Let the good times loll.

There are few things more relaxing than spending a lazy Saturday afternoon at a sidewalk cafe slurping back 50-cent Blue Point oysters on the half shell and clinking $1 flutes of California sparkling wine with good friends.

Café Roux’s happy hour is a big easy on the wallet. The Leawood restaurant at Park Place, which has been open since April, offers the special 4 to 7 p.m. daily. There is a diabolical brilliance to the shell game: Once you get your diners in the door, you’ve pretty much got them hooked, especially when the most expensive entrée is just $20.

Inside, Café Roux (pronounced roo) is a casual, handsome space: a bamboo bar, brick walls, tile floors, dark wood tables, spare, modern glass light fixtures and a few modernist paintings from the gallery down the street hanging on the wall.

If you look above the bar, there’s a shiny Emmy statuette, one of four awarded to Denver-based meteorologist and partner Marty Coniglio (brother of Kansas City-based owner Jen Coniglio), which explains the push on Facebook to get local meteorologists Gary Lezak and Bryan Busby to stop by.

To test the waters on my first visit, I ordered a Sazerac, a stiff, classic New Orleans cocktail of rye whiskey, bitters and pernod made famous at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. As the waitress delivered the half-full rocks glass, she oddly gushed, “You’re my hero!”

I could feel the bartender watching me. Truth is, I ordered the potent combination because it’s a reliable barometer of authenticity. Since returning from a trip to New Orleans last fall, I’ve discovered the Sazerac tends to stump local bartenders. Sure, there’s always Google at the ready, but there’s a difference between measuring ingredients together and really finessing them in a glass.

The drink was bracing but balanced, and I was immediately transported back to a reception at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum where I tentatively tried my first.

In the kitchen, the yardsticks of Cajun/Creole authenticity usually boil down to gumbo, crawfish etouffee and catfish po’boy. Café Roux’s chocolate brown roux had a pleasantly mellow smokiness, with slices of local Fritz’s peppery andouille sausage for kick.

The crawfish etouffee was smooth, velvety but more tomato-y than most versions I have tried, but in reality there are as many styles of etouffee as there are cooks in the world. The catfish po’boy was beer-battered, featuring a crackling deep-fried crust without a whisper of grease.

There are Southern standards mixed in, including buttermilk fried chicken and braised baby back ribs served with andouille, a deliciously sturdy dish worth putting on your list when the weather turns cold.

Jen Coniglio previously managed restaurants for Applebee’s along the Gulf Coast, where she says she became a fan of the casual local dining scene. She hired chef Brian Bromwell from Craigslist. Bromwell, a native of Kansas City, had been in New York City for nearly a decade working for fine dining restaurants.

Fish dishes displayed particular finesse; both dishes I ordered came to the table perfectly cooked. The pan-roasted trout was cooked in a nutty balsamic brown butter until the meat was white and flaky, then garnished with one fistful of pecans and another of crisp-tender green beans. The “green” redfish — yes, the fish that Paul Prudhomme made famous by blackening in a cast-iron skillet — was topped with maque choux, a fresh sweet corn relish, this one combined with a chili verde sauce.

On both of my visits, entrees arrived so quickly after ordering that it was clear the kitchen staff was humming at top speed, but minor glitches resulted with such eagerness to please. For instance, the shrimp in both the shrimp and oyster bisque and the shrimp and grits were undercooked, which is certainly better than overcooked.

The fried egg atop the piquant chicken and andouille hash was just shy of set. The french fries served with the oyster po’boy were limp, as if the kitchen hadn’t waited for the oil to get hot. But Café Roux’s waitstaff is eager to please. When our waiter replaced the order, the new fries came out hot and crisp.

Still looking for benchmarks, I ordered beignets, puffs of fried dough with a shower of confectioners’ sugar. But who am I kidding? My husband is a beignet guy. I’m really more of a bread pudding person, and when my spoon hit the bottom of Bromwell’s version of Creole bourbon bread pudding, I inhaled the gush of liquor with subtle hints of oak and vanilla that mingled with banana, dark chocolate and peanut butter.

Well, what can I say?  Next time, I’ll skip the Sazerac and go straight for dessert.

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.

Three new Creole-inspired spots recently popped up around the metro area — Cafe Roux in Leawood, Danny’s Big Easy at 18th and Vine and Fat Fish Blue in the Northland.

These restaurants offer hearty helpings of crawfish, gumbo, jambalaya and all that jazz.

So, what’s with the sudden Cajun invasion?

“It’s definitely a little bit of a novelty,” said Todd Leinenbach, managing partner at Fat Fish Blue. “It’s really about the party atmosphere.”

Factor in that festive spirit of the South, and you’ve got a Fat Tuesday celebration every night of the week.

Cafe Roux

If you order the crawfish boil at Cafe Roux, a new Cajun restaurant in Leawood’s Park Place, you’d better be prepared to get your hands dirty.

The steaming plate of tomato-red crustaceans — which look a lot like miniature lobsters — isn’t something you can eat with fork and knife.

You’ve got to grab a hold of one, crack it in half, then extract the sweet, buttery meat from the tail. It’s worth it, unless you’re the squeamish type.

Owner Jen Coniglio said some people like to suck the heads, too — “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Coniglio, who’s worked in the corporate restaurant industry for years, teamed up with her brother Marty Coniglio, a meteorologist in Denver, to open Cafe Roux.

“We’re best friends,” Coniglio said, “and we’ve always wanted to do something like this.”

She said she’s always liked Southern cooking because “it has an attitude” and it draws from so many great cuisines — mostly Spanish, Italian and French.

