No!

The best restaurants in the world are, of course, in Kansas City. Not all of them; only the top four or five. Anyone who has visited Kansas City, Missouri, and still doubts that statement has my sympathy: He never made it to the right places. Being in a traveling trade myself, I know the problem of asking someone in a strange city for the best restaurant in town and being led with great flourishes to some purple palace that serves "Continental cuisine" and has as its chief creative employee a menu writer rather than a chef. I have sat in those places, an innocent wayfarer, reading a three-paragraph description of what the trout is wrapped in, how long it has been sautéed, what province its sauce comes from and what it is likely to sound like sizzling on my platter--a description lacking only the information that before the poor trout went through that process it had been frozen for eight and a half months.

In American cities the size of Kansas City, a careful traveling man has to observe the rule that any restaurant the executive secretary of the chamber of commerce is particularly proud of is almost certainly not worth eating in. Lately, a loyal chamber man in practically any city is likely to recommend one of those restaurants that have sprouted in the past several years on the tops of bank buildings, all of them encased in glass, and some of them revolving --offering the diner not only Continental cuisine and a 20,000-word menu but a spectacular view of other restaurants spinning around on top of other bank buildings. "No, thank you," I finally said to the 12th gracious host who had invited me to one of those. "I never eat in a restaurant that's over a hundred feet off the ground and won't stand still."

Because I grew up in Kansas City and now live in New York, there may be a temptation to confuse my assessment of Kansas City cuisine with some hallucination by one of those people who are always feverish with Hometown Food Nostalgia. I myself have known such people. I once had to take to public print to disabuse William Edgett Smith, an otherwise stable friend of mine, of the bizarre notion that the best hamburgers in the world are served not at Winstead's, which happens to be in Kansas City, but at the original Bob's Big Boy outlet in Glendale, California, Smith's home town. ("A gimmick burger with a redundant middle bun," I said of the Big Boy, in an analysis Smith has never dared answer.)

I am aware of the theory held by Bill Vaughan, the humor columnist of The Kansas City Star, that millions of pounds of hometown goodies are constantly crisscrossing the country by U.S. Mail in search of desperate expatriates--a theory he developed, I believe, while standing in the post-office line in Kansas City holding a package of Wolferman's buns that he was about to send off to his son in Virginia. I can end any suspicion of bias on my part by recounting the kind of conversation I used to have with my wife, an Easterner, before I took her back to Kansas City to meet my family and get her something decent to eat. Imagine that we are sitting at some glossy road stop on the Long Island Expressway, pausing for a bite to eat on our way to a fashionable traffic jam:

Me: Anybody who served a milk shake like this in Kansas City would be put in jail.

Her: You promised not to indulge in any of that hometown nostalgia while I'm eating. You know it gives me heartburn.

Me: What nostalgia? Facts are facts. The milk shake being served at the Country Club Dairy in Kansas City at this moment is a fact. What's giving you heartburn is not listening to my objective remarks on Kansas City food but drinking that gray skim milk this bandit is trying to pass off as a milk shake.

Her: I suppose it wasn't you who told me that anybody who didn't think the best hamburger place in the world was in his home town is a sissy.

Me: But don't you see that one of those places actually is the best hamburger place in the world? Somebody has to be telling the truth and it happens to be me.

My wife has now been to Kansas City many times. If she is asked where the best hamburgers in the world are served, she will unhesitatingly answer that they are served at Winstead's. Our little girl, who is three years old, has already been to Winstead's a few times and, as an assessor of hamburgers, she is, I'm proud to say, her father's daughter. The last time I left for Kansas City, I asked her what she wanted me to bring back for her. "Bring me a hamburger," she said. I did.

• • •

Almost by coincidence, I flew to Kansas City for my gourmet tour sitting next to Fats Goldberg, the New York pizza baron, who grew up in Kansas City and was going back to visit his family and get something decent to eat. Fats got his name from the fact that he used to weigh 320 pounds. Ten or 12 years ago, he got thin, and he has managed to stay at 160 (half of the Fats Goldberg I once knew) ever since by subjecting himself to a horrifyingly rigid eating schedule. In New York, Fats eats virtually the same thing every day of his life. But he knows that even a man with his legendary will power--a man who spends every evening of the week in a Goldberg's Pizzeria without tasting--could never diet in Kansas City, so he lets himself go whenever he gets inside the city limits. For Fats, Kansas City is the DMZ. He currently holds the world's record for getting from the airport to Winstead's.

