Love in Brookside

No Kansas City neighborhood has been more overdue for a restaurant renaissance than Brookside. Perhaps because the area is so close to all those dining venues on the Country Club Plaza, locals haven't demanded much more than the few places they've had: a couple of saloons, a coffeehouse, two no-frills sandwich shops, Joe D's Winebar Café, Carmen's, Sharp's and Bella Napoli (Jake Imperiale's combination Italian market, espresso bar and tiny ristorante).

But the last year has seen a boomlet of activity. Joe DiGiovanni sold his namesake restaurant (although it continues to operate under the Joe D's name, and the menu hasn't changed much). The former bagel shop was reborn as a pretty Japanese restaurant, Domo Sushi & Grill. And a block or so to the west, in the corner spot that for decades was occupied by the Sanford Saper Dry Cleaners, a couple of enterprising restaurateurs have created a charming bistro with an ambitious menu called Avenues Bistro Brookside.

A Brookside friend of mine calls it "the restaurant you want to hate but can't." His reasons for wanting to hate it? "There's no place to park, the décor is too precious for words and it's filled with middle-aged, middle-class white people." But he says he eats there anyway because — what the hell — the food is good and reasonably priced. "Brooksiders have re-fined tastes, but they're basically cheapskates," he confesses.

I had my own reason for wanting to hate the place, and it had nothing to do with middle-class honkies or the scarcity of parking — although it is a pain in the ass. Eight weeks ago, I received a phone call from someone announcing himself as the "sommelier" of the Avenues Bistro.

"This restaurant is very new, and the owners realize there are kinks to be worked out," the young man said in a surprisingly unfriendly tone. "As someone who has opened new restaurants before, I know it takes time to get everything worked out. So we are requesting that you not come to this restaurant for a couple of months. That is, until it's ready to be reviewed."

After I caught my breath, I blurted out: "I don't review restaurants until they've been open at least a month, but I'll eat in your joint whenever I damn well want to." Besides, I told him, I'd been on staffs that opened five new restaurants. "I have some news for you," I added. "If the kinks aren't worked out in the first few weeks, they'll be kinking up the place until it closes."

When I told my friend Lorraine, who's also a former server, about this odd conversation, she burst into laughter. "He told you that you couldn't go to the restaurant? Let's go tonight!"

The idea was enormously tempting, but I had other plans, and, frankly, the snotty sommelier had soured me on the place. God forbid, I should be a voyeur, peeping in on a new business in all its kinky glory. I decided to wait a long time before sneaking in.

But it wasn't long before I started hearing good things about Avenues Bistro from some of my friends who are typically critical of new places. They also loved the sommelier. "He's charming and knows everything about wine," one of them gushed. "He even brought some grapes to the table!" I felt my eyes rolling to the back of my head.

Yes, I thought, it was going to be hard not to hate the place.

But after waiting 30 days, I'm here to eat my words.

You can't hate Avenues Bistro. The owners — Jason Rubis and former Ritz-Carlton chef Joe Birch — just won't let you. I haven't seen two men so determined to pull together a winning concept since PB&J's Paul Khoury and Bill Crooks opened their first restaurant, the Paradise Diner, more than a decade ago. Rubis and Birch (and even one of their investors) are all over the place, greeting guests, picking up dirty dishes, delivering dinners and ironing out the remaining kinks.

I only experienced a couple of minor irritations. On the first night I dined in the restaurant, when the server brought out my dinner — a plate of grilled German sausages — I cringed when I saw a glob of mashed sweet potatoes. Those sticky spuds hadn't been on the "Bavarian Grill" menu description, and I would have nixed them immediately if they had been; sweet potatoes are among the few foods that I detest. When I asked the server about the mashers, she giggled and said, "Well, it's supposed to come with the Rosti potato, but our chef was in a happy mood and gave you these instead."