Shake Shack

The Shake Shack on Santa Fe in old Overland Park (8039 Santa Fe Dr.) has taken over the spot vacated by Wheat State Pizza recently. I've lived in this neighborhood for nearly 10 years and this is one of those locations that seems to have had a new restaurant every year. It just seems like it's a tough place to make a living. But, I think Shake Shack has a pretty good shot at making it.

The painting on the windows says "Local, Organic, Sustainable", 3 words that excite hipsters and recycling friendly suburbanites like no other. I'm only interested in if it tastes good. I was heartened to see whole potatoes laying around the grill area as I walked in the door meaning they're cutting their own fries. If a place is cutting their own fries they're taking a giant step towards being a really good restaurant. As soon as the 2 ladies in line in front of me placed their burger orders, I saw the grill man reach in the fridge, grab 2 balls of hamburger and flatten them on the grill. Made to order burgers, another step in the right direction. When I looked at the menu, I marveled at the simplicity of a six item menu. Single basket, double basket, veggie basket, fries, onion rings, shakes/floats, there was beauty in the simplicity. I ordered a single basket and was confronted with the question "fries or rings", I froze. To which the counter guy (who I'm pretty sure is the owner) said "we can also do a fifty/fifty". Sold. I inquired what kind of shakes they had, only chocolate and vanilla on this day but they usually have strawberry. The owner was surprised at how quickly the strawberry shakes sold. He could have sold one more, but I had to have chocolate instead.

Do you want to go here if you're in a big hurry? Probably not, it takes a couple minutes to cook your burger. But, you're at least entertained a little bit by the owner who is a pretty happy guy. He's happy to tell you to bring in some art to hang on the walls. He's happy to talk to the customers. He's probably pretty happy because he owns a pretty cool little burger place. He's happy to let you put the trojan helmet on that's laying around on the counter. It's not a really organized system they're running over there, but they keep it fun and loose. A little happiness around makes the wait much more bearable.

I got my burger to go but I very easily could have eaten it there. They have a couple of tables outside where you can look through the park and see the historic carriage house. Or you can sit at one of the 8 barstools in the restaurant if the weather isn't to your liking. I brought my burger home and unwrapped it and was a little disappointed in the look of my fries and rings. I tried a fry and it was a bit soggy like it wasn't rinsed before it was fried. The onion rings were obviously hand cut and battered and, while inconsistent in thickness, were well cooked. The burger was stacked with some lettuce, a thick slice of tomato and enough diced onions for 4 burgers at any place. The Shake Shack promises that all of these items are locally grown, including the beef. I'm not sure if that means they won't have tomatoes in the winter or if they'll have South American tomatoes or what. I don't get locavorism, but I do know that all the toppings were delicious (my son ate the tomato). The burger taste was quite beefy with very few other flavors. If you like a simple burger like you'd get at a family picnic, the Shake Shack has the burger for you. I had to throw a couple of dashes of Tabasco and some ketchup on to make it good, your taste may vary. I will say they don't scrimp on throwing in condiment packets in your to go bag. I left the mustard and mayo packets there. With some salt on the fries and rings, everything was quite satisfactory. It was a good $5 lunch, $8 with a shake which was also good but a little ordinary. The biggest compliment I can give a place is to say I ate every bite and I ate every bite of my Shake Shack lunch.

The Shake Shack wants to be your organic, local burger stand and I can't really say they aren't organic or local, I'll leave that for someone who cares about such things to determine. What they are though is a good little local burger stand. Eating there is almost like going back in time to an old McDonald's with 10 cent burgers. There's nothing extraordinary here, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I'd like to think that The Shake Shack will become a neighborhood staple like John's Space Age, Villa Capri or the Dragon Inn. I do know the owner can definitely become one of the bigger characters in the neighborhood. Go, give The Shake Shack a shot, but be sure to take cash or check because they don't take the cards.

Family Dining Chronicles - Foster's Grille

I formulated an ingenious plan today in the shower. You see, Stella was going to be gone all day today, until well after the kids were going to be in bed. I had to come up with some way to entertain the kids for the full 14 hours of their day. My plan was kids shows in the morning, watch "Iron Man" together complete with popcorn for lunch (they ate really big breakfasts, don't judge me) then some free play time, then an early dinner at the newly opened Foster's Grille (119th and Metcalf behind the IHOP), with maybe a cameo by Stella. That would get us to the evening which would mean we could play a game (Blunders, Making Learning Manners Fun could be the game) or Wii Fit Rhythm Parade. That's a good full day that would keep the kids in line.

