And it is cheap. Do you know why? Smaller nigiri for starters. What would be a two-bite affair at Edokko or other area sushi restaurants is a small mouthful at Friends. For years I have correlated the size of sushi pieces with the quality of the restaurant, but I’m starting to re-evaluate. Sometimes bigger is better, sometimes it’s not and sometimes it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Let’s just say that the motion of the ocean is quite vigorous at Friends.

I’m starting to prefer the smaller pieces. I just find it more manageable to eat small nigiri in a single bite rather than awkwardly stuffing a giant hunk of fish into my mouth. Worse yet, attempts at eating nigiri in two bites are almost always disastrous. Once a piece of sushi falls from your chopsticks and is disassembled into it its component parts, it loses any magic it might have had.

The sushi bento box lunch special gets a lot of attention, and rightly so. For $8.95 you can get two nigiri, one maki roll, soup, a mini-egg roll, salad and crab rangoon (which they hilariously and accurately call a “cheese cracker”). Eating sushi at most places in the United States isn’t going to be a genuine experience of Japanese culinary culture and I suspect that Friends’ bento box lunches are a prime example of that. There are many options for the bento apart from sushi, but I’m not getting anything else if I go to a sushi restuarant.

So I’m not saying that this is the best food in the world; I’ll leave that to every other food blog in town. But I am saying that this is a well-sized, affordable lunch special that arrives quickly and tastes good.

If money isn’t an issue, by all means order sushi a la carte. I’ve done it and it’s really quite good and still won’t set you back a fortune.

And the sushi isn’t sketchy. I’ve never had anything that seemed less than fresh or anything that was cut or prepared oddly. I even tolerated the likely presence of mayonnaise in the spicy crunchy salmon roll and enjoyed it immensely.

Friends is the most laid back sushi restaurant I have been to in Kansas City. Due to sushi’s elevated price point, most places tend to be slightly fancier affairs. The style of food lends itself well to casual but hip fine dining and semi-douchey night club-esque implementations. Friends is more like the Japanese Succotash with colorful walls (each painted a different bright color), utilitarian furniture and crude design accents like bamboo branches attached to the walls of the dining room.

What differentiates it from Succotash is the very good service. There are always plenty of servers available to tend to the dining room as well as a host/ess seating prospective diners. This place is really quite small but fortunately the primary dining room is separated from the entryway, sushi bar and waiting area. It does mean that servers often spend downtime wrapping silverware or doing other sidework at the sushi bar, particularly during lunch. It doesn’t bother me much but it’s a little awkward to have servers performing work other than serving when in full view of customers.

That’s all I have to say, not having been eaten there more than a few times. But I thought it was worth saying that Friends isn’t scary, sketchy or gross. Rather it’s quite good sushi for a good price. Maybe someday I’ll foray farther into the menu.

This clean, hip decor is accentuated by the soft but noticable strains of a Sirius dance music station. It feels like they are trying a little too hard in this aspect, but at least there were no lyrics to distract me from the business of stuffing my face.

I was initially confused by their choice to name the place “Sama Zama” because it sounds gimmicky. But a quick Google search informs me that the term means “varied” in Japanese, which I admit is a perfectly acceptable and appropriate description of the menu. It takes a while to figure out what to order. There are many choices in various configurations: lunch specials, entree portions, appetizers, soups, noodles, desserts, sides and nearly all of them were unfamiliar to me. So it takes time to read and process what is being offered. My dining companion and I each ordered a lunch special which includes two dumplings and a salad with a smaller portion of the main entree. A good selection of regular entrees are available as lunch specials: ramen (spicy or regular), udon, teriyaki, and the aforementioned okonomi yaki in a number of permutations.

The raw, marinated octopus appetizer I ordered exhibited wonderful flavor: savory soy punched up with wasabe. It was presented in a small bowl and garnished with strips of nori. I found myself wanting a different preparation once I took a few bites, not because it was bad but because I grew weary of the consistency of the straight-up octopus chunks without rice or more vegetable to provide a balance of texture. Raw octopus is pretty slimy and doesn’t look very appetizing to the Western eye so all you whities out there should excercise caution if you aren’t feeling a little adventurous.

