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.

My House: Steak Night - Filet Mignon

Kansas City has tons of fun hot spots.  I love going out on the town at night, but it gets expensive.  Saturday night, in order to save some money, I decided to stay in.  As this blog is dedicated to finding the best steak deals I thought I would describe one of the most cost effective steak nights in Kansas City: grilling at home. 

One of the best deals I've found on steaks is at my local grocery, Marsh's Sun Fresh in Westport. They have a bargain bin for meat that needs to be eaten sooner rather than later (the meat's not bad, they just need to move it fast). I bought 2 choice cuts of filet mignon (aka beef tenderloin) for 10 bucks.  A filet is cut from the center of the loin of the cow and has no muscle producing a very tender piece of meat.  Marinading this cut for an hour or two significantly enhances natural flavor of the steak.

I use a little Worcestershire sauce, and a little chocolate balsamic vinegar from the Tasteful Olive in Overland Park. It adds a very subtle sweet and salty flavor that amplifies the tenderness of this cut.  Many people like to make a balsamic reduction sauce to put on top of a filet, but I find this marinade actually brings out the natural steak flavor while adding some of the balsamic flavor.

After the steak has marinaded for an hour of two I take it out of the fridge and let the steak get to room temperature. Personally I like to salt the outside of the steak first. This helps seal in the juices when you put it on the grill. I realize there is some controversy as to whether to salt the steak pre-grill, but after experimentation I found that salting before has made for better steaks. I take some kosher salt and sprinkle it on the outside of each side of the steak.  I do this one side at a time, and let the salt absorb in while the steak is getting to room temperature.  Salting one side then flipping it 30 minutes later and salt the other is a good rule of thumb.  

While waiting for my steak to get to room temperature I pulled out a nice bottle of Eugina Tempranillo and poured myself a glass.  It's a nice Spanish dry red wine, with some spice and cherry hints to it. As my wonderful Uncle Alan once told me, the most important drink with your meal is the one you have while cooking!

This is my BBQ pit, and I can actually call this a BBQ pit because there is a smoker there! *Note: BBQ involves smoking wood to create amazing flavors, grilling does not.  Tell your friends on the coasts (and here in town if they make this mistake) they are insulting our culture when they say "I'm having a bar-b-que" yet fire up a grill for burgers and brats.* Generally I prefer to grill on charcoal, but I have a difficult time lighting charcoal when I'm alone, it's just a little too wasteful (and costly).  Tonight I had to settle for the inferior flavor of the propane grill.

Once the grill was plenty hot I put the steak on.  You may notice a difference between this picture and the last steak pictured.  I decided to be decadent and wrap the steak in bacon.  Before I put the steak on the grill I put a little bit of olive oil, then kosher salt and some coarse black pepper on the side I planned on placing on the grill first. Once the already-coated side was on the grill I added a bit of olive oil, kosher salt and coarse pepper to side other side.  I like to leave the grill very hot.  This is a fairly thick cut of beef so it takes a bit more time than a normal steak would to cook.  Usually I leave it on the original side for 6 minutes, giving the steak a quarter turn halfway through. Then I flip it and do the same on the other side. However, I was watching a show tonight and left it 8 and 8 so this one was a bit more cooked than I normally enjoy.

 

To accompany my steak I had a nice wheat dinner roll and a leafy green salad.  The salad was a spring mix with red peppers, mozzarella cheese, and Ott's original dressing. Ott's is a type of French dressing with some horseradish added into it. It is sweet with a little spicy kick to it, but not too spicy.  It is very well balanced. If you've never had it I'd highly recommend trying it, it's my favorite dressing.
  

As I mentioned, the steak was a little more done than I would like, but it was still quite excellent, as you can see.  I just like a little bit more pink in the middle, but this was within the acceptable range.  Normally at this point I'd give you a breakdown of how everything was, but it was all awesome.  One of the benefits of a Kansas City steak night at home is you make everything the way you like it.  All in all this was an excellent Saturday night in. I had a great steak. I had good wine. I have a steak left over for tomorrow. Plus, I spent less then I would have even at a very cheap steak night at a local pub.

Here is a picture of what I did with my night: steak, sides, Netflix ("Eureka" mini-marathon) and some wine to wash it down with.  I had an Old Fashioned and a cigar to top this all off and then went to bed. Steak night at home will always be one of my favorite Kansas City Steak Nights!

Fric & Frac: Tuesday Steak Night

Deal: $10.99 10 oz KC strip with baked potato and a side salad.  

This is my first post as a non-law school student! It has no relevance for finding red meat awesomeness but I wanted to brag.

My most recent Kansas City steak night adventure was to an old Kansas City neighborhood bar and institution: Fric & Frac.

Fric & Frac has been around since 1976 dutifully serving the KU Med/39th street crowd beverages and food for 36 years. This is the only Tuesday steak night that I am aware of (right now) in the metro. 

