Rob Connoley’s Bulrush in Midtown elevates Ozark cuisine

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Kevin A. Roberts

Pork coppa steak with summer squash and a sauce of wood sorrel and chanterelle mushroom purée

"We favored common doings for eatin’,” Zepha Good of Taney County once noted.

It would be entertaining to dine with Zepha—who died at age 85 more than four decades ago on a hardscrabble farm she never ventured farther than 50 miles from—at Bulrush. What would she make of the white bass topped with a sparkling foam of emulsified pot likker, served alongside wild onions and ramp cracklings? Not the most common of doings.

Chef/owner Rob Connoley’s on a mission, using the cuisine of the Ozarks, the native foods of the peoples who populated those ancient oak-forested limestone hills, as inspiration for Bulrush’s fare. It is less a re-creation of those traditional diets, more an homage—and stunningly successful.

On your first visit, go for the seven-course tasting menu. You won’t receive the menu until the evening’s complete, a memory record rather than a transcript to be consulted in anticipation. Instead, Connoley or sous-chef Justin Bell explains each course as it’s served. Connoley’s spent as much time, it seems, working through old journals and letters, consulting with ethnologists and prying from them every historical detail of Ozark kitchens, as he has cooking. A 19th-century letter mentions that wolves made lamb impractical in the southern Missouri hills, so Bulrush doesn’t serve it. Likewise beef—“It was too hilly for cattle,” Connoley explains—so much of the protein at the restaurant is pork and venison, both plentiful in the pre-modern Ozarks. A perfectly grilled pork fillet taken from the shoulder is partnered with a tumble of earthy fermented wheatberries, grilled squash, and a purée of chanterelles. A rich, chunky pâté of venison and pork is topped with grassy braised collard greens and a filmy green tomato aspic.

Kevin A. Roberts

After a few courses, it’s obvious: There’s also a clear Japanese influence here. A mushroom dashi stock flavors the white bass dish—the fish has been rendered as pâté, its consistency like the kamaboko fish cake in Japanese seafood preparations. A sweet, creamy amazake kasu (the custard-thick lees of sake-making, and it’s Missouri-grown jasmine rice used in the process) is solidified into a big marble with the delicate taste of white chocolate, topped with green-tomato marmalade, in a starter course. Connoley is experimenting with shio-koji, a mold used in traditional Japanese cuisine that imparts a sweet-salty taste, using it to ferment cabbage and other vegetables.

And there’s the tableware. Wooden soup bowls, earthen pottery, frosted glass—all look less like Swan Creek, Missouri, and more like Kyoto, avoiding a contrived folksy look. Likewise, the interior is cool and hip, with cement floors, clever horizontal battens defining spaces, and the world’s most minimalist kitchen, center stage for the diners seated all around it. A nice bar and similar seating arranged around it are in the main dining area.

The most extravagant star of our tasting was a doughnut of fried acorn flour batter sitting in a pool of liquefied hazelnut praline along with charred cabbage and rutabaga, dressed with black walnut oil and pickled black walnut leaves. It’s almost overwhelming, as extraordinary a collage of taste and texture as you’ll ever put in your mouth. The dish is served in a dark hand-thrown bowl whose lid is adorned with a baseball-size ceramic acorn. Every element of the food and serving dish speaks of creativity and style.

Not every course here is so elaborate. One intermezzo was an orange cube of jelled pawpaw coated in coarse sugar. It was simple, explosively sweet. Fried hand pies are a hill-folk classic; Bulrush’s take is savory. The dough crescent is stuffed with unsweetened rhubarb and cream and plopped into a puddle of acorn tamari and a dribble of elderberry sauce.

For an additional cost, an alcohol pairing is provided for each course. The drinks are well selected, from a Prosecco-like Perlwein to a hefty brut cider. Try the Prodigious Jump cocktail: persimmon-infused vodka, dandelion amaro, apricot, and cardamom. It’s simultaneously exotic and homey.

It’s important to note that unlike many such tastings, Bulrush’s won’t leave you hungry. Portions are small but rich and filling. Note, too, that the tasting course requires prepaid reservations, annoying but understandable, and there are no refunds for no-shows.

Ozarkers of old might not recognize some of the preparations at this uniquely enjoyable eatery. From pawpaws to collards, venison to black walnut, though, Zepha would surely be happy to tuck into such decidedly uncommon doings.