While we ordered the spicy ramen and pork okonomi yaki as lunch specials, we were mistakenly brought full-size portions due to an error by our server who was otherwise quite good. I honestly didn’t realize what had happened until halfway through the meal. The price difference was minimal so I didn’t make a stink and somewhat enjoyed the huge portions we received. Seeing the specials being delivered to other tables, I noticed the portions were much more reasonable and appropriate for lunch.

The okonomi yaki is a crazy thing to behold: a pancake topped with meat and vegetables topped with a fried egg.

You can choose to further adorn the dish with bonito flakes or little fried wonton strips. I recommend the former. I was somewhat disappointed that the flavors weren’t punched up very high for something so divinely wacky in concept. The pancake portion was exceedingly gummy, leading me to believe that it had been undercooked. Perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to be? I think it is worth getting if you have never eaten it, but I’ll be ordering differently next time.

The broth of the spicy ramen, while exhibiting plenty of heat, was similarly lacking depth of flavor. Maybe I’m just a Guy Fieri-esque Phillistine who needs every dish laden with bacon and smoke and spice.

The noodles themselves were perfectly cooked and accompanied by delicious, tender slices of pork shoulder. This is the perfect dish for frenzied chopstick slurping.

Both entrees apparently came with little fried spring rolls which, while good, were pretty typical of most better Asian restaurants.

I’m not accustomed to posting about restaurants when they have been open less than a week but I decided to share my thoughts here nonetheless. Because I hadn’t planned on posting, I can’t recall the specific prices of the things I ordered. I think the ramen was $13 and the okonomi yaki about ten bucks. I want to say the lunch specials are about $10 as well. I hope Sama Zama does a good business and I suspect I’ll be back to eat again sooner rather than later. While my experience wasn’t perfect, the menu has a lot to offer and there really isn’t anything like it in town.

The Sama Zama website is still under development so the place to go for info right now is their Facebook page. They are open Sunday – Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

The space has been attractively renovated and is barely recognizable from its days as Matchstick BBQ, a short-lived but fairly solid breakfast and smoked meat joint on 39th Street West. Given the name and the interior vibe, I would assume that Anna’s Oven specialized in fancy salads, vegetarian fare and overpriced soups, but the menu trends toward updated versions of American classics: meatloaf, roasted chicken, macaroni and cheese and desserts like cobbler and bownies.

They open up at 11am and I strolled in about 11:40, eager to try the meatloaf, which Mr. Ferruzza enjoyed on one of his visits. Alas, they were out of meatloaf, which I assume meant that it hadn’t been made yet, given that they had recently opened and there was only one table occupied. The woman at the counter also warned me that they did not have chicken pot pie, which had been prominently advertised on the sandwich board out on the sidewalk. So I opted for chicken and noodles ($7) since it is a relative rarity on local menus and they advertise that the noodles are house-made.

The woman from the counter ran the front of the house by herself on my visit and spent a lot of time talking up the charitable aspect of Anna’s Oven with the few customers that strolled in. The business apparently gives a percentage of sales to the Friends of St. Anne, an organization that supports the work of a girls school in Kenya. Being a curmudgeonly old cynic I don’t pay much mind to this sort of thing. After all, what an odd choice of charity. It may have personal importance to the investors of Anna’s Oven, but I have no assurance that a religious school in Africa is more worthy of funds than Harvester’s, Big Brothers/Sisters, Amnesty International or the Heifer Project. Let’s be clear: I think charitable business ventures are an excellent idea, but this one seems too specific. I don’t want to research the charity before spending my money there. And it certainly doesn’t give them a pass to be a crappy restaurant.

Anyhow all this chatting about St. Anne’s really cut into the time the server was spending with other customers as more people slowly drifted in. She was supposed to bring out a bottled beverage to my table that took longer than the 25 seconds it should have taken. When she wasn’t with customers she was mincing garlic on a cutting board behind the counter and ignoring everyone. Basically you can forget about getting any attention once you leave the counter.

