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Fox and Pearl Brings Its Hearth to Kansas City’s Westside

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Flames and glowing coals in Fox and Pearl’s hearth are visible through the restaurant’s west-facing windows. The well-tended wood fire in the kitchen is an invitation, a flickering signal for diners and travelers to gather in the Westside’s newest addition. Chef Vaughn Good and his partner and co-owner Kristine Hull opened Fox and Pearl near the bottom of a steep hill on Summit Street. In a way, the restaurant is a summit in the couple’s journey as restaurateurs.

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From Lawrence to the Westside
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]ood, who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, moved to New York and studied at The International Culinary Center. “I was into molecular cooking and super modern food,” Good says. Then he met a chef at the school who inspired a shift in focus. “Charcuterie was his thing. It was a turning point for me. I started working with him and became fascinated with [butchering] and rootsy cooking.”

Good returned to Lawrence and worked as a sous chef at Pachamamas, where he had previously interned. Next, Good and Hull opened Hank Charcuterie in 2014. The shop concept quickly expanded into a full-service restaurant that appeased demand for his dishes but outgrew Good’s original intent. 

“When it initially opened, I wanted it to just be a butcher shop and charcuterie,” Good says. “We couldn’t change the business name because it was already established. I felt stuck at Hank.”

Lawrence’s food scene is mostly geared to college-age diners. Good couldn’t find an audience for specialty offerings like foie gras sausage, for example. He says, “I was dictated to about what would work. We sold lots of burgers. The specials were our passion but we couldn’t sell it.”

After a four-year run, Good and Hull considered moving the business to another location in Lawrence. They decided to migrate to Kansas City. The relocation made sense to them. Good says, “Sixty or seventy percent of our customers were coming from Kansas City.”

 

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Their new concept Fox and Pearl refers to the middle names of their daughters. Temporarily based in Novel’s former restaurant space (815 W. 17th St., Westside, Kansas City), Good began expanding his menu for a fresh audience. “The foie gras sausage at 815 was one of our biggest sellers,” Good says. “I only made burgers one day a week.” 

Good’s confidence grew, knowing he had creative freedom to explore ideas and develop dishes. Meanwhile, Hull and Good also searched for a more permanent location.

They were drawn to an empty space with spacious windows and maple flooring on the corner of Summit Street. The couple worked with real estate developer and landlord Adam Jones to radically transform the space. The restaurant and bar occupies the main floor with additional seating and open kitchen on the mezzanine, and an outdoor patio. They installed a spiral staircase that leads to a basement bar. Good and Hull now had a setting to fashion a full-blown restaurant concept that suited their interests, expertise, and vision.

“I’m excited about the building,” Good says. “The time we had at the Novel space was important. We got to know people in the neighborhood. We want to be a neighborhood space for people in the community.”

 

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From the Hearth
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]The wood-fired hearth is a key fixture in Fox and Pearl’s open kitchen visible from the mezzanine. Regarding the kitchen design, Good says, “People are interested in knowing where food comes from. People are interested in photos of the cooking process.”

Split pieces of oak and hickory wood are stacked on the patio, readymade fuel for cooking in the mason-built hearth. Local artist Bill Wenzel constructed the smoker positioned to the left of the hearth. Fox and Pearl also has a separate larger smoker formerly used at Hank Charcuterie. Good makes charcuterie and butchers meat in a dedicated room in the basement.

“Having a hearth will change the cooking quite a bit,” Good says. “I knew how to cook over fire. Now it’s getting in there, learning the tricks and setups and what works here. The built-in smoker can also be used as a warming oven. It imparts good flavor.”

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Good drew inspiration for live-fire cooking from other chefs. Fox and Pearl developed its basic hearth design on chef Ted Habiger’s setup at Brewery Emperial in the East Crossroads. Both Habiger and Good were individually inspired by Camino, an influential Oakland, California, restaurant known for its wood-fired cooking. Highly-regarded Argentine chef, author, and restaurateur Francis Mallmann was another culinary North Star for both Habiger and Good’s aspirations to use a hearth in their kitchens. Good and his chef de cuisine Isaac Hendry (above right), who previously cooked at Hank Charcuterie, Bluestem, and Port Fonda, also researched many books on wood-fired cooking. 

Food is served on earthenware dishes created by Lawrence artist Michael Crouch. Good discovered the artist’s handcrafted coffee mugs in a Lawrence shop and commissioned the dishware. “It was his first time making plates,” Good said. “The kiln is wood-fired. Each firing gives each dish its own personality.” 

The focus on butchery and charcuterie is evident on the menu. Pork, beef, and chicken as well as rabbit, duck, lamb, and eventually goat will make appearances. For instance, made-from-scratch rabbit bacon sausage arrives on a cream-colored dish with a deep lip. Grilled potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, paprika sauce and mango-colored flower petals also adorn the dish. While categorically a meat-and-potatoes dish, the tangy mushrooms and savory sauce added pleasing depth to comfort food that’s far from plain. I paired this course with Off Color Brewing’s Apex Predator. This farmhouse ale is juicy and hazy with a dry finish and fruity character. Quite different from Belgian-forward floral saisons and farmhouse ales like Boulevard’s Tank 7, Apex Predator seamlessly paired with the caramelized flavors and delicate smokiness of Good’s lightly grilled food.

