Fatale Attraction

If there hadn’t already been a Kansas City saloon called Missie B’s (which isn’t named after a girl, by the way), actress Missy Koonce might have been tempted to name her new nightclub after herself. She wouldn’t have been the first show-business blonde to have taken that route. During the height of Prohibition in the 1920s, the brassy, Waco-born vaudeville star Mary Louise “Texas” Guinan made a fortune opening one illegal speakeasy after another. After Texas Guinan’s closed, she went on to open the 300 Club, Club Intime, Salon Royale, the Argonaut — all of which were shut down by the police. She’d get busted, go to jail for a few days, then open another honky-tonk as soon as she was released.

That distinctive speakeasy flavor lives on in the combination nightclub and restaurant that Koonce and her partner, J.D. Mann, finally opened last month. The venue is called Bar Natasha, after Natasha Fatale, the cartoon character that Koonce played to great success in the Coterie Theatre’s 1995 show Rocky & Bullwinkle. It doesn’t have a sign — Koonce and Mann can’t afford one yet — and the location is squeezed like an afterthought between two more impressive buildings at 19th Street and Main. But there’s a bouncer at the door and a costumed pianist tinkling on a grand piano. And there’s Koonce herself, the statuesque blonde mixing a cocktail, greeting a favored patron warmly or climbing onstage to belt out a song.

“It’s just like an old Paramount picture,” said my friend Ned, who blew a small fortune there one night ordering the $70 caviar platter and a bottle of expensive wine. “The pianist looks like Mae West. And the boys sitting at the bar look like a chorus line from some Busby Berkeley musical. I swear, if Cary Grant came through the door, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.”

I have yet to see anyone resembling Cary Grant (or Hugh Grant or former Kansas Citian Ed “Lou Grant” Asner, for that matter), but the joint has been a magnet for local thespians and lesbians as well as for gay men and straight socialites, since it opened on New Year’s Eve. A couple of area actors, Damron Armstrong and Paul Orwick, work there hustling drinks. And one night, jazz singer Queen Bey, who was visiting for the first time, polished off a fish taco, a couple of lamb meatballs and a glass of sherry before shimmying onto the circular stage to sing “God Bless the Child.”

I was in the crowd that night, taking in the whole scene. I recognized a weathered veteran of too many smoky saloons and too many vodka martinis stumbling over from the bar, sloshing the booze from his glass and grabbing a complete stranger to gush: “She’s marvelous, isn’t she? I simply adore Queen Bee.”

My friend Dennis snickered at the sight. “Queens, queens everywhere,” he whispered. “Oh, well — at least it’s a classy place. Not like some smelly old gay bar.”

Koonce and Mann felt confident that their idea for an old-fashioned piano lounge — an urban cabaret with paintings by Kansas City artists on the walls and “smoking salons” removed from the main stage — would be a hit. What they didn’t count on was selling a lot of food.

“J.D. wanted to have food as kind of a little bonus,” Koonce says. “Something to snack on while you drink.”

“What we didn’t want is the stuff that you associate as bar food,” Mann adds. “Fried cheese sticks, chicken strips, potato skins.”

To create a menu, Koonce called in writer and former restaurateur Lou Jane Temple (the proprietor of Café Lulu, a theater and literary hangout in the late 1980s). “Lou Jane came up with two dozen items, and we pared them down to about thirteen savory choices and six sweets,” Mann says. “And they’re all selling beyond our expectations. Even the desserts. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who come in and order a hot fudge sundae when it’s freezing outside.”

I couldn’t believe I was sitting there one cold Thursday, listening to my friend Roy confess the recent details of his nightmarish relationship (the singing drowned out the juiciest parts, alas) and licking the melted blue-cheese butter off a hunk of top butt. The steak slices were as tender as a much more expensive cut. I’ve shared two mellow dinners off of this steak plate and the equally inexpensive cheese platter, generously laden with a wedge of creamy brie, a chunk of sharp white cheddar and a dollop of milky goat cheese.

“This is a very European way to have dinner,” my friend Bob observed one night as he layered a wedge of green apple, a chunk of steak and a bit of cheddar onto a crust of toasted bread.

Mann says the sliced steak has proved to be the most popular menu item, with a skewered, grilled chicken-and-pork satay coming in second. I prefer the luscious lamb meatballs, sweetened with raisins and crunchy with pine nuts, or Temple’s sinfully rich veal pâté, layered with hazelnuts and prunes and fragrant with sherry.

It’s a finger-food menu — without a single deep-fried offering to be found. Even the sautéed fish tacos come rolled in soft tortillas. Temple has gone on to other projects (Mann says she’ll refresh the menu every season), and Toni Holsinger oversees the kitchen. Holsinger remains faithful to Temple’s innovations but should do more to make sure the bacon wrapped around the grilled shrimp is a shade crispier and the steak doesn’t get overcooked.

But considering how busy Bar Natasha gets on the weekend nights, it’s a wonder that the kitchen crew and the serving staff stay as sane as they do. To their credit, servers sweep out of the kitchen with hot appetizers still sizzling and whisk away dirty plates to make room for more treats: a plate of crunchy sliced vegetables with an amber-colored peanut dip, say, or more of those delectably seasoned meatballs for dipping in a cool concoction of fresh yogurt and chopped cucumber.

No one on any of my three visits was interested in ordering a hot fudge sundae, but Bob loved the fudgy flourless chocolate cake. And I was so thrilled with my own crock of warm, spicy apple crisp topped with oatmeal crunch that I refused to share it with anyone at the table. Desserts here are as classy as Cole Porter show tunes, right down to a homemade sorbet prepared daily (most recently it was apricot) and Temple’s version of sweet-potato-and-pecan pie.

Koonce should consider one dessert with a direct link to the legendary Natasha Fatale and Boris Badunov: cookies made with Lucky Charms cereal! Long before General Mills used an annoying cartoon leprechaun to peddle its sugar-frosted breakfast cereal, Boris and Natasha were the brand’s official Saturday-morning spokes-characters. They lost the gig in 1964.

“I didn’t know that,” Koonce says. “But I wasn’t born until 1967.”

Neither Koonce nor Temple likes my idea of a Lucky Charms dessert, though. It clearly isn’t, um, Godunov for Natasha.