5 Questions With Jasper Mirabile Jr.

The Zagat 2011 survey was recently released, including some surprises (like Oklahoma Joe's being rated best overall restaurant).

Maybe not as surprising was the publication's pick for best Italian in KC, which went to Jasper's, the eponymous outpost of the highly visible, active and energetic Chef Jasper Mirabile Jr. No stranger to awards, the restaurant had also recently taken the award of Best Tableside Dish 2010 from The Pitch for their Mozzarella. Prior to all this hoopla, I chased down Chef Jasper to get some insights into his food, his philosophies, his goals and his life in a little game I like to call 5 Questions:

You’re a chef who’s very much in the public eye, doing demos in Kansas City and recently in Italy. You’re on facebook and twitter and even in front of customers at the restaurant with your famous tableside mozzarella. Why is it important to you to be so visible? Marketing is my life.  I love to cook, I love to meet people and I combine it all by marketing myself and promoting Jasper's.  Whether by radio or TV, it does not matter, I am everywhere.  I never turn down an event or cause.  I love to be at the local farmer's markets doing demos or at The Hen house teaching class.  As chef ambassador for Wisconsin Cheese, I get to travel everywhere and talk about cheese.  What a life.  I have met so many interesting people along the way. Captain Phil on The Cornelia Marie and Captain Johnaton from The Time Bandit...I worked on their boat during filming for the Deadliest Catch.  Traveled to New York to cook at The James Beard House this year...my fifth visit. Worked for American Italian Pasta Co. and cooked in Times Square for World Pasta Day. TV every Monday with NBC Action News Midday.  I have cooked with Giada, Paula Deen, worked with Red Gold Tomatoes, Farmland, Certified Herferd Beef, Eggland's Best etc...too many to name. I am head of Slow Food KC and on the biard of American Inst. of Wine and Food along with VP of Midwest of Gruppo Ristoratori Italiano.  fRadio show every Saturday...not a paid advertising...tKCMO owns the show and I am the host!   It is my life, my passion and my love! I am finishing my third cookbook, On The Cannoli Trail.  All desserts, you will love it! 

What have you been cooking lately… that is NOT Italian? Asian dumplings...I am obsessed with them.  Also roasted pig and pork loin in my La Caja China. (www.lacajachina.com)

For those who aren’t familiar, describe the difference between typical Northern and Southern Italian food, in which type are you rooted and why?  If you asked me this question two weeks ago I would have said Southern is more peasant style and North is rich with the bounty of Italy.  After retuning from Italy yesterday, I can say this is SO TRUE.  In Bologna, Parma and Modena last week, we ate so much butter, Parmigiano Reggiano and cream. All the food was so rich.  In Sicily, where my famiglia is from, we eat a lot of bread, olive oil, goat, pasta and fresh seafood.  All light and fresh.

You moved from Waldo to 103rd. How do you like the newer location and are there any plans for expansion? We love the newer location...all under one roof.  So easy to manage.  Business here is about 40% more than the old Jasper's.  We have such great access from 435 highway and  Johnson County.  No expansion...we are big enough.  Maybe a Mobile Cannoli Truck. That would be cool.

Give me a little-known-fact about Jasper Mirabile Jr.  Ha!  I cannot make a grilled cheese sandwich for the life of me...I always end up burning them.  My wife and daughter think this is the funniest thing.   I love BBQ and I crave pies...along with cannoli!!! 

His enthusiasm jumps off the page and is just as apparent in person. Jasper's is located at 1201 W. 103rd Street.

BRGR Battle

Restaurant: BRGR Kitchen + Bar
Location: 4038 W. 83rd St, Prairie Village, KS
Food: Burgers and a good bar
Service: Traditional waitstaff
Atmosphere: Loud and lively
Price: Burgers $8-$10, Sides $2.5-$7, Salads $8-$10
Rating: One napkin


What bar-b-cue is to Kansas City, the burger is to the United States as a whole.

