City, Slicker

t's been almost exactly two years since City Tavern was last reviewed in this paper, and much has happened in the intervening months. But first, a brief look back at 2003: The expensively mounted restaurant was celebrating its first anniversary, and hardworking sous chef Tim Doolittle had recently been promoted to the executive chef position, replacing celebrity chef Dennis Kaniger. The food had improved dramatically, but the dining room still wasn't doing the numbers that owner Dan Clothier expected, especially given that he'd opened his restaurant right next to two of the busiest venues in town, Lidia's and Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue.

Flash-forward to this spring, when local food writer Lou Jane Temple revealed on KCUR 89.3's Walt Bodine Show that Doolittle had left the restaurant and Clothier had told her that without a high-profile chef in the kitchen, the City Tavern was "finally making money."

That comment rubbed a few people — including Tim Doolittle — the wrong way, but Clothier is unrepentant about changing the direction of his kitchen. Instead of hiring a costly new chef, he gave an additional title, kitchen manager, to longtime general manager Craig Christopher, who is now working both the front and the back of the house.

"He's like a general who runs a tight ship," said Clothier, who also praised former chef Doolittle for his talent and culinary ideas, but says he wanted to put more of his own imprint on the restaurant. And save a little dough, too.

Clothier wants a specific identity for City Tavern, and his inspiration isn't the kind of trendy urban brasserie that the restaurant emulated in the beginning. No, Clothier wants City Tavern to have the time-burnished luster of San Francisco's 156-year-old Tadich Grill (a beloved oyster-and-chop house that started as an unassuming coffee stand) or Chicago's venerable Berghoff Restaurant, which turned 107 this year.

"I love those kinds of restaurants," Clothier tells me. "They're so incredibly dependable."

From the very beginning, he wanted a connection to history. Before he'd even started construction in the old freight-house building in the Crossroads District, he purchased franchise rights for one of New York City's culinary landmarks, the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant, located below Grand Central Station. There are still architectural details in his restaurant that evoke the original, but Clothier opted not to re-create another city's icon. "I realized that what I wanted was what the Oyster Bar had been when I lived in New York in the 1970s, not as it is today," he says.

City Tavern isn't the only local restaurant with historical pretensions (Capital Grille and M&S Grill are designed to give the illusion of having been around for decades), but it's the only one that comes close to pulling off the charade, thanks to its antique light fixtures, salvaged-wood flooring and distressed mirrors — and the sense of quiet decorum that one rarely finds in modern restaurants.

I've eaten at City Tavern a dozen times since it opened, but I never understood Clothier's concept until recently, when I brought two New York friends, David and Becky, to dinner and saw the restaurant through their eyes. As far as David was concerned, it was easy to believe that City Tavern actually dated back to the 19th century.

"It's a great old Midwestern dining room," he said, admiring the linen-cloaked tables, polished flatware, tabloid-sized menus and attentive young servers in starched aprons. David visits Kansas City fairly often and has made pilgrimages to all the famous steakhouses, but City Tavern is, hands down, his favorite. "The best Kansas City strip I've had in this town," he says.

Then again, he gave the same glowing praise that night to the shrimp cocktail (five fat crustaceans perched on a jade-green swirl of seaweed salad) and the honey-almond crème brûlée. "Are you sure this place hasn't been around forever?" he asked.

No, I told him, but a lot of the dishes on the menu are relics from the era of Diamond Jim Brady and his favorite New York restaurant, Rector's, where oysters, crab, lobster and steaks were standard fare. And though our little trio couldn't indulge in the quantity of food that Brady could put away, we were rewarded in the quality of the excellent dishes we chose. The creamy New England chowder is exceptional, and Becky did her best Lillian Russell imitation by gulping down three iced oyster shooters, each in a frosty shot glass with an ounce of Absolut vodka, a splash of cocktail sauce and a pinch of horseradish. "It has a nice kick to it," she said.