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Other dishes include porchetta on a bed of horseradish turnip purée with grilled onions and salsa verde. Smoked and grilled duck breast is served with caramelized onion tart, cider turnips, and duck jus. Large parties might opt for the family-style portion of fried chicken with fermented hot sauce and pickles.

Vegetables, starches, beans and ingredients kissed by flame and smoke are also key components of dishes. For instance, roasted root vegetables are plated with peach sorghum vinegar, duck confit, and a crispy poached duck egg for good measure. 

Simplicity sometimes means restraint, allowing fresh ingredients to express flavor without unnecessary adornment. Subtly smoky tomato vinaigrette contributed umami to a salad of heirloom tomatoes, spicy greens, grilled squash, and cucumber relish. The dressing added depth without drowning the salad in a tsunami of excess. Nettle sheep’s milk cheese and crispy strands of fried shallots offered contrasting textures to a salad as pleasing as a summer lullaby. 

Duck pâté topped with strawberry jam and served with Ibis Bakery bread arrives on a wood plank. Ibis Bakery produces some of the best bread in the city. Its crunchy crust and chewy interior dappled with air pockets was a smart choice as a platform for what felt like a sophisticated PB&J. The bread counterbalanced the pâté’s custardy texture while the jam’s sweetness brightened its mild flavor.

Served in a petite iron skillet, a blueberry buckle dessert was on point with its homespun feel. A buckle is a coffee cake-like dessert where the cake batter rises or “buckles” around the fruit. This version had the lightness and texture of a sweetened cornbread with intense berry flavor. While an unconventional choice, I ordered a glass of J. Brix Skin Contact Pinot Gris 2018 to accompany the dessert. The Pinot Gris’ cherry notes, subtle spice on the finish, and gentle structure of this skin contact (aka orange wine) paired well with the buckle and delivered a satisfying conclusion to the meal. 

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Lo-Fi Wines and Cocktails With Character
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]eneral manager and wine director Richard Garcia (above left), who first met Good and Hull as coworkers at Pachamamas, also worked at The Golden Ox, Novel, and The Antler Room. The couple recruited Garcia to be a core team member at Fox and Pearl, where he fashioned the wine list with an emphasis on biodynamic wines. 

“I call them lo-fi or minimal intervention wines,” Garcia says. Vineyard management and use of chemicals is 100-percent dependent on the environment and climate. When possible, Garcia sources wine from small producers dedicated to using “little to no chemicals in the vineyards that would wind up in the ecosystem.” These selections mirror “what Vaughn is doing in the kitchen” as far as working with small, eco-conscious farms and producers.

Designed to be approachable, the wine list highlights lo-fi wines and also lesser-known New World and Old World wines. Garcia says, “The world of wine is vast and hard to navigate. You try to find importers that parallel your values and offer wines you enjoy.”

Garcia’s wine descriptions are intentionally light and “tongue in cheek.” For instance, a Hungarian Hegyi-Kaló Kékfrankos 2015, made from Blaufränkish red grapes, is summarized as “cherries and violets, balanced acid and texture, sleeper hit for sure.” A sparkling La Vignereuse Gaia Quoi! Pet-Nat Syrah, from Gaillac, France, sounds like a catchy K-pop song – “plum and violet fizzy pop, easy going and super fun.” The listing for La Vignereuse Mayga Watt 2017, a Gamay from Gaillac, France, is hardly pretentious – “strawberry soda sop, melty push pop, indeed chuggable.”

“Making wine lists is like making mix tapes,” Garcia says. “There are elements of yourself and poetry. Little gems you want to share with friends and the world.” 

Bar manager Katy Wade (above right) honed her craft at top venues in Kansas City and Lawrence, including Voltaire, The Golden Ox, The Rieger, Julep, and 715 Mass. Her approach to unfussy cocktails further reinforces Fox and Pearl’s intent to be “a welcoming neighborhood place.”

Look for seasonal ingredients, such as blackberries and blueberries, and local spirits in cocktails. As an industry veteran, Wade is savvy to the wealth of well-made craft cocktails through Kansas City. She simply aims for her offerings to be “fun, accessible, and good.” 

To that end, Copper and Tod is a riff on the animal names in the film The Fox and The Hound. Wade says, “It’s our take on an Old Fashioned.” J. Rieger & Co whiskey, Old Grand Dad bourbon, Amaro Nonino, and Luxardo Maraschino form the quartet in this classic. 

The Third Plate is a rotating seasonal cocktail utilizing local produce. “It’s inspired by chef Dan Barber’s book on how we eat, what is available and seasonal,” Wade says. She also plans to develop alcohol-free and low-alcohol cocktails, a trendy alternative now available in New York and Los Angeles bars.

