Junior Achievement

The most famous Italian-Americans in this country aren’t the Sopranos but the survivors, larger-than-life personalities who cleverly reinvented themselves to survive each shift in popular culture. The obvious examples are performers — Madonna Ciccone, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin — who, by both lucky breaks and savvy choices, anticipated changes in style, fashion and the media and remained stars long after their contemporaries had fallen into pop oblivion. America obviously has a soft spot for Italian-American survivors: retired “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio’s pushing coffeemakers, Liza Minnelli’s meltdowns and marriages, Rudolph Giuliani’s plotting his next political maneuver. Rome may be the Eternal City, but over here it’s the Italian-American legends that go on eternally.

In Kansas City, that applies to Italian-American restaurants, too. No one remembers the places that didn’t survive the Cold War — Il Pagliaccio, Pasano’s, Vitale’s, Maranzino’s. But Italian Gardens, Cascone’s and Jasper’s are still big names on the local scene — even if, like Sophia Loren, they’ve had their share of facelifts.

Jasper’s started humbly enough but was reinvented over the years in much the same spirit that Frank Sinatra of Hoboken, New Jersey, transformed himself from gangly idol to Oscar-winning actor to jet-setting crooner. Jasper’s owner was another New Jersey native, first-generation American Jasper Mirabile, who went from meatballs to movie stars. Ambitious, gruff and demanding, Mirabile — who came to Kansas City with his Sicilian-born parents at age thirteen — bought a neighborhood joint at 75th and Wornall in 1954 and started serving the same fare as all Midwestern “I-talian” restaurants: pasta with marinara sauce, pizzas, fried chicken, liver and onions.

But he had much bigger dreams. In 1962, the year his fourth son, Jasper Jr., was born, Mirabile turned his namesake restaurant into Kansas City’s first upscale Italian establishment. A vintage postcard, circa 1977, depicts a luxuriously appointed dining room and waiters in starched shirts and tuxedos. It was the closest thing Kansas City had to a swanky Hollywood restaurant, and when real movie stars such as Anthony Quinn, Mitzi Gaynor or Bob Hope came to town, Jasper’s was where they could dine with suitable drama. Caesar salad was prepared tableside; so were the fettuccine Alfredo and the cherries jubilee.

But Jasper Sr. saw the future of dining, and it was casual. With restaurants like Houston’s and the Cheesecake Factory carving out a new middle ground, the Mirabile paterfamilias voted on a new incarnation and a new location. The family sold its corner at 75th and Wornall to Walgreen’s, bought a shopping strip at 103rd Street on the site of the old Watts Mill, and reinvented itself again.

The newest Jasper’s incorporates the best features of everything that came before it. Gone are the tablecloths, but the good china remains. A chilled fork accompanies a salad, cocktails arrive on a silver tray, a glass of wine is served from a tiny carafe. The details reflect a long-vanished, gracious era in dining.

Jasper Mirabile Sr. died before the new restaurant opened in 1999. But the 160-seat dining room (and the enclosed patio, which looks out on Indian Creek’s surprisingly rapid current tumbling over a couple of waterfalls) is a tribute to his personal taste: a stone fireplace, Murano-style light fixtures, the mirrored panels from the old place. But the real draw is the food. Jasper Jr., the restaurant’s executive chef, rarely gets the local publicity he deserves, though his culinary credentials are impeccable. (He’s cooked at the James Beard House.) The packed dining room, however, is the best kind of praise.

My friend Elizabeth, an art historian, calls Jasper Jr. “the Raphael of the Range,” because even the antipasto is beautifully composed. For the Melanzane Othello, for example, Mirabile wraps sleek sheaths of purple eggplant around puffs of ricotta cheese set atop a marinara that glitters like rubies. Three discs of baked polenta (crusty and golden on the outside, creamy and cheesy inside) each get splashed with a different rustic sauce: a marinara, a creamy garlic laced with wine and a garlicky butter concoction.

Scampi Livornese bears no resemblance to the common broiled shrimp that other restaurants call “scampi.” In this version (created by Jasper Sr.), the crustaceans pose in a pool of rich cream sauce so shockingly fresh-tasting you wonder whether it was blended right next to the cow. Fortunately, a basket of rolls is close at hand to sop up every last bit of the sauce.

Elizabeth and I deconstructed the platter of fire-roasted artichokes, briny olives, salami and silken, ivory-colored Caciocavallo cheese. Overwhelmed by that palette of distinctive flavors, we were exhausted by the time our server brought out a heaping mound of flash-fried calamari coated with an airy batter and served with lemony aioli.

Taking a breather, Elizabeth lit up a cigarette and sipped on a dry Pinot Grigio (just like in Florence, you can smoke on the patio without provoking hostile stares) while I worked on a neat salad of greens, cucumber cubes, purple onion slivers and a single slice of salami. I could have stopped there, but it was a sultry night, and I was intrigued by a new pasta on the list of summer choices: thick tubes of cavatappi tossed in a light cream sauce with sautéed cantelope and tiny pink squares of prosciutto. It sounded absurd, but the sweet-and-salty combination, along with the slightly spicy Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, was actually lush and soothing.

Elizabeth stubbed out her cigarette and immersed herself in a dinner of tender veal flavored with a layer of prosciutto, tissue-thin fontina and vinegary capers in a sienna-colored sauce of wine and lemon.

She loved it, but it wasn’t as dazzling as the supple veal shank I’d had a few nights earlier. That osso buco, braised in fruity, dark Barolo wine, was slow-simmered with baby carrots and peas until the meat was so soft I could have eaten it with a spoon.

That night I had been with Martha, who blushed at the attention of our Ramon Navarro-resembling waiter — or maybe it was that sip of homemade grappa infused with espresso and bittersweet chocolate. I had the same dizzy reaction to the sight of the five-tier dessert tray. Who could possibly choose not to order chocolate-dipped cannoli shells (made, as always, by the octogenarian Mrs. Martin, a fixture at the restaurant) filled with frozen ricotta, chopped chocolate, lemon rind and a whisper of cinnamon? Or a wedge of fragrant tiramisu, its soft ladyfingers soaked with coffee and liqueur, layered with foamy whipped marscapone? Or a vanilla-bean ice cream tartufo rolled in chocolate biscotti crumbs or, even better, the bianca variation, rolled in toasted coconut and drizzled with a burnt-orange caramel sauce? There’s even a summer tartufo — named after the truffle — made with cannoli filling and juicy bits of blood orange. “It tastes like Christmas!” Martha said after one spoonful of the frozen cream, cinnamon and fruit.

And it might have been Christmas by the time we finally abandoned our booth that night. Our languid dinner had gone on for hours, but that’s a tradition Jasper Jr. doesn’t plan to change.