Well-Aged Beef

Remember the ad campaign that asked “What becomes a legend most?”

In the 1970s and ’80s, Blackglama Furs ran a series of photographs featuring aging Hollywood icons — such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck — swathed in dark fur and looking a little weathered but still feisty and appealing. Whatever those babes had in their prime, the photographs proved they still had it.

A dozen or so restaurants in Kansas City also have survived the years with style (see Mouthing Off). Some of them are legendary, even without being draped in mink. Certainly that list is topped by The Golden Ox, the last remnant of the Kansas City stockyards’ bawdy, bustling years. Jay Dillingham, the president of the Kansas City Stockyard Company, created the restaurant in 1949 as the first upscale dining room in the neighborhood. Today it has outlived all of its West Bottoms contemporaries: The Frontier Room, The Rancher’s Café, the Cowtown Coffee House and the Hoof and Horn Club.

In fact, little is left on that stretch of Genessee Street that would suggest it once was a raucous, noisy and crowded street filled with stores, hotels, pool halls, barbershops and the agriculture offices for radio stations KCMO, KFRM and KMBC. When the stockyards closed in the 1970s, the neighborhood began to resemble a ghost town.

But The Golden Ox — which faces more steakhouse competition than it has in half a century — goes on with little change. And that’s what the customers want, according to the restaurant’s owners, Steve Greer and Jerry Rauschelbach. They have tweaked the menu a bit in the past four years and plan to reupholster the worn (and occasionally torn) leatherette booths. But they don’t want to do anything too drastic — it was one thing to add two salads to the menu, but messing with the cellophane-wrapped crackers was another story.

“I wanted to change the kind of crackers we serve in the cracker baskets with the salads,” Rauschelbach recalls, “and there was all kind of hue and cry. Our customers don’t want things to change.”

As a longtime fan of the place, I don’t either — on an aesthetic level anyway. The last major redecorating was after the big flood of 1951, and I love the dark woodwork, the wagon wheel chandeliers, the mirrors, the amber wall sconces and the cattle brands in the carpet.

It’s the kitchen that needs a kick in the saddle.

After four meals in as many weeks, I experienced a couple of nerve-wracking fumbles that nearly ruined good dinners. And something has to be done about the most glaring inaccuracy on the Golden Ox menu: the claim that all meals are served with “hot garlic bread.” I have never tasted these hard, vaguely garlicky little toasted bread rounds at anything but room temperature. They arrive with the dinners instead of the salads (that course comes with the assortment of Lance crackers), and it’s always a disappointment to peel back the linen napkin and pick up a piece of “bread” that could pass as cattle feed.

“You’re being much too critical,” carped my friend Connie. She was enjoying the restaurant’s best appetizer, a little casserole dish filled with baked mushrooms stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat under a bubbling blanket of melted cheese. “I mean, who cares about bread at a steakhouse? The potato is really the pivotal element in the starch category. If the potato isn’t good, it’s all over.”

Connie and her husband, Greg, hadn’t been to The Golden Ox for years, preferring to make the scene at the newer, trendier restaurants. “But we’ve been talking about going back forever,” she said when I invited them to join me. “I mean, it’s so out, it’s really in.”

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It’s not fair to contrast The Golden Ox with such recent-vintage, high-glamour imports as the Capitol Grille, Morton’s of Chicago and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. The Golden Ox is, after all, well into middle age and a little rough around the edges. But I’ve seen a reverse snobbery among my peers: Because it has stayed true to itself and its customers, The Golden Ox has become — cold garlic bread and all — hip and happening.

“You get a lot of bang for your buck here,” Greg said, thrilled to find a steakhouse menu that wasn’t strictly à la carte. Dinners include a salad and vegetable, which adds up to a lot of value: A complete filet mignon and lobster dinner costs less than most single steaks at the upscale steakhouses.

And Greer and Rauschelbach have added two salads, beyond the basic iceberg-and-crouton affair with a house-made herb vinaigrette. The restaurant now serves a wonderful concoction of fresh tomato slices piled with crumbles of pungent blue cheese, and a Caesar with a creamy, garlicky dressing. When we polished off those, a server in a long, starched apron whisked away the plates and returned with dinner.

Once, my ribeye was as tough as leather. But on another visit, a sizzling, tender filet mignon was perfectly cooked, and a thick smoked pork chop put me in hog heaven. Though it was juicy, the twelve-ounce prime rib could have been warmer. There was absolutely nothing to complain about, however, when it came to the combination plate with a tidy little filet and four medium-sized shrimp, served scampi-style in a garlic-butter sauce.

I was much less entranced by the hickory-smoked chicken breast, which had spent a shade too much time on the grill and arrived dry, accompanied by a plastic cup of syrupy teriyaki sauce. And the sirloin kabob, grilled with green pepper and onion, was utterly blah — with or without the teriyaki sauce.

The quality of the side dishes apparently depends on who’s minding the kitchen: One night the roasted garlic mashed potatoes were not only devoid of garlic but also cold. On another visit the steaming-hot mound was garlic-o-rama. A green bean casserole topped with crunchy fried onions would have been delicious if it had been hot. On the other hand, the steaming hot stuffed baked potato, crammed with sour cream, cheese and bacon, turned out to be the crucial element Connie had hoped for. Also wonderful were the creamy cheesy potatoes, a decadent version of traditional scalloped spuds — but they were almost too rich to finish.

Among the five desserts are an intensely sugary slab of Chocolate Suicide Cake and a forgettable bourbon pecan pie. But the spicy and tart warm apple pie, served with a mound of whipped cream, was far better than I had expected — and I had to fight with Connie and Greg over the last bite.

Even on the busiest night, the service at The Golden Ox is friendly and attentive. The music in the dining room is almost always recorded big band arrangements from the 1930s and ’40s, which sometimes is overpowered by the clatter of plates and trays coming out of the kitchen or the hum of the customers, chatting and laughing and clinking glasses.

One night I looked up from my booth and saw a single table of well-dressed, middle-aged ladies having supper in the center of the dining room, completely surrounded by groups of men: businessmen in suits, cowboy types in blue jeans and scuffed boots, a noisy group of visiting conventioneers in matching jackets. The acres of stockyards that once surrounded The Golden Ox may be long gone, but this restaurant’s dining room most becomes the West Bottoms’ legend.