October 2007 -- If you’re up for a little adventure, take a walk down to 18th and Main in downtown Kansas City, to the neighborhood of the renovated TWA building in the Crossroads Art District, where you will find soup, movie stars, and a rocketship.
Next to the TWA building, Souperman serves soups, salads, and “sandittos” in a cafe decorated with faux comic art of Souperman’s “fast food fighting” career. The owner proclaims “I’m cooking slow food – I’m just serving it fast.” And it was so fast that we were called to pick up our food before we had finished paying the cashier.
The sandittos are wrapped sandwiches stuffed with ingredients like a burrito and then grilled like a panini. You can get any of the sandwiches hot or cold, but we weren’t asked which we preferred. The default seemed to be hot on the day we went, so I suggest you make sure you specify what you want. Some of the sandwiches like the Chicken Ceasar and the Hummus might be better cold – especially during the summer months. Our group enjoyed the Hummus with Roasted Red Pepper, Olives, Feta, and Spinach; the Grilled Chicken Caesar with Parmesan and Toasted Garlic; the Smoked Turkey Melt with Swiss, Tomato, Spinach, and Pesto; and the Roasted Pork with Ham, Pickles, Swiss and Mustard Aioli. All the sandwiches seemed to be hearty and with a good mix of flavors.
It’s not surprising that a place like Souperman has a list of unusual soups that are tempting even after a walk in the sun. The small soup is 8 oz – which is a lot of soup. I enjoyed the Curry Pumpkin Bisque (vegetarian), which had a spicy, nutty flavor. Others who had the meat soups such as Roasted Pork and Barley Soup with Vegetables and Black Bean Chorizo Chili reported they were tasty and slightly spicy though the meat was a little chewy. On my second visit, I found the Smoked Tomato surprisingly ordinary with an artificial flavor.
Souperman also offers some intriguing salads. The Spinach Salad with Pecans, Dried Cherries, Goat Cheese, and Balsamic Vinaigrette was enough for a small meal and the cherries were an unusual touch. One member of our party had the Pesto Potato Salad with Corn, Parmesan, and Toasted Garlic which seemed to be drowning dressing.
The best deal at Souperman is their combo meals. You can get an 8 oz. soup and a salad or sanditto for $6.99.
For more information, see http://www.soupkc.com
For those who think that the Web destroyed print media and Starbucks destroyed the neighborhood coffeehouse, the storefront named simply Magazines and Coffee next to Souperman stands as a testament to independence and individuality. MAC serves espresso drinks, cold drinks including frappes and smoothies, sandwiches, and baked goods.
Magazines and Coffee is decorated with photographs from the old TWA building including photographs of James Garner, June Lockhart, Muhammad Ali, and other celebrities waving from TWA planes. At the other end of the shop is a photo-mural showing a line of mechanics wearing propeller hub covers on their heads like weird alien space helmets.
The espresso drinks are inspired, at least in name, by its TWA neighbor. You can get Jet Fuel (espresso shots from Vivace in Seattle) and the signature Howard Hughes made with espresso, hazelnut, chocolate syrup, steamed milk, topped with whipped cream and gold flakes, and served with an antibacterial towelette. I’m not a coffee drinker but one of the regular denizens told me it was the best coffee in the city.
The sandwiches are all under $6 and looked hearty, a couple of inches thick. MAC says they are the only downtown source for The Pastry Goddess. I had originally intended to get a scone, but lost courage when I saw the scones were large enough to be stored on the magazine racks. So I bought a reasonably sized fruit tart. The fruit was fresh and obviously selected by hand. The custard was filling light and not too sweet. The crust had a nice texture but was a little soggy. I only intended to take a couple of bite but somehow the whole thing disappeared! (Could I have picked up some Hughes paranoia?)
The magazines in the newsstand included the usual mass marketed periodicals on a variety of subjects – business, fashion, cars and motorcycles, art, music, entertainment, technology, and so forth (do we really need four Yoga magazines?). But there were also some magazines I’d never seen before and maybe a few I never want to see again. (I never really had the courage to look closely at Acne Paper.) There are magazines from all over the world – The Kyoto Journal sits close to the Austin Monthly. Independent press periodicals mingled happily with mass market with titles such as The Wilson Quarterly (“Surveying the World of Ideas” with articles “The Climate Engineers”, “Scatteration”, and “Portrait of a Math Genius”) and Ready-Made (“Instructions for Everyday Life” with articles telling you how to make your own I-Pod radio and your own custom clothing). Our group paged through magazines as various as Drumhead and Workbench.
See their web site http://www.magazinesandcoffee.com for more information.
If you still have a few minutes after lunch, you can get a view of the TWA Moonliner replica that sits on top of the TWA building now occupied by Barkley advertising agency (which uses the Moonliner as its logo).
The TWA Moonliner was built for Disney’s Tomorrowland in the 1950s. According to Disney and Howard Hughes, the original 80 foot rocket was what we could expect for spaceflight in 1986. A 35 foot replica was built for the TWA building here in Kansas City. The original replica (an oxymoron?) is in Columbia but when the building was restored last year, the architects also decided to build a new Moonliner replica to complete the renovation.
Though you can’t go directly to Barkley’s roof to see the Moonliner, you might want to take a look at their lobby if you are interested in the retro renovation of the building and the artwork they have installed.
You can see the shape of things to come by looking up to the TWA roof from 18th and Baltimore if you want to stay at street level. If you are more adventurous you can get a little closer to the Moonliner by entering the parking garage next to Magazines and Coffee and going to the roof of the garage (the fifth level). You can get the best view of the 1950s tomorrow from the southeast corner of the upper tier of the roof garage.
So when someone asks you what you did for lunch you can say, “I had a sanditto, coffee with gold flakes and James Garner, and a trip to tomorrow.” Conversation starter or conversation stopper? Try it and see.
Copyright © 2007 by Terry Matz. Please do not reprint without permission.
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