BERRY TRAMEL

Kansas City travelblog: Garozzo's and Kauffman Stadium

Berry Tramel

For me, the pandemic began in Kansas City. Big 12 Tournament. Before Rudy Gobert and the Oklahoma City positive coronavirus test, I sat in the Sprint Center, awaiting the start of the OSU-Iowa State game, when the Big 12 announced the rest of the tournament, after first-round games that Wednesday, would be played without fans.

You know the rest. Gobert, which canceled the Thunder-Jazz game in Oklahoma City and sent shock waves throughout American society. The next morning, the Big 12 Tournament and all the rest of college basketball was canceled. The next afternoon, all NCAA spring sports were canceled.

Colleagues Jacob Unruh and Abby Bitterman and I drove home Thursday night, knowing America had changed.

That’s’ been five months that seems like five years. The virus remains, still unchecked, but we’ve largely learned to live with it. Sports have returned, on some stages. Most of us are wearing masks out in public. We’ve found a new normal.

For us, a new normal is limited travel. A big family vacation was always a summer staple. The beach, be it Gulf Shores or Prince Edward Island. The mountains. Be it the Smokies or the Rockies.

This year, a big family vacation is out, of course. Traveling is difficult. But the call to see something new doesn’t dissipate just because there’s a pandemic.

So our seven-strong clan – Trish the Dish and I, daughter Haley, son-in-law J.J. and their three girls – headed out Thursday for Kansas City. Back where the pandemic started for me.

You guys know my affinity for Kansas City. Lovely big city. Full of interesting and beautiful sights. The Dish loves KC, too, and she had the pull of Nell Hills.

Nell Hills is a classic home furnishings/interior design shop in north KC. I’ve never been, but the Dish loves it. She’s’ even made a couple of trips to Kansas City without me, primarily to visit Nell Hills.

Turns out, Nell Hills’ annual tent sale is Saturday morning. Social distancing will be enforced, with limited entry and limited time to shop, but the Dish was all in.

So we decided three days in Kansas City would be a swell getaway. I’m working remotely anyway; I can work from KC as well as I can work from Harwich Court. We left Norman a little before noon and headed to KC. Traveling in familiar territory is an advantage during a pandemic. Like I wrote last month, the worst part of traveling to Mississippi for a few days was bathroom stops. You had no idea what to trust.

That’s not a problem going up and down the I-35 corridor, from San Antonio to Des Moines. I know that region well. After leaving Cleveland County, we stopped just once, in the Kansas Turnpike Travel Plaza between Wellington and Wichita. We knew we could trust it to be clean. We all got a snack and headed on. Didn’t want to eat too much. We were headed to Garozzo’s.

No reason to say too much about my favorite restaurant in the world. I write about it on every trip to KC. But it never gets old and it never fails to deliver. I’ve often wondered how often I would eat at Garozzo’s if I lived in KC. A friend of mine, Bill Reiter, worked for the Kansas City Star and claimed he ate at Garozzo’s a couple of times a month. I don’t doubt it. I think I’d do the same.

Garozzo’s is in the old Columbus Park district just off downtown KC. Has the ambience and tremendous food of a classic Italian joint. It feels like a step back in time.

Garozzo’s has embraced social distancing. Its main dining room has shed several tables, so it wasn’t its normal bustling place. We actually ate upstairs, accessed by an exterior staircase, in a room usually reserved for bigger parties. But the product was the same.

I had steak modiga, J.J. (his first trip to Garozzo’s) had a steak modiga/chicken speidini combination and the girls each got one pasta dish or another. I recommended J.J. do a split plate, so he could have a better sense of what Garozzo’s offers. The speidini is Garozzo’s specialty, but I’ve found the modiga to be the best thing on the menu. J.J. ended up saying the same thing.

My only regret: the special of the night was a lobster speidini, for a not-crazy price of $39, and how often do I get a chance to eat lobster? But I also figured, how often do I get a chance to eat Garozzo’s steak modiga. In retrospect, I should have ordered 9-year-old Tinley, a steak lover, a small modiga. I could have gone with the lobster and maybe had her leftover modiga. Except she might not have had any leftovers.

Just a wonderful experience. I usually enjoy Garozzo’s with colleagues. But eating with the people I love the most was fabulous. The only downside? Owner Mike Garozzo was gone for the evening. He’s always a delight as a restaurant host.

After dinner, we drove out I-70 so 10-year-old Sadie could see Kauffman Stadium. Sades has gone deep into softball, and the idea of a diamond surrounded by a massive, cool stadium intrigued her.

The Royals weren’t playing Thursday night, but the K was lit up. So we were able to get a photo with Sadie and I, standing on the hill overlooking the lit-up stadium.

We then returned to our hotel, the Springhill Suites near the Plaza, and hunkered down for a cool weekend in KC.