Restaraunt Review Thread

The premise is simple: review restaurants that you've been to. Local or not, high-end or dives, formal dining or eating at a food truck in pajamas and flip-flops, it doesn't matter. This is a thread for advertising your area's awesome foods, talking about how an old favorite place has gone downhill, or putting out the word on a little known spot you found in your home town. Please, though, try to keep it to places that you've actually recently gone to and taking pictures is encouraged.



I had meant to review a lot of places in and around Kansas City this summer but I didn't have as much time as I thought that I might. So here are a couple places:

WOODYARD BBQ

A buddy of mine loves watching a lot of cable shows, and if he has a chance to catch something about local BBQ then every time we talk about getting BBQ locally, he mentions places he's seen on TV. A perfect example of this isDiners, Drive-Ins and Dives.This has actually been a recurring issue as we'll try one of these places and I'll be less than impressed. So when he mentioned trying this place out because of the rave reviews he got from Guy Fieri, I kind of had a hunch about what we were in for.




There were 4 of us and we all ordered a variety of BBQ staples, but I didn't take pics of every dish because A) Ashley only ordered a sandwich that looked average, and B) our orders were spread out over far too long a period of time and I just ended up drinking beer for a while. I'll start with the ribs that my buddy ordered first:



One thing you can say about them is that they were moist. That said, they didn't have much flavor (at least to me). And KC isn't a dry rub BBQ area, so I'd have a hard time comparing them to ribs from, say, Texas. They looked good, they were moist, but after I was given a rib to help placate me after getting my meal and grousing about it, they weren't the kind of ribs that I like. That said they were the best thing I think that was ordered by us. And I had not watched the excerpt from Guy's show at the time, but after having watched it I wonder if their not removing the silverskin may have been why they were juicy but lacking any strong flavor.

Myself I picked up the 4-meat platter with brisket, pulled pork, burnt ends and "frankwurst":



First, the pulled pork: like the ribs, it was juicy but it was lacking the deep smoked BBQ type flavor I was kind of expecting. Same with the sliced brisket: juicy, moist, but lacking. Now anyone who has seen really good smoke rings might look at that brisket and wonder wtf is going on. There's hardly any smoke ring to it, or bark for that matter. But it wasn't terrible. Next comes the Frankwurst, which was IMHO the best meat on the platter which is a God damned shame. Good crisp casing, good flavor, and it seemed to be more done than any of the rest of the meats. The remaining two items though were terrible: the beans and the burnt ends. The beans themselves tasted like the old style baked beans from a can with a little extra flavor, but not enough to mask the taste of canned beans. If it wasn't made from canned beans then they are to be commended for coming up with a close approximation from scratch. But hands down the worst thing on the platter was what they tried passing off as burnt ends: THEY WEREN'T BURNT ENDS AT ALL.

Now burnt ends are a Kansas City thing for the most part, but when we order burnt ends we actually expect to get...wait for it...wait for it...BURNT ENDS. Now some places run out of burnt ends early and they'll just tell you "NOPE" when you order. Other places just chop up random brisket (not remotely burnt), douse it in sauce and hope it passes muster. Needless to say, I was terribly disappointed. Also as you can see from the pick the portion size was kinda "meh". Best part of the meal for us was getting shakes at the Sonic down the road afterwards and going to a movie.

We also had a debate about whether or not BBQ places should have french fries. We were split 50/50 on it; I prefer french fries but it's a tossup. This place had potato wedges, which as our friend Ashley said just wasn't the same thing. This just made me want to go to Arthur Bryant's, as they do really good friesANDburnt ends.


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THE GOLDEN OX

This place is kind of a local tradition, and it sits down where the KC stockyards used to sit. I'd mentioned this place to a few people before, and I've been meaning to drag people out for their Thursday night all you can eat Prime Rib special. Yes, you heard right, all you can eat Prime Rib. And the price was cheap, too, like $30 iirc or just under. So I put out feelers and even though lots of people backed out, I said the hell with it and went with one friend and met up with Quse from the forums. Then after we got there, had a couple drinks and moved to a table, we went to put in our order. What do we want you ask? Why, the Thursday night all you can eat prime rib, of course.

Unfortunately the waitress informed us that theyno longer did the all you can eat special.So now I must mourn our ritual of eating 2-3 monstrous prime ribs and going into a food coma when we get home (my friend Pat claimed that I did 4 once in a sitting, but I don't remember; I was probably near death at the time).

So I felt bad for bringing people out for a special and then finding out that the special didn't even exist anymore. Thing is, it was one of those things that they never advertised to begin with. So my friend Pat and I got the "large" Prime Rib cut, and Quse I believe got a steak (but I don't remember what cut precisely). The Prime Rib, for those wondering:



The large Prime Rib runs $36 and comes with a couple choices of sides. If you are a seafood fan they make a good lobster bisque but I passed on that (I'm from KCK and I grew up with Red Lobster being the best local seafood for the most part, if that tells you anything).

The Golden Ox does good steaks, but the downside is the price. You can easily do $50+ per person, and some people just don't like certain things about the place, whether it's the decor, waitstaff, the food itself, the location, etc. But if you like good steaks then it isn't bad place to try out. Also they've been pushing a new set of drink and sandwich/burger specials over the old specials (that they prob lost money on) but I haven't gone down to try those yet, might do that soon.

What kind of blows my mind about Woodyard is that there are a number of other BBQ places only a few minutes away. There is Quicks right down the street, Rosedale and Danny Edwards are both over on Southwest Blvd, RJ's isn't far over on Lamar and there is that one Johny's location over by Johnson drive and Metcalf (and I've prob forgotten several other places nearby). The local area is thick with BBQ so I was kinda surprised that they could thrive with all the local competition, after I left unimpressed.

Johnny's is another BBQ place that I thought was just "meh", and Fieri had them featured as well. The only place that he's had on his show that anyone has told me was worth trying wasSmokin Guns BBQover on Swift in NKC, told to me by someone who competes in BBQ locally. I need to go buy my books for fall tomorrow off of Front st anyways, so maybe I'll head down there and try them out while I'm in the general area.