"You'll go to Zarda's Dairy for the banana split, of course," Fats said on the plane when he heard of my plans. "Also the Toddle House for hash browns. Then you'll have to go to Kresge's for a chili dog."

"Hold it, Fats," I said. "Get control of yourself." He was looking wild. "Try to remember that this is a gourmet tour. Gourmets don't eat Kresge chili dogs. Naturally, I'll try to get to the Toddle House for the hash browns; they're renowned."

I gave Fats a ride from the airport. As we started out, I told him I was supposed to meet my sister and my grandfather at Mario's--a place that opened a few years ago featuring a special sandwich my sister wanted me to try. Mario cuts off the end of a small Italian loaf, gouges out the bread in the middle, puts in meatballs or sausages and cheese, closes everything in by turning around the end he had cut off and using it as a plug and bakes the whole thing. He says the patent is applied for.

"Mario's!" Fats said. "What Mario's? When I come into town, I go to Winstead's."

"My grandfather is waiting, Fats," I said. "He's eighty-eight years old. My sister will scream at me if we're late."

"We could go by the North Kansas City Winstead's branch from here, get a couple to go and eat them on the way to whatzisname's," Fats said. He looked desperate.

That is how Fats and I came to start the gourmet tour riding toward Mario's, clutching Winstead's hamburgers that we would release only long enough to snatch up our Winstead's Frosty Malts ("the drink you eat with a spoon") and discussing the quality of the top-meat, no-gimmick, class burger Winstead's puts out. We didn't need many words to convey our thoughts.

"Ahhhh," Fats would say, looking almost serene as he took another bite of his double cheeseburger with everything but onions.

"Oohhhh," I would say, feeling positively serene as I bit into my double hamburger with everything, including grilled onions.

By the time we approached Mario's, I felt nothing could spoil my day, even if my sister screamed at me for being late.

"There's LaMar's Do-Nuts," Fats said, pulling at the steering wheel. "They do a sugar doughnut that's dynamite."

"But my grandfather ..." I said.

"Just pull over for a second," Fats said. "We'll split a couple."

• • •

I can now recount a conversation I would like to have had with the "freelance food and travel writer" who, according to The Kansas City Star, spent a few days in town and then called Mario's sandwich "the single best thing I've ever had to eat in Kansas City." I mean no disrespect for Mario, whose sandwich is probably good enough to be the single best thing in most cities.

Me: I guess if that's the best thing you've ever had to eat in Kansas City, you must have got lost trying to find Winstead's. Also, I'm surprised at the implication that a fancy free-lance food and travel writer like you was not allowed into Bryant's Barbeque, which is only the single best restaurant in the world.

Free-Lance Food and Travel Writer: I happen to like Italian food. It's very Continental.

Me: There are no Italians in Kansas City. It's one of the town's few weaknesses.

Flftw: Of course there are Italians in Kansas City. There's a huge Italian neighborhood on the northeast side.

Me: In my high school, we had one guy we called Guinea Gessler, but he kept insisting he was Swiss. I finally decided he really was Swiss. Anyway, he's not running any restaurants. He's in the finance business.

Flftw: Your high school is not the whole city. I can show you statistics.

Me: Don't tell me about this town, buddy. I was born here.

"Actually, there probably are a lot of good steak restaurants there, because of the stockyards," New Yorkers say--swollen with condescension--when I inform them that the best restaurants in the world are in Kansas City. But, as a matter of fact, there are not a lot of good steak restaurants in Kansas City. There is only one and it gets its meat from the stockyards in St. Joe, 50 miles away. Fortunately, it is the finest steak restaurant in the world. The name of it is Jess & Jim's and it's in Martin City, Missouri, a tiny country town that is now part of Kansas City but still looks a little bit like a tiny country town. The most expensive steak on the menu is Jess & Jim's Kansas City Strip Sirloin, which sells for $6.50, including salad and the best cottage fried potatoes in the tristate area. They are probably also the best cottage fried potatoes in the world, but I don't have wide enough experience in eating cottage fries to make a definitive judgment.

