Mike Kelly's Westsider: Tuesday Steak Night

Deal: 10.95 12 oz. KC strip and two sides


Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been 14 days since my last steak. This is pretty serious for me. I rarely go 2 weeks without having a steak, whether I report about it on here or not. When I came to the frightening realization that it had really been two weeks since I had a steak I decided to go grab a steak.

This Kansas City Steak Night adventure was in the West Plaza area. I went to Mike Kelly's Westsider. This bar has been around for a long time. I bet most people have driven by it on multiple occasions and said "I really should go there." And you should! Mike Kelly's is an unassuming bar with a friendly atmosphere that is classy yet not pretentious. Low key, but not dull. You'll love the high tin ceilings, and the retro decor. The bar was established over 30 years ago, and continues to be a great neighborhood/local bar. It sits on Westport Road in-between State Line and Southwest Trafficway. They have live music most every night of the week.  Check out their website to see what they have playing. 


I arrived around 8:00 to get a steak, so I was too late for happy hour. They have a happy hour. Unfortunately I didn't ask what the deals were so you will have to forgive me. I have no ability to tell you what drink specials you may be able to get with the steak if you arrive at happy hour.   

I had the Flying Monkey Amber Ale they had on tap. I always enjoy that beer, even when it is full priced. I was highly impressed that they had the a Flying Monkey pint glass for my beer. Most of the beers they have on tap here are local beers, with the exception of bud light for the beer drinker who cares more about calories than flavor.


I observed that "local" is a theme they have going on here. They are a local pub for the West Plaza, they support local music by promoting local musicians nightly, and they serve local beer. Quite cool if you ask me. I like to keep money in our economy here in KC when possible.


Onto the steak!!

The steak night deal at Mike Kelly's Westsider is a 12 oz KC strip steak with 2 sides. I ordered my steak medium rare as always. The standard sides they have here are garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. You can get steamed veggies, fries or sweet potato fries if you want (but you shouldn't).

This steak came out looking excellent.  It had the grill marks that I love with the quarter turn. There was a nice layer of fat on the top of the strip that wasn't too big. I then cut into the steak and it was perfectly cooked medium rare all the way through as you can see.  

When I bit into the steak my first thought was this is a decent cut of meat, but they didn't really season it. It was obviously a choice cut of beef, and was sufficiently marbled. In some places it was a bit fatty with the hard fat you cannot eat. My dinning companion, who likes less fat than I do, thought it was too much fat. In a few bites I would agree, but overall for a 12 oz steak at a bar with a steak night this was actually a pretty good cut of meat. But like I said there was very little crusting (seasoning) to it. They would be well served to get some kosher or sea salt and cracked fresh pepper to put on the steak. I hate to admit this but I actually used a bit of A-1 toward the end to give the steak a bit more flavor. I realize that is a cardinal sin. But the steak needed something, and dumping the salt on wasn't really doing much for it.  

The sides here were phenomenal.  The garlic mashed potatoes were seriously the second best I've had in town, and that is including some of the finer steak house establishments in town. The grean beans as well were top notch. These weren't some green beans out of a can, they were at minimum fresh flash frozen, and the bacon and onion that was chopped up in the green beans was all very fresh.  The sides took this place over the top, and made up for the lack of flavor in the steak.  


The service was great. I was obviously not one of the regulars, as I sat down at a table (all the cool people were gathered around the bar). There was a bartender who was doubling as a server, but it didn't matter much because he was quite able to handle both duties with diligence and skill.

To sum it up this KC Steak Night adventure: 

• Restaurant: Mike Kelly's Westsider
• Location - West Plaza - 1515 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO 64111
• Ambiance - casual classy meets local pub
• Steak - Decent cut, needs more flavor 
• Sides - Holy shit are they awesome  
• Service - Excellent  

If you want to try a new place out (that has been around for a while), and are in the West Plaza area on a Tuesday stop by Mike Kelly's Westsider for a steak.