Foster's Grille intrigued me because they have hot dogs, hamburgers and hot wings in a kid friendly atmosphere, but not so kid friendly that they don't have beer on tap (in fact they had 5 taps, nothing more exotic than Boulevard Wheat). This is just the kind of place I'm looking to take my kids to eat. I'm hoping for good food, just because I have kids doesn't mean I'm checking my taste buds at the door. Unfortunately, that is exactly what places that cater to families have decided to do, dumb down the food to the point that it no longer has any taste (at best) or tastes awful (at worst).

Foster's appeals to more than just families so I was hoping for some good food. When we walked in the first thing the kids noticed was the Nascar looking car on the ceiling with Minnie Mouse hanging from it. My 2 and a half year old likes to point such things out by yelling "Minnie Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Minnie Mouse" as loud as he can upon seeing Minnie Mouse (or Lightning McQueen or Woody from Toy Story or any character from any movie he may have seen). Luckily, Foster's Grille is just the sort of place that can absorb a little kid's yelling. Not that it's loud or full of unruly kids, just that the noise doesn't strike anyone as annoying. The music is turned up loud enough to combat any kid noise and there's plenty of things to look at without having to get upset at someone else's unruly children. Since I have 3 kids under 5, this is the perfect atmosphere for me.

The ordering system at Foster's is a little different. You go up to the counter and get a menu pad and check the items you want, one sheet per customer, a little like ordering sushi at Kona. You can fill it out at the counter or or take it back to your table. The problem is, not all the menu items are on the pad and there didn't seem to be a place to write in additional items. When seated, my back was to the menu board behind the counter so I didn't know what other items there were nor did I know how much anything cost. I would have liked to have gotten onion rings, but I had no idea how to actually do that. I ended up getting 2 cheeseburgers with fries and fountain drinks along with 2 glasses of freshly squeezed lemonade. All the burgers and sandwiches come with fries and a fountain drink, so when I saw the price of the burgers, $8.95, I was taken aback but with fries and a drink, it seems in line with every other place of this type. I also ordered 3 hot wings, just to try them. I liked the option to just order any number of wings that you wanted. The whole meal cost $25, I can shave $5 off that total next time.

The food came out in short order. They called our names, we acknowledged it was us and they brought us our food. I split the kids' cheeseburger in 3 pieces and it was plenty to feed all of them. They also shared the fries which I would guess were about 50% more fries than you typically get with a meal. And the fries were just perfect wonderful specimens, the fries you wish Five Guys had. The kind of fries that scream to have malt vinegar poured over them instead of dipping them in ketchup. The kind of fries, you can forgive a substandard hamburger for. They were very nearly the perfect french fry, nice and crisp on the outside, fluffy fresh on the inside, nicely salted and wonderfully flavored. Seriously, go for the fries, don't substitute a garden salad for 95 cents. If you do, I will punch you in the nuts.

The cheeseburger was cooked very nicely to medium instead of medium well like most burgers. I enjoy that. I'd like to say the burger was great, but it wasn't. It lacked flavor, a little salt would have gone a long way. The cheese was plentiful, and helped bring a little flavor, but not quite enough to say this was anything better than an average burger. The hot wings, though, were very good. I wish they had other flavors other than buffalo, but, sometimes menu simplicity is warranted. I don't fault them for keeping it simple since the wings quite tasty, juicy and left me wanting more. I may even go with the wing entree (12 wings with fries and drink for $9.95) next time.

I love lemonade and drink a lot of it. I can safely say that the lemonade at Foster's is definitely not worth $1.85. It just wasn't very good. It didn't have the tartness I look for in lemonade.

The kids enjoyed themselves immensely which is saying something since no crayons were involved. I've yet to find the key to figuring out why the kids like certain restaurants and don't like others. But, restaurants that have crayons, ironically, are typically not that kid friendly. Foster's just didn't need to stoop to the crayon pandering. They also had enough food items that I can enjoy that I think we can keep Foster's in the rotation for family dinners. I should also note that the staff was super friendly and very willing to help out an outnumbered parent. I received multiple offers of help with carrying drinks, getting anything we might need like lids and straws etc. Some of this can be chalked up to a new staff on the second day open, but I think training shows. I think going forward we'll think of Foster's Grille staff being very friendly.

This is the first in a continuing series of family dining posts. It seems that most restaurant reviews in town leave out the family dining aspect of restaurants and eating out with my family is 95% of my eating out experiences. I know I'm not alone in this, so hopefully these reviews will be helpful to those of us in a family way. As stated above, what I'm really looking for is restaurants my kids will enjoy and have good enough food that I can enjoy them too. We're not taking the kids to Bluestem or Extra Virgin, so we need to find quality restaurants that are cheap enough that we don't mind if the kids don't eat everything on their plates. Also, I don't like the name I've given this, so if you have any better ideas, leave them in comments.

