Hello, Noshers! Today, I continue my foray into KC Restaurant Week with some photos from my dinner at Grand Street Cafe last week. Incongruously tucked away into a generic mid-rise office building (seriously, it’s bizarre), Grand Street Cafe offers an extensive American menu. We started off with what seems to be pretty popular these days – bread with a bean/chick pea dip in place of butter:
I’d like to think the dip is a lot healthier than butter, so I made up for it by eating more bread. Net neutral?
My eating buddy and I ordered off the Restaurant Week menu; we ordered both first courses – the first a frisee salad with BBQ bacon, fingerling potatoes, a soft boiled egg, french green beans, rye croutons, and bacon mustard vinaigrette.
Aside from the frisee, which is my salad nemesis, I enjoyed all the things in this dish – bacon? Yes! Soft boiled egg? Yes! More bacon in a vinaigrette? YES!
With a name like S’more Soup, I absolutely couldn’t resist the other first course option – roasted sweet potato bisque with toasted sage marshmallow, cocoa nibs, and toasted graham crumbs. Decadent and sweet without being cloyingly so, this bisque was the perfect pick-me-up for a frigid day. The toasted sage added some savory crunch.
For our mains, my eating buddy ordered the crispy boneless roasted chicken with bacon maple glaze, smoked sweet potato puree, house cured bacon, Tuscan kale, and roasted pearl onions (top photo). This dish was a perfect blend of flavors and textures – I loved everything about it! The sweet potato puree was a definite highlight. I would have ordered the same main if it weren’t for the shrimp and aged cheddar grits with Spanish chorizo, toasted garlic lemon butter, and braised savoy cabbage:
Our waitress warned me that the grits were very buttery and, well, that’s all I needed to hear. She was absolutely right – and they were great! I’m a sucker for cheesy grits, and chorizo is always a welcome addition.
For dessert, we both got the coffee & doughnuts – cardamom orange zest drop doughnuts, espresso “hot dark chocolate,” hazelnut custard, and salted caramel sauce. As with the bread/bean dip combo, mini doughnuts seem to be quite popular on KC menus these days – as you’ll remember, we also had doughnuts at the Tavern at Mission Farms. These were equally delicious, and I admit I quite liberally dunked the doughnuts into the salted caramel sauce. The only gripe I had about this dish was that I wish it were larger – I’m pretty sure I could have had 20 of these mini doughnuts. Yummmm….
Overall, a solid restaurant week menu at Grand Street Cafe – I look forward to making a return visit to this tucked-away place and checking out its regular offerings!
Grand Street Cafe 4740 Grand Street Kansas City, MO 64112
816-561-8000