   
  

Harpo's: Wednesday Steak Night

Deal: $8.95 10 oz "KC Strip" with a side

I'm making an effort to keep this regularly updated (approximately weekly). Plus I do have to eat while studying for the bar so I decided that I would go out for a Kansas City Steak Night. I had some trouble finding a dining companion at the last minute. When it seemed hope for finding a last minute dinner companion was fading a highly respected and well loved member of my family stopped by to return my portable grill and wanted to go to dinner. The KC steak night adventure was on! He picked up the tab as well, making this the most cost effective steak night thus far (not to mention this is also the lowest cost steak night I have been to yet).

I did my due diligence and found out that Harpo's has a Wednesday steak night. You get a 10 oz. KC strip and a side for $8.95. If you time it right you can also take advantage of some great drink specials. Unfortunately, I missed them all because I arrived at 7:30 p.m. They have $2 well drinks after 9 p.m. and happy hour from 3-6 p.m. They also have a "craft beer courtyard" during the summer, which is $3.50 per pint. But don't be fooled by their website when it says "craft beer courtyard," which implies that it's all day, because the deal does not start 'til 9 p.m.

It was a very pleasant evening in Westport, and we sat on the patio.  If you haven't been to Harpo's in a while (or have forgotten) they have one of the best patio's in town. When we arrived we had some trouble getting a server. There appeared to be some confusion about who would be our server between the two (very cute) servers working the patio. But, once it was sorted out service was excellent. I started off the evening with a nice Pale Ale, which came in one of the enormous cups that they have.  They brought us menus, but my dining companion and I both knew we wanted the steak night deal.

We both ordered our steaks medium rare with a side of sweet potato fries. You have a few side options here: salad, pasta salad, fries, cottage cheese and the aforementioned sweet potato fries.

My dining companion and I sat chatting and listening to the faux-intellectual hipster types poorly discuss the issues of the day with a great deal of self-righteousness*.  Before we could get lost in hipster mediocrity, the steaks arrived, and very promptly I might add. *Note: I do realize the irony of my own self-righteous condemnation of the self-righteous hipsters here. 

Onto the steak!

This steak looked very promising when it came out. Excellent grill marks, with the quarter turn done for the visual cross lines. Plus there was a mountain of sweet potato fries accompanying.  

I cut into the steak and it was cooked to a perfect medium rare.  This is the first place to actually nail medium-rare. I took my first bite and the outside of the steak had a wonderful salt and pepper crust. But as I continued to eat the steak proved to be very fatty, and not in a good way. I would not call this a KC Strip, as it was it was very low quality. However, it still tasted like a steak so it wasn't all that bad. (Steak is never that bad when cooked with the skill that this steak had been cooked with.)


The sweet potato fries were great.  Nice and crusty on the outside, and not overly seasoned. Overall this was a pretty good steak night, even if the cut of meat wasn't the best.

To sum up this KC Steak Night adventure:

• Restaurant: Harpo's 
• Location: Westport - 4109 Pennsylvania, Kansas City, MO 64111 
• Phone Number - (816) 573-3434 
• Ambiance - One of the best outdoor patio's in town 
• Steak - Superb job by the chef, bad job by the person in charge of ordering beef 
• Service - good once they decided who would take our table 

If you're out on a Wednesday and want a steak before you start drinking this is the place to go.  

Tomfooleries: Thursday Steak Night

Deal: $10.99 12 oz. KC Strip, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and a salad.

Graduating law school is great for about 3 days and then the reality that you have to take the bar exam kicks in. While studying for the bar your life becomes very isolated (perhaps you make vain attempts to have some sort of life by writing lame blog posts). Your friends begin to wonder what happened to you. Relationships get strained. Making time to see people becomes difficult.

As the pressure of the impending bar examination was starting to wear on my soul I opted for a time-tested recipe to solve life's problems: steak night. I decided it was time to emerge from my hole for some comraderie with friends. In my book, there is no better way to enjoy people's company than with steak and libations.

