ALLISON LONG/Kansas City Star
Trezo Vino Wine Bistro, in Park Place Center, includes dining areas near the bar, an open kitchen, and patio seating.
Maybe it was the first sliver of the chef's velvety, chicken-liver pate. Or maybe it was the chilled cantaloupe soup, a foamy, lighter-than-air sensation bearing a spicy watercress leaf that popped on my tongue.
But one thing I knew for sure: At some point in a recent visit, it began to sink in that I really liked what was going on at Trezo Vino.
This two-year-old restaurant at the Park Place development in Leawood is a sibling of Briarcliff’s Trezo Mare. While the Northland restaurant feels a bit more sit-down formal, concentrating on meat and seafood, Trezo Vino, under executive chef Dan White, takes a Euro-style spin through contemporary-American bistro cuisine.
The place has a kind of generic look, but its dark wood, open kitchen and Tuscan-inspired, black, gold and aubergine accents make it a pleasant enough setting for what seems like an ever-changing menu. (Just this month, it launched some new summery spins on a few of its dishes.)
A patio and some sidewalk tables overlook too much vehicle traffic for my taste, but once you settle in with a Trezo cocktail, a bottle of wine or some shareable plates, who would notice?
The menu is big and a bit overwhelming. Flatbread pizzas. Bruschettas. A bunch of ambitious and creative small plates. “Bistro plates,” which are more like traditional entrees. And a daily dish. In three visits my companions and I found enough to win us over among appetizers and the shareable (and sometimes pricey) small plates that we never got around to ordering entrees. You can stretch things out that way, too, ending up with a sequence of courses of your own design.
Still, the menu can make your head feel stuffed even before you order, but focusing on the details and descriptions will help you navigate, and servers are always ready to weigh in and guide.
One night, for example, I passed on a plate of gnocchi when the server suggested it might be a bit heavy, especially coming after a couple of the other dishes we’d already downed. A few days later, with three fellow diners at the table, the gnocchi proved to be a side-dish hit. The light, tubular dumplings come out in a bowl with a flaming under-plate, a theatrical gesture that helped bring its fontina cheese sauce to a bubble.
The over-riding motif here is eclectic and driven by White’s emphasis on fresh, daily-supplied, seasonal ingredients. As with that cup of cantaloupe soup, which, along with the watercress, featured a garnish of tiny radishes, White seems to favor gentle collisions of contrasting flavors, layering dishes with varying degrees of sweet, sour and savory accents all at once
Bruschettas included a handful of creative combinations (brie, apple and fig spread; tasso ham with white beans) but seemed less lively, even less inspired than most of the other dishes we had.
Highlights included a perfectly grilled, four-ounce filet of sea bass. It came with two large and tender scallops, all sailing along a basil verjus butter sauce and anchored by a dollop of tomato jam. Even as a small plate, it’s just about the most expensive dish on the menu ($27), but shared between two people, it seemed elegant and worth it.
Only slightly less expensive was a plate of day-boat scallops atop potato galettes (or latkes, some of us might call them). The dish was accompanied by a thick, grilled asparagus stalk, beautifully al dente, plus a pancetta aioli and drizzles of balsamic reduction and bright-green parsley oil.
One night our server let us taste the sweet-and-tart blackberry “agro dolce” barbecue sauce that accompanies a dish of braised short ribs. A few nights later we ordered the succulent ribs and swooned.
“Fantastic!” came the retort across the table from Word Man, a linguist usually given to more voluble declamations.
On weekend nights the restaurant offers a three-course, fixed-price menu of specials ($25 one week, $40 another), but because each dish is individually priced, you can cherry-pick. We did that one night to try a Dungeness Crab Parfait. It was a small dish (about the size of a single scoop of ice cream) at a not so small price ($10). Yet it offered one of those spontaneous adventures that make dining out such a pleasure. A half-dozen tender crab pieces from a long claw sat on a pudding of chunky tomato and horseradish-tinged yogurt.
“This is it,” said She Who Is Not Easily Pleased, obviously impressed but already lamenting the eventual loss of the tangy tease of this fleeting revelation of a dish. “This is something you’ll never taste another time in your life.”
Some restaurants keep you coming back with old-favorite dishes that never seem to change. At Trezo Vino, the seduction is in the surprise.