We must have waited 30 minutes for our food, so long that it almost became funny. While we waited I witnessed the wrong order being delivered to another table in the joint, and the wrong order given to a person waiting for takeout. Food was returned to the kitchen and fixed or remade apparently. This didn’t bode well. At least I had a bottle of Boulevard Wheat to keep me company.

Imagine my lack of surprise when the chicken and noodles arrived and the waitress explained that these were “not the usual noodles” because “they didn’t leave us any from last night.” What I received was a bowl of store-bought rotini with bits of chicken distributed throughout and maybe a 1/4 cup of watery broth hiding underneath. It was certainly not “yummy thick broth.” There was not even any garnish. Wanna see it?

This should really be obvious, but if you advertise house-made noodles in your dish and intend to substitute dried pasta, you should inform the diner first.

Where's the broth?

The dish was completely substandard and highly disappointing. It reminded me of something you make at home when you’re drunk and only have pasta and a leftover chicken carcass. I was annoyed, which you can probably discern from the general tone of this post. But there was no manager to speak to, just an unavailable server and a guy in the kitchen.

But hey the salad was good.

That little bowl in the background is the standard order of regular mac and cheese. Yep, the same store-bought noodles with a thin, slightly sour cheese sauce, and no garnish. This food is literally beige, would it kill them to put a parsley sprig somewhere? The mac didn’t taste all that bad, but was severely underseasoned and didn’t exhibit the best qualities of homestyle mac and cheese: cheesiness, salt. And where was the buttered bread crumb topping as promised on the menu? It certainly didn’t make me want to order the $68 party portion.

What am I getting at other than to complain? For starters, it’s clear that Anna’s Oven suffers from a lack of proper oversight and training. Why were there no processes in place to ensure that meatloaf, pot pie and homemade noodles are available every day when they open? Why did the cook and/or server not feel obliged to inform me that they were serving me something different than was advertised? Why was this place so goddamn slow? Other than providing a forum to feel good about charitable endeavors, are the owners invested in the success of Anna’s Oven? Does this place have a manager? After being there so long, my lunch felt like an obligation, like being at a timeshare presentation or worse, a bad community theater production against my will.

Not long ago, I found a hair in a dish that I ordered from a local restaurant. For many people such an occurrence is a dealbreaker, but after noticing it, I simply removed the hair and proceeded to eat my lunch. The restaurant is a place that I have enjoyed multiple times without incident and I trust them and know that they take pride in their food. But when that trust has yet to be developed, when owners’ work ethic is undetermined and their purpose unclear, missteps turn into grave errors.

Almost certainly, I caught Anna’s Oven on an especially bad day. I’m reasonable, I normally would go back to try more dishes and give them a chance to shine before writing this up. After all plenty of people in town seem to like it. But given this one experience I just can’t justify returning. It may not be fair, but there are too many other deserving lunch spots to try. That being said, I would love to hear others’ experiences at Anna’s Oven, mostly to see if I’m insane for being so turned off.

I started this site out of sheer boredom, disappointed in the selection of downtown lunch spots. Happily the urban core has seen an expansion of food venues for better or worse and I’ve since focused more of my efforts on Johnson County, a fascinating but frustrating place to eat, which happens to be where I work these days.

Rest assured that I have no inclination to stop posting about any locale. The intervening years have seen me reporting on a variety of food-related topics but at the heart of it, I want to focus on the unpretentious, easy midday meal. This is why I generally don’t accept invitations to try new dinner menus at restaurants on the Plaza or offers to sample the new lunch fare at joe-sample chain restaurant (believe me, if you have a food blog, you will get offers). I like places that lend themselves particularly well to the life of the regular, working person.

Thank you all for reading and commenting. If you want more, like the blog on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

The cuisine is every bit as authentic and tasty as Johnson County’s other Salvadoran outlet, El Pulgarcito and is dished out in a much tidier and slicker environment. El Pulgarcito seems to attract a more working class Latino clientèle while El Salvadoreño tends toward curious white people off the street, which makes sense given its location at the heart of a small but viable middle class shopping district. However I will not ruminate farther on this matter because it doesn’t really matter. Both restaurants have unique qualities and enough distance between them that I hope they can co-exist comfortably because they are both assets to their communities. El Salvadoreño’s Facebook page proudly declares, “Real Central American Food Made By Real Central American People” – and that’s what is really important isn’t it?