In KC, bar-b-cue is obsessed-over. Done with infinite variations on the same classic idea and set of techniques by several restaurants, each claiming to have the very best.  And today, across the nation, burgers are very much in the limelight garnering the same type of obsession with chef-driven, gourmet ingredients and chic dining rooms popping up all over.



It would be unwise for me to say this burger trend could ever manifest itself here in Kansas City to an extent rivaling King Barbecue, but it is clearly seeping in.

Swept up in the burger craze, I ventured to the heart of PV recently to try BRGR Kitchen + Bar and, specifically, to compare it to the impressive Blanc Burgers + Bottles. Blanc, having received 4 Napkins in the past, is clearly a favorite. Would BRGR be on the same playing field?

Of foremost interest to me was the atmosphere at BRGR. Prairie Village is a hotbed of young families and, as such, many of its restaurants feel more like a McDonald’s play place, teeming with grubby faced toddlers, than I like. Listen, I’m a 20 something.  I want everything to be “cool,” “modern,” and “innovative.” Terms like “family-friendly” send shivers up my spine (I’ll grow out of this soon enough, I’m sure). So I was afraid BRGR would feel too juvenile.

It did not. The restaurant has a sort of warm industrial feel. A wooden sign and front door, wooden bar, wood-plank room dividers and wood ceiling lend a sort of contemporary cowboy toughness to the place. The walls were exposed brick and the floor a simple concrete. The materials and appearance were delightfully adult-appropriate, I decided. A great relief.

We bellied up to the bar during the short wait for our table, where we encountered a fantastic surprise – Free State Brewery beers on tap! Being Jayhawk alum, this is a sentimental favorite. Our Oktoberfests were deliciously malty with a crisp hoppy finish.  Across from the bar are a few indoor tables and then the outdoor patio, at which I can easily picture myself relaxing and enjoying a beer sometime in the future.

Next thing we knew, we were being seated at our table smack-dab in the middle of the main dining area, perusing the list of 23 entrée selections – 12 with beef, 2 slider selections and nine non-beef choices. Choosing among so many different burgers was difficult but I landed on the Big Hoss. All BRGRs are a half pound of certified angus beef (75/25). Massive and juicy. The Big Hoss also came with a fried egg, maple bacon, Wisconsin cheddar, steak sauce and onion straws on a corn bun, with a little bottle of Tabasco on the side ($9).

The quality I found most remarkable about this burger was its size, rather than any of its flavor components. I immediately cut it in half after deciding there was no way I could pick up the whole thing without dropping half its contents. It was huge. Too big, really.

I’m a big fan of burgers with a fried egg on them. At BRGR you can add one to any burger for a buck (same for Blanc). The one on my Big Hoss was nicely done, with a still-runny yolk. The bacon was thick cut which would have been great, except it wasn’t quite crispy enough. Each time I bit into it, the whole piece of bacon got yanked out of the burger; I couldn’t get just a single bite to come off. The other slight disappointment was the corn bun, which seemed bulky, a little dry and stale. When eating a burger, especially one with a half pound of meat, plus two other proteins on it, I don’t want to be overwhelmed with a thick, spongy bun, too. So a less-cumbersome choice would have been preferable. Still, these nits aside, it was a pleasurable burger.

For sides, we chose “THE COMBO,” which allows you to select ay three for $7. We chose the BRGR fries, sweet potato fries and onion rings (other choices were onion straws, truffle fries and truffle tator tots). Here, again, we were shocked at the portions, as we were delivered two metal coffee carafes filled to the brim with the fries and three giant onion rings. The BRGR fries were good, seemingly hand cut and with a nice texture. The sweet potato fries were pleasantly crispy, too. Not mushy the way they can be when done poorly. The onion rings could have been great – large and firm with a heavy, crumbly crust – but the breading had a cheap-tasting Italian herb flavor that we didn’t completely appreciate. It seemed unfitting in the context of the rest of the all-American menu.

