Restaurant at 1900 now offers elegant dining as carryout

Restaurant at 1900’s lobster roll. // Photo by Zach Bauman

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has forced chefs and cooks of all styles and skill levels to become increasingly more creative and nimble to keep their establishments afloat. It’s an evolution of the business that no one wants or asked for—yet even so, many chefs have proven themselves exceptionally adept at this form of crisis transition, offering customers incredible food and service, while managing to keep their staff members safe. It’s nearly impossible work, but somehow, they wake up and do it every day. This is the foreseeable future of restaurants as we know it.

Cheesecake tart. // Photo by Zach Bauman

The excellent work being done at the Restaurant at 1900 is no secret—since its opening two years ago, its chef, Linda Duerr, has received an accompanying two James Beard nominations for Best Chef: Midwest. Her restaurant specializes in elegant, approachable seasonal fare with exceptional ingredients—and it absolutely was never intended to be a carryout operation. Yet quickly, this remarkable chef and staff have made it one of the city’s finest with its “1900 at Home” service, with special touches that make eating at your own table feel like an extravagant experience.

Ocean Water Gimlet. // Photo by Zach Bauman

Monday through Saturday (depending on the time), customers can call in lunch or dinner orders and can add bottles of wine from the restaurant’s special reserve, or boozy and booze-free cocktail kits so specially packaged that opening them feels like opening a gift. But oh my lord, this food: The lobster roll off of the lunch menu, for example, features ultra-fresh lobster poached so perfectly that it melts in your mouth, placed on a butter-crisped bun with tangy heirloom tomatoes. Also hard to pass up is a dish of adobo cornmeal-crusted shrimp accompanied by a tempura-fried squash blossom so crisp, so airy it seems unreal, all atop a heap of bright, citric jicama-melon slaw. Pastry chef Elizabeth Paradise’s superb desserts are also nearly as perfect to look at as eat, including a creamy cheesecake tart topped with poached stone fruit and ripe cherries, along with a brown butter crumble and pistachios.

It doesn’t feel quite right to call what Duerr and her team are offering as carryout, but if nothing else these past 7 months have all been about redefining pretty much everything. If this is carryout, then may very well be the best carryout Kansas City has ever seen.

Photo by Zach Bauman

The Restaurant at 1900

1900 Shawnee Mission Pkwy, Mission Woods, KS

therestaurantat1900.com