El Salvadoreño offers the familiar assortment of pupusas: cheese, pork, loroco, beans and the glorious mix of pork, beans and cheese, sometimes referred to as revueltas. The pupusas arrive fresh of the grill, not too greasy, and have excellent texture and a nicely griddled crust. On one visit I did receive a pupusa that was a tad less griddled than I prefer but to complain would be splitting hairs.

Pupusas arrive with the requisite jar of curtido, a slightly spicy shredded coleslaw accompaniment and red sauce which does not have a strong flavor but does provide much needed moisture to this starch-heavy cuisine.

A particularly delicious starch is the fried yuca which comes topped with chunks of fried pork, curtido and sauce.

The yuca wedges are expertly fried and incredibly crispy on the outside. At $6.50, yuca frita is one of the cheaper options for lunch if you’re crazy you don’t feel like having pupusas.

One item that I have not seen at other Salvadoran outlets is the pan relleno ($7.50) which bears the distinction of being somewhat of a preposterous novelty sandwich while not being all that unhealthy.^*

While the menu describes the filling as “roasted, marinated chicken” with a “spoonful of chicken broth” the soft texture and flavor implied that it was poached or stewed, then shredded into a mild, chile-based sauce. This is conjecture as I am completely ignorant of the actual cooking method. A soft French roll serves as the delivery system, along with a few crisp vegetable slices. The pan relleno is also supposed to come with mayonnaise on it, feel free to ruin the sandwich yourself by acquiescing. It is nearly impossible to eat with a knife and fork and even harder to manage with your hands. Like most things wet and sloppy in the world however, this sandwich is worth the effort invested. Spring for the escabeche ($1.50) which is a mix of pickled carrots, onions, cauliflower and cucumbers, pointedly spiced with oregano. It makes a splendid crunchy accompaniment to the mild, softness of the pan relleno.

I’d be remiss not to mention El Salvadoreño’s superb tamales. The masa has perfect texture: wet but firm, almost like custard. The pork filling is both a humble and decadent option, offering the characteristic tenderness of slow-cooked meats the world over. They have chicken tamales too.

The little deep fried pasteles are great too. The ground beef version lacks the flavor punch of the vegetarian pastel but the tomato-cilantro puree that accompanies both makes them equally enjoyable.

The service is quite friendly. El Salvadoreño seems to be a family run business and it’s apparent that each person in the kitchen and on the floor have a stake in its success. While small, it’s the kind of dining room that would prove challenging for one server when it fills up. Fortunately there are almost always two people minding the front of the house, something its southerly neighbor, Elsa’s, should pay heed to.

The storefront space is quite modern with high ceilings, bright colors, hard surfaces and metal accents. Interestingly the front wall of the place doubles as a garage door that can be opened in warmer months. This can only be a good thing when the farmer’s market kicks into full gear and the area is crushed with hungry consumers. I admit that part of me prefers the run-down comfort of El Pulgarcito when it comes to this kind of food but there’s no reason to pass it by when you want a good meal in downtown Overland Park.

El Salvadoreño
7926 Santa Fe Dr
Overland Park, KS
(913) 871-6165
9 a.m. – 9 p.m. Sunday – Thursday
9 a.m. – 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday

*For native Salvadorans,the pan relleno is not a novelty but rather a hallmark of their traditional cuisine. To others, the dish may across as a little nuts.

Seriously, how great is it that this business chose to keep the original sign rather than tearing it down or covering it up with a modern one? It may have been purely a matter of cost, but it was also a good business decision because I will always stop at a lunch spot with a good old fashioned sign.

