Soul Survivor

Dinner entrées are served with a choice of two of the restaurant's seventeen side dishes, which range from a fluffy ball of potent sage-flavored cornbread dressing to creamy macaroni and cheese, and from luscious, long-simmered collard greens to a baked potato (seriously overcooked on one visit). The pan-fried chicken was disappointing, the breast and legs neither as crispy nor as juicy as the superior bird served at the Willises' buffet restaurant. Ditto for the slightly dry baked chicken, though it looked gorgeous under that translucent amber crust.

A good-sized hunk of pink salmon can be grilled, blackened in spices, or baked in lemon juice. We chose the baked dish for the kids to share (they decided to be adventurous), and it was flaky and moist; after letting me have a tiny taste, the kids gobbled it right up, along with a heap of crispy french fries.

Howard got cocky and ordered his rib eye cooked with blackening seasonings but medium-rare, then pouted when it arrived -- an awfully thin 12-ounce cut -- with a beautiful, spicy, ebony coating but definitely well-done. The server whisked it away and returned, much later, with a medium-rare steak that Howard pronounced "well-marbled and superbly juicy." He had just started eating it when dessert arrived.

OK, so there are little kinks yet to be worked out. The servers are pleasant and attentive but can get easily flustered. The young hostesses have terrible telephone manners. And the kitchen is still getting its act together. Long before I made my first foray to the restaurant, I heard from friends that "the food is delicious, but it takes forever to get it." That problem appears to be solved; on the busy Friday night when I had my second dinner, the kitchen crew was in such a groove that dinners almost flew into the dining room. Mine was the finest pan-fried pork chop I've tasted in years, rich and meaty and smothered in a lovely brown gravy.

For that meal, I was with my friend Lou Jane, a longtime downtown resident, who looked around at the attractive, well-dressed crowd and said, "It's a happening place, a new social hub."

I could cause a hubbub just trying to describe the Peach Tree's desserts, versions of the traditional favorites the Willises served at their buffet restaurant for years: a soft, spicy hunk of fragrant bread pudding dripping with vanilla frosting, or a delicately spiced peach cobbler crisscrossed in ribbons of flaky pastry and a big scoop of melting ice cream. There's a dense sweet-potato pie, too, and my new favorite, a warm slab of crumbly pound cake drizzled with peach nectar.

I looked up from my pound cake on that visit and saw, mounted on the wall, a vintage black-and-white photograph of a long-razed 18th Street neighborhood business, an old gas station selling fuel for 13 cents a gallon. Maybe now that gas costs more than ten times that amount, it will be more cost-effective to stay closer to the heart of Kansas City. The new Peach Tree Restaurant offers everyone a chance to put their money where their mouths are instead of continuing to argue about the best solution for a downtown renaissance. And eating is always preferable to squabbling, don't you think?