Rah Rahs

Restaurants hit middle age faster than people do, thanks to heavy wear and tear on almost every surface — from the fabric on the booths to the steel in the exhaust fans. If a restaurant survives a decade, it’s solidly into middle age; by the time it reaches thirty, it’s geriatric. This theory makes the 99-year-old Savoy Grill the Methuselah of local restaurants. But because of its classic lines and timeless décor, the Savoy has never needed retooling.

Plenty of younger restaurants haven’t aged as well — Fedora comes to mind, as does Benton’s Steak & Chop House. Those places could use a little cosmetic surgery — or something much more drastic, as was the case with the Northland’s ten-year-old Paradise Grill. It’s had a dramatic facelift and a personality transplant.

The freestanding building was gutted for much of the summer and eventually lost its name and its identity (noisy, crowded, plebeian menu, flashy décor). It reopened on September 14 as the sixth member of PB&J’s glamorous Yia Yia’s sisterhood, the first of which was born at 119th and Roe in Leawood. If the old Paradise Grill was a suburban soccer mom, this new incarnation is the Stepford wife: dark, mysterious and seductive, but domestic enough to boast cosmopolitan cooking and spotless bathrooms.

It might be scary if the female servers were gorgeous automatons, but they’re not. In fact, the distaff members of the wait team are funny and perky in a wholesome Midwestern way. The waiters, on the other hand, clearly have been hired on the basis of good cheekbones, narrow waists and artfully gelled hair. They’re not only good-looking, but smart, too! At one meal, our server was a former construction worker who also worked part-time for the Dennis Moore campaign.

Ben was an excellent waiter as well, and he listened patiently to my barrage of questions. He even smiled when I rolled my eyes at that night’s pasta “special,” a combination of cavatappi noodles in a cumin-citrus broth drizzled with a chipolte-lime cream sauce. “I am so bored with that over-the-top fusion-cuisine bullshit,” I snapped, stopping Ben before he could defend the chef (not executive chef D.J. Nagle, who was off that night) and the motley collection of flavors.

“That’s a throwback to the old menu,” Bill Crooks, co-owner of the PB&J restaurant empire, told me later. And I’m happy to report that the offerings on the actual menu (which differs slightly from the Johnson County Yia Yia’s) are more straightforward. That’s how Crooks wants them. “I know who put it on that night,” Crooks said when I dissed the polyglot pasta dish, “and I’ll kill him!”

Murder? No, just tell the kitchen crew not to let their cute black berets go to their egos: They’re cooks, not Picassos of the spice cabinet. A little artistry goes a long way, and at the new Yia Yia’s, even the butter — cut into thin triangles, splashed with cilantro oil and sprinkled with porcini mushroom dust — becomes a canvas.

“Could I get some plain butter?” asked my cilantro-hating friend Jeanne, who had found the idea of a stylish, upscale restaurant in North Kansas City to be “unfathomable.”

“I used to live in the Northland, back when the Gold Buffet was the apex of sophistication,” she said.

Earlier, standing in the tiny lobby as we waited for a table (the place was packed), I had pointed out to her that the crowd was pretty high-toned, sporting lots of expensive leather coats and tasteful jewelry. “They look just like the customers out in Overland Park,” I said.

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“Not so fast,” Jeanne said, nudging me. “Mullet alert at the bar.” And there he was: a wiry, goateed customer in T-shirt and jeans, his head draped in the longest, most luxurious mullet ever — the King of Mulletville.

The old Paradise Grill crowd hadn’t abandoned the restaurant, we were told. Why would they? The food is better, the prices are still reasonable, and designer Hal Swanson has upholstered the walls in thick fabrics and carpeted the floor so you can have a civilized conversation.

Now the place has enough self-confidence to offer a petite filet on the children’s menu. (My eleven-year-old goddaughter was thrilled to have an alternative to chicken strips and hamburgers.) Even more startling was a complimentary amuse-bouche for the grown-ups: a tiny preview of coming attractions to whet the appetite. (On both of my visits, it was a cube of seared ahi tuna dressed up in different sauces.) But not every diner gets one. “We only make twenty or so a night,” Crooks said.

Jeanne and I followed that with five grilled shrimp, each wrapped in a swath of salty pancetta and perched on a mound of cilantro, shaved fennel and thin slices of tart Fuji apple. Later, slices of crispy flatbread arrived with tissue-thin squares of pink prosciutto, swirls of caramelized onion, pearly slices of pear and pungent gorgonzola.

A Cobb Salad devotee, Jeanne was intrigued by chef Nagle’s “mod” updating of that Hollywood hybrid. Introduced at the now-defunct Brown Derby restaurant in 1936 as the first main-course salad, it’s always been more full-meal deal than insalata. But Nagle’s crew doesn’t serve the ingredients all chopped up, the way Robert Cobb did. Instead, it’s sort of a do-it-yourself show. Greens tossed in parmesan-dill dressing are heaped over roasted chicken, then topped with slices of turkey and crunchy bacon and sided with mini-mounds of croutons and avocado as well as a jumble of marinated onion and chopped tomato.

Needing something hot and familiar to cheer me on what was a damp, chilly night, I found great comfort in a plate of autumn pasta. Puffs of ravioli stuffed with squash and chanterelles came covered in a glossy, amber-colored brown-butter sauce delicately seasoned with rosemary.

On another crummy evening — even colder and rainier — my friends and I experienced comfort-food nirvana. Nagle’s simple, hearty dinners with full-bodied, potent flavors were the culinary equivalent of being wrapped in a thick, soft quilt.

Warm arborio risotto came richly laden with chopped lobster and translucent curls of fennel. Peeking over a steamy bowl of creamy polenta, a meaty slab of braised short ribs was glazed in a cumin-scented barbecue sauce. A wood-roasted, juicy chicken breast lay surrounded by roasted winter vegetables. Best of all, pink chunks of tender hanger steak — beef tenderloin marinated in beer and brown sugar and grilled until it’s smoky and sweet — were scattered over a mahogany heap of slowly simmered potato “risotto” (a luscious hash, really) and topped with a clever little “mullet” of roasted portabella mushroom.

Crooks told me that chef Nagle and his staff are still refining their dessert tray. That would explain why the vanilla crème brûlée was a sugar-topped puddle of cold egg soup on one night and creamy perfection with fresh raspberries, blueberries and strawberries the next. The pumpkin cheesecake was delightful, but the quivering blob of panna cotta was made with so much gelatin that it almost slid off the spoon. And why can’t there be some new, rich chocolate alternative to that tired PB&J confection made of ganache wrapped in phyllo pastry? A dining room isn’t the only thing that needs a facelift in the millennium. Dreary desserts do, too.