By the way, Lobito’s isn’t really a burger joint, despite the name. It’s a Mexican Restaurant, and a pretty good one at that. Certainly there are burgers on the menu, but my guess is that this is a move to placate diners attracted by the sign. I’ve heard the burgers are actually worth trying, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

This place was extensively decorated for Halloween when I visited, with fanciful little jack o’ lanterns and skeletons adorning nearly most of the wall space. There are also a number of wolf-themed drawings and photographs; “lobito” means “little wolf” in Spanish. I was also struck by how impeccably clean every surface was. Clearly some sort of re-purposed fast food joint, Lobito’s takes advantage of all the wipe clean surfaces by wiping them clean every chance they get. Seriously, it’s one of the more spotless places I’ve ever been to.

Service is quite friendly too. You will be greeted at the door, checked up on by the owner, and thanked as you leave. That will do as much to endear me to a place as good food. Speaking of food, the menu is a gigantic, confusing affair, complete with specials, combo platters, a la carte items, burgers, an extensive breakfast menu and a dessert selection that includes flan and sweet tamales, a relative rarity in these parts.

The Mexican fare tends toward Tex-Mex but offers more authentic variations such as Mexican style soft tacos alongside the ground beef and deep fried varieties. The “Lobito’s Plate” features your choice of meat with rice, beans, guacamole, sour cream, some shredded lettuce and a tomato slice. The chicken is a marinated, pounded and grilled breast that tastes simply of lime and salt and is extremely juicy. The rice and beans are passable but nothing special.

What sets Lobito’s apart is the big selection of salsas available at a little salsa bar in the front of the restaurant. I appreciated having a number of them to try because the food took a longer to come out than one would expect. Normally this kind of gimmick doesn’t do much for me, but I really enjoyed the mild, tomatoey salsa that came with the basket of chips at the table, but also the smoky and spicy chipotle and the sublime salsa verde, accented liberally by black pepper. I also tried a really strange roasted red pepper salsa which I wouldn’t recommend on anything but the pico de gallo and avocado puree are both very good.

Located close to the Sports Complex, Lobito’s is a perfectly good choice for food coming to or from a game. If Dixon’s and Hi-Boy are too busy or tired give it a try. You can get a beer and can even play pool while you enjoy some very good Mexican fare.

You see, after my first Visit to Elsa’s, I was prepared to never return. Elsa’s offers pretty good food, but absolutely clueless service. My workday lunch took over an hour and a half, most of it spent waiting for food, bread, the bill, the corrected bill, the change, and at the end of it all they reported to us that they “couldn’t find” any change.

I wasn’t angry, just dumbfounded and almost amused by what a mess the management of this place appeared to be. I’m not someone who demands that servers at international restaurants have a firm grasp of English, but they should be able to communicate in some manner by pointing, gesticulating or something. The young woman who waited on me had a pleasant demeanor but just looked lost and was generally unresponsive. She clearly understood so little of what I said that she didn’t know how to react. I felt terrible for her; it must be incredibly difficult to interact with people all day and not know the language.

There are at least two other women and one man involved in the operation of Elsa’s, all of whom speak excellent English. I found it odd that they wouldn’t make themselves more available in the dining room to make sure service was going smoothly. Our server made herself rather scarce when not taking orders or delivering food. I wonder if she was simply avoiding the discomfort of communicating with English speakers.

Well my second visit found the whole operation noticeably improved, though not without notable kinks. I’m happy to report that the menu is well-constructed and the prices are affordable. Meat and vegetarian specials allow for one primary dish and two side-dishes for eight or nine bucks. Accompanied by an overflowing plate of injera, the spongy bread that doubles as utensil, these specials offer more than enough food for a midday meal.

I have eaten plenty of Ethiopian food over the years but have remained pretty ignorant of variances in spicing and preparation. My second time at Elsa’s I ordered the shiro wat, a dish of stewed chick peas but instead received the miser wat, a creamy red lentil item with a very nice spiciness. Despite the mix-up, I willingly ate it and found it delicious and surprisingly rich, no doubt due to the finish of a berbere- based sauce. My favorite item is the kik alicha, a basic but deeply satisfying yellow lentil assemblage. The gomen (chopped collard greens) is not as soft as I typically see it, but has a nice, fresh quality that is missing from most Ethiopian cuisine.

