The Golden Ox, Downtown Kansas City
Birthplace of the Kansas City Strip
Well, it’s our last day of vacation and while I have drafts of many different blog entries (including Truman’s Library and The Arch), I have to bump my foodie entry forward. Originally, this was just a food entry, but after spending the night in the hotel from hell, I decided to unleash my inner bitch and complain loudly about this joint …
Gas: Gas prices have been pretty darned good considering that this is the “Fourth of July” week. We only paid over $3/gallon once and that was in Kansas. On one interstate sign, we saw gas advertised for $.69/gallon, which I suspect was a typo. {SNORT} I wonder what would have happened if I had taken a picture of the sign and went to the gas station? Would they have honored their broken sign? {Disenchanted laughs like an idiot here}
Food: Holy cow! We’ve been to some interesting food joints on this trip. For the record, I packed a cooler before we left Sorta’ Cosmopolitan in an effort to conserve money. All of our hotels have had free breakfasts (the one at the EconoLodge was the best, if you can believe that!) and we’ve tried to eat either lunch or dinner from the cooler. In Topeka, we really didn’t eat out — the first night, it was late so we ate out of the cooler. The second day, we ate lunch at the taco joint in Abilene so we ate dinner out of the cooler.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Kansas City, MO, that we actually had a good meal in a restaurant. When I looked up Kansas City in my Missouri guidebook, the very first attraction – listed before any museums, statues, or other sites – was the Golden Ox Restaurant. In the trivia section of the book, the author noted that “The Kansas City strip steak was originiated in Kansas City at the Golden Ox Restaurant in 1949.” The Coach is a steak connoisseur as well as a history buff, so how could we pass up this joint? The history of the area was wicked cool:
The restaurant’s roots go all the way back to 1871 when the first independent stock yard was organized and facilities erected in the Kansas City west bottoms on the east bank of the Kaw river. The first exchange building was only twenty-four feet square. This area had always been a trading center, dating back to the days when trappers, hunters, and Indians came to trade furs, livestock, grains, and other valuable commodities. Over the years the stock yards grew rapidly as the remaining frontier was opened and settled. At one time over 1.8 million cattle per year passed through the Kansas City stockyards.
The area has also had its share of struggles. Historic floods devastated the stock yards in 1903 and again in 1951. Both floods covered the entire west bottoms with 15 to 30 feet of water. In addition, a disastrous fire burned more than half of the stock yard area in 1917. Each time the stock yards were re-built bigger and better than before. [Read more on their website]
So, the Coach called downtown for directions and we made it to the Golden Ox with few problems. Our waiter was excellent … something that we rarely encounter in Sorta’ Cosmopolitan. We started with calamari which was crisply fried and served with two different sauces. Each of our meals came with a salad: my salad was an awesome combination of tomatoes and cheeses. For dinner, we both opted for the — you guessed it — the Kansas City Strip. I got the smallest steak I could find, but ended up having to share it with the Coach because it was huge! The Coach has endorsed the food at this restaurant: he said this steak was almost as good as the best steak he ever had (which was, incidentially, in Paris, France).
After dinner, we tracked down another site in K.C. You see, our guidebook said that “Kansas City has more fountains than any city except Rome, and most of them are on the Country Club Plaza.” Well, we found Country Club Plaza and we promptly left. Come on — our book was supposed to be about stuff that was “off the beaten path” and the Country Club Plaza is nothing more than a giant outdoor mall.
The second night, we had a bit more trouble. It seems that a ton of places in Independence are closed on Sundays. (Ah, midwestern values!) We finally identified a restaurant we wanted to eat at – Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm Restaurant — but when we called the number in our guidebook, it was disconnected. The Coach looked it up the hotel’s phone book — same number, still disconnected. He tried information — still disconnected. A Google search turned up the fact that the place went belly up in February. Blah.
So, I left the food decision to Gary and we ended up eating at a restaurant in suburbia (a typical coach decision). He picked Bandana’s, a BBQ chain restaurant. {le sigh} It was an okay choice. The restaurant certainly followed a motiff — there were bandanas everywhere. The BBQ wasn’t bad — I had ribs and the Coach had chicken. We even had boiled peanuts, which I love. The Coach tried the peanuts, but hated them. He said something about the mushy texture. Whatever. Those things are freakin’ awesome.
Last night, we tracked down two places in St. Louis. The first was Fitz’s, in the Loop near Wash U. Now, I’ve seen the Fitz’s root beer in the grocery store, so this looked like a cool place to stop. On the website:
Fitz’s American Grill & Bottling Works may be the only restaurant in America where you can watch a vintage root beer bottling line in operation while you enjoy your meal. The equipment dates back to the early 1940’s, and is easily viewed from the main dining room.
Of course, our timing was off so we didn’t get to see the bottling works in action. We did, however, get to see a little kid celebrate his birthday. His dinner came out in a little car, which was pretty cute. And instead of a birthday cake, he had a birthday float. It was so huge that the Coach said, “That kid is going to be bouncing off the walls for hours!” The float even had a birthday candle in it. {LOL}
Even though it took a gimick (the bottling works) to get us in the door, the food ended up being excellent. I had this chili cheese hamburger that I had to eat with a fork. It was massive — I couldn’t eat all of it and I didn’t even touch my french fries. The Coach had a pulled pork sandwich which he described as “very good” but, when pressed, wouldn’t say if it was better than Bandana’s. The inside of the restaurant was colorful, the business was brisk, and the wait staff was good. I’d eat here again.
After dinner, we made our way down to Ted Drewes’ Frozen Custard Stand. I knew about this place because it had been featured on Feasting on Asphalt last summer. Hey, if Alton Brown says it’s good, it’s worth trying. I tell you what, the place was packed. Obviously, this stand is no longer off the beaten path. We had a conversation with another couple from Indiana (who had also seen the custard on Alton’s show) and ordered our custard. Honestly, I didn’t think it was all that special. The Coach had a plain vanilla cone (“You can’t mess up a vanilla cone.”) and I had the Cardinal Sin concrete which included chocolate syrup and tart cherries. It wasn’t bad, just melty.
Lodging: And now to the crappy part of the trip. Our hotel rooms have really been hit or miss. I didn’t expect that the EconoLodge in Topeka would be good because it was really, really cheap. It ended up being the best hotel on the trip. The people at the counter were friendly and helpful. The room was clean. They lent me a wire so I could plug into the Internet. The pool was open and clean. They didn’t charge us the full cost for having the Evil Kitten along. The breakfast was good. Sure the location was a bit odd — across from a Goodwill store — but it was close to all of the attractions.
It went downhill from there. The Quality Inn in Independence was adequate. The A/C worked, as did the internet (with a little bit of coaxing). The breakfast was fine. The room was big. The location was convenient. But the wallpaper was coming off the walls and the pools (both of them) were closed. As for last night – holy shit, but our hotel sucked. When I was a kid, the Ramada Inn was a great brand. You could count on clean rooms and decent service. This hotel — the Airport Ramada in St. Louis — was very, very bad. The slide lock was coming off the door. The bathtub had some mold in it. Our non-smoking room smelled like an ashtray. It’s nasty enough that I had some hesitation about taking off my shoes to walk in the room. Of course, we weren’t in the room very long at the beginning of the stay, so we didn’t notice the nastiness until after we got back from the Arch. I will never, ever stay in a Ramada again. Nasty hotels suck. [The Coach did complain, but the management up front didn't seem to be aware of the fact that someone had been smoking in the nonsmoking room. No offers of making things right.]
And on that note, I really need to get dressed. We’re on our way home and we have a long drive ahead.
