The Real Thing

Anthony Spino III doesn’t need demographic studies or development surveys to know that things are finally changing in downtown Kansas City. He only needs to step out the front door of his family’s restaurant, Anthony’s Restaurant & Lounge. “It used to be that I’d only see street people walking around in our neighborhood,” Spino says. “Now I see young people jogging and riding their bikes all over the place.”

At 27, Spino is pretty young himself, and his brother, Vito, who now helps him run the restaurant for his parents, is only 23. Vito wasn’t even born when his father, Anthony Jr., turned a downtown saloon called The Soup Kitchen into a full-service restaurant in 1979. The Soup Kitchen, operated by Anthony III’s grandparents, was a modest affair: a bar, 13 stools and grandmother Antoinette’s daily lunch specials. That original building still exists but was incorporated as the banquet room for the new Anthony’s back when Jimmy Carter was president and Kansas City still had a professional basketball team and the country’s first all-disco radio station.

Downtown Kansas City still had a glimmer of life when the Spinos took a gamble and built a new restaurant at the corner of Admiral and Grand. But the pulse was fading fast — the once-thriving entertainment scene known as the River Quay, on the other side of the highway loop, had already gone from coolsville to ghost town. And things were equally grim a few blocks to the west, where the bawdy dives and strip clubs on 12th Street were slated for demolition and several big movie palaces and department stores had been either closed or razed.

Anthony’s has outlasted most of its urban contemporaries, including the venerable Italian Gardens and Jennie’s. Why? Maybe it’s thanks to the little shrine to St. Jude — the patron saint of hopeless causes —mounted on the stone bluff facing the restaurant’s parking lot. A friend of mine scoffs at that theory. “The reason Anthony’s carries on,” he insists, “is that it’s the last real no-bullshit, smoker-friendly, unpretentious Italian-American joint left in town. You know what Buca di Beppo pretends to be? Anthony’s is the real thing.”

That point hit me like a ton of mostaccioli when I recently checked out one of the newer chain-restaurant operations near the NASCAR track, the Texas-based Johnny Carino’s, which claims to “celebrate the simple values and colorful lifestyle of the Italian countryside” (according to its Web site) but is actually a slickly packaged version of an old-fashioned pasta palace … like Anthony’s.

Anthony’s isn’t physically old, but in terms of style and sensibility, it’s much closer in spirit to the kind of no-frills neighborhood spaghetti joints that my parents loved in the 1960s. There’s even a vintage cigarette machine at the entrance, and smokers get the better tables in the front dining room. (Cigarettephobes are whisked to the harshly lit back room.) There must be a powerful smoke-sucking device in the room because on the night I brought a couple of friends to dine there, Carol Ann — who detests the smell of burning tobacco — barely noticed the puffing pair in the next booth.

It had been years since Carol Ann or Patrick had eaten at Anthony’s. They didn’t even know it was still open. When we walked through the front door (after parking and genuflecting to St. Jude), we caught a few seconds of a screaming match between two street people on the other side of Grand. It was dusk, you see, a little late for joggers.

The light fixtures in the front dining room are outfitted with pink bulbs that presumably make every diner look younger. But not thinner, alas, so what the hell was I doing slathering a spongy piece of warm Roma bread with butter before I even ordered? I shamelessly ate three more slices before the appetizers arrived, and they weren’t lightweight, either: heavily breaded hunks of fried calamari (and a little too chewy, despite the gorgeously crispy crust) and a pile of exceptionally delicious chicken livers. Patrick gave the livers the highest possible compliment when he announced, “They’re better than Go Chicken Go.”

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The dipping sauce for both was the slightly sweet “red sauce” — great-grandmother Angelina’s sugo recipe — that’s the signature sauce for most of the pasta dishes at Anthony’s. Sophisticated palates might find it too sugary or too bland, but it was a joyful nostalgic experience for me. Not because my own Sicilian nonna made a similar sauce (hers wasn’t sweet but potent with garlic), but my favorite childhood restaurant in Indianapolis did. That particular joint, long closed, also served the same kind of soggy iceberg-lettuce salad, drenched in a vinegary dressing, that Anthony’s offers up with dinners. I’m almost ashamed to confess how much I love that salad.

I have eaten more elegant interpretations of veal scalloppine in my day, but Anthony’s is the most rustic, emotionally satisfying version, the pounded veal medallions thickly blanketed with a smoky, garlicky marinara. Patrick couldn’t decide between eggplant parmesan or the steak Modiga until the waiter told him he could have the beef with a side of eggplant. The filet arrived on a sizzling platter, all bubbly with molten mozzarella cheese. “It’s like the very best Philly steak sandwich I’ve ever had,” Patrick said, “but without the bread and with a lot of white wine. And real lemon juice! I just bit into a lemon seed.”

Carol Ann ignored my protestations that Anthony’s variation on fettuccine puttanesca wasn’t traditional enough (the “whore’s pasta” is usually made with black olives, anchovies, capers and red peppers), although she was thrilled that Anthony’s heaps its sluttish dish with lots of shrimp, clams and chunks of crabmeat. It’s imitation crabmeat, but Carol Ann didn’t mind, and our waiter told me that most of their customers prefer it. “Real crabmeat is kind of boring,” he said.

Well, it is a little more savory than the sweet, succulent artificial crab that is also generously laden on several other dishes, including the addictively good fried artichoke hearts that I ate on my second visit, this time with my friend Jeanne and her two teenage daughters (who thought the faux crab was, like, the bomb). Anthony’s isn’t haute cuisine, for God’s sake. It’s a cozy, unassuming dining room with uncloaked tables, plastic tumblers, fake plants and pink light bulbs. You want fancy? Go to Jasper’s or Lidia’s. You want big slabs of cheesy lasagna or fettuccine swimming in thick cream sauce with peas? Go to Anthony’s.

I’m not sure how to describe the dish called bruzzalini, an Anthony’s specialty made with ground sausage rolled around a hard-boiled egg and inspired, perhaps, by the hard-to-find (in Kansas City, anyway) rolled-meat delicacy braciola. It’s a tasty, mildly seasoned creation, and it’s pretty damned good with a hunk of Roma bread. Like an Italian meatloaf, but better.

The Spino family still makes some of the desserts offered here, including the cannoli, the cheesecake, and a thickly iced layer cake. The tiramisu is from a big food-service vendor, but it’s pretty decent. One night, the featured pastry was a big slab of Boston cream pie, which the two teenagers had never seen before in any restaurant. They turned up their noses at the idea of spumoni (the waiter was insulted — and rightly so), but they polished off the custard-filled cake faster than you could say porcellini piccoli.

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While they attacked the dessert, I walked across the dining room to say hello to two friends who live in a chic downtown loft when they’re not visiting their place in New York City. “We love Anthony’s!” they told me. “We eat here all the time.”

Yes, downtown is definitely changing, but thank goodness Anthony’s stays the same.