Oklahoma Joes

Restaurant website
3002 West 47th Ave
Kansas City, KS 66103
map


Strongly Recommended

Who doesn't like gas station BBQ? Unlike other gas station BBQ, this has actually taken over most of the gas station until it is more of a restaurant than a place to fill your car. When I arrived, there was a line out the door and across the parking lot. Once inside, I realized that the line didn't end there, but wrapped around the inside of the building. But the service is quick and efficient, and seem to be used to such a lunch rush. Seating is at a bar along the window and at tables crammed into every available space. Amazingly it wasn't that difficult to find a place to sit, even with the crowd.

I ordered the BBQ Dinner of ribs and pulled pork, served with one side (beans) and texas toast (a steal at $11.79). The ribs were awesome! Great flavor, a little chewy but not tough, and not falling apart. The pulled port was fine - it was pulled pork. The BBQ sauce was good, but I have friends who make just as good pulled pork and as good or better sauce.

I have to say that besides the ribs the other highlight of the meal was the beans, which I don't usually look forward to. But these were clearly homemade beans with nice BBQ flavor and little bits of meat running around. I ate the entire thing (and then flew home to Boston, yay!). The texas toast was good too, and fun to watch them run the pieces of white bread through this buttering machine. I have to wonder where one buys a buttering machine. In any case, if you are in Kansas City, this place is worth a visit!

Plaza III

Plaza III
4749 Pennsylvania Ave Kansas City, MO 64112
(816) 753-0000
http://www.plazaiiisteakhouse.com/
Map

Not Recommended

How can I put this gently…despite receiving multiple awards: 2006 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, 2006 Tom Horan's America's Top 10 Club, 2006 Ingram's 2004 Best Overall Restaurant I found the experience to be so underwhelming…so pedestrian…so unimpressive that I can’t understand how this restaurant received any accolades at all.

The meal opened with a tureen of crudites (celery, carrots and radishes served on a bed of ice) that was attractive but no thought was given to the fact that I needed to use a knife to cut the veggies just to make them small enough to eat. The dip that was serves along side was a weak, thin ranch dressing that was boring, to say the least. The bread board was fine; though the bread was bland (I think the baker forgot to add salt).

I ordered a cup of seafood bisque as an appetizer. The waiter delivered a sub-par bisque with a grainy texture and no real seafood flavor to speak of.

For my entrée I ordered the Steak au Fromage, a 10 ounce New York strip steak with blue cheese butter on top. Despite the websites claim that their beef is aged in a "...temperature-controlled, specially-designed Beef Locker for 21-28 days to develop natural tenderness and exceptional flavor" the waiter told us that the meat was “Wet aged for three weeks”. There is a tremendous difference between wet and dry aging. Dry aging tenderizes the meat while concentrating flavor. The process takes special care and is very time consuming and expensive, requiring extra effort, storage and high-quality beef. Wet aging will break down the meat and tenderize it to a degree, but offers little else. In wet aging, the beef sits in a “cry-o-vac” package, marinating in its own blood and inter-cellular fluids. Not very appetizing.

The steak was cooked to the correct temperature (I had ordered it medium-rare) and the blue cheese butter on top melted away leaving a thin blue cheese essence behind. The steak would have been better off accompanied by a simple slice of good quality Gorgonzola. To add insult to the injury of the $40.00 price for the steak was the $8.00 price for the insipid side of Lyonnaise potatoes. Apparently the chef (like the baker) had never heard of salt...or pepper. The entire presentation of my entrée was careless and detracted from the experience. The over-large plate emphasized the fact that I just paid forty bucks for this entree. The steak had a 2 ounce ice cream scoop of blue cheese butter and a lump of curly-leafed parsley tossed unimaginatively on the plate. Had the kitchen at least had the decency to put Italian parsley or arugula or another culinary herb on the plate I could have eaten it with the steak to add a little interest.

I passed on the dessert menu and then grudging paid $80.00 dollars (including tip) for what should have been a $40.00 meal. I have no issue paying top dollar for quality food that is prepared with attention to detail. Plaza III is obviously cashing in on the steak house craze that is running around the country but in no way, shape of form does it deliver.

Smokestack Bar-B-Q

Smokestack Bar-B-Q
8920 Wornall
Kansas City, Missouri
Phone: 816-444-5542
Fax: 816-822-0198
Map

Highly Recommended

Off of Wornall Street, a block up from Ward Boulevard lined with Corporate Offices and homes that are just shy of Newport Rhode Island mansions is Smokehouse Bar-B-Q. Smokehouse Bar-B-Q very small and unassuming storefront tucked into a corner of a tiny shopping plaza. The restaurant sits about 50 people and the day I was there for lunch, there wasn’t an empty seat in the place.

The menu was inclusive: ribs, sausages, burnt ends (crispy little chunks of beef, cooked well done), chicken, turkey, ham, wings and baked potato stuffed with Poor Russ Meat (finely chopped burnt ends). Lunch plates run from about $7.50 to $9.15 and, from what I saw going by my table, are all piled very generously. Salads and Appetizers listed were not very surprising: house, chef’s, grilled and fried chicken salads and onion rings, mushrooms and Cajun wings under the apps.

I had the “His Ribness” which is a plate full of ribs, fries, pit beans, pickles and toast. The 6 ribs were cut from a rack of spare ribs, sauced generously with vinegary tomato based bbq sauce. The pit beans were very good (although cold) in what I assume is the same sauce that was slathered on my ribs. The beans came in a side dish with an equal ratio of small pieces of smoked meat. The fries were non-descript and I left them (and the slice of white toast) sitting on the plate.

Service was fast, friendly and attentive. I was in and out in under 30 minutes and was so generously fed that I can go into hibernation for the rest of the day.

I found everything I could have wanted in a bbq joint with one exception…no beer. I did not ask about bringing in my own.