Fans of Carmen’s Café in Brookside tend to gravitate there for its coziness and its reliable way with St. Louis-style Italian food.
There’s the cramped entry bar, with its usually entertaining open kitchen; the dimly lighted, bustling cube of a dining room; and a somewhat generic weekend overflow space upstairs.
Well, after nearly a dozen years in Brookside, Carmen’s this year planted another flag out in the ’burbs, and, as the old TV theme had it, sort of, it has moved on up to a new level.
Walk into its new spot in Leawood’s Park Place — that development has become a formidable noshing node of the local restaurant universe — and you’ll notice an immediate difference.
The bar is long, spacious and elegant. There’s a faux pressed-tin ceiling and a rough-textured plaster wall, and you don’t have to squeeze your way through to get to the comfortable, mirror-lined dining room. On a recent Monday night, the place was close to full throttle with at least one large party making jolly in the main room and seemingly happy diners all around.
Another thing you’ll notice: The menu is virtually identical to the Brookside outlet (well, the entrées tend to be priced a dollar higher), and the kitchen, still ensconced in a 10-foot section at the end of the bar, turns out old favorites with similarly pleasing results. Starting, of course, with the “Italian butter,” a small bowl of garlic-studded, basil-flecked oil, into which one traditionally dips hunks of the store-bought (Roma?) Italian bread. Sometimes you have to ask for it, but it usually arrives at the table shortly after the menus, and it makes a bold assertion that your evening will take on a garlicky hue.
For appetizers one night, a friend and I grooved on the gambas a la plancha, nicely grilled, bacon-wrapped shrimp in a diablo sauce. On another visit, my party raved about some perfectly grilled sea scallops surfing in a Spanish saffron cream sauce (“I like that it has color in the sauce,” one friend said of the tiny red threads of saffron).
We were less impressed by the calamares a la putanesca, the sauteed squid being slightly tough and the topping a little heavy on tomato sauce and a little light on the olives, capers and promised anchovies.
House salad always precedes the entrees, and here again, as in Brookside, you’ll find the same crispy iceberg and romaine lettuces heavily doused (though not overdone) in a tangy Italian dressing. Said Big Bass Man from across the table, “This definitely turns salad into a dressing-delivery device.” A first-time Carmen’s diner, he was not at all unhappy. Nor was I.
Carmen’s entree choices include veal, beef, chicken and pasta prepared in traditional settings with occasional in-house spins. You’ll find many of the usual suspects, including Alfredo, Oscar and saltimbocca. The Carmen’s kitchen likes the sauces, but I’ve always preferred some of their simple, lighter touches, such as in the angel-hair pasta with crushed tomatoes, oil, garlic and basil.
In recent visits, a veal piccata showed off someone’s skill in pounding a piece of meat into near two-dimensional submission before the quick saute and finish in a tasty, lemony sauce. Also quite satisfying were a chicken spiedini and a salmon diablo, though the latter’s sauce seemed more impishly mild and tomato-dominant than devilishly peppered.
And now for one big difference between the two Carmen’s.
“Do you like lobster?” founder and co-owner Juan Bautista asked one night as I looked over the menu.
He had no idea he was speaking to a long-displaced Mainer as he touted that night’s special: lobster spiedini. He said he was testing the dish in hopes of eventually adding it to the menu at both restaurants. He said he uses only cold-water lobster tails — from Maine, of course, or other points north.
The dish presented the firm but tender lobster meat two ways, both lightly breaded in spiedini fashion and served in bite-sized portions separated by a large helping of slightly red-sauced linguini. On the left, the lobster pieces came atop a bechamel-based sauce; on the right, a simpler, dangerously aromatic lemon butter sauce.
Do I like lobster?
I certainly liked that dish. And I’m glad to see a locally grown restaurant — a dressed-up Carmen stepping out in the fabo precincts of suburbia — holding on to what it does well, and apparently thriving.
Carmen’s Café Leawood
11526 Ash St., Leawood; 913-327-7115; carmenscafekc.com
Star rating
Food: ★★★
Service: ★★★ 1/2
Atmosphere: ★★★ 1/2
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday; 4 p.m.-11 p.m. Saturday; 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.
Entrée average: $$$ (under $30)
Vegetarian options: The menu’s tapas and pasta sections include numerous possibilities.
Handicap accessible: Yes.
Kids: What kid doesn’t like spaghetti and meatballs?
Noise level: Acceptable.
Reservations: Accepted.
Code of ethics: Starred reviews are written after a minimum of two visits to a restaurant. When required, reservations are made in a name other than the reviewer’s. The Star pays for the reviewer’s meals.
Recommended
Gambas ala plancha (bacon-wrapped shrimp): $9
Sea scallops: $11
Chicken spiedini Carmela (with a Sicilian-style amogio sauce): $21
Capellini de Angel: $16
Veal piccata: $23
Lobster spiedini (if available): $28.95
Steak Oscar: $28 (a house favorite)
Desserts: None is made in house but thumbs up to a simple flan ($4.95) and a great tiramisu ($6; it comes from a New York supplier).
What to drink
One more difference between Carmen’s Brookside and Leawood locations: The suburban wine list is a notch or two better. It features 85 or so bottles at reasonable, overly pricey and knock-yourself-out levels; several easy options can be had by the glass, including a La Posta Malbec from Argentina ($33 by the bottle; $9 by the glass) and a Farnese Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, from Italy ($7.25). The full bar is stocked with premium offerings, and one special is a Cognac-blend after-dinner drink ($10) borrowed, manager John Paul Balthazar said, from the Blue Heron at the Lake of the Ozarks.
If you like Garozzo’s, where co-owner Juan Bautista once worked, or Carmen’s Café Brookside, you’ll like the new place.