Harold's Through the Looking Glass

You have a song that kind of takes you back to a time and place immediately? A song you really liked and can link to 5 or 6 fun memories from the past? You probably have 5 or 6 of those kinds of songs. When I hear the song “Brandy (You're a fine girl)” by Looking Glass. It takes me back to high school and college when I ate at a diner called Livingston's twice a week, sat in cars with my friends and drank in parking lots before we went to high school events and singing karaoke at Heroes on Friday nights (Brandy was and is my go to karaoke song). Go ahead and play the video while reading.


I only mention this because I went to Harold's Drive In on Admiral Boulevard for lunch today and I thought of the song “Brandy” while I was watching my burger (I got the single cheeseburger) being cooked on the griddle right behind the counter. You see, Harold's reminded me a whole lot of Livingston's, and not just because they have fried cauliflower on the menu.

Harold's is different in that it doesn't have any tables to eat at, hence the term drive-in, I suppose. You order from the counter, they only take cash, and your food is served to you in a paper bag. They may as well tell you to scram after you get your order.

But, Harold's is the type of place where they remember your name, when you were last there and what your likely order is going to be. It felt like a place I'd been to a hundred times over, like Livingston's. The customers were decidedly blue collar, paint specks could be seen on some items of clothing, one guy was wearing his orange road crew vest. I felt a bit overdressed and I wasn't even wearing socks.

My order of a single cheeseburger and fried cauliflower was around $5.40. The Harold's special (double cheeseburger, fries and medium soda) will set you back around the same amount after tax. For the big fellas in the audience, you can get a triple, fries and soda for $6.75.

The service was friendly, but not overly so. I think if I went back a couple more times over the next couple of weeks I would know all 4 ladies' names and they would all know mine. At about 10 visits I might be able to enter into a conversation about post menopause hot flashes with them (if I were so inclined).

My burger was pretty good, not something that would make a top 10 burgers in KC list, but for the $2.25 it costs, it could be in the conversation of top 10 burger bargains. The standard dress of the burgers is lettuce, tomato, onion and mustard. I got mine with only lettuce and onion and used some habanero ketchup I have in my office. The onions have a nice dice and add a lot of flavor, you definitely know they're there. The lettuce is shredded and doesn't offer much of anything of value.

The cauliflower was very good, but not the best I've had. I'm pretty sure it was frozen, but it wasn't like most of the frozen cauliflower you get at restaurants around town. It had a different type of breading, more a beer batter than fried cauliflower usually has. I don't know if they bread their own and freeze it or not. If you're a fan of fried cauliflower it is definitely worth the trip to Harold's to check it out. I'm glad my pals at the Mid-America Regional Council told me about it.

I almost forgot, as I walking out of Harold's Drive In with my grease stained carryout sack in hand, “Brandy” came on over the speakers. I didn't even notice music playing while I was waiting.

How Not to Order a Burger

Now, I'm not terribly impressed with this Obama dude, but I've always had a respect for him. That is until I found out he ordered his hamburger medium well. Who does that at a fine hamburger establishment? It really is just beyond the pale. Is it so hard to order a hamburger correctly? Apparently it is for Obama. I'm not sure this is an impeachable offense, but as of now, I've got my eyes on you Obama.

The Internet Food Association has a nice summary of opinions from some of the greatest bloggers around.

Tickled by a Pickle

I know of no way to say this clean, so I'm just going to go ahead and put it out there. I have the biggest pickle to give my daughter when I get home (I also picked up a mask for her at the Earth Day Event).

After my work pals and I went over to the Power and Light Earth Day event, we decided to hit up the Marquee Bar and Grill in the Mainstreet AMC. Wednesdays are half price burger days so I had a chance of getting a good burger downtown for under $10, not an easy feat since there aren't any fast food burgers downtown.

I was a bit taken aback at the ritziness of the Marquee B&G. The waiters and waitresses were dressed like waitresses at a white tablecloth restaurant and the dining room definitely looked like a formal restaurant. It was a very nice looking place. I guess if you're charging $10.50 for a burger you have to offer some degree of formality. I'd like to see how formal it seems when some douche, after a long night of boozing up Bud Lights in the bottle, wanders over from McFadden's at 2 in the morning and throws up all over his $9 biscuits and gravy (the Marquee has a late night menu and they are open until 4 AM).