The food: Coniglio said Cafe Roux, which opened last month, has lighter fare than most Cajun restaurants. So not everything on the menu’s blackened and deep-fried.

The cafe specializes in fresh seafood dishes such as the crawfish boil ($13), roasted flounder ($18) and pan-roasted trout ($17). But there’s heavier comfort food on the menu, too, in the form of buttermilk fried chicken ($15) and Southern fried dill pickles ($7).

The atmosphere: Cafe Roux is dark and cozy, save for the big, sunny windows facing Ash Street. Dark wood, brick walls and deep red vinyl on the furniture give the cafe a rich, masculine feel.

The drinks: A long bar spans one wall of the cafe and serves up beer, wine and specialty cocktails such as the Sazerac, $9, a famous New Orleans drink made with Pernod absinthe, Wild Turkey Bourbon, Peychaud’s Bitters and a sugar cube. If you’re feeling adventurous (not squeamish) try the Oyster Shot ($8) — a raw oyster swimming in Absolut Peppar vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.
— sarah benson
 
What: A new casual Cajun and Southern restaurant in Park Place.

Where: 11554 Ash St. in Leawood

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Info: 913.400.3478, or on Facebook

A lot of people aren’t too keen on the idea of sushi … raw fish? Still, sushi comes imbued with a certain sexiness, an attraction worth getting close to.

That seems to be the thought behind RA Sushi Bar and Restaurant, a small chain launched a dozen years ago in Scottsdale, Ariz., then bought and expanded by Benihana Inc. RA Sushi builds its reputation not so much on outstanding seafood offerings but on experience. It’s a magnetic, clubby space where Japanese-inspired fish dishes can be had along with cutesy cocktails and easy-to-down servings of decorated maki, the traditional rice-wrapped rolls cut into bite-sized pieces. (And, sure, if you drag Grandpa along he can have a filet or beef teriyaki while he grouses over the sound and the small type on the menu.)

This RA Sushi outlet opened in August on the ground floor of the hip Aloft hotel in Leawood’s new Park Place development. In the evenings it fairly pulses with a dance beat and an overhead nightscape of stunning red globes. As the crowds have discovered, RA Sushi is all about the vibe.

And it’s a good vibe, confirmed a 20-something friend as we sat at the sushi bar one weeknight. That feeling was not universally shared, however, on the night that four of us somewhat older patrons sat in the main dining room. (Hmmm. Were we deliberately shunted to the back of the room?)

That tabletop dinner had its high points: a sharable cauldron of miso hot soup; a simple, crunchy-spicy bowl of cucumber kimchee; a tangy, textured plate of sesame lemon whitefish.

But just as often we found ourselves wondering about blandness and inconsistency. Several dishes sounded promising but delivered less than they should have.

Everything that was right and wrong about the meal could be summed up with a large entrée bowl of noodles: The udon, or wheat noodles, topped with spicy teriyaki chicken, were pleasantly plump, chewy and enlivened with a glazing of chili-kicked teriyaki sauce. On the other hand, the nuggets of white-meat chicken were overcooked and dry, as if the kitchen staff weren’t paying attention to quality control.

Similarly, a plate of pork gyoza potstickers appeared like weary stragglers, unadorned on a white plate; supposedly sautéed, they seemed undercooked and over-stored.

The menu is long — there’s also a lot of “sushi 101” to read — and aside from typical sushi-restaurant offerings of nigiri (raw fish on rice), maki (rolls) and sashimi (just the fish), there are lots of creative presentations, seafood or otherwise.

A tuna tataki came in a volcanic arrangement of vertically positioned planks of fish and a crackling spray of crispy threads. The downside: The tuna, which at some pre-assembly point might have been seared, seemed overchilled and nearly flavorless.

In a tasty mango lobster roll, the rice is filled with a “lobster mix,” avocado and cucumber and topped with a thin patch of the orange fruit. That fruit spin is the kind of thing that cuts straight through the fear of exotic cuisine. Similarly, cream cheese makes a frequent appearance in the maki offerings and undoubtedly helps explain why the flamboyant “Viva Las Vegas” roll is among the most popular offerings.

On a second visit, five sushi chefs worked constantly filling orders over the two hours I spent at the sushi bar. Because I sat down before 7 p.m., I qualified for a generous happy hour (3 to 7 p.m. daily) on appetizers (half price) and a few sushi offerings.

The “RA”ckin’ shrimp appetizer, with a light and peppery batter, is served with a ginger teriyaki dip. The combination of crusty exterior and hot, firm shrimp inside was a pleasant surprise, and the fusion of flavors represents the best of what RA Sushi is all about.

After a sashimi serving of top-of-the-line bluefin toro (tuna belly; $18), which showed as a buttery soft morsel hinting of sea water, I asked the server about freshness. Daily, she said; fish is flown in daily. A little later one of the sushi chefs told me otherwise: Fish arrives twice a week.

In my experience, the better fish offerings came in nigiri and sashimi servings, cut thicker and served to order, rather than some of the appetizer or “tapas” preparations, which might have been made in advance.

At the dinner table, we took our server’s advice and went straight to a couple of the banana-based desserts. A “banana split maki,” with a little chocolate inside and wonton wrapper out, indeed had an inspired presentation on a long narrow dish; kudos to the server who, after one of the pieces toppled over as he headed to our table, instantly retraced his steps and had the dessert replated.

In the end, though, I wanted to be wowed by the dish more than I was. Again, an underwhelming palate moment, but, perhaps indicative of the seductive trance RA Sushi can generate, I will say we downed it all.