Orange and Red

The Pitch's Fat City blog has been doing a series of posts counting down their 50 favorite dishes in KC. It's reasonably interesting and should certainly be used as a guide to trying new things in the area. That's exactly what I did Saturday morning as I was strolling along at the Overland Park Farmer's Market. I decided to stop into Clock Tower Bakery to grab a croissant (I love croissants and Clock Tower Bakery has pretty good ones, they even have a chocolate croissant), but they were either out or didn't have any that day. So, I dug into my memory banks and remembered that the orange roll from Clock Tower was one of the 50 favorite dishes. So I got it.

Mind you, I only had one and it may have been a bad one, but if that roll was one of the 50 best dishes in KC then KC isn't quite the food city I believe it to be. And that's not to say the orange roll was bad, but the orange zest may have had a little too much pith in it because it made each bite a little more bitter than I would have liked it. In the end, I would have preferred one of my beloved croissants.

Not only would I not put the orange roll on my list of top 50 dishes, it wasn't even the best dish I had that day. Rather surprisingly, in a day where I had Harry's Country Club fish and chips and some pulled pork in addition to the orange roll, my favorite dish of the day came from Mission Bowl. We had decided to go bowling at our neighborhood bowling fun center after dinner. We happened upon quite the little deal where each game cost $1.50 plus we got 2 free sodas. They also had some snacks set out at a little table by the concession stand. It had been several hours since I ate so I went to check out the snacks. They had some tortilla chips set out with a couple of little crock pots full of queso. They also had some red shelled mini tacos (I call em 2 bite tacos from my days eating at Willie C's in Wichita). I have a strong love for 2 bite tacos and I was intrigued by these red shelled ones. I grabbed 5 or 6 and headed back to our bowling lane.

This is not hyperbole, from my first bite of the red 2 bite taco I knew I was eating the best bowling alley meal of my life. They were fiery hot and quite dangerous to take a bite and then bowl. After the first one I learned to eat them while Stella was bowling so I could drink from my big PBR can after each taco. The first 6 were gone quite quickly, Stella was even addicted to them. I went back and got 10 more and found out they were jalapeno chicken mini tacos. These 10 were gone in a matter of moments. Unfortunately, Mission Bowl didn't put any more out so we were left with just chips to eat (I have a rule about not eating from crock pots in Mission). The jalapeno chicken mini tacos might force me to take up bowling or at the very least start eating at Mission Bowl. The red mini tacos definitely make my top 50 KC food items.

As an aside, I have been doing some Googling today trying to find the red delights and I've come up with nothing. I've never seen these anywhere and I'm sure they come off the back of a Sysco truck. I don't understand why more places don't have the red mini tacos. They're simply divine.