KCRag Forum

AJoD wrote: Rotating restaurants atop hotel towers with great views have little incentive to offer more than passable food.

Highlander wrote: That's somewhat true and I admit I have been there on a few occasions just because I love the view.  It will be even better with PAC coming on line soon.  Isn't the kitchen 40 floors below the restaurant?  I think that would be a very difficult set-up to run from a food service perspective. 

Highlander wrote: That's somewhat true and I admit I have been there on a few occasions just because I love the view.  It will be even better with PAC coming on line soon.  Isn't the kitchen 40 floors below the restaurant?  I think that would be a very difficult set-up to run from a food service perspective. 

DaveKCMO wrote: i just mentioned EBT as a locally-owned option. i haven't been there in well over 10 years and can't really vouch for the quality. the concept and history are solid, nothing a new exec chef couldn't resolve. so let's just forget it, okay?

anyway, cordish has a lot riding on this next choice of tenants. it's such a prime spot and bice was such a miserable (and notable) failure from the very beginning.

Highlander wrote:Isn't the kitchen 40 floors below the restaurant?

Highlander wrote: Yep, they've still not hit any home runs with their restaurant tenants yet as in something that will draw people into the area on a regular basis.  Bristols is the only thing that is even close right now.  Aren't there still some high profile spots in the district that have never been occupied, like across the street from Raglan Road?

trailerkid wrote: I am puzzled why Cordish refuses to see they need to add credibility to the dining options. People would make the special trip downtown to dine if there were unique options. The reputation is that everything comes out of a corporate kitchen @ P&L. I don't think that's true, but that's the perception. People will accept the corporate kitchen model if the names are Ruth's Chris, The Palm, Houston's, etc. but very very few know Raglan Road,801 or Bice so the perception is they're not destination dining  but just chains.

Cordish needs to partner with local, known chefs to make the dining aspect work better. Instead Cordish drags in people from the East that no one has heard of like what happened with Pizza Bar. If the pizza had a local chef do the recipe it'd be a lot harder to dislike than some guy flown in from Baltimore.

I'm sure it all sounds much simpler than it really is, but I look at First Management/Doug Compton in Lawrence. They've used Krause to launch 2 wildly successful concepts in their downtown properties and there is a mob scene around these places day and night. Cordish could add so much value and energy to their dining scene by developing more chef-driven, local concepts. I just don't see the need for mediocrity when there is a wealth of culinary talent under their nose.      

beautyfromashes wrote: They need to throw money at Colby to move the Bluesteam DT.  The current location is not fine dining and having a Beard award winner in the district would be huge.

KCPowercat wrote: I don't think bice is a good match for bluestem due to the size but I absolutely despise where bluestem is now.  I mean the blockbuster and gamestop is a fabulous neighbor and all but still....

mean wrote: The current location is perfect for the bluestem concept, and I don't think an entertainment district full of college kids and tourists from Abilene is exactly the kind of crowd who are going to drop a few hundred bones on a great meal. And if they do, they'll post reviews on OpenTable and Yelp like, "we were a little disappointed with the first 3 courses as they weren't anything we recognized and came across as belonging in a restaurant in California."*

That said, if Cordish wanted to pay some local culinary luminary a boat full of cash to consult on a P&L concept, like a KC-style Gordon Ramsay, that might be interesting.

*Quote from an actual review of bluestem.