Haggis Heaven
I’m always up for some new culinary adventure — provided it won’t poison or blind me or make my skin break out. But I think I might draw the line at one of the featured dishes on the menu at this year’s Ethnic Enrichment Festival, August 19-21 at Swope Park. This brand-new twist on the Scottish delicacy haggis — a traditional sausage made from sheep’s stomach lining stuffed with minced heart, liver and other tasty organs, as well as onion, suet and oatmeal — is called “haggis on a stick.” It will be sold at the Scotland booth along with that other classic Scottish treat, iced tea.
The festival, an annual celebration of Kansas City’s ethnic diversity, has always offered a wide variety of international foods and beverages, but this year marks the long-awaited return of a Greek booth. “The local Greek festivals had that covered,” says festival manager Dick Horvatic. Not every booth will be quite as traditional as Scotland’s. Instead of poi or roast pig, the Hawaii booth will sell “Hawaiian ice.” You know … snow cones.
Festivalgoers can buy imported Icelandic water at the Iceland booth and, at the Lithuanian booth, frozen apricot-torte slices and bacon buns. Prices vary at each booth but range from 50 cents for a single item to $6 for a complete meal. “But you don’t want to do that,” Horvatic advises. “You want to try something from every booth. If you ate one meal, you’d be stuffed.”
Speaking of an entirely different Kansas City tradition: I’ve always wondered what happened to the beautiful stained-glass dome from the old Harry Starker’s restaurant and bar on the Country Club Plaza (not to be confused with the very elegant Starker’s Reserve Restaurant that’s still there). The other day, I looked up and saw it again — cold-stone sober this time — in the main dining room of the nine-week-old Smokehouse Bar-B-Que (8451 Northwest Prairie View Road) in the Zona Rosa Shopping Center.
Starker’s owner Cliff Bath sold the 21-year-old stained-glass dome (which was created in Portland, Oregon, at a pre-installation cost of $48,000) in 1996, and it apparently has been in storage since then. “The owner got a great deal on it,” Bath says. “The auction was held on the coldest, snowiest day in Kansas City in a decade. There weren’t a lot of bidders.” Bath says the dome sold for less than half of what he paid.
But Bath’s loss is Zona Rosa’s gain. One form of ethnic enrichment is to be surrounded by elegance while eating burnt ends and deep-fried corn nuggets. It’s a very American concept.