Once we were seated our waitress informed us that Wednesday is also half price beer day. Woohoo! I'm not usually one for a lunchtime beer, but for half-price I might be persuaded. As I looked for something that noted what they had on tap, I noticed my boss sitting at the next table. I told my work pals “I guess I won't be having a beer after all” (not that my boss would care in any way whatsoever).

I ordered the burger they call the Swope, which is a burger “grilled to perfection” with blue cheese crumbles and bacon. I almost got the one with a fried egg, the McGee, but I didn't want to take the chance with them putting mushrooms on it, even if I ordered it without. We had already been in the restaurant for 15 minutes and service seemed slow, I didn't want to wait for them to make me another burger.

After another 15 minute wait our burgers arrived and they were monsters. But, they were the least impressive thing on the plate. The pickles were clearly the stars and probably what The Marquee wants to be known for. You know the whole pickles you get at a fair or carnival. These pickles are like that only they are cut in half and twice as long. Like The D, I don't care much for pickles, but one of my daughters loves them so I saved it to take home to her.

Also accompanying the burger was a generous portion of waffle fries. I could even see specks of Kosher salt on virtually every one. I'm not a fan of the waffle fry in general, but these were very good. They had a nice crunch and plenty of flavor which doesn't usually happen with waffle fries. The burger was very big with lettuce, onion and tomato on the side. They didn't overdo it with the blue cheese which I appreciated. I only got 2 thin slices of bacon on the burger and they were too long so I ripped them in half and it appeared that I had 4 regular slices of bacon.

I'm not going to rave about the burger. It was pretty good. If I had paid the $10.75 list price, I'd be looking for a refund, but for $5.50 or so, it was perfectly reasonable. I don't think the Swope will be on too many KC top ten burger lists but it's not an embarrassment. In fact, I will say that the blue cheese really added something which I don't usually find with blue cheese. It was a nice accompaniment for the burger, I'm glad I didn't sub out for provolone like one of my friends did. In fact, with the ability to sub out the blue cheese there is no difference between the Pendergast and the Swope other than bacon. So if you do the math, Marquee Bar and Grill prices their bacon at 25 cents. But on the late night menu, a side of bacon costs $5. I don't know, I find that interesting.

I would not recommend eating at the Marquee unless you're extremely wealthy OR are there on a half price burger day. I would also not eat there if I were in a hurry as our lunch took an hour and 15 minutes. But it is a nice looking place and the food is pretty good especially if you like pickles.

Update: If you go to the Marquee Bar and Grill website and sign up for the newsletter, you will get an email within 10 minutes offering you a free happy hour.

Please come and have a FREE happy hour party with as many guests as you can bring on Friday, April 24th! We will offer you two different times: 6pm or 8pm!

Starting at the time you choose, you and your party will drink the happy hour specials all night long!! You will drink the happy hour specials for FREE for two hours!!! Your guests will drink only $3 domestic draft beers, $4 wells, and $5 house wines. If you bring at least 10 people, you will receive two free appetizers for you and your whole party! Once 8pm or 10pm rolls around (depending on what time your party is) you will join the rest of your party and drink happy hour prices for the rest of the night!

Shoving Meat in Padma's Mouth

Apparently I'm not the only one who likes a lot of meat in my mouth. Padma from Top Chef really seems to be enjoying the Western Bacon Thickburger from Hardee's in this commercial.
On a related note, this burger looks pretty good; bacon, onion rings, cheese and hamburger with barbecue sauce. Follow the link for a $1 off coupon.

John's Big Dud

In order to avoid the NCAA regional crowd today, a coworker and I decided to give the newly reopened John's Big Deck a try for lunch. We thought we could get a good lunch and watch some Friday NCAA regional action without the crowds undoubtedly heading to Willie's based on the KC Beer Blog's recommendation. I wish I had taken my own advice.

When we got there about 11:20 there were about 4 other tables taken as well as 5 or 6 people at the bar. The first thing I noticed was how nice the hardwood floors looked, they used to be real ratty and had no shine. Now, it appears they've been sanded and refinished, it really looks nice. We found a table where we both had good views of a TV or two. With that important work done we were ready for some service. And we waited. And we waited. Welcome to John's! Same-o Same-o. After 5 minutes the waitress (and when I say the waitress, I mean there was only 1 waitress) came by and took our drink order, tea for my coworker and Dr. Pepper for me (why restaurants serve Pepsi, is beyond me, I'm a Coke guy). We got our drinks in a reasonable amount of time, the tea looked like they had brewed 5 gallons with one tea bag.

