Love in Brookside

The chef's happy mood nearly put me in a foul one. But I ate around the dreaded sweet potatoes and enjoyed the plump bratwurst and weisswurst sided with sauerkraut and a pile of warm, sweet red cabbage. Birch later told me that it had been a terrible mistake: The Bavarian Grill isn't supposed to come with any potato because customers were complaining that it was too much food (an argument rarely heard in a Kansas City restaurant).

I noticed the other kink when my friend Bob was going on and on about his champagne Chicken and I could hear only every third word. When this narrow dining room is at capacity, it's a cacophony. Still, I got the message: Bob loved the juicy bird breast in a crisp, feather-light crust, draped in shallot-butter sauce flavored with sparkling wine. "It's one of the best things I've ever eaten," Bob said.

He ordered it again a few nights later, when we returned for dinner with Dan and Cathy. She was immediately charmed by the dining room's Chianti-red walls, the stylish light fixtures and our waiter, John, who is a professional actor when he's not schlepping dishes. Impulsively, we decided to start with a plate of lobster and crab cakes and a "basket" (that's an understatement) of what the menu calls Belgian-style pommes frites. I've eaten the crisp, pencil-thin double-fried frites in Brussels, and they weren't anything like this Brookside version, which we agreed tasted a lot more like good ol' American steak fries. But they were addictive nonetheless, served, as in Belgium, with several dipping sauces. Equally superb were the crab-and-lobster cakes, which were nearly as big as hockey pucks. Sacre couer, maybe this kitchen does serve too much food!

We also shared a Sicilian steak, mozzarella and tomato salad that Cathy didn't like. (She detected an odd aftertaste from the grilled beef strips.) I found the concoction amusing. After all, Sicily isn't known for steak — my grandparents rarely saw beef before they came to America — and the mozzarella was too chewy. Far more interesting was a Scandinavian salad with fluffy goat cheese, pickled beets, candied pecans, cranberries, red onions and avocado. I'd never think of combining avocados with Scandinavian cuisine, but it was a tasty combination of textures and flavors.

Obviously, this isn't a traditional European restaurant, even if the menu does run the gamut from Basque chicken and tortellini Roma to Austrian-style calves liver. But Birch is faithful to the spirit of classic dishes, including that night's special, a luscious veal piccata that had Cathy swooning. And I've tasted plenty of variations on the dish known as lobster ravioli, but none can match the sinful decadence of Birch's puffy pasta pillows stuffed with bits of sweet Maine lobster and blanketed with a sherry-scented, pumpkin-colored tomato-cream sauce.

"It's excellent," Dan said after a few bites, "but almost too rich to eat." He took most of his dinner home.

Not me. I'd ordered a sautéed chicken breast, prepared Basque-style with bits of salty prosciutto, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes in an evanescent wine-cream sauce that was so good, I was tempted to lick the plate.

For the finale, Dan and Cathy nibbled on a dense wedge of flourless chocolate gateau, and Bob lapped up a satiny creamy vanilla crème brûlée.

"I love this restaurant," he announced, just as the young sommelier — much friendlier off the phone — stopped by our table carrying a plate heaped with tiny grapes.

As he launched into a passionate spiel about wine and fermentation, I realized that if I didn't like Avenues Bistro Brookside so much, I'd swear I hated the place.