My friends and I all live in the city so I wanted to find a steak night close to where people lived. After some digging I found out that Tomfooleries has a steak night on Thursday.

I sent a text out to a few friends who lived nearby to let them know I was still alive and was going to have a steak at Tomfooleries. It was a very pleasant evening; people were out shopping and dinning as they are apt to do while on the Plaza.  There were great street performers and a wonderful soul band was playing in-front of Scooters on 47th Street.

Tomfooleries is a great restaurant and bar located on 47th street on the west edge of the Plaza. Not only is it a decent restaurant in the day and a nice brunch spot on Sunday, but it is as well a VERY fun place to go at night that always has a great crowd and good times.  

I arrived a bit earlier than my dining companions, but I was quite content because the Heat and Celtics were playing a knock out game and Lebron put on one of the best NBA performances of all time. I had a Boulevard Pale Ale while enjoying NBA playoff basketball, two great things that I had been missing out on while studying. One by one my compatriots arrived and we chatted while enjoying a few suds.

I got there around 8 p.m. and there were no drink specials. By the time we left they had a reverse happy hour, which starts at 9 p.m.

We feigned a look over the menu, but we all knew it was a steak that would satisfy. I ordered my KC Strip, medium rare as always.

The only real choice you have is between a house salad or a Caesar salad. I opted for the Caesar. It came out fairly quickly, with onions on it.  I'm not a huge fan of onions on salad as the flavor is overly dominate so I removed them, but my dining companions enjoyed the twist on the Caesar. Aside from the onion overdose, the salad was great. They didn't overdo it with the dressing, and they had an excellent balance of croutons and fresh Parmesan. Everything you want in a Caesar salad.

The sides were very simple mashed potatoes and a piece of garlic toast. Classic steak night sides.  Both were good, but nothing to write home about. They tasted how you would expect mashed potatoes and garlic toast to taste like. However, the garlic toast came in quite handy to sop up the juice from the steak.  

On to the steak!

The steak I got was kind of a funky cut for a KC Strip, but my dining companions' steaks all looked like you would expect a Strip to look like. Right off I was pleased to notice that they actually had some form of a grill in the kitchen, so the steak didn't have the skillet-cooked, buttery flavor to it.  That is great on burgers when it's 3 a.m. and I'm snarfing down at Town Topic burger, but I prefer a nice charred flavor to my steak that only a grill can provide.

The steak came out a bit overcooked.  I would consider this medium to medium well.  I cut to the center and it was only slightly pink and mostly brown around the outside.  This was kind of disappointing, but it happens to the best of us from time-to-time.

However, the steak was well favored. Tomfooleries clearly has an excellent steak seasoning that involves mostly pepper and salt. Normally I'll add a little salt to the plate to dip my steak in (super healthy, right?) but this steak had an excellent amount of salt and pepper to it. Not a lot of other spices either, which is great because it didn't cover up the steak flavor. The cut seemed to be a regular, lower-end choice quality steak, but it wasn't a terrible cut of meat. There was plenty of fat marbled throughout to keep the steak juicy and tender.

The service was impeccable, always there when you needed another drink but not intrusive.   

Overall this is a pretty great steak night. Had the steak been medium rare this would have been the best I've been to so far. Nonetheless it was a great night with friends I hadn't seen in a while and a welcome break from studying for the bar. This KC Steak Night hit the spot.


To sum up this KC Steak Night Adventure:

• Restaurant: Tomfooleries 
• Location: 612 W 47th Street, Kansas City, MO 64112 (Plaza) 
• Phone Number: (816) 753-0555
• Ambiance: Casual bar that turns into a hot spot at night
• Steak: Good, could be great 
• Sides: Plain yet sufficient
• Service: Impeccable
• www.tomfooleries.com
  

 This is a great Thursday Steak Night if you're in the mood for a big steak.