Saturday, October 10, 2009

czar bar

★★½ (2½ stars - see last paragraph)

kansas city has a handful of hip music venues with veggie fare on their menu. i had never been to the czar bar, but i was excited to try their menu - especially when i saw their veggie burger was "served on a vegan friendly bun." there are a couple of other veggie friendly options, including hummus, crispy eggplant strips and the unexciting house salad.

i met my friend kim for dinner one night and as usual, double checked with the server about the vegan veggie burger. to my surprise, the veggie patty contains egg and isn't vegan. i'm not sure i get it - to me, promoting the vegan friendly bun sort of implies that the patty itself is vegan. what am i going to do, just order a bun? strike one. slightly dissuaded, i thought i'd go with the crispy eggplant strips instead. nope - they use an egg wash to bread them. i asked if they could not use the egg wash for mine, but no dice - they are pre-breaded. strike two. it was a really cold and rainy day, and salad just didn't sound comforting, so i went with hummus.


the hummus itself was okay, but nothing to write home about. i'm glad i got it at the happy hour price or i would have been really disappointed. i usually don't have high expectations for bar food, but kansas city has quite a few vegan friendly places with great food. (mccoy's, record bar, etc. - i'll be sure to get reviews up soon.) basically, czar bar isn't very vegan friendly, but an ovo-lacto vegetarian has a couple options. the food and prices are just mediocre, so i can't really think of anything veg-food-wise that would put czar bar at three stars. therefore, i'm giving it two stars, with an extra half star for the staff member that kept going back to the kitchen to check on ingredients for me. thanks guy.


website:
czar bar

location:
1531 grand boulevard
kansas city, mo

816.221.2244

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