The basement bar and lounge, not a speakeasy, mind you, will have different offerings than the upstairs bar. Wade intends to feature spirits that “express a sense of place and terroir,” such as single-estate Tequila Ocho and sherries. She adds, “We’ll use the space to explore special spirits in a more intimate setting, where the bartender may spend more personalized time with guests.”

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Feels Like Home
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ox and Pearl’s food evokes the bygone days of farmhouse cooking once commonly practiced in households as a matter of necessity. Baking bread, putting up preserves, butchering meat, and growing vegetables in a garden were (and are) labor-intensive activities. Putting sustenance on the supper table was more practical than pastoral. Foodstuffs were once exclusively sourced from farmland, ranch, field and stream. Fox and Pearl offers a modern version of this experience, where guests may enjoy the delicious riches of someone else’s creativity and labor.

Good’s cooking draws on southern and midwestern cooking influences from his upbringing. His iteration of regional cuisine uses wood and smoke in time-tested techniques. Yet, he isn’t beholden to Kansas City’s barbecue tradition or boundary lines of what regional cuisine should be. The menu at Fox and Pearl is adventurous yet approachable. Chermoula-rubbed quail with stewed field peas and greens, black garlic yogurt, radish salad, pickled garlic scape, and hush puppy? Good deploys a North African sauce on a game bird supported by southern cooking staples. Elsewhere, heartland meets Old World as Good marries casarecce, a type of Sicilian pasta, with Kansas white beans, mustard greens, herbed buttermilk cheese, and black walnut gremolata. These dishes exemplify Good’s culinary imagination and versatility by tapping into seemingly disparate foodways. 

Fox and Pearl will inevitably be described with words like rustic, farm to table, rootsy, and chef-driven. These words still have currency and apply, to a degree, to the food and experience that Good, Hull and their team have shaped. Yet, sometimes language or a hashtag serves as shorthand to sketch an impression, conveying an implied sense of being in the know without fully providing context.

Rustic evokes gauzy imagery of rural life in the countryside, where folks wear denim and mud-flecked boots and drive old trucks that run forever. The term also refers to unsophisticated, coarse people from the country, who lack social graces or polish. A yokel, if you will. The food, wine, cocktails, service, and decor at Fox and Pearl is anything but unrefined and provincial. Fox and Pearl connects diners in a cozy urban neighborhood setting with farms, ranches, and provisional suppliers located outside of city limits. 

More to the point, Fox and Pearl’s team have realized a vision for their aspirations. Within the realm of possibilities for what a new restaurant and bar might be, Hull, Good, and their team’s combined ideas and raison d’etre for Fox and Pearl are synchronized and unified. Warm sunlight fills the space and glows across the maple floor. Spacious booths and banquettes, family-style tables, and cozy bar stools offer multiple settings to have an intimate meal, a convivial gathering, or to rub elbows with the charming person at the bar. While brand new, Fox and Pearl already feels as familiar and inviting as home.

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Swedes and Sunshine
[dropcap]P[/dropcap]arking at the intersection of Summit Street and Avenida Cesar E. Chavez affords a view of the 1907 three-story brick building that houses Fox and Pearl. Cast iron five-pointed stars adorn the brick wall to the west like black sparks from an ancient fire long since cooled and bound in place. These stars are anchor plates, commonly used in European cities, towns, and villages on 18th and 19th century brick and masonry-based buildings. Connected to a tie rod or bolt, the anchor plates provide strength by reinforcing the wall. If read like a constellation and with knowledge of the city’s history, the stars are clues to the slow, gradual evolution of the Westside.

Fox and Pearl makes its home in a neighborhood long associated with its Latino and Mexican-American residents and cultural roots. Yet the building is a reminder that the area was once known as Swede Hill. In the 1900s, around 2,000 Swedes and western European immigrants settled in this hilly section of the city. 

According to Niel M. Johnson’s Swedes in Kansas City: Selected Highlights of Their History, Swedes began arriving in Kansas City in 1868. Some continued westward to rural towns such as Lindsborg, Kansas. Others settled near Kansas City’s riverfront, where they worked at meatpacking houses and on the railroads. 

By the 1880s, growing numbers of Swedish settlers congregated next to German and Irish immigrants. Swede Hill “was bounded by 25th Street (the railroad tracks) on the south to 16th on the north and from the bluff on the west to Broadway on the east,” according to Johnson. Gradually, Mexican-Americans rented and bought homes built by immigrant Swedes. By the 1920s, the neighborhood’s identity shifted from Swede Hill to the Westside. 

Swedish-Americans once gathered in the brick building that is now home to Fox and Pearl. The building originally housed the Nytta, Nöje och Enighet Lodge [usefulness, enjoyment, and unity], a Swedish-American social organization. The Swedish Pioneer Club No. 1 (Pionärklubben), another fraternal organization established in Kansas City in 1896, also met at the hall. 

Swedish-Americans observed native customs at the hall, such as midsommar and the julfest [Midsummer and the Christmas festival]. According to Johnson, cultural programs also included “readings of Swedish stories and reports by members on trips to Sweden or to remote places in the U.S.” Following each program, members served “a light supper, which might be accompanied by a case of beer and a fifth of ‘sunshine’ (whiskey).”

