Disco Cantina

I find something supernatural about coincidences. When they happen, I experience a shiver through my body. I can’t remember who said it, but I’ve always believed the adage that “a coincidence is God’s way of performing a miracle anonymously.”

But I’m not sure that what I experienced on a recent Friday night at the three-month-old Kokopelli Mexican Cantina was a miracle. It was probably just a very weird coincidence. I was eating dinner with my friends Bob and Gia and Gia’s 9-year-old kid, Johnny, when Evelyn “Champagne” King’s 1978 disco hit “Shame” started playing over the sound system. I suddenly remembered the first time I heard that song: I was working as a newly minted waiter at a Mexican restaurant in my hometown, and the shrill horns on the record surprised me so much that I nearly dropped a bowl of hot chili con queso in the lap of my middle-aged customer, who yelled at me. I felt “Shame” all right.

Back in the present, at the very moment “Shame” started playing at Kokopelli, our not-so-young waitress brought out a bubbling order of the restaurant’s cheesy Santa Fe dip, served in a fluted tortilla bowl.

“Who sings this song?” Gia asked as she dipped a warm tortilla into the gooey, spinach-flecked sauce. “Gloria Gaynor?”

Before I could correct her, the next song started playing — and it was Gloria Gaynor, singing “I Will Survive.” That was immediately followed by another diva hit from 1978, Alicia Bridges’ “I Love the Nightlife.”

We all agreed it was an odd music mix for a Mexican restaurant in squaresville Prairie Village, particularly in a place where the average age is considerably older than the disco generation. But little Johnny started jumping up and down in his seat when the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” boomed through the dining room.

“Johnny just loves disco,” Gia announced as the kid waved his arms around.

“I did, too — when I was his age,” I said, pointing to a lithe young waiter in a black T-shirt passing our table.

“It’s coming back,” Gia said.

Well, everything does. Music, fashion … even restaurants. Six months ago, this very dining room had been the second incarnation of the Michael Forbes Grill, modeled loosely on the dark and clubby restaurant of the same name once located at 75th Street and Wornall Road. But the concept tanked for numerous reasons. “Part of it was the economy after the war in Iraq started,” says owner Kevin Lyman. “Part of it was a menu that was too big. The kitchen could be inconsistent with so many items. Part of it was the neighborhood. It’s an older clientele out here, a tough crowd.”

On August 7, Lyman and his wife, Tammy, closed Michael Forbes Grill. Out went the 55-item menu, the little framed vintage photographs of pre-disco Kansas City, the fried catfish dinners and, for the most part, the influence of former partner Forbes Cross.

Three days later, the Lymans reopened the restaurant as the freshly redecorated Kokopelli, which serves many of the Mexican dishes that the young couple had offered when they owned the popular Lee’s Summit cantina known as Habanero’s Mexican Restaurant. Kevin Lyman signed a two-year noncompete contract when he sold Habanero’s in 2001, but he’d always planned on opening another Mexican restaurant.

“And when we started losing money at Michael Forbes, I knew it was time for a change,” he said.

That included a provocative new name, inspired by the silhouetted figure of the Native American Kokopelli — “fertility god, prankster, healer and storyteller,” according to Lyman’s menu. Lyman worried that the name might turn off some of his conservative customers. But, he said, “From the minute we opened the doors, female patrons showed me their Kokopelli earrings, their necklaces, their bracelets. It’s a lot more recognized as a positive symbol than I had imagined.”

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Maybe it’s all the fertility-god vibrations — enhanced by throbbing lyrics like I want some action from “I Love the Nightlife” — but the dining room has a lot more energy than it did during the Michael Forbes era, when it mostly attracted an over-60 crowd. It’s not surprising that the AARP members who live nearby have rediscovered the joint, but Lyman has sexier aspirations.

“We’re still working hard at getting younger patrons in here,” he says. “The thirtysomething crowd.”

If dozens of different call tequilas (along with fresh strawberry margaritas and studly bartenders) don’t do the trick, maybe the reasonably priced dinner dishes will. They certainly charmed Gia, who nibbled on three cheese-and-onion enchiladas as she wished aloud that we had the broad-shouldered waiter with the buzz cut as our server rather than, as she put it, “the very nice lady who looks like she used to be a nun.”

On that note, the spinach-filled Angel Fire enchiladas were more angelic than fiery, I’m sorry to say. Despite the addition of pepper-jack cheese, they didn’t pack much heat. Bob, who tends to be insanely fussy in Mexican restaurants, deemed the freshly made guacamole just as good as the Habanero’s version, if not better. He also gave high points to his cheese-drenched Rio Grande burrito, a thickly stuffed tortilla packed with beans, pork and cheese. Johnny was so busy wriggling in his seat as Donna Summer wailed “Dim All the Lights” that he barely took a bite from his bean burrito.

“He’ll be asking for platform shoes next,” I warned Gia. “And then you’ll be sorry.”

But by then it was time for dessert, and I wasn’t the least bit sorry to yank away the fried ice cream from his greedy little paws. Instead of some rock-hard frozen ball of vanilla ice cream encased in crushed taco shells, Kokopelli’s arrived inside a flaky, cinnamon-coated tortilla, topped with a fluffy cloud of whipped cream. It looked for all the world like a trashy tart. Even better, the ice cream was partly melted, which gave it a pleasing, custardlike consistency. To hell with the nightlife — this ice cream was all the action I needed.

On my second visit, though, the dining room was much more demure. The disco soundtrack had been replaced with more traditional Tejano music. And instead of getting the kindly, nunlike lady, Bob and I endured the most laissez-faire service imaginable from a very youthful waitress who was far more interested in doing her side work than scurrying over to our practically invisible table in the Siberian zone of the dining room. Not that I’m complaining or anything.

Maybe because it was late, or maybe because the kitchen wasn’t firing on all cylinders that night, this visit wasn’t as much fun as our earlier outing. The creamy chicken enchilada soup packed a nice kick (unlike many of the dishes here, which seem to be severely toned down in the spice department), but Bob’s Rio Ranch tacos were unexceptional. The steak and chicken fajitas were a bit oily, and the beef was oddly salty.

The highlight was eavesdropping on the trio of ladies in the adjoining booth as one woman regaled her pals with the story of how she’d gotten into a bitch fight with a former friend at a Plaza restaurant. Bob even shooed the waitress away at one point, whispering, “Can’t you see? I’m listening!”

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As I pushed away the metal fajita plate, I couldn’t help wishing I’d ordered the luscious crabmeat enchiladas in white-wine sauce that I’d sampled at an earlier lunch or tried the shrimp version of the same dish. But the menu had insisted that fajitas were the restaurant’s specialty. Oh, that Kokopelli is a prankster, all right!

“I liked it better on disco night,” Bob said.

I agree. The second night, Kokopelli’s needed to turn the beat around.