FooDoo in midtown Kansas City works some vegan magic

Comfort food means different things to different people, but two of the defining traits are almost always some mix of the familiar and the indulgent.

At the 3-month-old midtown restaurant FooDoo, owners Bryan Merker and Carlos Mortera — who also own Beignet and The Bite in the City Market — are serving up a slightly different spin on traditional comfort food dishes where the only thing missing is the meat.

FooDoo sits snugly in a tiny storefront space on Broadway that has seen its share of restaurants come and go, the last of which was the short-lived Mr. Good Chicken. FooDoo entices diners with the familiar comforts of dishes like burgers, hearty pastas, pizza and smoothies, made from predominately local ingredients that are 100 percent vegan and often gluten-free.

Vegan and vegetarian food has a bad reputation in the minds of some people, often because of the misguided perception of being bland or having a health-first and taste-second approach. I’ve found that the best vegan dishes succeed by calling back to the ideas of a classic dish, rather than trying to fool the eater through straight up imitation.

Chef Mortera shares this sentiment, and it shows in the very fulfilling vegan food being served at FooDoo.

The small but cozy dining room has a soothing ambiance, and my dinner companion and I were greeted with a hearty hello from the server behind the pressed tin bar. The walls and angled ceilings are adorned with a variety of voodoo masks, skulls and similar works of art, simultaneously unpretentious and intimate.

Once seated, we perused the menus to find that a similar welcoming vibe was echoed through the food, with familiar dishes like stroganoff, dumplings and potato cakes sitting next to descriptions that featured less common but delicious-sounding ingredients like cinnamon-sea salt pumpkin seeds and smoked tofu.

Some vegetarian menus can read like a complicated instruction manual, but the FooDoo menu was easy and accessible, broken into a selection of salads and small plates, main courses and two pizza options, with the many gluten-free options clearly marked.

I’d been told to make sure to try the Big Kahuna burger but was slightly puzzled to find it missing from the menu. Our very helpful server explained that the lunch and dinner menus are different and burgers are featured at lunch only. After a thorough tour of the menu and recommendations from our well-informed server, we settled on a series of items to try.

The first dish was that night’s special, a sautéed Swiss chard roll stuffed with yellow curry-braised jackfruit and brown rice, served with a mango chutney and kamikaze sauce — a spicy sauce similar to the Sriracha and mayonnaise concoction found at many sushi joints. Unfortunately, it is not a regular on either menu, but I hope they make it permanent as it was an enchanting dish of sweet, savory and spicy flavors.

The vegetable dumplings were another small plate that hit just the right notes, bright with flavors of ginger and sesame and cooked in the potsticker-style to give perfectly contrasting textures of the crispy bottom and steamed top to the dumpling wrapper.

The dumplings packed a satisfying punch worth their nearly $9 price. They were served on a bed of mixed greens with homemade pickled ginger on the side, as well as sweet chili and wasabi-sesame-ponzu dipping sauces. Our waitress offered us chopsticks, a small but welcome gesture.

FooDoo’s dinner entrees are a mix of Asian-inspired items like the lemongrass dish — served with jerk-seasoned gluten protein, chili-lime cashews and vegetables in a lemongrass and ginger gravy — and those with more classically European-inspired origins, such as the Bolognese and the mushroom stroganoff.

Each entrée is served with a choice of gluten-free brown rice risotto or cavatelli pasta, the latter of which I chose to pair with the stroganoff on the suggestion from the server, and thankfully so.

The small bites of pasta soaked up the rich, velvety red wine reduction, which the mix of seitan — a ground soy protein — and seared crimini, oyster and portobello mushrooms were swimming in. Garnished with raw curls of carrot and a sprig of fresh rosemary, it was the definition of comfort food, at once familiar and decadent in every way imaginable, and a dish any meat eater would happily devour without pause.

For those with a sweet tooth, FooDoo offers dessert in the form of a sea salt bread pudding made with pretzel bread, coconut cream sauce and balsamic reduction, in addition to a changing selection of fruit crumbles.

FooDoo’s lunch menu is a more informal affair, which I experienced with a group of ravenous eaters on a follow-up visit. It features two salads and build-your-own pizzas but is divided between what the menu calls “handhelds,” such as burgers and sandwiches, and quesadillas, wraps and tacos.

We started with the 10-inch flatbread pizza, which also comes in a more expensive 12-inch gluten-free version. We added spinach and mushrooms at an additional cost and got a vegetable pizza experience every bit as good as you’d expect from most local pizzerias.

The Rainbow Loom is one of two salads that are offered on both lunch and dinner menus, and it was a delightfully fresh mix of raw zucchini, beet and carrot curls with meaty walnuts and a ginger-beet vinaigrette. The vividly colored vegetable salad was as enticing to the eye as it was on the taste buds.

The handhelds and wraps were a slightly different story, with each one having high points and low points.

The Big Kahuna burger is one of FooDoo’s most popular items, with a grilled housemade patty made of soy protein and grain, served on a locally baked, nicely toasted pretzel bun. It’s topped with grilled pineapple, caramelized onions, vegan mozzarella, jalapeno jam and avocado aioli.

While satisfying, many of the flavors are obscured by the sweet pineapple and caramelized onion. A slightly bigger patty would help the burger to be the star, rather than the condiments.

My personal favorite of the lunch offerings was the Taco Trio, three doubled-up corn tortillas stuffed with your choice of protein — I chose the delectable barbecue jackfruit — lettuce, cactus relish, vegan cheddar and cilantro. At $9.85, including sides, it is a fantastic and filling lunch.

FooDoo also features an array of juices and smoothies to make you feel better about indulging in the vegan comfort food, and many of the choices would work as a quick liquid meal in their own right. Though they happily offer everything in carryout form, be advised that they aren’t open for breakfast hours if you are hoping for one of those juices for your morning commute.

In a midtown neighborhood that is undergoing somewhat of a culinary renaissance with iPhotower opening earlier this year and Hamburger Mary’s moving into the Uptown Theater complex soon, FooDoo is a welcome addition that brings with it a welcoming ambiance and unique take on vegan cooking.

The best items at FooDoo succeed by packing each plate with the right balance of textures, flavors and execution; reimagining familiar dishes with a creative eye toward healthy, local and, yes, meatless ingredients.

You don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian to enjoy well-executed, honest cooking; isn’t that the very definition of comfort food?

This story was originally published September 30, 2014 at 7:00 AM with the headline "FooDoo in midtown Kansas City works some vegan magic."