The first floor of the brick building later housed a drug store, possibly Stevens Drug Store, and grocery, likely Noon and Johnson. By 1970, the Swedish Pioneer Club and NN&E had dissolved. The latter organization sold their building to the Guadalupe Society. 

 A preserved Swedish lodge banner bearing the slogan Nytta, Nöje och Enighet is currently displayed on another floor of the brick building. The banner may be moved to Fox and Pearl’s upper dining room. 

The Swedish spirit of usefulness, enjoyment, and unity and Westside roots imbues Fox and Pearl’s modern space with an innate sense of history tied to the community. Other signs of the building’s rich history are evident. Blue-and-white tilework by Fox and Pearl’s fire engine red front door designate “Drugs,” a nod to the pharmacy that once operated in the space. 

Inside, Fox and Pearl displays a black-and-white photograph from 1923 of a grocery store and a second-floor butcher shop that once conducted business onsite. Artist Peregrine Honig and musician Mark Southerland, two longtime creative contributors to the cultural growth of the Crossroads, lived and worked in the building’s first-floor studio space years ago. Boulevard Brewing Company’s marketing department offices were once located on an upper floor of the building. Today, Fox and Pearl operates in a fully-transformed setting replete with rich history, providing hospitality, supper from its hearth, and even a bit of “sunshine.” 

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People of Craft Beer: Sloane Dominick, Kansas City, Missouri

Sloane Dominick

Sloane Dominick got her dream job at Kansas City Bier Company in Kansas City, Missouri, on February 14, better known as Valentine’s Day. Less than four months later, she worried about how a major life change might affect her career.

Previously, Dominick worked as a beverage manager at World Market but sought a change.

“I wanted to be on the production side of brewing,” Dominick said. Even after Dominick landed the brewery job, she said, “I felt like I was missing something.”

Professionally, the job fulfilled Dominick’s goal. She was initially hired in 2017 to work as a bartender and server at Kansas City Bier Company. She worked on the brewery’s bottling line and volunteered for odd jobs as the brewery grew. As a draft technician, she cleaned lines and even devised a method that saved Kansas City Bier Company around $1,800 a year. Personally, Dominick had a long-buried secret hidden behind a wall of uncertainty.

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Valentine’s Day is named after St. Valentine of third-century Rome. The name Valentinus is  derived from the Latin word for worthy, strong, or powerful. Over time, Valentine has come to represent the patron saint of couples, marriages, and the romantic February holiday. For some, Valentine’s Day is celebrated with flowers, heart-filled greeting cards, chocolate, and expensive dinner. Others reject the day as a make-believe ritual of commercialized marketing or view it through the prism of heartbreak and longing.

After launching a brewing career on this day, Dominick faced a pending choice to be strong and powerful enough to disclose her secret, or she could maintain a make-believe way of life that had already taken a toll.

In June 2017, Dominick chose to come out as transgender with a new assumed name.

“I talked about it with a friend,” said Dominick. “We discussed it and decided that I would go forward with coming out. I came out with my name Sloane on Facebook. I was afraid.”

The announcement was a decision to finally and publicly part with her previous gender and step into her feminine identity. In a way, coming out was both a breakup and an embrace of a true self she always knew existed.

That same night, she also made the announcement to friends and brewery coworkers while attending a Dogfish Head Brewery event at Bier Station, a local craft beer taproom. However, she was unsure how her coworkers would respond.

“The next day I went into work and my new name was listed on the schedule. Everyone was accepting of me,” Dominick said. “I didn’t want to give up my dream job. I feel like I was Sloane since I began working at Kansas City Bier Company. They have been nothing but supportive.”

Dominick suffered from depression for years. After making the announcement and sharing her new name, Sloane, she felt relieved and knew it was the right decision.

“I’ve known my entire life. I’ve been working on this since I was a small child,” Dominick said. I tried to bury it and focus on other things. But it’s like putting the wrong fuel in the car. It won’t run right. For twenty years, I’ve known something wasn’t right.”

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“I didn’t know that transgender was even a thing until I was 13 or 14,” Dominick said. “I had to find information on a computer and find out myself.”

Growing up, Dominick didn’t like to be made to play sports or placed into a male gender role.

“I just wanted to be me. I didn’t understand until I figured out the word for it,” Dominick said. “For ten years, I buried it. Bottled it up. Sometimes, something would trigger me and I would express it.”

Long before coming out as trans, Dominick saw a therapist to address her feelings.

“The therapist gave me bad advice,” Dominick said. “I went back in the closet. I kept it hidden as  a teen. I felt guilty about what I was doing. I told my mom when I was around 22, but nothing came of it.”

Later, Dominick told her mother about being transgender a second time. “I told her that she knew. She did,” Dominick said. “She’s been accepting of me and uses my name and correct pronoun.”

Dominick explained that the pronouns “she” and “her” apply to her as a female. “I’ve never been anyone else.”