Something was missing, what could it be? A menu, yeah menus would be great. I actually had to ask the waitress if we could have a menu. She responded, it's around here somewhere, let me get it for you. When she said “it” she meant there was one menu for the whole restaurant. Why would you need more than one if there's only 1 waitress? She located the “menu” and brought it over, it was a sheet of paper with the 10 or so items listed in bold, center justified, Arial 12 point, no prices with the special written in pencil in the bottom margin. I can see why they only had one, you can't beat handwritten menu items.

The first thing we noticed was the absence of any kind of Lent friendly items, which is not a big deal to me, but my Pope loving friend was going to be forced to sin or eat mozzarella sticks for lunch. My motto is “sin before eating mozzarella sticks” and I think my coworker now can say that he's taken that to heart. He got “club sandwich” and I got “burger with fries”.

I've always had a bit of a conundrum when going to John's because I loved their fries and their chips. It was always a tough decision which one to get. With only one option, the choice was much easier, I got the fries. As we were waiting for our food, John's started getting their FoodService delivery. At lunch. At 11:45. Who gets their food shipments at lunch time? As the delivery was coming in through the front door, I noticed boxes of curly Q fries, not boxes of potatoes like a good restaurant would get. I also noticed a lot of people walking out of the restaurant having never been served. I don't think they were all Lent Friday people either as I don't think they ever saw a menu. I think they just got tired of waiting for any kind of service. I've never seen so many people leave a restaurant without being served.

When our food arrived with packets of ketchup and mustard setting atop the fries (seriously, who thought that was a good idea), I asked for some Tabasco sauce. Tabasco, for me, is almost a necessity for a hamburger, especially for a hamburger I'm kind of unsure about. The waitress said sure and went on her way. I was mildly curious if I was the first one to get Tabasco at John's since they reopened since I saw a 3 pack of Tabasco unopened, like if you bought it from Costco, sitting on the service table by the pickup window while we waited for our food. I thought they probably had an open bottle or two somewhere as well. Apparently that is what our waitress was looking for and couldn't find. I was able to hear her ask the bartender if they had any Tabasco. I was unable to hear the bartender's answer and I was never able to point out the unopened bottles to the waitress because she didn't come back by our table until our meal was finished.

Had my burger been accompanied with Tabasco it would have actually been pretty good, but with just ketchup it ended up being a little blah. My friend said his sinful club sandwich wasn't very good. The fries were horrible, nearly inedible. They were of the potato wedge variety and were sprinkled with some sort of flavor salt. Nothing would have helped them, they were just not good and obviously not made from scratch like they used to be. What's more, I only got 3 packets of ketchup for my burger and my fries, it would have taken 7 packets to help me choke down those fries.

It was hard to even enjoy the games going on on the TV's. It was comparable to trying to watch a game and have someone punch you in the nuts every 5 minutes. Every interaction with food, waitresses and drink was painful. I feel like I need to ice my balls after eating there.

Total time in John's was an hour and a half. Total time enjoying myself in John's was 20 seconds (the time spent admiring the newly restored hard wood floors, which was only interesting to me because we just refinished the floors in the Bull E. Vard mansion last year). It's going to be a long time before I trust them for lunch again. Let's just make a quick list of mistakes I've never seen before; one menu for the restaurant, the menu looking extremely unprofessional, condiment packets on top of the food. Then there were the mistakes you often see; understaffed, long wait times, bad food.

I hope this was just new opening pains but the mistakes made were quite glaring. I'll be interested to see if drink service at happy hour is as poor as lunch service was. If it is, John's won't last very long.

Whopper Sacrifice

Guess what I had for lunch today. Well I had my free Whopper for sacrificing 10 Facebook friends. I wish I could say it was worth it. While I didn't think anything of the Facebook friends I sacrificed, I was equally unimpressed with the second Whopper of my life. There won't be a third. Those things suck!

Bull Burger

I grew up fairly poor and it wasn't often that we had hamburger buns in the house, so I gained a taste for the bunless burger. This particular burger is a 1/2 pound of 80% ground chuck with onion powder, Penzey's Chicago Steak seasoning, salt and pepper. I also tore up 2 pieces of cooked bacon and mixed it into the raw meat along with a bit of dijon mustard. I threw it on the grill at the highest heat possible and cooked one side. After 5 minutes I flipped the bad boy over and threw a pat of butter and 2 pieces of whatever cheese we had in the fridge on top. After it finished cooking, I plated it and covered it in Tabasco and cracked black pepper.

I kind of laugh that in an Atkins diet this is an acceptable meal, I always thought it was an indulgence someone of my slim physique (way back when) could get away with.

If you want some kind of side dish you can roast a couple of jalapenos and peel the skins off.