Basically the only thing I’ve had that I didn’t care for was a meat dish, the name of which escapes me due to bad notetaking and worse short-term memory. Basically it involved tough chunks of beef that were cooked to death but not enough to soften the flesh into anything pleasantly chewable.

The service on the second visit, while problematic, did not get in the way of me enjoying the experience. This was a different server and she also struggled mightily with English. But her consistent smile and pleasant demeanor put me somewhat at ease. Of course I did receive the wrong entree and waited a long time for my check but this meal was enough to keep me from writing off Elsa’s entirely.

I can only assume that my first, disappointing visit went south because the restaurant was fairly busy. I saw many problems that first time: wrong orders, errors in timing, MIA waitstaff but the second visit had me eating with only one other table in the place and my food came out quickly. I appreciate that the owner came around to check on me a couple of times; she is a very friendly person and I hope that her restaurant succeeds. At this point in time however, I’ll only visit Elsa’s when I have a lot of time to kill and am dining with patient people.

Apparently not everyone feels that way, because when I stopped by recently, this fairly spacious BBQ joint on Broadmoor was full of people at the lunch hour. There is nothing to alarm the discerning barbecue diner upon entering. You order at a counter, jauntily accented with an old school menu board and a display of barbecue sauces that is dizzying in its comprehensiveness.

The staff persons are very friendly and helpful, particularly the owner who is typically present behind the counter expediting orders or out in the dining room delivering food. Simpler dishes like sliced meat sandwiches are presented right at the counter soon after ordering. Others are delivered to you out at your table.

The highly touted barbecued chicken is probably one of the better versions around town. As seen in the DDD video, it is smoked and then deep-fried to give the bird a relatively crisp crust. As a result, the chicken is much moister and has a pleasantly crunchy skin, unlike chickens I’ve had at other BBQ joints such as Zarda, who recently served me a dry-ish, flabby chicken that looked better but tasted worse than this one.

That being said, poultry is one of the most forgiving meats to smoke and I was hoping for more wood flavor from Johnny’s bird. While not among the best barbecue I’ve tasted, Johnny’s chicken had a hypnotizing effect on me, and I found myself stripping every piece of meat and gnawing on the bones. The portion is good too-a half chicken seems like a lot but really is only a pound and a half of meat which is rounded out perfectly by Johny’s decent baked beans which are cooked in the smoker but come across as a very traditional, molasses-flavored Boston-style baked bean.

I suspect that the sauce turns a lot of barbecue purists off. It is extremely red, more pronounced than the color of ketchup and is applied liberally to most dishes unless you request that it be left off. While not particularly assertive, it has a distinctive tanginess that complements lighter meats better than beef or ribs. Some diners assume that the sauce is inferior because of its color while I find it acceptable, certainly better than the oddly sweet stuff at the otherwise superior RJ’s up the road.

The fries are nothing special: crinkle-cut frozen numbers that get the job done but really should be better considering the competition from other barbecue joints like Arthur Bryant’s and Oklahoma Joe’s who dish out superb, hand-cut fries.

The burnt ends are prepared well but lack the smoky punch that I expect from the best barbecue. The sandwich comes on a soft hoagie roll, topped with red onions and pickle slices, all of which are utterly unnecessary and ridiculous. At my core I feel that barbecue should be meat, sauce and white bread.

The decor is alas, drab as hell, reminiscent of a chain diner like Waid’s. The walls are sadly devoid of much artwork and the furniture is pure, cheap commercial dreck: Formica tables, vinyl booths, industrial carpeting.

The service is great here all around. The owner is very active in the daily operations and is typically out on the floor delivering food and making sure people are happy. At the risk of being indelicate, I should point out that Johnny’s employs a couple of developmentally disabled bus-people, a practice that I whole-heartedly endorse and appreciate. Those who have worked with such people (as I have have) or have them in your family (which I do) realize that providing a source of income is extremely important in contributing to their quality of life and promoting independence and self-sufficiency. One of the bus-women noticed that my paper towels had run out and chatted with me while replacing them with a fresh roll. I’ve never had a bus-person introduce herself to me before, but she did, and I found it a delightful exchange. Johnny’s gets big kudos for giving an opportunity to people who are often overlooked.