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Dominick first took estrogen on September 8, 2017. Before taking the prescription, she was required to see a therapist. Then Dominick was referred to an endocrinologist.

“The whole process took three months,” Dominick said. “It was the hardest three months I’ve ever had.”

Initially, Dominick wasn’t sure how quickly the estrogen would affect her. She had planned to transition socially at first. The physical impact of the prescription would take time to manifest, but the psychological response was more sudden.

“Twenty years of depression were gone when I took estrogen,” Dominick said. “I thought, ‘This must be what normal people feel like.”

Dominick’s figure began to develop more curves. She said, “I began to see myself how I wanted to see myself. The depression was gone. I finally was allowed to be myself. My brain runs better on estrogen.”

To formalize the gender transition, she legally changed her name to Sloane Dominick.

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Kansas City Bier Company continues to be the place where Dominick clocks into her dream job. She also works a second job as a draft technician at The Belfry taproom and helps owner Celina Tio with beer and spirit tastings, dinners, and events.

Naturally, she continues to be a fan of craft beer. “Beer is so interesting and enjoyable,” Dominick said. “It has so many flavors.”

Socially, Dominick feels at home within the craft beer community.

“The Kansas City community is cool and accepting,” Dominick said. “It’s good to feel part of it.”

Dominick actually didn’t drink until she was 23-years-old and started drinking vodka and whiskey.

“I caught onto craft beer about four years ago and got into it as a hobby,” Dominick said. “There’s so much to discover. It’s interesting. There’s a sense of community, where I can hang out. There’s always something going on.”

Now, Dominick favors saisons, wild ales, and sours. Lambics and brett.-based beers were some of the first she explored.

“Boulevard Brewing’s Spring Belle was a formative beer,” said Dominick, referring to a 2015 seasonal Belgian-style saison made with flowers.

Dominick continues to expand her role at Kansas City Bier Company. She proposed a collaboration beer with Bier Station dubbed Wrong Place Radler. The beer will feature two syrups made by Eric Jones of Bier Station that may be added to Kansas City Bier’s hefeweizen.

Dominick said, “I came up with the name and concept, then pitched the idea to John Couture at Bier Station.”

That’s the beauty and heart of craft beer. As one of mankind’s oldest beverages that predates even St. Valentine of Rome, beer is not trapped in traditional styles and roles. Craft beer continues to evolve and grow. The talent, creativity, and imagination of skilled brewers and collaborative partners defy limitations. Similarly, the community of craft beer grows stronger by resisting limits and being true to each other and to the social and inclusive nature of beer.

Dominick summed up her connection to craft brewing as a simple yet powerful statement.

“Craft beer is part of my life’s calling,” Dominick said. “I was meant to be in beer.”

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Kansas City Star Reviews Expedition of Thirst

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A couple years ago, author Pete Dulin hit the winding roads of eastern Kansas and western Missouri in his red Ford Focus. He visited 150 wineries, distilleries, and breweries to research his fourth book, a travel guide titled Expedition of Thirst. Writer Anne Kniggendorf’s reviewed Expedition of Thirst: Exploring Breweries, Wineries, and Distilleries Across the Heart of Kansas and Missouri for The Kansas City Star.

She shares facets of the book’s dive into the winemaking and grape-growing culture in Kansas and Missouri. Kniggendorf chose this quote of mine that sums up how much there is to explore in Expedition of Thirst which was published by University Press of Kansas.

“We think of wine and terroir in France, but the bi-state area also has these distinct regions and climates and types of soil that will have a significant impact on the flavor and aroma of wine and the grapes that are grown,” Dulin said during a recent phone interview from Thailand, where he was visiting family.

The review shares how I drove more than 2,000 miles across eastern Kansas and western Missouri to visit multiple businesses in a day. After a long day of driving, talking, and tasting wine, beer, and spirits, “taste-bud fatigue” can set in, Kniggendorf wrote.

She cites some of the many off-the-beaten path destination featured in the book, such as Fly Boy Brewery and Eats in Sylvan Grove, Kansas. Those looking for a day trip might consider a jaunt to Columbia, Missouri, where the city has a distillery and multiple breweries.

Kniggendorf does a fine job of capturing the spirit and intent of Expedition of Thirst. It’s a fine, thorough review. Visit the link to read the full review of Expedition of Thirst.

The 288-page book has many color photographs that I shot to accompany the travel guide entries on the 150 breweries, wineries, and distilleries. Signed copies are available by ordering directly from my site. The book is also available at local retailers and major online retailers.

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Essay Excerpt: When Kansas Was America’s Napa Valley

“When Kansas Was America’s Napa Valley” is the title of an essay I wrote for the series What It Means to Be American, a project by The Smithsonian and Arizona State University in conjunction with Zócalo Public Square.

