We know St. Louis has a lot of cool stuff. Cooler than Kansas City stuff. There is, for instance, no one on local TV in Kansas City even in the same league with Jasmine Huda. And we know St. Louis has some great BBQ places. So keep your panties unbunched. But the simple fact is that Kansas City is BBQ. It fits there. BBQ in Kansas City is like Crown Center, Val-O-Milks, and an embarrassingly awful baseball team. BBQ has been a part of Kansas City, according to the venerable Kansas City Barbeque Society since the 1920s. That's when Henry Perry fired up a grill in an old streetcar barn over on 12th, wrapping the grilled meat in newspapers for customers to carry out. Arthur Bryant showed up at Perry's place and went to work there in 1927. He was on his way from Texas to attend school in the East. He got derailed by a BBQ sauce-stained hand of Fate.
Perry got a kick of slathering the meat he sold with a sauce so fiery, it left his customers gasping. After he died, Bryant took over the operation and changed that. His sauce, which continues to be a secret today only slightly less classified than the customer-repair service number for your local cable TV company, is a kind of gritty, grainy, vinegar-based concoction. The only hint he ever gave was that he used tomato paste as the base. Bryant (if you look at the picture of him on the bottles of sauce, you'll see he will be played by James Earl Jones when BBQ: The Musical comes out) made other renovations. He replaced the sawdust on the floor with linoleum. In 1946, he moved to the present location, at 18th and Brooklyn.
Author Calvin Trillin put Arthur Bryant's on the culinary map, of course, when he called it the best restaurant in the world. (He was wrong, incidentally. It is the third. The best restaurant in the world is Woodman's Fried Clams in Essex, Massachusetts. After that, if you are interested, is Calarco's Venetian Room in Westfield, New York.)
Jimmy Carter invited Arthur to come to Washington and make BBQ at the White House during his tenure there. Bryant replied that if Carter wanted his BBQ, Carter could come to Kansas City and get it. Which Carter did. Arguably the only intelligent decision he made in the four years of his term. At the restaurant today there's a big picture of President Carter tucking into a hill of ribs bigger than the national debt his administration racked up. The stories and legends of Arthur Bryant’s continue to grow, as best demonstrated by those busloads that regularly unload customers who stack up in the parking lot. Like the afflicted at Medjugorje, it is a religious experience.
"You can't get too fancy or you get away from what the place is all about," Arthur said of his attitude toward decor. There's scant chance of that happening. We were standing in line there once when an obvious first-time diner ahead of us turned and commented that, "They could probably do a better business if they'd clean this place up a bit." We didn't bother to tell him that at peak hours, the line we were standing in goes out the door. Or that in fact, they had cleaned it up. Considerably. In the good old days at Arthur Bryant's, it was customary for the young and athletically inclined to take a couple of quick steps once inside the screen door and then to surf across the dining area right up to the food counter, hanging ten on the grease that covered the floor in a fine sheen. Now you're lucky to skid a couple of feet.
The decor at AB's is "late classical garage sale," heavy on that kind of industrial-grade Formica, plastic dishes, and cheap aluminum silverware that says "State Correctional Facility" in a way some other, lesser dining establishments can never match. The cuisine at Arthur Bryant's is, let's be honest, not likely to earn the restaurant one of those smiley-faced little happy valentines handed out by the American Heart Association. Just walking in the place will have your cholesterol count doing the cha-cha. If the place was ever quiet enough, which it isn't, you could hear a lot of little arteries sitting up and begging for mercy.
If you've never been to Arthur Bryant's, there are a few matters you'll need to know about: First, the restaurant is in a section of town that, frankly, is not often highlighted by the Chamber of Commerce in Kansas City in promotional brochures designed to get you and the kids to come for a weekend of Midwestern fun. Arthur's is about three blocks down 18th, just far enough for you to feel some liberal guilt about your relief in seeing the security guard who is always on duty in the parking lot. (We're exaggerating. The neighborhood isn't that bad. And don't worry about not fitting in. You are as likely to be splattered at Arthur's with barbeque sauce by the city's most affluent as by construction workers. The only way anybody'll know you're not a regular is that you probably won't be wearing cowboy boots, which are actually considered quite snazzy in K.C., by adult and otherwise mentally competent citizens.)
Doubtless you have your own favorite BBQ dish. But if you don't know enough about serious eating not to have made it to Arthur Bryant's before now, you should take the advice of someone wiser. Get the sandwich combo: half beef, half ham or pork. Luciano Pavarotti, in his prime, might have polished off an entire sandwich. It's perfect to split between two people of more pedestrian appetites. And a side order of fries. Unpeeled and deep-fried at 400 degrees. In pure lard. Exquisite. And a side order of baked beans. They've got some kind of beer on tap there and soda. But the drink of tradition is a red cream soda. Don't ask to see a wine list.
Stand in the line and try to maintain the same sort of respectful mien you would demonstrate in any place of worship. If the Royals are on the TV, don't make comments like "This cow town actually has a baseball team?" When you reach the window, take a plate and silverware. Cognoscenti know to stuff the latter into their pants pocket. Once it has been filled by the counterman, you're going to need both hands at least and possibly the kindness of a stranger to carry your plate to the table.
The countermen at AB's are not what you would call chatty. The big kahuna there will usually just tilt his head up at you, peering through a pair of glasses lens thicker than Julia Roberts' lips. That is your cue to shout "Combo, beef and pork, side order of fries and baked beans." Give him your plate. He will slap on it a slice of Wonder bread right out of the plastic sack ("Builds Strong Bodies 12 Ways"). He tops that with a fistful of thinly sliced beef that is approximately one-third of the dressed weight of the cow that donated it. He uses a paintbrush to slather on the first coat of barbeque sauce. It is a rich russet mud, speckled with bits of pepper and a scent that wafts up and flavors your memory like the smell of spring on that first picnic date you had with what's his/her name, the one you knew you were fated never to marry but the one you knew you'd always love in some... Sorry. It smells good. On top of that first layer goes another slice of bread, another massive fist of ham or pork. Another wash of sauce, the top slice of bread goes on, and the whole mound is whacked cleanly in half with a scimitar that doubles as a butcher knife. The entree is completed with another handful of fries that inevitably spill off the plate as he hands it to you. The first time you eat there, the two or three spilled fries will scarcely be noticed. The second time, each one that falls will cause a wince. In 1937, the Emperor Haile Selassie, of Ethiopia, who didn't mind going out of his way a little for a good meal, dropped in at Arthur Bryant's and the counterman relented and for the first and so far last time, used tongs to prepare the meal.
Just as Haile did, you get your beans and other side dishes and drinks at the cash register.
There are squirt bottles of sauce at the tables, the original and some variation that I've never bothered to try for much the same reason that I would not want a decaf espresso at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Go for the real thing. Arthur's own ambrosia, vinegary and slightly smoky and peppery, delightfully gritty on the palate and with a finish for which the winemakers at Phillipe de Rothschild’s caves would happily die. Some diners like to just dab a bit on the meat, others want their food swimming in the stuff. These are the sort of private and personal decisions a person has to make about life on his own.
The taste? Aside from politics and Ryan Seacrest's sexual orientation(s), BBQ has occasioned more opining than most other matters of discourse in the commonweal. Once you have passed through the screen-door portals of Arthur Bryant's, the babble surrounding the subject will be met with an amused and indulgent ennui on your part. You will know. You have been to BBQ's Olympus. The rest is simply meandering around in the foothills.
