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KC's Iron Chef

He wants to be a restaurant mogul, but first Rob Dalzell has to prevent another opening-day disaster.

By Crystal K. Wiebe 

At 6 a.m. on January 15, Rob Dalzell is already two hours into his day. He's chopping olives and joking with two employees in the concrete bowels of his first restaurant, 1924 Main.

He wears a black T-shirt and pin-striped black pants with the word "Chefwear" on the hip.

The employees — Chrystal Tatum and Lindsey Kiliany — playfully roll their eyes when their boss brings up odd facts about them, such as Tatum's old pet hedgehog and Kiliany's shock the day she found herself serving University of Kansas football coach Mark Mangino. They tease Dalzell about being from Fayette, a small Missouri town halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis with little in it but a traffic signal and a Dairy Queen. And they sing along to oldies such as "Come and Get Your Love."

By 8 a.m., the women will transport the olives — along with grilled tortilla sandwiches they call "sandittos," massive tubs of soup and dozens of single-serving salads — two blocks down Main in Dalzell's mustard-yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser to his second restaurant, Souperman.

Meanwhile, he'll be around the corner, lighting fires in Italian stone ovens at his third restaurant, Pizza Bella. And nearby in the Power and Light District, behind glass walls covered in brown butcher paper, construction workers will hammer away inside Dalzell's unfinished fourth venture — Chefburger.

It's clear during his and Tatum's walk-through later in the morning that there's still much to be done at Chefburger. There's no kitchen equipment yet, and the walls remain unfinished. Over the next two months, construction delays and absent city inspectors will force Dalzell to put off his planned March 1 opening by 10 days.

It wouldn't be the first time that Dalzell faced opening-day headaches. He was so unprepared for the huge turnout on Pizza Bella's first day that he now uses that mistake as his rallying cry as he prepares to unwrap Chefburger.

Dalzell is used to keeping this kind of hurried schedule. At 33, the lean chef with an often stubbly face is quickly becoming a downtown restaurant mogul. His eateries include fine dining and fast casual, and they remain — for now — unique to Kansas City. Someday, Dalzell hopes to franchise his restaurants nationally; he has set 30 restaurants as a goal for the first round.

"Eight out of 10 restaurants fail," he says. "One of the big reasons is nobody really wants to do the work."

Doing the work isn't an obstacle for Dalzell — it's an obsession. Seven days a week, he rises at 4 a.m., heads to Scott Fitness in the City Market and then spends at least the next 16 hours cooking, cleaning, tending bar and closely managing employees in one or all of his four restaurants. "Basically," he says, "I leave the house at five, and sometimes I don't get home until midnight."

That doesn't leave a lot of time for his wife, his two young daughters or his oafish Labrador, Bud. Dalzell talks about a far-off future when he and his wife, Margarita, will lounge on a beach, unfettered by restaurant responsibilities. Until then, the endless days will help put his kids through school and allow him to pay Margarita's mother to be a live-in nanny. "Means to an end" is a mantra that the self-described workaholic repeats. "In the back of my mind, I say, Nobody's going to work harder than me — or longer."

Doug Dalzell, his father, says he has encouraged his son to take a break and reports, with a look of awe, "He told me, 'For me, relaxing is coming into the restaurant. So why take a day off?'"

Dalzell can't relax away from the restaurants because he trusts so few people. "If you think you can start a restaurant and hire someone else to run it, you're mistaken," he says.

He opened 1924 Main in 2004. And for the first two years, he insisted on doing virtually all of the cooking himself. This hasn't endeared him to all of his employees. Dalzell admits that he has made some enemies over the years. Only in the past six months has he positioned himself as more of a kitchen overseer. "I always wanted to cook everything," he says. "One of the hardest things with cooking is learning to delegate a little. I need to learn how to be a better delegator. My job is to set the standards."

By any standards in the restaurant business, Dalzell has expanded quickly, and his newer restaurants haven't earned the stellar reviews that greeted 1924 Main. Already stretched thin, Dalzell will have to figure out how to maintain quality while opening his fourth restaurant in as many years.

On the night of the First Friday art openings in February, dressed-up couples pack 1924 Main. Among them, a man feeds chocolate to a woman in a slinky red dress sitting among the row of stools surrounding the restaurant's open kitchen. Not more than 5 feet from the woman in the red dress, in his usual black chef pants and white coat, Dalzell watches the room from his edge of the kitchen. His eyes dart. His hand keeps reaching for the walkie-talkie at his hip so he can relay commands to his staff.

It's 8 p.m., and he's been working 15 hours. His blue eyes look dull; bags hang under them; he takes occasional pulls from a tall, disposable cup of coffee. On the other side of the line, three white coats prepare entrées that include Berkshire pork loin and braised lamb. A young cook sets up salads and desserts. Dalzell inspects everything. A beef tenderloin needs more sauce. A table needs checking. Where's Margarita?

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