Fric & Frac is located at the corner of Genessee and 39th St in Kansas City Missouri. It is a wonderful bar that is famous for its cheese steaks and burgers.  This is a great place to shoot pool, have a beer and some tasty food.  If you haven't been to the 39th street corridor in a while you should it is loaded with great restaurants, bars, boutiques, cafe's and fun stores.

I was leaving work and had been eating tacos for days.  I had one of my favorite taco places cater my graduation party on Cinco de Mayo, and had tons of left overs. Pastor tacos with pineapple are one of my favorite foods, but the thought of another taco was frightening.

Not being able to eat anymore Mexican I decided it was time to return north of the boarder for some classic American food. What is more American than a juicy steak?  My dining companion and I sat down and looked over the menu.  Not sure why, I did I know what I was going to get.

The deal here is a 10 oz. Kansas City Strip Steak with a side and salad. I opted for the baked potato. Also available are fries or steamed veggies.  Not being a fan of low carb diets, a classic baked potato with my steak sounded heavenly.

While my dining partner perused the menu we ordered a pitcher of PBR.  I'm not a regular PBR drinker, but this time it hit the spot. It was crisp, refreshing and cheap. They didn't have any great drink specials when we were there. They do have 2 for 1 drinks for happy hour from 3-6 p.m., and half off of all wells after 9PM. If you plan your steak night properly you can take advantage. Unfortunately I arrived at 7:15 p.m. and left at 8:45 p.m..  The PBR pitcher was $9.00, had I opted to order by the glass it would have been $3.10. They had glasses of wine for $5.00 as well.   

After we had some suds, my dining companion figured out what sounded good and we went on to order.

The salad came out quickly.  It was your classic house salad, iceberg lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, shredded carrots, black olives, onions, tomato, and a surprise of garbanzo beans. I ordered Italian dressing on the salad.  My dining partner and I ended up in a debate on whether anything but ranch or blue cheese dressing is appropriate with a steak. While I normally prefer a ranch dressing on my salad when having a steak, this time I decided against it.  Let me know if you think I committed a cardinal sin.

Onto the steak! This was a surprisingly excellent steak. It was obviously a choice cut of KC Strip steak and was lean yet well marbled.  It had the perfect amount of fat topping the upper portion of the steak. You could tell it had been cooked on a flat electric skillet with butter on it. I prefer less buttery flavor, but the buttery flavor was not so dominate to overpowered the steak's natural flavor like you get in some dinners (looking at you Denny's).

The steak was also fresh never frozen and hand cut, not prepackaged, which gets high marks in my book. Frozen steak is an abomination against all that is good an holy in the world. As always I ordered the steak medium rare. This came out exactly how I believe medium rare ought to be. It was brown on the outside, pink most of the way through and slightly red in the middle.

This steak did not have any crust built up around the outside, they appeared to only cook the steak in butter.  I personally like some cracked pepper and kosher salt on the outside. Overall the steak was excellent, especially when comparing to other steaks I've had at other steak nights.

I will only briefly address the baked potato. It tasted like a baked potato, classic steak side. Done.  

While this blog is dedicated to steak, my dinner companion ordered a Philly cheese steak that deserves honorable mention. Fric & Frac has amazing cheese steaks. While they don't use the same super high quality french bread that is mandatory on every Cheese Steak if you are in Philadelphia, Fric & Frac does offer a cheese steak with Philly cream cheese. I had a bite and wow is it good. I will go back and eat one another night (or possibly another afternoon) when I have not stuffed myself full of a KC Strip. If you are there on a non steak night do treat yourself to one of these it is quite choice. 

The service here was great once they realized we were there.  It is a seat yourself place so you need to catch the servers eye so they know you are there, found that one out the hard way. But the service was great, the server was quick with suggestions and offered bits of great information about the menu. 

To sum it up this Kansas City steak night adventure:

• Restaurant: Fric & Frac 
• Location: 1700 West 39th Street, Kansas City, MO 64111 
• Phone Number: (816) 753-6102 
• Ambiance: Fun bar atmosphere
• Steak: Excellent 
• Sides: Classics with no frills 
• Service: Good
• Philly Cheese Steak with cream cheese - worth the heart attack   

Fric & Frac does not have a website I can direct you to.  If you're craving a steak on a Tuesday night this is a great place to go.

 

River's Bend Restaurant and Bar: Wednesday Night Steak Night

Deal: 11.99 KC Strip and 2 sides on Wednesday Night.  

I went out in search of BBQ last night, yet ended up inadvertently stumbling upon a steak night.  I took that as a sign from God telling me to post my first review.  I am not tone to deny divine inspiration, especially when it says eat steak! 

I was on my way to Smokin' Guns BBQ up off of Swift Ave. in North Kansas City. Unfortunately, I arrived and it was closed.  If you're from Kansas City and you have BBQ on your mind it is hard to move forward without some smokey delicious meat drenched in the finest condiment the world has ever known: Bar-b-que Sauce.