Half of our burgers and two thirds of the sides did us in, despite starting out with huge appetites. We liked BRGR a great deal for its laid back, fun atmosphere, good selection and decent prices. Truth be told, though, I went back to Blanc last weekend with friends, had an Au Poivre burger on their Farm to Market salt and pepper brioche bun and confirmed that its smaller portion and superior taste/textures gave it a clear edge over what I had at BRGR. I’ll go back to BRGR, but it will likely be upon someone else’s request rather than my own.

Rating: one napkin

5 Questions with Danny O'Neill - "Bean Baron" The Roasterie

And you thought your coffee consumption was out of control...

Three? Four? A half-dozen coffees in a day? That's child's play... compared to Danny O'Neill, owner, founder, "Bean Baron" of Kansas City's arguably best known coffee company - The Roasterie.

Coffee may not be a food, per se, but it's used in cooking frequently, goes well with food as a beverage, fuels many of our nations finest chefs and is most certainly an essential part of restaurant culture. The Roasterie knows and embraces this correlation with food so well, one can find Roasterie blends individually customized for Kansas City's favorite restaurants at their neighborhood grocery store.

So it's fitting that my next game of five questions is with The Bean Baron. And if you're thinking to yourself, "Man, I bet that guy drinks a lot of coffee," my friend, you have no idea. But read on to find out...

Who is "The Bean Baron" - at work and in life, generally?
I always start with fun…life is fun, should be fun…I’m all about fun. I’m very high energy and love performance and excellence in all things. I love being with my family, my friends, my staff, our customers…and they are all really in one big pot. I’m driven…to have fun, to do my best…I love and am intensely passionate about coffee, espresso, entrepreneurship, giving back, helping others, Roasterie Coffee ice cream, chocolate, anything with an internal combustion motorJ.

Average weekday morning. You wake up. I assume you drink some sort of coffee drink. What is it and how do you prepare it or where is it prepared for you?
I don’t like to be more than a few meters from a commercial espresso machine! So we have them everywhere…at home in Brookside, at our farm outside Excelsior Springs, in our Airstream Mobile Coffee Unit, in our offices…everywhere. I love espresso and normally go straight from bed to the La Marzocco in our kitchen…and I usually pull anywhere from 6 to 9 double shots…then go to the shower. I may stop at the Café and when I do, I always get a double macchiato. At the office I’ll usually have either French Press or whatever Amanda has brewed. The boys will usually be cupping so I jump in whenever I can. After around 3:00 or 4:00 I switch to decaf…but have had at least 20 + cups of regular by then so it’s time. Over the years, there has been such dramatic improvement in the decaf processes that you really have to have a discerning palate now to tell the difference.

What does the average coffee drinker not know about coffee that he/should?
Perhaps the work that went into getting it in their hands. We spend all year sourcing…and the farmers growing, the best coffee that we can find on the planet. Those beans have likely gone through nine sets of human fingers, taken one tree a whole year just to produce 1 to 1.5 pounds of coffee; and nearly five years for that tree to produce it’s first full crop! So, an intense amount of work goes into those beans…but they don’t need to sweat all that…’cause that’s what we do!

Now there are two Roasterie Cafe's in Kansas City. What are the company's plans for expansion considering cafes, facilities and distribution?
We spent five years studying the local market before we decided on the 2nd Café. We want each one to play a major role in their local community…we’re not interested in the “drive-by” locations. We want to be a part of our neighborhood, wherever we are. So, it’s likely we’ll continue to be very methodical in our future Café expansion plans.
We continue to build locally, regionally and nationally in terms of sales and distribution. But we really focus here in the Midwest and that’s where most of our growth continues to be, except online…which we’re really pleased with and it’s really spread across the country.

What's your best or favorite coffee-related travel memory? 
Being lost in Ethiopia at night when a roadblock came down and ‘rebels’ got on the bus with AK47’s to steal and/or kidnap. When our guides told them we were just poor coffee buyers, they let us go. It was very fun and exciting.

Clearly, this is a man living a caffeinated lifestyle. A true KC original and an interesting subject for 5 questions. Hope you enjoyed!