Jess & Jim's is a simple place, with decoration provided by bowling trophies and illuminated beer signs. But if the proprietor saw one of his waitresses emerge from the kitchen with a steak that was no better than the kind you pay $12 for in New York--in one of those steakhouses that also charge for the parsley and the fork and a couple of dollars extra if you want ice in your water--he would probably close up forever from the shame of it all. I thought I might be too full for the Jess & Jim strip. Normally, I'm not a ferocious steak eater--a condition I trace to my memories of constant field trips to the stockyards when I was in grade school. (I distinctly remember having gone to the stockyards so many days in a row that I finally said, "Please, teacher, can we have some arithmetic?" But my sister, who went to the same school, says we never went to the stockyards--which just goes to show you how a person's memory can play tricks on her.) Also, I had been to Winstead's, Mario's and the doughnut place for lunch and had spent the intervening hours listening to my sister tell me about a place on Independence Avenue where the taxi drivers eat breakfast and a place called Laura's Fudge Shop, where you can buy peanut-butter fudge if you're that kind of person, and a place that serves spaghetti in a bucket. (My sister has always been interested in (continued on page 208)No! (continued from page 110) that sort of thing--spaghetti in a bucket, chicken in a basket, pig in a blanket. She's not really an eater; she's a container freak.) But I managed to eat all of the Jess & Jim's Kansas City Strip Sirloin --all 15 or 20 pounds of it, by my estimation.

One aspect of Jess & Jim's decor had puzzled me until that evening. In one room, the tables along the wall are separated by partitions and have curtains that can be closed to make them completely private. Jess & Jim's is, after all, a family restaurant; it has a kiddies' menu. It's not the kind of place people go to do a little nuzzling over a plate of cottage fries. Glancing across the table that night and noticing my 14-year-old nephew eating, I finally figured out the reason for the curtains. They were obviously installed by the management as a way to provide privacy for people engaged in disgraceful acts of gluttony.

• • •

It has long been acknowledged that the single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant's Barbeque at 18th and Brooklyn in Kansas City--known to practically everybody in town as Charlie Bryant's, after Arthur's brother, who left the business in 1946. The day after my stupendous steak at Jess & Jim's, I went to Bryant's with Marvin Rich, an eater I know in Kansas City who practices law on the side. Marvin eats a lot of everything--on the way to Bryant's, for instance, he brought me up to date on the chili-parlor situation with great precision --but I have always thought of him as a barbecue specialist. He even attempts his own barbecue at home--dispatching his wife to buy hickory logs, picking out his own meat and covering up any mistakes with Arthur Bryant's barbecue sauce, which he keeps in a huge jug in his garage in defiance of the local fire laws.

Bryant's specializes in barbecued spareribs and barbecued beef--the beef sliced from briskets of steer that have been cooked over a hickory fire for 13 hours. When I'm away from Kansas City and depressed, I try to envision someone walking up to the counterman at Bryant's and ordering a beef sandwich to go--for me. The counterman tosses a couple of pieces of bread onto the counter, grabs a half pound of beef from the pile next to him, slaps it onto the bread, brushes on some sauce in almost the same motion, and then wraps it all up in two thicknesses of butcher paper in a futile attempt to keep the customer's hand dry as he carries off his prize. When I'm in Kansas City and depressed, I go to Bryant's. I get a platter full of beef and ham and short ribs. Then I get a plate full of what are undoubtedly the best French-fried potatoes in the world. ("I get fresh potatoes and I cook them in pure lard," Arthur Bryant has said. "Pure lard is expensive. But if you want to do a job, you do a job.") Then I get a frozen mug full of cold beer. But all of those are really side dishes to me. The main course at Bryant's, as far as I'm concerned, is something that is given away free--the burned edges of the brisket. The counterman just pushes them over to the side and anyone who wants them helps himself. I dream of those burned edges. Sometimes, when I'm in some awful, overpriced restaurant in some strange town, trying to choke down some three-dollar hamburger that tastes like a burned sponge, a blank look comes over Me: I have just realized that at that very moment, someone in Kansas City is being given those burned edges free.

