V-Day Dinner

For Valentine's Day this year the wife and I ventured out to Michael Smith Restaurant for dinner.  This jewel in KC is owned by Michael Smith who is a James Beard award winner (think cooking version of one of the entertainment  four: EGOT).  This is definitely and upper scale restaurant and I'd put it in the fine dining category.  All those things being said though, the price tag, while higher than your average night out, wasn't really that brutal considering the top tier chef and quality of the meal.  The other thing that was very nice was that even though this is fine dining, the menu was extremely approachable.  And by approachable I mean that it was not pretentious and overly flamboyant with chef speak, I got the distinct impression that the chef was going to let the food wow you and not try to impress you with detailing prep styles and using obscure ingredients that could overwhelm a diner.  The food was prepared and presented in such a way that you knew you were about to eat something special, something that you couldn't even attempt to duplicate at home, but it was all very recognizable and felt very comfortable.

We did the 6 course tasting and as I've said before, at these types of dining establishments the tasting menus are the way to go.  In this case though I would recommend stopping at the 5 course.  The sixth course is a cheese course and it was good, but in my opinion not worth the extra cheddar (pun inserted for wife's amusement).  If you feel better about ordering one entrée, I'd recommend the Eight Hour Pot Roast, I know it's Pot Roast and that sounds so incredibly pedestrian, but it was so very good, the duck was a very close second.  But again... I would highly recommend the tasting - you'll get what the chef thinks is best and who knows you may get something that isn't even on the menu...

All in all I loved this restaurant and it instantly, instantly (it had me at the appetizer course) vaulted into my top 3 dining experiences (1) Topolabambo, 2) Michael Smith, 3) Delmonico).  I would highly recommend this as a great occasion restaurant, one that I will absolutely be visiting again.