Los Angeles-based nonprofit Zócalo Public Square, an ASU Knowledge Enterprise Magazine of Ideas, syndicates journalism on its site to media outlets worldwide. Zócalo editor Eryn Brown contacted me in October 2017 and commissioned an essay for the series, What It Means to Be American. After discussion, we decided on a topic that would explore the history of winemaking and grape-growing in Kansas before and after Prohibition. I wrote the essay over a month’s time, building on research I had unearthed while writing Expedition of Thirst: Exploring Breweries, Wineries, and Distilleries across the Heart of Kansas and Missouri.

Below is an introductory excerpt from the essay. Visit the links below to read the entire essay.

When Kansas Was America’s Napa Valley

Located in the northeastern corner of Kansas, Doniphan County’s eastern edge is shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece, carved away by the flowing waters of the Missouri River. The soil is composed of deep, mineral-rich silty loess and limestone, making it ideal for farming—and, it turns out, for growing grapes and making wine.

California wasn’t always America’s winemaking leader. During the mid-19th century, that distinction went to Kansas and neighboring Missouri, where winemakers and grape-growers led the U.S. wine industry in production. Bold entrepreneurs, industrious Kansas farmers—many of them German-speaking immigrants—produced 35,000 gallons of wine in 1872. That volume jumped more than six-fold by the end of the decade.

But the growth in Kansas’ wine industry (and its sister industry, brewing) coincided with dramatic changes in the state. From 1860 to 1880, Kansas’ population mushroomed from 107,206 to nearly one million people. Kansans battled over slavery in the Kansas-Missouri Border War (1854-1861) and again during the Civil War (1861-1865). Kansas vintners faced a dynamic and challenging moral, social, business, and political climate. The region’s civic and religious leaders railed against the use of alcohol, which they believed contributed to moral decay and spiritual rot, leading them to implement the first statewide prohibition on selling and manufacturing alcohol in the United States in 1881. For more than a century, this ban caused a slowdown from which the Free State’s winemakers are only now beginning to emerge.

Read the entire essay.

http://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/places/when-kansas-was-americas-napa-valley/

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/02/05/kansas-americas-napa-valley/ideas/essay/

Image caption: Still photograph of teetotaler women from the satirical short film Kansas Saloon Smashers (1901), which spoofs the Wichita temperance activist Carrie Nation. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Kansas Public Radio Review of Expedition of Thirst

Rex Buchanan

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There are a number of independent breweries, wineries and distilleries across Kansas and Missouri.  Author Pete Dulin has been to more than 150 of them in the course of researching his new book, Expedition of Thirst.  Kansas Public Radio commentator Rex Buchanan took a look and turned in this book report.

Listen to the review on Kansas Pubic Radio.

(Transcript)

This is a great time to be a beer drinker.  There are so many high-quality local beers out there, so many brewpubs, keeping up with them is an almost-impossible but highly desirable task.

Fortunately, the University Press of Kansas has just published a guide to the breweries, wineries, and distilleries of eastern Kansas and western Missouri.  Called Expedition of Thirst, it’s by Kansas City writer Pete Dulin.  The book covers more than 150 locations in the two states.  Putting it together, he drove more than 1500 miles.  Researching this book had to be good duty.

Dulin covers all the local breweries he can find.  That includes the Free State Brewing Company here in Lawrence, the granddaddy of the modern brewpub business in Kansas.  Established in 1989, it was the first local brewery in the state since Prohibition, and remains one of the most popular.  Dulin covers other long-time establishments like the Blind Tiger in Topeka, the River City Brewery in Wichita, the Little Apple in Manhattan, and the Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri.

But Dulin doesn’t just cover the older places in the larger towns.  He finds the breweries in little towns, like Sylvan Grove, population 279, and the unincorporated town of Beaver, both out in central Kansas, places that seem too small to support any businesses, let alone a brew pub.  Even if you’re somehow not a beer drinker, this is valuable information, because many of these brewpubs are also good places to eat.

While I claim some hard-won beer expertise, I readily admit that I know far less about wine and spirits.  But Dulin’s book seems just as comprehensive when it comes to wineries and distilleries in both states.  Once again, he covers not just those wineries that you might know about, like the Holy-Field Winery in Basehor, but all sorts of others, like the Smoky Hill Vineyards and Winery north of Salina, the Holladay Distillery in Weston, Missouri, and the Shiloh Vineyard and Winery way out west in WaKeeney.

This book isn’t just a comprehensive guide to all these establishments.  It’s filled with color photos and the story behind each place and its owners.  It includes suggestions of drinks you should try.  The book even has a waterproof cover in case you happen to, uh, spill something on it in the course of your own research.

I know lots of people who brew their own beer and make their own wine.  And some of it is pretty good.  But with all places described in this book, many of them producing incredibly interesting, really drinkable products, it seems like a shame to take a chance on something homemade.  Especially when Pete Dulin has already done much of the work for you.

Kansas and Missouri may have their differences, but this book makes it clear that the two states share common ground on the beer, wine, and distillery front.  I can’t think of a better way to bring us together than by crossing state lines for a cold one.  I know I’m willing to do my part.