Marvin and I had lunch with a young lawyer in his firm. (I could tell he was a comer: He had spotted a hamburger place at 75th and Troost that Marvin thought nobody knew about.) We talked about some hot-dog places and we had a long discussion about a breakfast place called Joe's. "I would have to say that the hash browns at Joe's are the equivalent of the Toddle browns," Marvin said judiciously. "On the other hand, the cream pie at the Toddle House far surpasses Joe's cream pie." I reassured Marvin that I wouldn't think of leaving town without having lunch at Snead's Bar-B-Q. Snead's cuts the burned edges off the brisket with a little more meat attached and puts them on the menu as "brownies." They do the same thing with ham. I don't like Snead's brownies quite as well as the burned edges at Bryant's, but that's like saying Tolstoy was not quite up to Dostoievsky as a writer. A mixed plate of ham and beef brownies makes a marvelous meal--particularly in conjunction with a cole slaw that is so superior to the muck they serve in the East that my wife, who had been under the impression that she didn't like cole slaw, was forced to admit that she had never really tasted the true article until she showed up, at an advanced age, at Snead's.

After two or three hours of eating, the young lawyer went back to the office ("He's a nice guy," Marvin said, "but I think that theory of his about the banana-cream pie at the airport coffee shop is way off base") and Marvin and I had a talk with Arthur Bryant himself, who is still pretty affable, even after being called Charlie for 25 years. When we mentioned that we had been customers since the early Fifties, it occurred to me that when we first started going to Bryant's, it must have been the only integrated restaurant in town. It has always been run by black people, and white people have never been able to stay away. Bryant said that was true. In fact, he said, when mixed groups of soldiers came through Kansas City in those days, they were sent to Bryant's to eat. A vision flashed into my mind:

A white soldier and a black soldier become friends at Fort Riley, Kansas. "We'll stick together when we get to Kansas City," the white soldier says. "We're buddies." They get to Kansas City, ready to go with the rest of the guys in the outfit to one of the overpriced and underseasoned restaurants that line the downtown streets. But the lady at the U. S. O. tells them that those restaurants are not integrated--that they'll have to go to "a little place in colored town." They troop toward Bryant's, the white soldier wondering, as the neighborhood grows less and less like the kind of neighborhood he associates with decent restaurants, if not paying attention to the color of a man's skin is such a good idea after all. When he gets to Bryant's--a storefront with five huge, dusty jugs of barbecue sauce sitting in the window as the only decoration--he is almost ready to desert his friend. Then he enters. He is in The single best Restaurant in the World. All of the other guys in the outfit are at some all-white cafeteria eating tasteless mashed potatoes. For perhaps the only time in the history of the republic, virtue has been rewarded.

Bryant told us that he and his brother learned everything they knew about barbecue from a man named Henry Perry, who originated barbecue in Kansas City. "He was the greatest barbecue man in the world," Bryant said, "but he was a mean outfit." Perry used to enjoy watching his customers take their first bite of a sauce that he made too hot for any human being to eat without eight or ten years of working up to it. When Arthur Bryant took over the place that had originally been called Perry's #2, he calmed the sauce down, since the sight that made him happiest was not a customer screaming but a customer returning. Arthur Bryant is proud that he was the one who introduced French fries and that he was the one who built up the business. But he still uses Perry's basic recipe for the sauce ("Twice a year I make me up about 2500 gallons of it") and Perry's method of barbecuing, and he acknowledges his debt to the master. He keeps jugs of barbecue sauce in the window because that was Henry Perry's trademark. I immediately thought of a conversation I would have to have with the mayor and the city council of Kansas City:

Me: Have you ever heard of Henry Perry?

Mayor and City Council (in Unison): Is that Commodore Perry?

Me: No, that is Henry Perry, who brought barbecue to Kansas City from Mississippi and therefore is the man who should be recognized as the one towering figure of our Culture.

Mayor and City Council: Well, we believe that all of our citizens, regardless of their color or national origin--

Me: What I can't understand is why this town is full of statues of the farmers who came out to steal land from the Indians and full of statues of the businessmen who stole the land from the farmers but doesn't even have a three-dollar plaque somewhere for Henry Perry.

Mayor and City Council: Well, we certainly think--

Me: As you politicians are always saying, we have got to reorder our priorities