Longtime West Side restaurateur opening new concept specializing in Turkish cuisine
A two-story circa 1890 house on the city’s West Side has recently been home to some of Kansas City’s top locally-owned restaurants.
Now a new concept hopes to join that list.
Longtime West Side restaurateur and landlord Adam Jones is teaming up with Orcan Yigit, a native of Turkey who owns several restaurants in Ankara, to open Clay & Fire. It will serve Near East cuisines, mostly Turkish, but also some Armenian and Mediterranean dishes.
With Yigit and the partners’ chef temporarily stuck in Turkey because of the pandemic, they are bringing on chef Brent Gunnels, who also lives in the West Side and has Cult of Pi, a home-based pizza company.
Clay & Fire will open in stages.
Breakfast with Turkish coffee is scheduled to start August 15. The menu will include Dedas Kharcho, described as a Georgian village frittata made with day-old bread cooked in olive oil with onion, tomato, cheese, herbs and seasonal vegetables. Gunnels said Clay & Fire’s Persian Eggs will be an onion and tomato stew with eggs cracked on top and finished with cilantro — similar to shakshuka. And the restaurant will have a traditional Turkish breakfast spread with fresh cucumber and tomato, yogurt, nuts, eggs, jams and honey.
“Think of it like a breakfast charcuterie board made with fresh local ingredients,” Gunnels said.
They will slowly add more breakfast items. Hours will be 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
By September they plan to offer a carry-out lunch with rotisserie lamb, goat and chicken, along with salads and mezze dishes.
Dinner service is scheduled to start in mid-September with expanded hours. Clay & Fire will make use of the wood-fired oven by making such dishes as Turkish Pide, a long flatbread with minced lamb, and clay pot roasted vegetables and stews. Mezze, or small plates, will be a large part of lunch and dinner offerings made with produce from farms around Kansas City.
The house has several outdoor seating options from patios in front and back, to a second floor balcony, and will even have tables on the sidewalk.
Jones graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute, working summers as a carpenter. He purchased an old brownstone house at 18th and Summit streets in 1982, renovated it, moved in and has been there since with his wife, Noori, a native of Tehran, Iran.
In 1986, they opened West Side Cafe with other partners. The operation, at 723 Southwest Blvd., served moderately priced Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food. At the time, an advisor from the U.S. Small Business Administration didn’t like the location and suggested they buy a McDonald’s franchise instead, Jones said.
They also were founding members of The Blvd. Cafe in 1990 at 703 Southwest Blvd., which they later sold while still owning the building. Noori Jones also had Noori’s cafe in the Crossroad’s Freight House District.
Jones sells organic produce through his A&F Farms, near Trenton, Mo. He also owns the Clay & Fire building, at 815 W. 17th St., just west of Summit Street, which was formerly home to Lill’s on 17th and then Novel restaurant before it relocated to the East Crossroads. Fox and Pearl also operated in the space temporarily while waiting to move into their current building, at 21st and Summit, which is co-owned by Jones.
“When I renovated the (Clay & Fire) building 20 years ago it was going to be demolished,” said Jones, who owns the building “When I renovate a space I always pretend I’m going to live there or have a restaurant in it.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 3:36 PM.