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Sneak Peek: Expedition of Thirst cover

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I’m excited to share the cover for Expedition of Thirst: Exploring Breweries, Wineries, and Distilleries across the Heart of Kansas and Missouri. Any guesses on where this photo was taken? Hint: It was shot in Missouri.

Published by University Press of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and due out in October 2017, my fourth book is a regional travel guide. Expedition of Thirst maps routes that crisscross eastern Kansas and western Missouri. In summer and fall 2016, I made many trips and stops at most of the 150 breweries, wineries, and distilleries in the book. Yes, the research was tough as I sipped and sampled beer, wine, and spirits.

In the book, I introduce the men and women behind the craft. You’ll meet interesting characters and gain a sense of place in each locale. During my travels, I explore varied landscape from the Flint Hills of Kansas to the plains of Missouri and Ozarks. Between reading the travel entries and expedition notes, you will find some insight into the history, culture, and geography of the territory I traveled. A wide range of color photographs also bring these people and places to life.

I look forward to retracing my routes in fall 2017 and spring 2018 with the book in hand. Hope you will too. Meanwhile, I hope you will pre-order a copy now. I’ll sign copies and ship them direct to you, beginning in October once the book is available.

Watch this site and sign up for my newsletter to learn about upcoming author events and book news.

Until then, safe travels. Cheers.

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Author Talk at Kansas City Central Library

Kansas City BeerAuthor Talk – Pete Dulin
Kansas City Beer: A History of Brewing in the Heartland
Sunday, April 23, 2017 | 2 p.m.
Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.

As part of the Missouri Valley Speaker Series, I will present a talk about my most recent book. Stockyards Brewing will also serve beer at a reception before the talk.

About the talk: To the delight of local beer aficionados, Kansas City has seen a proliferation of new breweries in recent years, building on a history that dates to the 1850s. In a discussion of his new book Kansas City Beer: A History of Brewing in the Heartland, author Pete Dulin explores how factors such as advancements in transportation and technology, European migration, and industry competition fostered early growth in the local brewing industry. And how the rise of major breweries of the post-Prohibition era – including Muehlebach, and more recently Boulevard Brewing – led to a modern wave of craft brewers that continues today.

Above image: The former Heim Brewing bottling warehouse and plant located in the East Bottoms.

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Kansas City Beer: Rochester Beer a Hit in England

Rochester Brewery, J.D. Iler Brewing

While researching Kansas City Beer, I came across some interesting facts and trivia about Kansas City’s breweries, including the maker of Rochester Beer.

In 1897, Kansas City-based J.D. Iler Brewing Company, also known as Rochester Brewing Company, sent a shipment of its Rochester beer to Yorkshire, England, customers on demand for “holiday entertainments.” Previously, a group of Brits toured numerous breweries and sampled beers across the U.S. They were referred to Joe Iler’s brewery in Kansas City. The touring Brits preferred the superior quality of light Rochester beer to heavier English ales, porters, and stouts of the era. They had Rochester beer shipped across the Atlantic to drink it with guests at holiday parties.

Also, J.D. Iler Brewing Company promoted its Rochester Beer through unusual advertising. It sponsored a set of color lithographs depicting exotic scenes from around the world for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The name of the brewery and beer were both displayed on the artwork created by Harper’s magazine illustrator Charles Graham.

To learn more about this Kansas City brewery and others, pick up a copy of Kansas City Beer.

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Kansas City Beer Now Available

Kansas City BeerKansas City Beer: A History of Brewing in the Heartland is now available. Since the official book release date of Oct. 24, 2016, the book is available at many local retailers and online. The History Press published this brewery history book as part of its American Palate Series.

Official Book Description

Westbound immigrants, pioneers and entrepreneurs alike arrived in Kansas City with a thirst for progress and beer. Breweries both small and mighty seized opportunity in a climate of ceaseless social change and fierce regional competition. Muehlebach Brewing Company commanded the market, operating in Kansas City for more than eighty years. Built in 1902, the iconic brick warehouse of Imperial Brewing still stands today. Prohibition made times tough for brewers and citizens in the Paris of the Plains, but political “Boss” Tom Pendergast kept the taps running. In 1989, Boulevard Brewing kicked off the local craft beer renaissance, and a bevy of breweries soon formed a flourishing community. Food and beer writer Pete Dulin explores Kansas City’s hop-infused history and more than sixty breweries from the frontier era to the twenty-first century.

This book was fascinating to research because it involved finding “facts” in several ways. I studied old city records from the mid-1800s and dug through publications and marketing brochures of yesteryear. I contacted historical societies and reviewed digitized copies of books on Google. For any brewery that existed prior to 1989 when Boulevard began, research involved sifting through print and online sources. No one from the late 1800s to early 1900s before Prohibition was alive to interview!

For more contemporary breweries, such as Boulevard Brewing which was founded in 1989, I was able to interview key people including founder John McDonald and others. I reached out via social media to track down people that once worked at former breweries and brewpubs in the 1990s. Again, I perused online articles, websites, and other resources as well as reading book and print material. Perhaps the most fun part was interviewing the modern generation of Kansas City brewers from the 1990s to present, knowing that their stories fit in the sequence of history I was assembling as a book.

