House of Style

Without confessing too many details, I’ll admit this: The downtown Hereford House and I were conceived in the same year, and it’s a tossup which of us is aging less gracefully. We probably both need face-lifts, though the Hereford House dining rooms did get a new coat of semigloss, tomato-red paint a couple of years ago. That not only disguised a lot of wear and tear but also made the crummy artwork (including an oil painting of John Wayne’s head floating over a desert landscape) less disturbing.

I’ve never quite understood the institution’s long-standing reputation, particularly among members of the tourist set who act as though eating a rib-eye dinner there is a culinary pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Compared to many other local steakhouses, the original Hereford House comes off as slightly shabby and second-rate. The food, however, has improved a bit over the past couple of years. I wonder whether that’s because, as the Hereford House empire expands, the newer restaurants have far more style and panache than the old codger on 20th Street. All Hereford House restaurants use the same menu, but because each of the four outposts is a distinct step up in class, the food has taken a comparable step, too.

That’s especially noticeable at the two-month-old Hereford House at Zona Rosa. The newest addition to Rod Anderson’s collection of restaurants (which also includes Pierpont’s and the Union Café at Union Station) is one of the most attractive. But the 230-seat venue in the heart of the Northland’s artfully contrived Zona Rosa shopping village is more than just a pretty face. Service there is impeccable, and chef Richard Perry (who moved over from the Leawood location) is a stickler for getting food out of his kitchen while it’s hot and making sure the portions are obscenely huge.

Although it’s less than a year old, Zona Rosa is already crammed with restaurants (less one spectacular failure, the Flat Wok Mongolian Barbecue, which was open for barely two months). Most of them are national chain operations, such as the Outback Steakhouse and the yet-to-open Ted’s Montana Grill. But Anderson isn’t concerned about these lower-priced beef vendors horning in on his territory. “We have a more upscale concept,” he says. “Not so much in terms of price but most assuredly in the sense of a dining experience.”

I don’t always agree with Anderson’s pronouncements, but in this case he’s right on the money. This Hereford House starts earning high marks as soon as patrons step up to the cowhide-wrapped front desk and encounter savvy hosts — who actually seem to have received some training, unlike their counterparts at other Zona Rosa restaurants. The place looks terrific, with massive iron-and-glass light fixtures, dark woodwork, a patterned carpet and prairie-style oil landscapes. Defying most corporate dining conventions, this steakhouse takes dinner reservations (my new barometer for dining with dignity in this town) and doesn’t scorn smokers, even if they’re confined to the bar side of the building. And the attractive servers, in their neatly starched white shirts, have exquisite manners.

On my first visit, I brought along a trio of unabashed dining snobs: Bob, Jim and Karen. Jim had never been to Zona Rosa and was impressed by the “attractive, small-town quality” of the shopping center, with its winding streets and fountains. “With this here,” he said as he unfurled a white linen napkin over his lap, “why would Northlanders ever travel south to eat anymore?”

That was precisely what Anderson was thinking when he committed to opening the new restaurant. “There are lots of housing developments and hotels on the other side of the river,” he tells me. “And people didn’t want to drive downtown to eat.”

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Even a midtowner like me would rather drive to Zona Rosa — on Interstate 29, it’s a 20-minute shot from downtown — than dine at the creaky original venue. Can I help it if I prefer more glamorous surroundings?

That first dinner at Hereford House North was as comforting as I wanted it to be. The appetizers — which all tend to be of the fattening persuasion — were fine, particularly the slices of meaty portabella mushroom wrapped in a sheath of won ton, flash-fried and served with a soothing horseradish cream sauce. The salads, like the dinners, are rolled out on a four-wheeled cart and presented with great theatricality, along with big, fluffy yeast rolls.

Karen decided to indulge herself on that night’s dinner special, an 8-ounce tenderloin sided with four Cajun barbecued shrimp and a mound of garlic mashed potatoes. “It’s a gorgeous presentation,” she said, smiling wanly, “but I’m already full.” She pressed bravely forward, noting that her husband, Jim, was raving about his two thick slabs of ground sirloin meatloaf and Bob was already halfway through a 10-ounce Kansas City strip crusted with black pepper and melted bits of pungent blue cheese.

I was more discreet that night, ordering a hunk of boneless rainbow trout drenched in garlic butter and cluttered with toasted almonds. It was satisfying enough that I was almost able to ignore dessert, which included a beautiful wedge of chocolate ganache cake with a thick layer of chocolate mousse that we all shared. “This is so fabulous, I don’t care if I die of a heart attack,” Jim said. I did, but I impulsively stuck my fork into the cake anyway.

The second time I visited the restaurant, this time with Bob and the lovely Joy, we had some unexpected live entertainment when a raucous quartet of smokers wandered into the nonsmoking main dining room with lit cigarettes between their fingers. The reaction from other diners was priceless — they coldly stared at the nicotine-loving foursome as if they were lepers — before management graciously escorted them back into the bar area. I adore restaurant scenes, especially if they don’t end in violence.

We were seated at the back of the dining room, with its panoramic wall of windows looking out at the bright lights of the surrounding Zona Rosa shops (including the bizarre Hot Topic shop, which sells eccentricities such as Morbid nail polish, Sid Vicious T-shirts and Barbie lip gloss). Even though the night was bitterly cold, plenty of people were walking past the picture windows. In fact, this may be the only Hereford House with any kind of view. The concept has been so well-received that Anderson tells me he’s toying with the idea of adding windows to the original Crossroads location.

We also had a sweeping view of the dining room, where Joy noted that there was very little conversation among the diners. “Most people are totally concentrating on eating,” she observed. Well, there’s a lot to eat. Bob had ordered the special du jour, a variation on the steak-and-shrimp theme, this time with a 10-ounce filet in a portabella-mushroom sauce, grilled shrimp and a petite 3-ounce lobster tail. Even though his lobster looked more like an overgrown shrimp, he announced that the dish was “absolutely wonderful. ”

Joy, meanwhile, was working on a buttery crustacean from her shrimp-scampi dinner. “The food here isn’t exciting, but good, solid food,” she said. “It’s like going out on a date with your husband instead of, say, Antonio Banderas. Comforting but not thrilling.”

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I agreed, taking great comfort in my chicken Chardonnay — two plump, pan-seared chicken breasts blanketed in a golden onion sauce lightly flavored with white wine. Instead of rice, I had opted for one of this restaurant’s signature side dishes, a fat (and hot!) twice-baked potato.

I would have been happy to skip dessert that night (in case I ever wanted to wear a snug Sid Vicious T-shirt), but Bob and Joy were game, so we split the restaurant’s clever spin on the traditional carrot cake. Instead of being frosted with cream-cheese icing, the two layers are served as sort of a free-form sculpture, held together with a thick swath of icing, then lightly toasted and drizzled with a caramel sauce and sprinkled with candied walnuts. It was a nice twist on an old theme.

So is this brand-new Hereford House.