In general, this place is a lot better than I was led to believe, but not among the brightest lights of KC barbecue. I think Johnny’s is legitimate and probably unworthy of ridicule. It’s certainly worth a visit for those who want to familiarize themselves with the range of barbecue available in the area.

Johnny’s hickory House Bar-B-Que
5959 Broadmoor St
Shawnee Mission, KS 66202
www.johnnysbbqkc.com
(913) 432-0777

The decor is not necessarily modern but it doesn’t incorporate the kitschy, old lady aesthetic that many Asian restaurants do. As many have noted, Pho Hoa is difficult to locate from the street, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped many people from finding it. My visits have found it quite busy, patronized by youthful Vietnamese, curious suburban whiteys, students from the nearby medical college and even some older folks. The sea of tables in the main dining room creates quite the upbeat atmosphere, as do the host of young employees who seem to share all duties, from hosting and sandwich-making to food running and bussing. One fairly clueless server with a poor grasp of English took our orders, but we were equally attended by other workers who delivered our drinks, appetizers and food, and others still who delivered our check and we found them quick and friendly.

The house special banh mi is quite delicious, although a little too sweet for my taste. Having tasted a similar version from Kim Long’s I find I prefer that sandwich.

The namesake Pho was good, and featured the best treatment of tendon that I have ever tasted. We were disappointed not to see the accompanying plate of bean spouts and herbs that always come with Pho, undoubtedly an oversight due to the busyness of the place and the odd division (or lack of division) of labor.

The food all came out at different times, and the Pho was last, making it less desirable to ask for the accompaniments since we were already full. Indeed my partner received her drink almost immediately while I waited quite a while for my avocado shake. I made it through an order of spring rolls (they call them summer rolls) before I received it. The shake was only slightly sweet, but silky, rich and delicious. The avocado flavor was not particularly strong but I really enjoyed the beverage and would order it again. In general, I was a little disappointed at not receiving our dishes in any order that made sense.

Nothing at Pho Hoa struck me as being any better looking or tasting than other Vietnamese spots in Columbus Park. The selection of banh mi is a selling point for sure, but better Pho can be had almost anywhere else in town, particularly Hien Vuong in the City Market, Vietnam Cafe and Sung Son in Westport. I feel likewise about the spring rolls and the banh mi. But Pho Hoa does offer all these items under one roof and in a perfectly acceptable style.

Those who order salads step aside to the front of the counter where you can choose from among a dozen or so toppings for the tepid pile of iceberg and romaine lettuce. Not a great salad, but at least there is choice involved.

When original Pizza is firing on all cylinders, it’s hard to beat their slices. This is thin-crust pizza served in large-ish New York style triangles.

Despite looking somewhat undercooked on the top, the slices in the photo above have crispy, scorched crusts. You can order thick-crust (Sicilian-style) pieces but they are not nearly as delicious.

All pies are premade and stored in the deli case. Upon ordering, slices are put into the oven for a minute or two to crisp up. This is not only a common practice among pizzerias, but one that effectively balances freshness with quickness. If there is a small line, your slices will probably be ready by the time you pay and help yourself to a fountain drink. My preference is to order the slices well-done, which can take a couple minutes longer. The guys here have a tendency to pull slices out of the oven too quickly which can deprive diners of the joy of a fully crispy bottom crust. So I recommend asking them to keep it in the oven a few more minutes.

But this pizza evokes the classic New York style unlike any other I’ve had in Kansas City. Order a plain cheese and see if you don’t agree. Interestingly Original Pizza has a location in the Oak Park Mall which is highly regarded by some. I actually ate there once and couldn’t get past the utter drudgery of eating in a food court. I also remember the plain, premade salad and the undercooked pizza being inferior to the flagship location.

Original Pizza has a number of other Italian menu offerings but in limited varieties: sausage stromboli, ham and cheese calzone, and a very good meatball sandwich on excellent crusty bread. The sub is hard to eat, but worth ordering. While not perfect, Original Pizza is a highly worthy lunch spot in the heart of Overland Park, perhaps better suited than any other to satisfy a pizza craving.