Mama's KC-MO

I find it a bit crazy that there are two sides to Kansas City, the Kansas side and the Missouri side. There is no difference your talking one side of the river as opposed to the other. We were watching TV this morning and there is a huge crises that the KCK government is running out of money. I know, why don't you shut down one of the government arms merge and save all that money. Then you wouldn't be in as much trouble would you? But Noooo the politicians would never allow that. That would put their jobs in jeopardy.
Mama's is in Kansas City MO...

Absolutely the largest breakfast menu we have ever seen:

That grey square down in the lower left is the number of omelet combinations. No limit of "Cheese, Denver, or Mix" here you had 66 choices for your omelet. And they had several other "World Famous" menu items which made choosing hard.
Well sort of.
Mama's was noted by Guy as making their own corned beef hash from fresh corned beef.  You have no idea what this means to me. I am a corned beef fiend and a proper corned beef hash is probably the perfect breakfast in my humble opinion. I have sought out every type of canned corned beef hash that I can and have ate and compared them. I have sought out every restaurant that I can through several states that serves corned beef hash and have made my way to them in order to check out their offering. I have made my own corned beef hash with different recipes (except for Fanny Farmers "Flannel" hash. It has beets in it and that's gross. Does anyone really like beets? I thought the only real purpose for beets was to be canned  and sliced and put on the side of your thanksgiving plate for color only).
Obviously I am a corned beef hash hound and aficionado so imagine my excitement when EAT told me that this joint was actually noted by Guy on the Food Network as preparing their hash from scratch and even corning their own beef in a multi-day process. I was pumped!
We specifically over-ordered with the intention of leaving most of the food behind, except for the hash of course. We got:

 

Kitchen Sink Scrambler

Corned Beef Hash... Duh!

Belgium waffle

 

Deep Fried Cinnamon Roll

Biscuits and Gravy (1/2 order to show SOME restraint)

We avoided going for what was the largest layer cake I have ever seen in person. The six layer banana split cake:

  

We enjoyed just about everything. The egg scramble looked dry but it was not. The tomatoes were canned which was a bit surprising but it worked out quite well. The deep fried cinnamon roll was one of those love it or hate it things and I was quite interested because I like both cinnamon rolls and just about anything deep fried. But sadly the glazing that the waiter poured over on top had some ingredient that did not agree with us so that ended up being a one bite experience for us. The waffle was light and well executed this was a good dish in EAT's opinion and she is the Belgium waffle expert.

The biscuits and gravy were superb. The underlying biscuit was appropriately light and fluffy and the gravy was peppery with a very good sausage in generous quantity. I'm sad to say that this is the best B&G of the trip. Better then Brint's even.

The corned beef hash was massive. I think it must have been at least a pound of food. It actually had chunks of real corned beef in there. But when I bit into it I found that there seemed to be a mix of both canned and fresh made. There were the telltale "diced" potatoes that are the hallmark of a factory made product. You just can't dice cooked potatoes like that by hand. There were also hash brown grated potatoes in there. And to top it all off there was the distinct flavor of a canned variety. I am convinced that they are mixing with canned because they want their patrons to have the taste of corned beef hash that they expect. I have made fresh corned beef hash and it tastes markedly different than canned. If you want to taste what fresh made corned beef hash tastes like go to "Mimi's Cafe" in Tulsa. That's the real stuff.

I could not finish the huge dish but my loyalty to the dish of corned beef kept me from leaving it. Even with with all that disappointment with their execution I took a left over box. I am not really sure what I am going to do with it. For the moment I am keeping it at my side like a puppy. I have no intention of eating it but I cannot stand the thought that I am actually going to throw away corned beef hash. Especially hash that has REAL bits of corned beef in it. I am conflicted.

Would we go back to Mama's? Of course! Their menu is WAY too big to experience in one trip or to be sullied by one dish.

In a way I am glad that Tulsa has better corned beef hash. I would hate to think that I am deprived of the best hash because I just don't get to KCM that often. There! That's my rationalization for why I don't need to move to KCM just so I can go to one restaurant on a frequent basis.

Grinders

I have to get this post out quick I am waiting for EAT to get ready this morining so that we can go to Mama's. Why am I so excited about Mama's? Well! fresh made corned beef what else? But I'll tell you more about that later.

Griners was started by a couple of guys who like to drink beer together and like to make fun thinks to eat. One of the guys is an artist and likes to do those huge sculptures out of steel that you see around places:

 

It is located on the trashy warehouse side of Kansas City which is rapidly becoming the art district. The owner seems to have bought the whole city block and there are about 3 art galaries, a photographer, a tattoo place, and the owner's personal art studio located there. In the back is a large open air arena with a huge stage at the end and several "shack" bars surrounding the arena.

They rent the place out for festivals and concerts and it all seems quite contrived as a way to make even more money off of their gen-x new-age grunge motorcycle hip diverse alternative coffee drinking boutique beer guzzling tattoo wearing friends. Don't get me wrong we enjoyed ourselves and sat outside at one of the wooden picnic tables in the arena area.

Both the inside decor and the menu were just as eclectic.

The menu as a wide variety of things but we settled in on the "death" wings a Philly cheese steak sub and a "Bengal Tiger" pizza. Everything was great. The Philly cheese steak was well executed and the death wings were very good even though the heat didn't really kick in until the third wing or so but it did catch up with us. EAT thinks we should get a batch of these wings and sit and eat them while watching OU beat Missouri by way of our personal revenge for the spice.

 

The bengal tiger pizza had Indian spices, crab and other wierd things the pizza was the flat new-york style (very thin, to the point that you had to fold it over to eat it) made by hand and was well executed. 

 

The spices made the pizza very different flavor and I don't know if it was fishyness from the crab or was it that we were getting too full but we could not finish it.

Would we go back to Grinders?  Absoutly! The menu is way to diverse to catch all the gems in two or even three trips. Would we go attend a concert? I think not. This crowd is not "our people".