Note: Kansas City North and North Kansas City are not the same thing. North Kansas City is a quaint area of town (that used to be its own independent municipality) directly north of the River in Kansas City, Kansas City North the entire region North of Missouri River in Kansas City. 
 
Not knowing the restaurants well in NKC well I decided to get out my generally trusty Urban Spoon app.  I looked for BBQ restaurants nearby.  Sadly I couldn't find any BBQ that sounded enticing and close.  But there was a place I had never heard of in Parkville called River's Bend.  It was listed under the BBQ section and my dining companion and I decided it'd been forever since either of us had been to Parkville, so we hopped on Hwy 9 and drove over to Parkville.  It is a short 7 minute drive from North Kansas City (about 12 minutes from Downtown).    

River's Bend is located right on Main Street in downtown Parkville.  It is a picturesque setting.  The Restaurant overlooks the river and the park.  I was quite disappointed to find out that the Restaurant was not a BBQ joint.  But as fate would have it we walked up there was a large sign out front beckoning "STEAK NIGHT."  It was time to end the BBQ hunt and start the steak night reviews.

We got inside and were seated.  The place has excellent ambiance.  It is an old power plant for Park College so it has tons of great industrial detailing.  On some evenings and weekends they are set up to have bands play. There is a patio out front to relax and have a beer on while watching trains pass by all with the Missouri River rolling behind.   

 I'll get better at taking these as time goes on.

They have an excellent happy hour and have their own brew.  The brew is called the "Choo-Choo" Brew.  It is a tasty American style lager, but it has more hops added for an extra bite that really made the beer taste great.  At happy hour the Choo-Choo is only a dollar per glass.  They also have bud light and other domestic draws and well drinks for two bucks during happy hour.  I love American Style Lagers, which makes me persona non-Grata around my beer snob friends, but I love the crisp refreshing taste.  I very much enjoyed the spin they put on the Lager by adding more hops to the Choo-Choo Brew.  

Onto the steak.  They had a fairly reasonable deal for $11.99 you get a KC strip and 2 sides.  I ordered mine medium rare as I will always do to make a fair comparison.  The steak did not have a lot of crusting on it and wasn't a superb cut of beef.  I'm not expecting Prime Dry-Aged meat at any of these steak nights, but if it happens I'm not going to complain.  All in all the steak tasted like a steak would at any bar and grill, nothing special about it, but nothing awful either.  The marbling was ok, it would be a stretch to even call it a choice cut of beef.  It was also pretty thin, not even an inch thick.  I personally am partial the 1.5-2 inch thick cuts, but again we're at steak night not the Golden Ox (my personal favorite steakhouse). 

What amazed me about the River's Bend was the sides that accompanied the steak.  The mashed potatoes you see pictured above had just enough garlic flavor and sour cream to be awesome.  My partner and I both agreed they were some of the better mashed potatoes we'd had in a while.  Unfortunately for you readers the green beans I ordered were forgotten at the time the picture was taken, but they were amazing.  They were home-style so cooked with bacon and white onions.  They also had an additional sweet flavor that I'm fairly certain was brown sugar. All in all they were excellent.  If the green beans were from a can they are from the best canning place I've ever tried. The stalks were still bright green and longer than your traditional canned beans, which makes me think they must have been either frozen pre-cut or fresh cut. The sweet brown sugar flavor mixed with the bacon and onion sent these green beans over the top.

They were a bit understaffed that evening so the service was slow, but I never mind enjoying a slightly longer meal.  We got tag teamed a bit by the manager and server/bartender (only employees working) but it was a slow night so it was understandable why the owners wouldn't staff up.  I have a feeling many of the steak nights will be like this because few places will give a great deal on a night they expect lots of people.  But the staff was always friendly.   

So to sum it up:

• Deal - Wednesday, $11.99, steak and two sides
• Location: 2 Main Street  Parkville, MO 64152
• Atmosphere - Fun
• Food:
• Steak - Decent 
• Mashed Potatoes - Awesome 
• Green Beans - Awesome 
• Choo Choo Brew - Tasty if you like American Style Lagers 

http://www.riversbendrestaurant.com/ 

If you're in Parkville on a Wednesday Night & want a steak this is a fun place to get on

Steak Night Explained

Kansas City has been dubbed Cowtown. Love it or hate it this is part of who we are. We have a plethora of world class steak houses, but this blog will not (yet) attempt to find and review them.  

The goal is to find the best steak nights in Kansas City and let people know about them. Perhaps once the steak nights have been taken care of we'll move to taco Tuesdays or something else people suggest.    

After finding out about a steak night I will eat there, then I will tell you about it.  My goal is to find the best places to get a great steak for a good price on any day of the week.

Drink specials will also be discussed.  

Anyone who has suggestions are welcomed and encouraged.