In the introduction to Kansas City Beer, I link the history of the city with its brewery history. The latter is innately tied to the former. During the process of writing and after completing the manuscript, I felt keenly aware that I was recalling, defining, and recording history from past and present. In a short span of time, my book will seem like ancient history. Even now, I find myself observing and thinking about current events, whether it is brewing or politics or social change, through the lens of history to provide a long-term perspective.

I’m pleased with the final result of Kansas City Beer. It’s easy to read with short profiles of nearly 70 breweries from roughly the 1850s to 2016. Much has happened in the history of Kansas City and its breweries.

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Expedition of Thirst: Pome on the Range Orchard and Winery

Pome on the Range Orchard and Winery owner Mike Gerhardt

Before arriving at Pome on the Range Orchard and Winery in Williamsburg, Kansas, the drive from Kansas City involves reaching escape velocity along the twisting construction zone lanes of I-35 South. Past the suburb of Olathe and outlying towns of Gardner and Edgerton, uninterrupted prairie stretches out lean and flat.

By early June, hot dry winds blow across green and golden fields bleached by the sun. Purple prairie clover and white clover blankets ditches and subtly sloping hills. Highway patrol cars in the median shine like beetles and bask like turtles in sunlight, waiting to bolt like jackrabbits and strike like rattlesnakes.

The Sioux word “Kansas” has been interpreted to mean “people of the south wind.” After an hour’s drive, I take exit 176, rumble along Idaho Road, pull into the gravel drive of Pome on the Range Orchard and Winery, and find a Kansan before me. Owner Mike Gerhardt, dressed in a faded beige shirt and navy shorts, stands next to a tractor and chats with another man. They both exhibit the copper-red tan of farmers and ranchers, men at home in the sun and soil.

 

blog Pome on the Range barn

 

Inside the tasting room, I introduce myself and explain that I’m researching regional wineries, breweries, and distilleries for a forthcoming travel guidebook, Expedition of Thirst. Gerhardt, looking gruff at first behind a blond, thick bristle brush mustache, leans back against a counter. He answers questions about the orchard and winery that he owns and operates with his wife Donnie. Later, I learn that Kelly, a tall young woman with blue eyes that works at the shop, is also a fourth-grade teacher.

Gerhardt reels off details about apple varieties that make the best cider and fruit wines. He doesn’t grow grapes or use them to make wine. Instead, he blends fermented apple juice with juice concentrate from blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrant, and other fruits to produce his wines. At 2,000 gallons, the small-batch winery is only part of the orchard’s business operation. The shop and tasting room also sells locally-grown fruits and vegetables and preserves, honey, and other goods produced in the region.

During the course of our talk, Gerhardt talks about customers that unknowingly use fruit as a device to access memories of childhood. A customer might ask for a certain variety of peaches or Black Diamond watermelon, convinced that the specific variety of fruit is the best ever. Gerhardt locks eyes with me and slowly shakes his head. No, he says, there are other peaches or watermelon that taste much better. When the supermarket or a farmers market stand carries “peaches and cream” sweet corn, customers snap it up by the dozen. Actually, Gerhardt points out, that corn is most likely Ambrosia or another variety. It is only called and marketed as peaches and cream because that’s the name the public has associated with sweet corn.

People often latch onto the idea of fruit from a farm, a specific variety in particular, not because it is truly the best, but instead the fruit reminds them of a childhood memory. Gerhardt shares a personal story of growing up on a farm, where the house had no air-conditioning. During summers, the family ate evening meals on a wooden table in the south part of the yard under a shade tree. It was too hot to eat in the house. After dinner, the family dined on cold sliced watermelon. Gerhardt doesn’t recall the taste of that watermelon but it prompts the memory of his youth and family meals.

Of course, Gerhardt’s observation reminds me of author Marcel Proust and his famous insights from “Remembrance of Things Past” that ties a memory to madeleines, or small cakes.

Buying peaches, watermelon, sweet corn, or other farm-grown foods becomes a device for tapping into memories and a prop for sharing stories around the kitchen table. Most of us do not live, or haven’t lived, a rural agrarian lifestyle. These trips to the farm or supermarket to buy “farm fresh” produce helps us access an idealized nostalgia of childhood, even if the memory is imperfect. Or, the trip inspires a feeling of something pure and authentic although we didn’t experience farm life firsthand growing up. None of this commentary is meant to suggest that visiting and buying at the farmers market or direct from the farmer isn’t worth your while.The best best is to venture to the source. Talk with the farmer, rancher, winemaker, brewer, and baker to learn, taste, and touch the food, wine, and farm-produced goods. Before recollection, there must be the collection of experience.

Expedition of Thirst: Exploring Wineries, Breweries, and Distilleries in Central Kansas and Missouri (University Press of Kansas) will be published in fall of 2017. This series of posts documents stories and observations of the people and places I encounter during my research and travels that won’t necessarily be included in the travel guidebook, due to its size and format.