Food at this Kansas City restaurant tastes so good I was tempted to drink the sauce
When you look at a menu in a restaurant and every single dish on it looks and sounds so delicious and special that you find yourself having a hard time making a choice, then in my opinion, you’re exactly where you need to be — where the food and the atmosphere are yummy and inviting.
That was my experience the morning I stopped at Urban Restaurant, 3420 Troost Ave. in Kansas City.
The sounds of Kenny G. jazz, hip hop and R&B poured from the speakers and, along with the natural light from the street, filled the modernly decorated dining area. Several customers sat up to the bar — the centerpiece of the dining room — devouring plates of what appeared to be breakfast food. It was 11:30 a.m., just before lunch.
The customers chatted. They were either regulars who know one another or fast friends drawn together by good food. They were laughing, despite below freezing temperatures and snow packed roadways outside. That was another good sign.
I came to Urban Restaurant, which opened last April, to try one of owner and chef Justin Clark’s signature dishes. He has three: shrimp and grits, $21; oxtail bánh mì (a pulled meat sandwich), $16; or a fried grouper sandwich, $26. All prepared, Clark said, “with a twist.” It’s that little unexpected something Clark adds that just sets off the flavor. It’s like the “Bam!” that celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse said kicks a dish up a notch. At Urban Restaurant, for example, it’s the heap of collard greens Clark puts in the middle of a dish that normally would not include that vegetable.
What did I choose, you ask? Let’s just say every bite shut my eyes and had me shaking my head, and licking my lips, murmuring “so good.”
It’s the twist that makes Clark’s creations at Urban Restaurant taste different from the dishes with familiar names. Clark has a hard time putting his style of food in one category, but knows, “it’s not Southern cooking,” or soul food per se.
“People expect that because I’m a Black man I do soul food or barbecue,” Clark said. “I can do that, but that’s not what I do here. I do American food. But I don’t want to be like everybody else. I put myself into it. I’m him. I create.”
His grilled cheese is made with poached lobster knuckle and claw meat. His seared salmon is served over a kale and Brussels sprout salad drizzled with a maple-mustard vinaigrette. Urban has vegan options, too, and a lot of the ingredients that Clark uses — meats, eggs and produce — come fresh from the Barnham Family Farm in Kearney.
I ordered the shrimp and grits — a mound of buttery grits topped with perfectly cooked jumbo shrimp and “Bam!” a heap of southern-cooked collard greens and crispy bacon, ladled with a sauce so flavorful I wanted to drink it.
Shrimp and grits is one of my favorite meals. I order it often wherever it’s on the menu. The dish at Urban is among the best I’ve eaten.
When the artfully plated dish arrived at my table, it seemed like a lot to eat in one sitting and I thought I’d save some to take home for later. Nope. I ate every morsel except for the stingy spoonful I forced myself to share with The Star photographer who had accompanied me on the assignment.
The journey
Having grown up the son of a military man and moved frequently, from city to city, Clark knows something about being different, and he’s comfortable in that space.
Originally from Arkansas, Clark grew up — starting around middle school — in Kansas City and attended school in the Hickman Mills school district. After high school he spent his time working in eating establishments around town, but he says his passion for food and preparing it was inherited.
Clark comes from a long line of great cooks, including his mom, his grandmother and many of the women in the family before them. His dad was a baker in the military.
Clark’s life changed when Alvin Brooks, then the head of AdHoc Group Against Crime and a friend of the Clark family, helped him land a job in the kitchen at the Ameristar Casino Hotel, where then-executive chef Ashley Archer took Clark under his wing. When Archer left for the Chicago area, he offered to let Clark crash on his couch if he would move to Chicago and attend Le Cordon Blue College of Culinary Arts. Clark took him up on that offer, and in three years graduated from the Chicago culinary school.
During my recent visit to his Urban Restaurant kitchen, watching Clark cook was like watching one of those reality cooking shows — pans sizzling, flames blazing artfully from a skillet and Clark, with one hand, flipping food into the air to toss it in the pan.
Food changes minds
Clark’s first restaurant in Kansas City opened at 4101 Troost Ave. in 2016. Urban Cafe was so tiny that it had no real kitchen. “I worked off a panini press and a smoker,” Clark recalled. The cafe could seat 10, and Clark said he loved the community that supported his cafe. The most popular sandwich was the smoked pork belly.
A few years later he moved to 55th Street and Troost Avenue, and when the new KCI terminal opened he landed a 15-year contract for an Urban Restaurant in the main concourse. The location at 55th and Troost had plenty of space, including a full kitchen to expand his menu. But a series of crimes — an armed robbery, a break-in, vandalism and a car driving through the front window — led him to find a new place.
Business at his current spot, at the corner of Troost Avenue and Armour Boulevard, is good, Clark said. He’s settling in and talking to people in the community about the kind of food they like to eat. His inspiration to create good food, he said, often comes from the people he talks to on the streets and in his restaurant. Someone says they like to eat “chicken livers and crackers, well that’s paté,” Clark said and chuckled.
“I feel like we ought to be a staple in the neighborhood,” Clark said.
Clark said his decision to keep his restaurant on Troost Avenue and offer “well made” food creations that meet the tastes of the diversity of people living in Kansas City, was intentional.
“I’d always heard stories about Troost and it being the racial dividing line,” he said. “Well, we are not a Black restaurant, we are a restaurant. But I do want to change the perception of Troost. The dividing line, that was the past. We are moving to the future. People want quality. I want to open people’s minds with my food.”
