers are all young and beautiful. (On my second visit, I witnessed a local talent agent circulating among the staff, passing around her business cards as if they were after-dinner mints.) Sure, they could use a little polish when it comes to timing and picking up customer cues, but they’re all so adorable and full of energy, you forgive them for everything. And some of their wide-eyed comments are priceless. On one busy Friday night, my quartet of friends looked around and realized that as we had been having dinner, the room had filled with dozens of single, twenty-something women who weren’t eating but drinking and chattering. It was as if we had stepped into an episode of Sex and the City.

“Is this girls’ night out?” asked one of my friends.

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“Nah,” griped another, as she swigged back her second glass of wine. “It’s just that there aren’t any men anymore. All the good ones are dead.”

“Oh no,” said our gorgeous young waitress. “They’re just late. The good men don’t start coming in until after 9:30.”

This was the same server who had lured us to the combination appetizer platter: a jumble of calamari, lovely little crab cakes made with leeks and roasted tomatoes and a plate of fat shrimp rolled in goat cheese and wrapped with a sliver of salty prosciutto. Even that ubiquitous appetizer known as spinach cheese dip (which is so awful in most restaurants that I avoid it at all costs) gets high-class treatment here. Chef Breitenstein blends a heavy cream béchamel with onion, garlic, big chunks of artichokes, spinach, Parmesan and bubbly Chihuahua cheese. It’s the classiest version of this dip in town, and we dug into it with blue, red and yellow corn chips.

Imaginative appetizers are only one of the surprises on Breitenstein’s menu. I was impressed that the food wasn’t of the boring, deep-fried “bar food” ilk, but Breitenstein later told me that “most people are surprised that we have food here at all!”

Because Raoul’s is squeezed into a tight corner of the distinctly plebian Rosana Square shopping strip — in a space once occupied by a sports bar — it might come as a shock to first-time diners that this is no burger-and-beer joint. In fact, the salad selection boasts a wonderful concoction of romaine lettuce and red pepper, a cloud of crispy fried noodles and thin slices of seared, sesame-crusted Ahi tuna all splashed with a punchy vinaigrette. Even the five pizzas are fashionable, such as the thin crust spread with a freshly made basil pesto and dappled with roasted chicken, red peppers, artichokes and a blanket of mozzarella. I devoured it greedily, hating to share even the smallest wedge.

Breitenstein’s menu presents only six entrees, but the luscious eight-ounce filet, lightly glazed with Madeira and perfectly grilled, is worth dancing about. It comes with intensely flavored garlic mashed potatoes, slices of grilled portabella and a few crispy onion rings. Even more glamorous (and overwhelmingly rich) is the same filet sliced and smothered in a lightly spiced reduction of veal stock flavored with ancho chiles. This little feast comes out with four grilled shrimp doused in cilantro-lime butter and a steaming, buttery mound of mashed potatoes blended with chunks of lobster.

Even the desserts were beautiful, though they turned out to be boring underneath the surface. “We import them from a chef in San Francisco,” announced our pretty server, Larin Christensen. At that meal, we sampled two tiny tarts that arrived at the table as delicate and colorful as an orchid corsage — but the cappuccino mousse version needed a bigger jolt of chocolate and the pistachio-passion fruit mousse was neither nutty nor fruity, but an airy little circle of creamy nothingness.

Judging from all the svelte figures surrounding Raoul’s dining room, however, dessert isn’t a priority. And after 10 p.m., the food isn’t either.

“You should stick around,” Larin said as she picked up our plates. “When the music starts, we clear away the tables and the dance floor gets absolutely packed! You can hardly move.”

And that was enough to make me move — right out of the place. For entertainment value, I pick food over music every time, but Breitenstein’s cuisine is still a mystery to most of the Velvet Room’s youthful clientele. That’s too bad, because the food is just as sexy.